David Sirota: Top 5 Reasons to Vote Against Paulson's $700 Billion Bailout

David Sirota in The Huffington Post, written before the House rejected the Treasury Secretary's bailout plan, but just as thought-provoking today:


Top 5 Reasons to Vote Against Paulson's $700 Billion Bailout
Posted September 28, 2008 | 06:01 PM (EST)


There's news this Sunday afternoon of a congressional deal to bailout Wall Street fat cats with $700 billion of taxpayer cash (you can read the draft legislation here). Though the deal negotiated between congressional leaders and the White House is better than what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson originally proposed early last week, it remains an insulting atrocity, having omitted even basic aid to homeowners, bankruptcy reforms and any modicum of future financial industry regulation. Now, the New York Times reports that the Democratic leadership may not have the votes to pass this bailout. So without further ado, here are the top 5 reasons (in no order) why every single member of Congress - Democrat and Republican - should vote this sucker down. Please feel free to copy and paste this post into an email to your congressperson. They are deciding right now - let them hear your voice.

1. BAILOUT'S INHERENT FISCAL INSANITY COULD MAKE PROBLEM WORSE

When an individual consumer uses a new credit card to pay off astounding debt from an old credit card, it's akin to check kiting, which is is illegal. Apparently, though, when the government does it, it's billed as Serious Public Policy. Because that's what this supposedly prudent bailout bill would do: Force taxpayers to borrow $700 billion from foreign banks to pay off the bad debt of Wall Street banks. During a crisis that is aimed at preventing interest rates from skyrocketing, nobody has been able to explain how adding almost a trillion dollars to the interest rate-exacerbating national debt would do anything other than undermine the plan's underlying objective. Worse, the U.S. Treasury Department itself admits that the $700 billion number is "not based on any particular data point" - that is, they created it out of thin air because "We just wanted to choose a really large number." Slapping that amount of money onto the national credit card when our government can't even justify the amount is beyond absurd - it is insane.

It didn't have to be this way, of course. As I noted in my newspaper column this week, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed a temporary tax on millionaires to finance part of this bailout. Similarly, Blue Dog Democrats proposed a future tax on financial firms if and when taxpayers lose cash on the deal. These proposals were discarded in favor of language asking the government to "submit a plan to Congress on how to recoup any losses," according to the Associated Press. Not only is that language toothless, but it opens up the possibility of a plan being submitted that says we should raise middle-class taxes or slash middle-class social programs to pay for Wall Street's misbehavior.

2. EXPERTS ON BOTH THE LEFT AND RIGHT SAY THIS BAILOUT COULD MAKE THINGS WORSE

Primum non nocere is the latin phrase for "first do no harm" - the priority principle for any EMT working on a sick patient. It should be the same priority for Congress at this moment - and a growing group of esteemed experts on both the Right and Left are insisting that this bailout bill could make things worse. Here's a review:

* The Washington Post reported on Friday, almost 200 academic economists "have signed a petition organized by a University of Chicago professor objecting to the plan on the grounds that it could create perverse incentives, that it is too vague and that its long-run effects are unclear."

* NYU's Nouriel Roubini, the visionary who had been predicting this meltdown, says "The Treasury plan (even in its current version agreed with Congress) is very poorly conceived and does not contain many of the key elements of a sound and efficient and fair rescue plan."

* Harvard's Ken Rogoff, a Former Federal Rerserve and IMF official, insists that the prospect of this bailout is, unto itself, taking a manageable problem and making it into a more intense crisis. He says that credit is frozen primarily because banks want to avoid dealing with other banks that might drive a hard bargain, and instead would rather wait for free money from the government. Without the prospect of that free money, Rogoff suggests that credit would probably begin moving again, if slowly.

* Dean Baker of the Center on Economic and Policy Research says that spending so much cash so quickly on such a poorly conceived plan could have the effect of making it impossible to fund economic stimulus that is the real way out of this mess. "Suppose the Paulson plan goes through," he writes. "It is virtually certain that the economy will weaken further and the number of foreclosures and people without jobs will continue to rise. This is the fallout from a collapsing housing bubble...When families respond to their loss of home equity by cutting back their consumption it will deepen the recession. In this context it might prove very important to have the resources needed to provide a substantial stimulus. [and] there is no doubt that this bailout will make further stimulus much more difficult to sell politically."

Meanwhile, it's not even close to clear that this is a problem that requires such an enormous response. As mentioned above, the Treasury Department admits it has absolutely no factual basis for requesting $700 billion - an amount equivalent to about 5 percent of our entire economy. Additionally, the Washington Post reports that "Banks throughout the United States carried on with the business of making loans yesterday even as federal officials warned again that their industry is on the verge of collapse, suggesting that the overheated language on Capitol Hill may not reflect the reality on many Main Streets." Indeed, "many smaller banks said they were actually benefiting from the problems on Wall Street" and "even some of the nation's largest banks, which have pushed hard for a federal bailout, deny that the current situation is forcing them to reduce lending."

The questions, then, are simple: In the face of this bipartisan opposition from objective experts, why should a lawmaker instead believe the same Bush officials who helped create this crisis with their deregulation, the same Bush officials who just months ago said everything was AOK? Shouldn't there be almost complete unanimity among both objective and partisan observers before spending 5 percent of our entire economy after just one harried week of White House demands? Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. It's time, as The Who said, that we "don't get fooled again."

3. THERE ARE CLEARLY BETTER AND SAFER ALTERNATIVES

The mantra throughout the week has been that America has "no choice" but to pass Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's $700 billion giveaway - that, in effect, there are no alternatives. But that's an out-and-out lie - one with a motive: Making it seem as if the only thing we can do is hand the keys to the federal treasury over to both parties' corporate campaign contributors.

The truth is, there are a number of alternatives. Here are just a few:

* In the Washington Post last week, Galbraith outlined a multi-pronged plan shoring up and expanding the FDIC, creating a Home Owners Loan Corporation, resurrecting Nixon's federal revenue sharing, and taxing stock transactions (a tax that would fall mostly on speculators) to finance the whole deal.

* The Service Employees International Union has drafted a plan based around a massive investment in public services and national health care, and regulatory reforms preventing foreclosures and forcing banks to renegotiate the predatory terms of their bad mortgages.

