Category: Corruption

Lamest Man in Massachusetts New Hampshire

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Scott Brown, of course, who, after losing to Elizabeth Warren, went to work for a law and lobbying firm, got his tits in a bundle with Lawrence Lessig who put out a flyer that criticized Brown as a lobbyist.

The Scott Brown campaign sent a cease and desist letter to Lessig’s campaign finance reform PAC:

Former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown has attempted to revive his political career by running for Senate in New Hampshire. But in the final days before his September 9 primary, he’s squaring off against another opponent — Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig, who advocates against money in politics. Lessig’s Mayday PAC endorsed Brown’s GOP primary challenger Jim Rubens, and is now sending out a mailer calling Brown a “Washington lobbyist.”

The mailer led to an angry response from the Brown campaign. “This is a flat-out lie. Scott Brown is not nor has he ever been a lobbyist. Ever,” campaign manager Colin Reed wrote, calling on Lessig to “immediately cease and desist with the mailer in question.”

In response, Lessig posted the letter on his blog, and linked to an article from The Hill about Brown joining the Boston office of “Nixon Peabody, a law and lobby firm.” The firm itself said Brown would work on “business and governmental affairs,” including those related to “the financial services industry.” Lessig writes:

Yes, according to the Senate, Scott Brown isn’t a “lobbyist.” But I submit to anyone else in the world, a former Senator joining a “law and lobbying firm” to help with Wall St’s “business and governmental affairs” is to make him a lobbyist. Because to anyone else in the world, when you sell your influence to affect “business and governmental affairs,” you are a lobbyist.

You would think that a man who is a lawyer who has spent much of his life as a public figure would understand just what it means to be a public figure after New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which required actual malice or a reckless disregard for the truth for libel and defamation suits.

Of course, in the process of making this demand, the hapless former Cosmo centerfold has served to generate publicity for the flyer.

See, “Streisand Effect, The”.  (Heh)

Former Bushie Enmeshed in Money Laundering Probe

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I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

Zalmay Khalilzad’s wife’s bank account has been frozen by Austrian authorities:

A U.S. probe into alleged money laundering by Zalmay Khalilzad has led Austrian authorities to freeze a Vienna bank account linked to the former presidential envoy to Afghanistan.

Khalilzad, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, allegedly transferred $1.4 million to his wife’s bank account in Vienna, Austrian magazine Profil reported today, citing court documents. The money came from oil and building contracts in Iraq and the United Arab Emirates that allegedly violated U.S. laws, U.S. investigators told their Austrian counterparts, according to the papers cited by Profil.

Austrian court spokeswoman Christina Salzborn confirmed the documents’ authenticity in a telephone interview. Christian Bielesz, the lawyer for Khalilzad’s wife, Cheryl Benard, confirmed that the account was frozen and an investigation under way.

The U.S. had asked Austrian authorities not to seize Benard’s account, Bielesz said in a phone interview. A decision on whether to unfreeze the account is expected “quite soon,” he said.

The documents alleging the misconduct were part of a cache of papers retrieved from a garbage bin earlier this year by a Vienna-based blogger. Austria’s courts have instructed workers to take better care of sensitive information, Salzborn said.

Of course, the response of the judge is to criticize the bank for allowing money laundering to be found by a pesky blogger.

Needless to say, Khalilzad is likely neither to face prosecution, nor to have the accounts seized, because, well, the you can be sure that there is someone on the other side of the aisle who wants to get rich the same way, and they need to lube that revolving door for their turn.

I’m beginning to think that we are living in the last days of the Roman Empire.

Yet Another Reason to Hate Andrew Cuomo

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It turns out that the Republican coup in the New York State Senatewas sided by hizzoner the Governor:

Andrew Cuomo has always been careful to maintain a plausible-looking deniability when it comes to his role in keeping his own party out of power in the State Senate.

Whenever he’s been asked about his involvement in the creation of the controlling Republican-Independent Democratic coalition, Cuomo has shrugged and suggested that it’s not the governor’s place to get involved in that sort of thing.

“This is an internal legislative matter,” he has said.

It’s on this basis that Cuomo has been able to put distance between himself and the coalition at opportune times—such as, say, when the Working Families Party threatened to endorse someone else for governor earlier this year. And it’s this distance that has allowed him (presumably) to keep a straight face as his running mate, Kathy Hochul, attempts to bolster her own Democratic credentials ahead of the Sept. 9 primary by complaining that the Senate coalition didn’t achieve enough for progressives.

But now, multiple sources with deep knowledge of the IDC and Republican conferences’ dealings confirm that in fact the governor was not a passive observer during the formation of the coalition. He was “deeply involved,” they say, and “absolutely” encouraged the marriage that allowed the Republicans to remain in leadership even after the election of a Democratic majority. Furthermore, they say, the governor was a key player after the coalition launched, privately offering advice about tactics and messaging.