* For those in the mindless, zombie-ish "someone has to do something, so we have to do what the White House says!" camp, consider the possibility that you are under the spell of the same kind of White House fear that led us to invade Iraq because of Saddam's supposed WMD. Consider, perhaps, that there may not even be a compelling basis for doing anything just yet (or at least not anything nearly so huge), and that the whole reason there is this urgent push right now has nothing to do with the financial situation, and everything to do with creating the political dynamic to pass a wasteful giveaway - one that couldn't be passed otherwise without a sense of emergency. And ask yourself why you would listen to this White House instead of listening to those experts who have been predicting this crisis and are now advising against this bailout - experts like CEPR's Baker. In two separate posts (here and here), he says that letting the problem play out could be the best path, because Treasury and the Fed may already have the tools they need. Following this path, the worst thing that happens is "The Fed and Treasury will have to step in and take over the banks [which] is exactly what many economists argue should happen anyhow," Baker writes. "So the outcome of the worst case scenario is a really frightening day in which the whole world financial system is shaken to its core, followed by a government takeover of the banks. Eventually the government straightens out the books and sells them off again. But the real threat here is not to the economy, it is to the banks."

* Then there is the idea of simply taking the $700 billion and simply give it to struggling homeowners to help them pay off part of their mortgages. This hasn't even been discussed but the thought experiment it involves is important to understanding why there is, indeed, an alternative to the Paulson plan. If the root of this problem is people not being able to pay off their mortgages, and those defaults then devaluing banks' mortgage-backed assets, then simply helping people pay their mortgages would preserve the value of the mortgage-backed assets and recharge the market with liquidity. That would be a bottom-up solution helping the mass public, rather than a top-down move helping only financial industry executives.

On this latter proposal, some may argue that giving any relief to homeowners is "unfair" in that those homeowners created their problems, so why should taxpayers have to help them? But then, is helping homeowners any less fair than simply giving all the money away to Wall Street, no strings attached? I'd say no - and helping homeowners also serves a second purpose: namely, keeping people in their homes, which not only helps them, but helps an entire neighborhood (as any homeowner knows, nearby properties can be devalued when foreclosures hit).

4. ANY INCUMBENT VOTING FOR THIS PUTS THEMSELVES AT RISK OF BEING THROWN OUT OF OFFICE

As a preface, let me state that I think we live in a country where politicians too often listen to their donors and to the Establishment rather than their constituents, not the other way around. America is a country where our leaders dishonestly invoke the concepts of "Statesmanship" and "Seriousness" and their supposed hatred of "pandering" to justify ignoring what the public wants (as if giving the public what it wants is somehow not the objective of a democratic republic). So, in short, I don't think there's anything wrong with this bill being "politicized" by coming down the pike right before an election - in fact, I think it's a good thing because the election - and the fear of being thrown out of office forces our politicians to at least consider what the public wants. I mean, really - would we rather have this decision made after the election, when the public can be completely ignored?

Polls overwhelmingly show a public that sees voting for this bill as an act of economic treason whereby the bipartisan Washington elite robs taxpayer cash to give their campaign contributors a trillion-dollar gift. As just two of many examples, Bloomberg News' poll shows "decisive" opposition to the bailout proposal, and Rasmussen reports that their surveys show "the more voters learn about the proposed $700 billion federal bailout plan for the U.S. economy, the more they don't like it." Put another way, this bailout proposal has unified both the Right and Left sides of the populist uprising that I described in my new book and that is now even more angry than ever.

Any sitting officeholder that votes for this - whether a Democrat or a Republican - should expect to get crushed under a wave of populist-themed attacks from their opponents. We've already seen it start. In Oregon, Democratic challenger Jeff Merkley (D) is airing scathing television ads hammering Republican incumbent Gordon Smith for potentially supporting the deal. Similarly, this morning on Meet the Press, we saw Republican Senate challenger Bob Schaffer (CO) dishonestly papering over his own votes for deregulation and ripping into his opponent Rep. Mark Udall (D) for potentially supporting the deal. Incumbents, get ready for that kind of election-changing heat in your face if you vote "yes."

This, by the way, could play out in the presidential contest. Barack Obama has been taking the advice of the Wall Street insiders in his campaign in endorsing this bailout. McCain has endorsed the vague outline, but he may ultimately back off once he sees the details, allowing him to then run the last month of the campaign as the economic populist in the race. I'm not saying it would work, considering McCain's 26-year record of supporting the deregulatory agenda that created this crisis. But such a move could end up help him flank Obama on the defining economic issues of the race.

5. CORRUPTION AND SLEAZE ARE SWIRLING AROUND THESE BAILOUTS - AND AMERICA KNOWS IT

The amount of brazen corruption and conflicts of interest swirling around this deal is odious, even by Washington's standards - and polls suggest the public inherently understands that. Consider these choice nuggets:

* Warren Buffett is simultaneously advising Obama to support the deal, while he himself is investing in the company that stands to make the most off the deal.

* McCain's campaign is run by lobbyists from the companies that stand to make a killing off a no-strings government bailout.

* The New York Times reports that the person advising Paulson and Bernanke on the AIG bailout was the CEO of Goldman Sachs - a company with a $20 billion stake in AIG.

* The Obama campaign's top spokesman pushing this deal is none other than Roger Altman, who Bloomberg News reports is simultaneously "advising a group of investors who are trying to prevent their shares from being diluted in the U.S. takeover of American International Group Inc." - that is, who have a direct financial interest in the current iteration of the bailout.

Add to this the fact that the negotiations over this bill have been largely conducted in secret, and you have one of the most sleazy heists in American history.

**********

If this bill passes, it will be a profound referendum on the dominance of money over democracy in America. That - and that alone - would be the only thing an objective observer could take away from the whole thing.

Money will have compelled politicians to not only vote for substantively dangerous policy, but vote for that policy even at their own clear electoral peril. Such a vote will confirm that the only people these politicians believe they are responsible for representing are are the fat-cat recipients of the $700 billion - the same fat cats who underwrite their political campaigns, the same fat-cats who engineered this crisis, and want to keep profiteering off it. Any lawmaker who takes that position is selling out the country, as is any issue-based political non-profit group - liberal or conservative - that uses its resources to defend a "yes" vote rather than demand a "no" vote. This is a bill that forces taxpayers to absorb all of the pain, and Wall Street executives to reap all of the gain. It doesn't even force the corporate executives (much less the government leaders) culpable in this free fall to step down - it lets them stay fat and happy in their corner office suites in Manhattan.

Even if they believe that something must be done right now, lawmakers should still vote no on this specific bill, and force one of the very prudent alternatives to the forefront. They shouldn't just vote no on Paulson's proposal - they should vote hell no. Our economy's future depends on it.

The Truth Hurts!

Ron Suskind: How Politics Trumped Governance

Ron Suskind in the Huffington Post:

How Politics Trumped Governance
Posted September 29, 2008 | 05:45 PM (EST)


So, how did we get a war inside the Republican party that may leave the economy in shambles? Look to the end of last week, when McCain made his odd Washington cameo.

First, a bit of subtext: the legacy of the Bush years is how politics trumped governance. McCain, egging on these Republican anti-Bush/Paulson insurgents during his brief return, was doing the politics-first, win-at-all-cost, dance. He was, in essence, telling Bush it was payback time (after all McCain had done, holding his nose, in a support role for W since 2004). Specific, unspoken instructions to Bush in that big White House blow up: give way (and lose face) as the new Republican party -- which McCain now claims to lead -- alters his Treasury Secretary's $700 billion bailout. This will make McCain seem like the de facto president, filling a vaccum, giving him a huge election time boost -- maybe enough of a boost to win. Bush's response, screw you; I'm still in charge and, incidentally, I don't believe in reciprocity. Bush's position: Loyalty goes one way with me, it flows upward, and I'm still the President. I thought you got that, John.

This behind the scenes power putcsh is why most of the House Republicans are now opposing Bush. They're done with him, that's clear, and running from him like the Republicans did in Nixon's final days. For his part, Bush is trying to make sure no one else (and especially McCain) has a chance to step up into the void. With Bush, everything is personal -- it's how he makes sense of a complex world and tries to bend it to his will.

Historically speaking, the Bush/Cheney/Rove innovation of this period has been the view that politics and governance are not incompatible. In fact, their view is that politics fiercely played -- triumphing in daily news cycles and winning as a first principle -- is the guiding strategy of governance.

Now, McCain, waiting to claim victory of any brokered deal inside the Republican camp, is saying that the tide is with me. If I keep my cooI, I might ride it right to the White House. He's taking a leaf from a well-worn playbook that history may show as the cause of so much that has gone wrong. It may now spell political gridlock, incoherent policy, and disaster for the U.S. economy.

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Oak Tree vs the Pyramid

This from Free Range Apes the other day:


election 2008: the oak tree v the pyramid: time for a change

It seems to me, in this climactic electoral year, that we are clearly faced with a simple choice.

Do we choose the oak tree, or do we choose the pyramid?

Let us compare the characteristics of each so that we can make an informed decision:

The fecund oak adapts to and innovates in the face of ever changing circumstance, the pyramid, sterile, frozen, remains defiant and unbending, as it slowly decays.

The oak tree embraces reality, the pyramid denies.

The pyramid does not learn. It is simple minded, monolithic and mundane.

The oak tree is the unfolding of nature, and the pyramid is carved from the mind of man.

In the oak tree energy organically flows from the bottom up, whereas the pyramid is all about the top down imposition of control.

The oak tree is life, the pyramid is death.

In which of these two worlds do you wish to live?

The logic of the pyramid is a memetic cancer. It is a simple program that leads the single cell to act selfishly, as it’s desires are more important than the whole. The fundamental flaw in this belief, and that which leads it to self destruction, is that the individual cannot survive in a vacuum. We are each a part of the interrelated web of life, the more than human whole.

And following the logic of the pyramid, trust will eventually be lost amongst the collaborators, as the logical progression of the system unfolds, and the inevitable outcome of the actions becomes apparent.

Pyramids are not sustainable.

The logic behind them will inevitably lead to disintegration.

So my choice is the oak. In the evolutionary sense it appears to be a winning strategy. Losing strategies, in nature, after all, do tend to get culled pretty quickly in evolutionary time.

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Not Every Day

This is the subject line on a piece of e-mail, from Crest Toothpaste, in my box this morning:

Emeril and Crest need your help!

Not, you will admit, the sort of request you get every day. Evidently Emeril needs my help to come up with a new catch phrase for Crest. But as I see it, Emeril came up with "Bam!" with no help from me, and I have no reason to think he can't do it again.

Trader-X: Suspicious email

The following is from Trader-X...views from a distorted mind. It provides something to think about, does it not? Plus it's pretty hilarious, and given recent news from Wall Street and Washington, hilarity is something worth having.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Suspicious email

I found this email in my Inbox earlier today. Do you think it is a scam?

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

DEAR AMERICAN:
I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.

THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.

PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS.

YOURS FAITHFULLY MINISTER OF TREASURY PAULSON

The Delicate Subject of John McCain's Marbles

Chris Kelly in The Huffington Post, via Digg.com:

"Evil must be defeated!" -- John McCain 8/16/08

"Enough is enough! We're going to put an end to greed!" -- John McCain 9/17/08

It's inspiring to know that John McCain has a plan to end greed. I just hope it doesn't distract him from his mission to defeat evil. Either way, it has to kick the shit out of whatever Barack Obama's got on the docket, with his empty words and pie-in-the-sky promises.

America's choice is clear. Barack Obama, a messianic egomaniac who thinks he's, like, our savior or something, or John McCain, who will defeat evil and put an end to greed.

John McCain will not only take on special interests and Washington insiders, he'll fundamentally alter human nature. And without raising taxes, either. He'll lead us to a sort of martial nirvana where all other emotions are replaced with patriotism, and turn the United States into a shining, selfless, bipartisan cross between heaven and Sparta.

Or maybe he's just a desperate shell of a man, babbling glorp.

If Reverend Wright went around shouting stuff like "We're going to put an end to greed!" people would start thinking he was some kind of fruitcake.

--

You might think "I'll end greed" would be the most mortifying thing John McCain could say at one sitting. You'd be wrong. At Wednesday's town hall -- his first with Sarah Palin -- he topped himself with this explanation of her credentials:

"She has been commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard. Fact. On September 11 a contingent of the Guard deployed to Iraq and her son happened to be one of them so I think she understands national security challenges."

Which is fine except:

The governor of Alaska doesn't command the National Guard in combat overseas.

Sarah Palin didn't deploy anyone anywhere on September 11th. She was a guest speaker at an Army deployment ceremony.

Track Palin isn't in the National Guard; he's in the Army.

Sometimes it seems like it's more than John McCain can handle, just keeping all the lies about Sarah Palin straight in his head. Tomorrow he'll say she's in the Air Force herself, on a plane she bought on eBay, bombing the bridges at Toko-Ri.

--

It's all Shiites and Sunnis to John McCain. So what's your problem? We're told that Lord Raglan fought the entire Crimean War believing the Russians were the French. And that worked out okay because, uh, everyone under his command died.

--

"I know how to win wars! I know how to win wars!" -- John McCain 7/15/08

I know this is a sort of threadbare exercise -- the old switcheroo -- but imagine what would happen if Barack Obama got the Army and the National Guard mixed up.

digg story

If McCain Had His Way...

A great post by John Neffinger in The Huffington Post today:

Hello? If McCain Had His Way, That'd Be Our Social Security Money Wall Street is Losing

What do we democrats have to say about the mess on Wall Street?