………

But while the governor did not originate the idea of an actual coalition, sources say he and his staff were active in “nudging” it along behind the scenes.

The governor’s interest, say knowledgeable sources, was ensuring that Republicans had control over the agenda in the Senate, so that he wouldn’t be handing over power to New York City Democrats.

“The governor and [top aide] Larry [Schwartz] made it very clear they wanted the IDC to work with the Republicans to run the Senate,” one source explained.

Another recalled that there were “many, many conversations” between Schwartz, Cuomo and Republican leaders. The governor frequently expressed frustration with Democratic Senate leaders, and complained that he couldn’t work with them.

Before the coalition was announced, Cuomo privately made the IDC feel more comfortable working with Republicans and assured them they “wouldn’t get crucified,” or be “left out to dry” if they made the move.

This is not a surprise.

Cuomo was implicitly supportive of the renegade Democrats in the state senate, and now we see evidence of direct collusion.

He so deserves to lose his primary race.

The Talibaptists Have Seized the USAF

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The Airforce is refusing to allow an athiest airman to reenlist unless he includes “Under God” in his oath:

An unnamed airman in the United States Air Force wants to continue to serve his country. Yet, the Air Force reportedly told him that his service is unwanted unless he swears an oath that concludes with the religious affirmation “so help me God.” According to the Air Force Times, the airman crossed out the words “so help me God” when he signed his reenlistment contract. He was subsequently told that he must either swear this religious oath or leave the service.

 In justifying this decision, an Air Force spokesperson pointed to a federal law, which requires “[e]ach person enlisting in an armed force” to take an oath that concludes with the four words this airman finds objectionable. He did agree to the other portions of the oath, which includes a promise to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and to “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.”

This is clearly unconstitutional, as there is exhaustive judicial precedent saying that the government cannot coerce a person to profess belief, but this does not matter to the Air Force.

The US military in general, and USAF in particular, have been infiltrated by right wing Evangelicals looking to create an “Army of God”, and this is just an early consequence.

Here is the Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s take on this is well worth reading as well.  In particular, they note that the legislation in question which the Air Force is siting to exclude this airman allows for a simple affirmation:

Regrettably, this truly horrific scenario is indeed the case within the United States Air Force (USAF). Just the other day, the USAF public affairs office at the Pentagon informed the world that “Reciting ‘So help me God’ in its official reenlistment and commissioning oaths is a statutory requirement under 10 U.S.C. §502“. In short, you had better repent and swear your oath to “God” or be gone. Interestingly, that just cited U.S. Code provision (which the Air Force is pathetically using to support its “sorry, our hands are tied” position of abject cowardice here) also makes it clear that armed forces members may “affirm”, in lieu of swearing, this enlistment or commissioning oath. When one “affirms” such an oath of office, there is NO need to “swear” to “God” to do so. Such is the very distinction between “swearing and affirming.” 10 U.S.C. §502 allows either to be done by the enlisting or commissioning Air Force member. The USAF’s transparent duplicity and specious motivations for basing its new decision to force service members to swear to God are dangerous, disingenuous and despicable.

Your mouth to ……… Well, you get the idea.

Time for Another Blogger Ethics Panel

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Noted intelligence reporter Ken Dilanian, who has written on intelligence issues for both the LA Times and Associated Press, has been revealed to have pre cleared his stories with the CIA:

A prominent national security reporter for the Los Angeles Times routinely submitted drafts and detailed summaries of his stories to CIA press handlers prior to publication, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.

Email exchanges between CIA public affairs officers and Ken Dilanian, now an Associated Press intelligence reporter who previously covered the CIA for the Times, show that Dilanian enjoyed a closely collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication. In at least one instance, the CIA’s reaction appears to have led to significant changes in the story that was eventually published in the Times.

“I’m working on a story about congressional oversight of drone strikes that can present a good opportunity for you guys,” Dilanian wrote in one email to a CIA press officer, explaining that what he intended to report would be “reassuring to the public” about CIA drone strikes. In another, after a series of back-and-forth emails about a pending story on CIA operations in Yemen, he sent a full draft of an unpublished report along with the subject line, “does this look better?” In another, he directly asks the flack: “You wouldn’t put out disinformation on this, would you?”

Dilanian’s emails were included in hundreds of pages of documents that the CIA turned over in response to two FOIA requests seeking records on the agency’s interactions with reporters. They include email exchanges with reporters for the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other outlets. In addition to Dilanian’s deferential relationship with the CIA’s press handlers, the documents show that the agency regularly invites journalists to its McLean, Va., headquarters for briefings and other events. Reporters who have addressed the CIA include the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius, the former ombudsmen for the New York Times, NPR, and Washington Post, and Fox News’ Brett Baier, Juan Williams, and Catherine Herridge.