Today Obama said it proves that the Republican economic philosophy has failed, and I heard him mock McCain for calling for a commission because "we know how we got into this mess." Now some people think about things like "economic philosophy" a lot, and many have at least a general notion of how we got into this mess. But even though everybody cares how much money ends up in their pockets, most people are understandably a little fuzzy about all the policies and philosophies and market forces behind our very complex economy. To further confuse the issue, McCain is also saying something about reform, and taking on "fat cats," and accusing Obama of being just as cozy with these Wall Streeters as anyone else. And at this point, slightly more voters trust John McCain to handle the economy than trust Barack Obama.

As it happens, though, not that long ago we had a rare political moment in this country, a moment where the public sat up and took notice of economic policy -- and spoke out and made its voice heard too. When George W. Bush made it to term #2, he decided to try to privatize social security to reward his supporters on Wall Street with a new source of capital, customers, and fees. (Those would be the same people whose firms are now cratering under the weight of the bad debt they recklessly took on while Republican regulators looked the other way.) But as it turned out, we Americans were not about to let our elected representatives turn over our social security taxes to Wall Street financiers to gamble with if it meant losing the guaranteed income that has allowed millions upon millions of American seniors to live out their sunset years with at least a basic measure of dignity.

But while ordinary Americans spoke out, John McCain stood with Bush (hugged him awkwardly in public, even), against the American people. In fact, just six months ago, McCain again let slip his fondness for privatization.

I have been scratching my head why this has not been talked about more, especially since Obama has been having trouble winning votes among seniors. There may well be some good reason I'm missing why it hasn't been a top argument thus far.

But now that you can't look at a newspaper or TV screen without seeing the mayhem on Wall Street, it's time to remind Americans what the world would look like if John McCain was in charge of our economic policy. Plenty of people are losing plenty of their retirement savings as it is. But if we had let Bush and McCain privatize social security, some of those people would be losing a lot more. And a lot of other people with less retirement savings would be hurting even more, because they depend on social security to cover basic needs.

This is something Americans understand: social security is secure, and the stock market is anything but. There are few more personal or dramatic ways to illustrate McCain's terrible judgment than to imagine the nightmare scenario so many Americans would face if McCain and Bush had gotten their way on this -- or if McCain were to get his way as President.

When Wall Street's woes are the top story, this should be our top talking point.

digg story

No More Mr. Nice Guy!

I try to be a decent fellow, I really do. Most of the time.

But sometimes people just drive a fellow over the brink.

Case in point: Someone who has a Yahoo e-mail address similar to mine but who stupidly keeps giving the wrong address (viz., mine). Or someone who has stupid friends who keep e-mailing me when they clearly mean to e-mail the other. Or both.

The Cliff Notes version: Not quite three years ago, I received several order confirmations from Yves Rocher ("The World Leader in Botanical Beauty Care," if you must know) addressed to a Mary Ann Reynolds at my address. Clearly an error. I notified customer service of this mistake; they sent their apologies; and I gave it not another thought.

Until a couple of days later, when I started getting all sorts of e-mail from various women who were trying to organize a lunch. So I helpfully e-mailed them and told the of the errors of their ways, and suggested that if they wanted Mary Ann to attend they'd best get her correct address. No reply. In fact, the erroneous mail continued ("the 15th won't work for me; how about the 19th?" and so on) for several days. Delete, delete, delete.

Over the past 35 months, the pattern has been the same. Nothing for a good long time, then a sudden rash of e-mail. From a travel agent. From a condominium manager. From the lunch group. Then nothing for a good long time. Then another rash of messages. And so on.

In every case, I helpfully e-mail the offender and suggest that they check for their friend's/customer's correct address and update their address books accordingly. And in every case I receive a courteous and apologetic reply from businesses, but never anything from "real people."

This past summer came another spate of e-mails intended for Mary Ann but sent to me. Less cheerful than in the early days--largely because these messages are coming from the same women whom I have alerted about the mistaken address--I persist in trying to do the right thing. Mary Ann is never going to see the pictures of your niece if you don't listen to what I've been trying to tell you these past three years and update your goddamn address book!

As before, no one possesses the courtesy necessary to e-mail back a simple thank-you.

Well, this past week I have received two copies of a travel itinerary for one of the individuals whom I have tried to set straight--indeed, the one with the niece, the one whom I notified in July that she still had the wrong address and who obviously can't be bothered to either update her address book or to acknowledge her annoying mistake.

And that was the last straw. Or, I guess, the last two straws.

I have tried. God knows I've tried. I have e-mailed every single woman on the let's-do-lunch list. I have e-mailed the woman who's coming out to visit Mary Ann next week. It doesn't do a bit of good. They don't acknowledge, they don't correct.

So the heck with them.

Every single message that I receive for Mary Ann will from now on go straight into the trash. And the woman who sent the itineraries, and the photos, and previous messages that I informed her were missing their mark, well, she's now on the block list.

Some people just won't let you help them. The best thing you can do for them is let them have their way.

And guess what? The old conscience is 100% clear and sunny.

In Case You Think it Can't Happen Here

Steven Rosenfeld at AlterNet:

GOP Voter Suppression Comes to Wisconsin

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on September 13, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/98702/

Partisan voter suppression efforts have many faces, but they all have one goal: suppressing your political opponent's voters.

In Wisconsin this past week, the Republican Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen, filed a politically timed lawsuit that local election officials say will interfere with turnout for the presidential election on Nov. 4 and create a bureaucratic nightmare for election workers seeking to process a record number of new voter registrations before then. The AG's game plan is simple: create a bureaucratic nightmare to tie up the election machinery before Election Day and then create bottlenecks to confound voters on Election Day.

According to a Sept. 12 report by Steven Elbow at Madison.com, the Wisconsin AG filed suit this past Wednesday forcing election officials to use a tactic being employed by Republicans in other states -- notably Michigan, Kansas and Louisiana -- that involves removing people from voter rolls if the addresses on their voter registration forms does not match the address on their state driver's licenses. The rationale to purge would be based on the assumption that if the addresses did not match then the voter registration would be incorrect and therefore invalid.

Never mind that Wisconsin is among a handful of states where voters can register to vote on Election Day and ostensibly clear up or correct any registration information error at that time. The suit's goal is voter suppression, which would be accomplished by causing delays in voting when people show up on Election Day and are told they are not on voter rolls and then would have to go through the registration process, delaying them and holding up other voters in line behind them.

What's especially outrageous about this tactic in Wisconsin is that the very federal election law that makes this voter purging technique illegal in most states -- the National Voter Registration Act -- exempts Wisconsin from the NVRA's voter purging process because the state has Election Day Registration. In other words, because Wisconsin is among a handful of states with the most liberal, voter-friendly laws, its voters do not have the legal protections intended to stop voter suppression in other states.

Elbow's report on Madison.com quotes that city's clerk about the impact of the AG's suit.