The money quote on this is, “Of course, journalists routinely curry favor with government sources (and others) by falsely suggesting that they intend to amplify the official point of view. But the emails show that Dilanian really meant it.”

Read the rest, but basically, not only did act as a CIA stooge, he uncritically regurgitated CIA lies about things like civilian drone strike casualties.

H/t Gawker.

And Now the Cops are Ratting Out Christie’s Bridge Scandal

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Props to the The Bergen Record for their coverage of Bridgegate.

Today, they revealed that senior staff at the Port Authority Police were aiding the bridge closures, and the rank and file cops are talking:

On the second day of the George Washington Bridge lane closures last year, a Port Authority police officer stationed at a gridlocked intersection picked up the two-way radio in his patrol car. The closures were creating “hazardous conditions” on Fort Lee’s streets, he told fellow officers according to his own account, and the lanes needed to be reopened.

 “Shut up,” a Port Authority police supervisor at the bridge allegedly replied, instructing the officer not to discuss the apparently secret operation over an open radio channel.

 That exchange, as described by officer Steve Pisciotta and involving the highest-ranking officer at the bridge, Deputy Inspector Darcy Licorish, is included in a summary of the recollections of nearly a dozen rank-and-file police officers that was provided to lawmakers investigating the lane closures, according to documents obtained by The Record.

The accounts of 11 officers at the bridge during the week of the closures share common threads and provide vivid new details about how the operation was put into effect on a Monday morning nearly a year ago.

 ………

 The instructions about the new lane configuration, many of them said, were delivered at roll call before the morning rush hour on the first day by Police Lt. Thomas “Chip” Michaels, who grew up with Governor Christie in the town of Livingston. He told the officers not to touch the traffic cones choking the number of access lanes out of Fort Lee from three down to one, according to the officers.

Later that morning, officers said they saw Michaels driving David Wildstein — the Port Authority executive who ordered the closures and also grew up with Christie — around Fort Lee’s gridlocked streets.

………

 Several immediately heard gossip in a police break room that the closures were part of a dispute between Christie and Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, who had declined to endorse the governor for re-election. The officers described the resulting traffic as “horrible” and “horrific,” and at least one urged a reversal of the operation, only to get warnings that his remarks over the radio were “inappropriate,” according to his attorney. It’s the first indication that police charged with patrolling the bridge recognized and notified superiors of the chaos being caused by the lane closures.

The summary, written by the legislative panel’s attorney Michael W. Knoo and based on an interview with the officers’ attorney Dan Bibb, renews questions about the role of some Port Authority police officers in what appears to have been an exercise motivated partly by politics.

The Record also obtained separate summaries of informal interviews with the two police supervisors at the bridge at the time, Michaels and Licorish. Those interviews were conducted prior to the one given on behalf of the 11 rank-and-file officers and do not address some of the allegations regarding the instructions – and warnings – the officers say they received.

………

 Some of the 11 rank-and-file officers at the bridge, however, described the supervisors as ordering them not to voice opposition to the lane closures as they were happening.

 Perhaps the most explosive anecdote was provided on behalf of Pisciotta, a 12-year officer who is typically one of the first to arrive at the bridge before the morning rush hour, according to the summary. Pisciotta’s attorney said his client, who had worked at the bridge for over five years, recognized early on that the closures were causing traffic safety problems and aired his concern over the radio on the second day, according to the summary.

………

 Licorish “replied to Pisciotta by radio, telling him to ‘shut up’ and that there could be no further discussion of the lane closures over the air,” according to Pisciotta’s attorney.

Michaels and a police sergeant then “visited him in person at his post to tell him that his radio communication had been inappropriate,” the attorney said.

A second officer, Angela Tait, said she witnessed both exchanges, according to the summary.

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, of Teaneck, who is co-chairwoman of the legislative panel, said the summaries indicate that “law enforcement was in on this whole thing.”

 “It was bad enough that it was the Port Authority and people close to the governor, but now you’ve got the people who are responsible for keeping us safe,” she said. “Any time you have law enforcement involved in a political operation, that’s very troubling.”

 Bibb, who is representing the 11 officers, also told the lawmakers’ attorney that many of the officers have already been interviewed by federal investigators, who are conducting a criminal probe. Bibb provided the legislative panel a summary of what the officers stationed at the bridge would say if subpoenaed to appear before the committee and testify under oath, according to the memo, dated Aug. 27.

Seriously, the lower level cops have both gone to the union, and gone public about this.

This is like peeling an onion, but someone is clearly making onion rings out of this, hopefully the US Attorney.