"It will disenfranchise voters. That's what we're concerned about," City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl said. "We're working on plans to make sure we don't have long lines at the polls, make sure that the lines can move smoothly and quickly. If we throw this into the mix, then it is going to slow things down."

The Madison.com report reveals the Wisconsin AG is reading from a long-established GOP playbook, justifying 'ballot security' concerns under the banner of preventing voter fraud.

"Van Hollen spokesman Kevin St. John said Van Hollen wants the GAB to verify voters who registered by mail since Jan. 1, 2006, because they didn't have to show an ID," Madison.com reported.

Imposing stricter voter ID laws has been the Republican legislative response to so-called Democratic voter fraud in recent years. The GOP defines this phenomena as hordes of Democrats posing as other voters and voting more than once to pad the vote count. While there are pre-existing election laws that ban such activity, and handfuls of prosecutions in states when people attempt to vote more then once, the Bush administration Justice Department has only prosecuted two dozen such cases despite devoting significant manpower hours by federal prosecutors to ferret out such abuse -- and even firing U.S. Attorneys who did not pursue such cases. The GOP strategy is based on identifying a handful of errors in filing new registration forms, a retail-level problem, if you will, and imposing a statewide response, a wholesale solution.

Stripped of discussing it in polite terms, it is akin to institutional racism -- since many of likely Democratic voters targeted by such ID laws are people of color, students and other under-represented sectors of the public.

The Madison.com report says the state's election director, Kevin Kennedy, told the AG that "the (state election) board is committed to preventing voter fraud, but (said) Van Hollen's demands are too much, too soon."

"The board believes it would be counter-productive to rush this effort and to create a significant risk, at best of unnecessary hardship and confusion at the polls, and at worst the disenfranchisement of Wisconsin citizens with a clear and legitimate right to vote," Kennedy said, in the Madison.com report.

Thousands of voter registrations will likely be affected if a court approves the suit, the Madison.com report said.

"As the election approaches, the phones at clerks' offices get busier, so people calling back to resolve discrepancies will be less likely to get through," the report said. "The closer we get to the election, the less time we have to clear things up," Witzel-Behl said.

The partisan nature of the AG's lawsuit was best expressed in a comment by Diane Hermann-Brown, Sun Prairie city clerk, who said the court needs to act quickly if it wants counties and municipalities to comply. "I don't think he's wrong on what he's doing," she said of Van Hollen. "It probably needs to get done. It just should have been done sooner."

Hermann-Brown's comment about the suit's timing underscores why this is a partisan action, not an exercise in good government.

Selective enforcement of voting rights laws is all about shaping election rules to one party's benefit. If the Wisconsin AG was so concerned about accurate voter registration rolls dating back to January 2006, one would think he would have acted sooner than 60 days before a presidential election. Something stinks in Wisconsin elections -- and it's not the cheese.

A court hearing is scheduled for later this week.

Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election, with Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006).

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/98702/

digg story

McCain-Palin: Running on a Lie

Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post, via Digg.com:

What kind of person tells a self-aggrandizing lie, gets called on it, admits publicly that the truth is not at all what she originally claimed -- and then goes out and starts telling the original lie again without changing a word?

Sarah Palin is beginning to seem like quite an unusual woman, and I'm not talking about her love of guns and "snow machines," her faith, her family or any of the presumably non-elite attributes that we in the "elite media" are accused of savaging. Wrongly accused, I should add; reporters are doing nothing more sinister than trying to find out who she is, how she thinks and what she has done in office.

One deeply troubling thing we're learning about Palin is that, as far as she's concerned, unambiguous fact doesn't appear to rise even to the level of inconvenience.

I'm sorry, but to explain my point I have to make another visit -- my last, I hope -- to the never-built, $398 million "Bridge to Nowhere" that was to join the town of Ketchikan, Alaska, with its airport on the other side of the Tongass Narrows.

You'll recall that in her Republican convention speech, Palin burnished her budget-hawk credentials by claiming she had said "thanks but no thanks" to a congressional earmark that would have paid most of the cost. A quick check of the public record showed that Palin supported the bridge when she was running for governor, continued to support it once she took office and dropped her backing only after the project -- by then widely ridiculed as an example of pork-barrel spending -- was effectively dead on Capitol Hill.

In her interview with ABC's Charles Gibson, Palin 'fessed up. It was "not inappropriate" for a mayor or a governor to work with members of Congress to obtain federal money for infrastructure projects, she argued. "What I supported," she said, "was the link between a community and its airport."

Case closed. Except that on Saturday, days after the interview, Palin said this to a crowd in Nevada: "I told Congress thanks but no thanks to that Bridge to Nowhere -- that if our state wanted to build that bridge, we would build it ourselves."

That's not just a lie, but an acknowledged lie. What she actually told Congress was more like, "Gimme the money for the bridge" -- and then later, after the whole thing had become an embarrassment, she didn't object to using the money for other projects.

I'm not shocked to learn that politicians sometimes lie. To cite an example that comes immediately to mind, John McCain's campaign ads attacking Barack Obama have taken such liberties that even Karl Rove says he wonders if they've gone too far. But it's weird for a politician -- or anyone else, really -- to maintain that an assertion is true after admitting that it isn't true.

Maybe Palin cynically believes she can keep using the "no thanks" line and manage to stay one step ahead of the truth police. Maybe she calculates that audiences would rather believe her than their lying eyes. Or maybe she really believes her own fantasy-based version of events. Maybe the Legend of Sarah Palin has become, on some level, more real to her than actual history.

And quite a legend it's turning out to be. The Post reported Sunday that as mayor of tiny Wasilla, Palin pressured the town librarian to remove controversial books from the shelves, cut funds for the town museum but somehow found the money for a new deputy administrator slot and told city employees not to talk to reporters.

And the New York Times reported Sunday that as governor, Palin appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to a $95,000-a-year job as head of the State Division of Agriculture. Havemeister "cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency," the Times reported, noting her as one of at least five schoolmates to whom Palin has given high-paying jobs in state government.

Nothing against cows. Nothing against high-school BFFs and being true to your school. But a different picture of Sarah Palin is beginning to emerge. The McCain campaign would like us to see a straight-talking, gun-toting, moose-eviscerating, lipstick-wearing frontierswoman. Instead, we're beginning to discern an ambitious, opportunistic politician who makes no bones about rewarding friends and punishing those who stand in her way -- and who believes that truth is nothing more, and nothing less, than what she says it is.

The writer will answer questions at 1 p.m. today at http://www.washingtonpost.com. His e-mail address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

Read more from Eugene Robinson at washingtonpost.com's new opinion blog, PostPartisan.

read more | digg story

Chris Kelly: Sarah Palin Isn't Not Not Dis-Un-Lying

Everything gets slick in Alaska, I guess. Even the past.

read more | digg story

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Governor Palin's Reading List

Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in pubic premises before the snow flies."It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list.

read more | digg story

Editorial from today's New York Times. Clearly, everything McCain says and does calls his judgment into question...and yet, there is a good chance that he will be elected. Which in turn calls our judgment into question, no?


September 13, 2008

Gov. Palin’s Worldview

As we watched Sarah Palin on TV the last couple of days, we kept wondering what on earth John McCain was thinking.

If he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible.

It was bad enough that Ms. Palin’s performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness.

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things — who are so blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls “the mission” that they won’t even pause for reflection — shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country.

One of the many bizarre moments in the questioning by ABC News’s Charles Gibson was when Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, excused her lack of international experience by sneering that Americans don’t want “somebody’s big fat résumé maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state.”

We know we were all supposed to think of Joe Biden. But it sure sounded like a good description of Mr. McCain. Those decades of experience earned the Arizona senator the admiration of people in both parties. They are why he was our preferred candidate in the Republican primaries.

The interviews made clear why Americans should worry about Ms. Palin’s thin résumé and lack of experience. Consider her befuddlement when Mr. Gibson referred to President Bush’s “doctrine” and her remark about having insight into Russia because she can see it from her state.

But that is not what troubled us most about her remarks — and, remember, if they were scripted, that just means that they reflect Mr. McCain’s views all the more closely. Rather, it was the sense that thoughtfulness, knowledge and experience are handicaps for a president in a world populated by Al Qaeda terrorists, a rising China, epidemics of AIDS, poverty and fratricidal war in the developing world and deep economic distress at home.

Ms. Palin talked repeatedly about never blinking. When Mr. McCain asked her to run for vice president? “You have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission,” she said, that “you can’t blink.”

Fighting terrorism? “We must do whatever it takes, and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.”

Her answers about why she had told her church that President Bush’s failed policy in Iraq was “God’s plan” did nothing to dispel our concerns about her confusion between faith and policy. Her claim that she was quoting a completely unrelated comment by Lincoln was absurd.

This nation has suffered through eight years of an ill-prepared and unblinkingly obstinate president. One who didn’t pause to think before he started a disastrous war of choice in Iraq. One who blithely looked the other way as the Taliban and Al Qaeda regrouped in Afghanistan. One who obstinately cut taxes and undercut all efforts at regulation, unleashing today’s profound economic crisis.

In a dangerous world, Americans need a president who knows that real strength requires serious thought and preparation.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Not Ready. Or, if You Prefer, Half-Baked.

Another spot-on editorial by Bob Herbert in today's New York Times:

September 13, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

She’s Not Ready

By BOB HERBERT

While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.

How is it that this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on “American Idol.”

Ms. Palin may be a perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent woman (however troubling her views on evolution and global warming may be), but she is not ready to be vice president.

With most candidates for high public office, the question is whether one agrees with them on the major issues of the day. With Ms. Palin, it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing. She doesn’t appear to understand some of the most important issues.

“Do you believe in the Bush doctrine?” Mr. Gibson asked during the interview. Ms. Palin looked like an unprepared student who wanted nothing so much as to escape this encounter with the school principal.

Clueless, she asked, “In what respect, Charlie?”

“Well, what do you interpret it to be?” said Mr. Gibson.

“His worldview?” asked Ms. Palin.

Later, in the spin zones of cable TV, commentators repeatedly made the point that there are probably very few voters — some specifically mentioned “hockey moms” — who could explain the Bush doctrine. But that’s exactly the reason we have such long and intense campaigns. You want to find the individuals who best understand these issues, who will address them in sophisticated and creative ways that enhance the well-being of the nation.

The Bush doctrine, which flung open the doors to the catastrophe in Iraq, was such a fundamental aspect of the administration’s foreign policy that it staggers the imagination that we could have someone no further than a whisper away from the White House who doesn’t even know what it is.

You can’t imagine that John McCain or Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Joe Lieberman would not know what the Bush doctrine is. But Sarah Palin? Absolutely clueless.

Ms. Palin’s problem is not that she was mayor of a small town or has only been in the Alaska governor’s office a short while. Her problem (and now ours) is that she is not well versed on the critical matters confronting the country at one of the most crucial turning points in its history.

The economy is in a tailspin. The financial sector is lurching about on rubbery legs. We’re mired in self-defeating energy policies. We’re at war. And we are still vulnerable to the very real threat of international terrorism.

With all of that and more being the case, how can it be a good idea to set in motion the possibility that Americans might wake up one morning to find that Sarah Palin is president?

I feel for Ms. Palin’s son who has been shipped off to the war in Iraq. But at his deployment ceremony, which was on the same day as the Charlie Gibson interview, Sept. 11, she told the audience of soldiers that they would be fighting “the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

Was she deliberately falsifying history, or does she still not know that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

To burnish the foreign policy credentials of a vice presidential candidate who never even had a passport until last year, the Republicans have been touting Alaska’s proximity to Russia. (Imagine the derisive laughter in conservative circles if the Democrats had tried such nonsense.) So Mr. Gibson asked Ms. Palin, “What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?”

She said, “They’re our next-door neighbors. And you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska. From an island in Alaska.”

Mr. Gibson tried again. “But what insight does that give you,” he asked, “into what they’re doing in Georgia?”

John McCain, who is shameless about promoting himself as America’s ultimate patriot, put the best interests of the nation aside in making his incredibly reckless choice of a running mate. But there is a profound double standard in this country. The likes of John McCain and George W. Bush can do the craziest, most irresponsible things imaginable, and it only seems to help them politically.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

10 Things We're Looking Forward to Now That the Large Hadron Collider Is Running

From Woot.com:

10 Things We're Looking Forward To Now That The Large Hadron Collider Is Running

by Scott Lydon Wednesday September 10, 2008 4:15 PM

Since the total destruction of the planet is apparently off the table...

1. Suddenly much harder to get particle beams insured
2. Brief, sudden portal to empty dimension where we can dump all those Sansas
3. The return of that battleship we lost in the Philadelphia Experiment
4. Last minute lawsuit from Fox that claims they have rights to make a Hadron Collider and they just now noticed it
5. Crazed Doctor McCoy falls through, meets a woman, has to watch her die to stop the Nazis
6. "Hadron" replaces "Caden" as the hot new name for baby boys
7. All Swiss chocolate now tastes a little strange but no one knows why
8. New particle discovered, named after Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog
9. Fred Phelps opens godhatesbosons.com
10. Buyer’s remorse from the scientists as they realize that the Extra Large Hadron Collider was only thirty nine cents more

John McCain and his Blizzard of LIES

This year, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute. These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.

read more | digg story

I Think This Battle Is Lost

From yet another of my surveys:


In case it's too small to read, it says In what ways does Hampton Inn/Suites show it's conservation efforts?

Of course, it should say In what ways does Hampton Inn/Suites show its conservation efforts?It's is a contraction, for it is or it has.

In my various pedagogic undertakings, I have advised students to avoid this silly, third-grade error by mentally--or, if they prefer. physically--rewording the sentence utilizing it is. If the sentence makes sense, then they should use it's. If it doesn't, they should use its.

Apparently, I'm the only one sharing this advice. Or else it's being roundly ignored by the pupils and former pupils of all the others who are sharing similar advice.

It's one thing when a local mom-and-pop operation publishes such a foolish error. It's quite another when a big international market-research firm can't manage grade-school punctuation.

And when that big international market-research firm is part of a gigantic publishing conglomeroid, well, the irony is almost unbearable, no?

The Scream Machine

As long as people are talking about barnyard beauty tips, they're not talking about substance...If you [McCain] scream bloody murder every day, however, people eventually stop taking you seriously...there will be at least four key moments when the McCain-Palin campaign will be unable to avoid the issues.

read more | digg story

Intriguing Fakery

Via YouTube, obviously...

McCain Lies Again: Ad on Sex Education Distorts Obama Policy

A McCain ad that claims Barack Obama favors “comprehensive sex education” for kindergarteners contains serious misrepresentations... or to put it more bluntly, John McCain and his campaign spread more lies.

read more | digg story

Dig THIS, Digg!

A little while ago I sent the following comment to Digg.com. It’s in reference to my post of a few days ago in re Digg’s “bury” function being abused to flag virtually all negative or unflattering article about the McCain-Palin ticket as “possibly inaccurate”:

I have noticed lately that articles critical of McCain-Palin (and in at least one case, an article COMPLAINING about criticism of McCain-Palin) are almost invariably accompanied by "[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]." These are not exclusively blogs or opinion pieces, but news reports from reliable news organizations. (Example:" Palin bills gov't for travel expenses while staying at home" from the Washington Post; "Polls admit to asking a higher number of Republicans" from the Huffington Post; "Sarah Palin's Alaskonomics" from Time; and many more.)

It is clear, then, that the "bury" function in Digg.com is being abused by McCain partisans, and possibly even operatives, who are attempting to cast doubt on anything that may be construed as negative or unflattering about their candidate.

In this, Digg.com is complicit. The "bury" function simply means I DON'T LIKE SOMETHING, not that it is inaccurate. But Digg's policy is to record "bury" clicks and then, at some magic tipping point, announce that the article in question is "possibly inaccurate."

"I don't like this" does NOT equal "This is inaccurate."

Someone could post an article that says Monday follows Sunday, and if I organized enough Diggers (as evidently the McCain camp has done) and instructed them to "bury" the article, that article would eventually turn up as "possibly inaccurate"...even though Monday DOES follow Sunday!

Clearly, Digg needs to reconsider the "bury" function. It seems to serve no real purpose, and in this election season is obviously being abused. I strongly encourage you to stop this abuse by terminating the "bury" function, at least until after the presidential election.

Failing that, I strongly encourage you to do away with the "possibly inaccurate" assertion, and go with the much more accurate disclaimer "Buried by XX Diggers," since "inaccurate" is, well, inaccurate.

I’ll keep you posted on what sort of a response I might get.

Wow. It's Been Ages Since My Last Cross-Burning!

Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home

From the Washington Post -- ANCHORAGE, Sept. 8 -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a 'per diem' allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

read more | digg story

McCain ally moves to curb probe of Palin

This at Newsweek.com:

Team McCain and the Trooper

Nominee's ally moves to curb probe of Palin

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

Newsweek Web Exclusive

Updated: 9:36 PM ET Sep 5, 2008

Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called "October surprise" that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election.

In a move endorsed by the McCain campaign Friday, John Coghill, the GOP chairman of the state House Rules Committee, wrote a letter seeking a meeting of Alaska's bipartisan Legislative Council in order to remove the Democratic state senator in charge of the so-called "troopergate" investigation.

Coghill charged that the senator, Hollis French, had "politicized" the probe by making a number of public comments in recent days, including telling ABC News that Palin had a "credibility problem" and that the investigation into the firing of public safety commissioner Walter Monegan was "likely to be damaging to the administration" and could be an "October surprise." Wrote Coghill: "The investigation appears to be lacking in fairness, neutrality and due process."

The investigation, authorized by the Legislative Council last July, revolves around charges that Palin abused her power by embroiling the governor's office in a bitter family feud involving her ex-brother in law, a state trooper named Mike Wooten. Specifically, the council is investigating whether Palin fired Monegan when he refused to dismiss Wooten (who at the time was involved in an ugly custody battle with Palin's sister) after getting repeated complaints about him from the governor and her husband, Todd Palin. (Among the allegations that were raised against Wooten by Palin's sister: he had Tasered his ten-year-old stepson and shot a moose without a permit.) Palin has denied wrongdoing; Monegan has said he believes his firing was connected to his refusal to fire Wooten.

French, the Democrat overseeing the probe, has hired a special counsel to determine, in effect, whether Palin "used her public office to settle a private score," he recently said. He has also suggested that the probe may turn up evidence that state laws were violated by Palin's aides because they pulled confidential personnel files on the trooper.

But Coghill, who told NEWSWEEK that he has the backing of Republican Speaker of the House John Harris in his effort to remove French, suggested Friday that the investigation into Palin's firing of Monegan should be shut down entirely. "If this has been botched up the way it has, there's a question as to whether it should continue," Coghill told NEWSWEEK.

The move underscored the huge political stakes in the outcome of a legislative investigation that is being closely monitored by both the McCain and Obama campaigns because of its potential impact on the fall election. "How can this possibly be read as anything but a partisan attempt to shut down a legitimate investigation that was approved and funded with bipartisan support?" said one state Democratic legislative aide, who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivities. Coghill told NEWSWEEK that he decided to write his letter to strip French of his position on his own-without any coaxing by McCain campaign officials.

But a top McCain campaign official acknowledged that the GOP lawyer had given the campaign a "heads up" about his letter and that the McCain campaign approved of the effort to remove French.

"An investigation that was supposed to be non-partisan has become a political circus and has gotten out of control," said Taylor Griffin, a top communications aide dispatched from McCain campaign headquarters to Alaska this week to monitor the investigation and related matters. (Griffin also said that Palin has "nothing to hide" about the Wooten matter.)

As a further sign of the sensitivity of the probe, a lawyer for Palin told NEWSWEEK Friday that Todd Palin, the governor's husband, was in the process of hiring his own separate counsel to represent him in the legislature's probe. Thomas Van Flein, Governor Palin's lawyer, would not identify who is now representing the governor's husband. But he sought to deflect charges that Todd Palin, a commercial fisherman and oil company worker, had improperly intervened in state business by inviting Monegan to the governor's office and asking him to look into Wooten's status on the state police force. (For his part, Wooten has acknowledged that he "made mistakes," but that he was "punished appropriately" when he was suspended from the police force for five days in 2006.)

In an interview on Friday, Van Flein sought to deflect charges that Todd Palin may have acted improperly by talking to the state public safety commissioner about Wooten. Todd was "the governor's husband and a citizen of the state and he has every right to an opinion as [does] everyone else," Van Flein said.

One major reason the probe is so sensitive is that it raises the prospect that Governor Palin's credibility could be called into a question in a major state probe on the eve of the election. When the "troopergate" story broke over the summer, Palin adamantly denied that anybody in her administration exerted any pressure on Monegan to fire Wooten. But only weeks later, a tape recording surfaced in which another one of her top aides, Frank Bailey, was heard telling a police lieutenant, "Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads, 'Why on earth hasn't this, why is this guy [Wooten] still representing the department?'"

French today acknowledged that some of his public comments about the ongoing probe may have been out of bounds. "I said some things I shouldn't have said," he told NEWSWEEK. But he insisted he had no intention of stepping down because the investigation was really being conducted by Steve Branchflower, a retired state prosecutor who was hired as the special counsel in the probe. French also said today he had moved up the deadline for Branchflower to produce his report. Although it was originally due Oct. 31, the Friday before the election, it will now be completed Oct. 10-in order to be "as far away from the election" as possible.

In the interview with NEWSWEEK, Van Flein, Governor Palin's lawyer, raised other objections to the troopergate probe. He said the legislative investigation ran counter to the Alaska Constitution because it was being conducted in secret and without strict procedural rules. He said that in the "post-McCarthy era", he would have expected more due process guarantees.

Van Flein also told NEWSWEEK that as part of defense preparations for the investigation, he had taken his own depositions from potential witnesses—including one this week who refused to give testimony to the Legislature's special counsel. That was Frank Bailey, the former senior Palin aide who was recorded mentioning the concerns of Palin and her husband that Wooten was still on the police force.

In the deposition taken by Van Flein, which Palin's lawyer made available to NEWSWEEK, Bailey acknowledged he had "overstepped my boundaries... I should not have spoken for the governor, or Todd, for that matter. I went out on my own on this discussion."

But Bailey also confirmed in the deposition that Palin had herself raised Wooten's name with the state police during her first security briefing after she won election as governor in November 2006. Bailey said he sat in on the briefing with Gary Wheeler, then head of the governor's security detail. Wheeler asked Palin and her husband whether they were aware of any threats against her that the new bodyguards should be concerned about. "They specifically brought up only one person, and that was Mike Wooten," Bailey testified. "There was a serious genuine concern about not only their safety but the safety of their family, their kids, their nieces, nephews, her father, regarding Trooper Wooten." Bailey testified that Sarah Palin never asked him to do anything about Trooper Wooten, but that Todd Palin did talk to him about "issues about Trooper Wooten," and expressed "frustration" that the state police were doing nothing to respond to the Palins' concerns.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/157439

© 2008

Digg's Inaccurate "Inaccurates"

A few minutes ago, I shared this observation with my chum Jerry, and thought it worth posting here as well. I wrote:

I have noted, in browsing on Digg.com, that a fair number of articles that are not entirely adulatory toward McCain and Palin are flagged "Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate." Interestingly, these articles--at least the ones I've noted--are not from blogs or YouTube or fringe publications with dubious standards or motives. Rather, they are from Newsweek, the New York Daily News, CNN, and the like. Obviously, this is no guarantee against inaccuracy, but having read several of the articles in question I began to wonder why and how they had been so flagged. And so I browsed through Digg's FAQ and found this:

What does it mean when a story has a message saying it may be inaccurate?
If a story has been repeatedly buried by the Dugg community, with the reason being that it is inaccurate, we display a message next to the story indicating that it may be inaccurate.

In other words, if I don't like something that someone has Dugg, I merely have to hit the "bury" button...and encourage you to do so, too, and eleventy other friends and so on, and then at some magic tipping point Digg announces that the article has been "Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate." Which is itself inaccurate: All that's happened is that a certain number of people have hit the "bury" button...they have offered no evidence to indicate the "inaccuracy" of a given article. Indeed, they have not even made an unsubstantiated claim that the story is inaccurate. All they've done is said they don't like it, and then Digg transmutes that into "inaccurate." Hmm.

As I expressed to my friend, I always make a point of Digging those articles when I see them, just to flip the bird at those who, it seems pretty obvious, are using the "bury" button--and Digg's lax definition of "inaccurate"--to cast doubt upon anything that points out something negative about their darlings.

Frankly, I think the "bury" button is a bad idea. The very concept is wide open to abuse, as is being illustrated.

And for the record, Diggers: "Don't like" or "don't agree with" is not the same thing as "inaccurate."

The phrasing is very odd, too: "Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate." Just about everything is possibly inaccurate, no?

Here are some recent articles from Digg's US Elections 2008 category flagged as "possibly inaccurate." Please note that I have limited myself only to articles from the so-called mainstream media, omitting even the higher-quality left-leaning sites such as the Huffington Post or DailyKos. Judge for yourself the "inaccuracy" of these pieces:

Sarah Palin may have women flocking - to Barack Obama

[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]

nydailynews.com — If John McCain wanted to poach the women's vote from Barack Obama, he shouldn't have tapped a running mate who dubbed herself a "pit bull with lipstick."More… (US Elections 2008)

McCain's Lies

[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]

cnn.com — Lies McCain made during his convention speech.More… (US Elections 2008)

Palin's Speech Didn't Move Undecided or Democratic Women

[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]

news.yahoo.com — McCain's pandering to women improved her standing to women in focus groups in Nevada, but polling data suggests that there is no movement in national polling data, showing women are not stupid like John McCain and Karl Rove think they are. More… (US Elections 2008)

McCain Operatives Trying to Derail Palin Investigation

[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]

newsweek.com — Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called "October surprise" that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election. More… (US Elections 2008)

Palin's Speech Raises $1M for Republicans; $8M for Democrats

[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]

blogs.wsj.com — Sarah Palin’s speech to the convention Wednesday night energized conservatives and inspired excited Republicans to donate a cool $1 million to the RNC's effort to elect John McCain. Bloomberg reported that Palin’s speech was even better for Democrats who got over $8 million in donations since Wednesday!More… (US Elections 2008)