Rick Perry is Toast

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This story predates Governor Perry’s indictment by about 4 months, but this goes straight from abuse of power to outright bribery:

Aides to Gov. Rick Perry offered Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg continued employment in the district attorney’s office if she resigned her elected post following a drunk-driving arrest, officials familiar with the offer said Thursday.

The offer came after Perry threatened and then vetoed $7.5 million in funding for the office’s anti-corruption unit, known as the Public Integrity Unit, because Lehmberg had refused to step down.

But several officials and sources told the Express-News that Perry — through intermediaries — offered various options to Lehmberg to entice her resignation, culminating in promises to restore funding to the unit, another position in the District Attorney’s office, and selection of her top lieutenant to serve as the new district attorney.

The offer was explicit; “they were clear,” the elected official said.

Something that Rachel Maddow has always said is that if you want to look at local corruption, you need to check the local press, in this case, The San Antonio News Express.

This is an explicit quid pro quo, but if you read the national press, it’s pundits complaining about the criminalization of ordinary politics.

It isn’t. It’s a classic bribery attempt.

Governor Ultrasound is Completely Fornicated

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After just 17 hours deliberation, despite having an epic set of instructions from the judge, the jury found former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell  and his wife Maureen of every major charge:

A federal jury on Thursday found former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, guilty of public corruption — sending an emphatic message that they believed the couple sold the office once occupied by Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson to a free-spending Richmond businessman for golf outings, lavish vacations and $120,000 in sweetheart loans.

After three days of deliberations, the seven men and five women who heard weeks of gripping testimony about the ­McDonnells’ alleged misdeeds unanimously found that the couple conspired to lend the prestige of the governor’s office to Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in a nefarious exchange for his largesse.

The verdict means that Robert McDonnell, the first governor in Virginia history to be charged with a crime, now holds an even more unwanted distinction — the first to be convicted of one.

He and his wife face decades in federal prison, although their actual sentences are likely to fall well short of that. U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer set a sentencing hearing for Jan. 6.

The former governor, a onetime Republican rising star considered for the 2012 vice-presidential nomination, was convicted of all 11 corruption-related counts brought against him. In a small victory, he was acquitted of lying on loan documents.

………

It was a stunning outcome for the couple, all the more so because in December, McDonnell declined to accept a plea agreement in which he would have been found guilty of just one felony count of lying on a loan document, according to people familiar with the case. Maureen McDonnell would have faced no charges.

He was unbelievably guilty, and he somehow figured that he would get out of it, so he now faces many more years in jail, and he sold the mother of his  children down the river.

I’m not surprised. 

He thought that he was on the proverbial “Mission from God” only, unlike the Blues Brothers movie, he wasn’t joking.

It’s the same cycle as one sees in ancient Greek tragedies: Koros to Hubris to Ate to Nemesis.  (Success to arrogance to madness to comeuppance)

Republicans Aren’t Even Trying to Appear Non Corrupt Anymore

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Last night, Democratic Senate Candidate Chad Taylor withdrew from the race for US Senate:

Kansas voters have lost a chance to vote for a Democratic senator this fall — and Republicans could pay the price.

 Chad Taylor’s stunning decision Wednesday to withdraw from the U.S. Senate race forced partisans and analysts to recalculate the potential outcome of the Kansas contest.

 The consensus: Longtime incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts is in serious trouble, and the GOP’s chances of controlling the Senate could suffer as a result.

 “It’s extraordinary. It’s stunning. It’s shocking,” said Stu Rothenberg, a nationally known political analyst. Roberts “is still going to be the favorite, but the fact that those of us in Washington who look at races actually have Kansas on our radar is a significant development.”

 After surviving a brutal GOP primary in August, Roberts — and other Republicans — were counting on a four-way election to split his opposition, giving the veteran a chance to win in November with less than a majority of votes.

 The likelihood of that outcome tumbled dramatically Wednesday when Taylor quit.

 A recent poll found remaining independent candidate Greg Orman leading Roberts by 10 points in a one-on-one matchup. The Olathe businessman enjoyed the same margin in a different mid-August poll.

Chad Taylor was in 3rd place, and Dems in Kansas are focused on the governor’s race, so it makes sense to do this.

Senator Roberts nearly lost the primary to a doctor whose hobby was posting gunshot victims’ X-Rays on Facebook, and so his going from 2 opponents to one is a very big deal, as the poll numbers show.

In going from a 3 person to a 2 person race, Pat Roberts gains just 1% against Greg Orman, while he picked up 10% and Taylor was still behind in the polling, so from a tactical perspective (Orman would likely caucus with the Dems) it makes sense for everyone involved.

Of course, this story is not complete.  After contacting the Secretary of State’s office, and getting explicit instruction on withdrawing from the race, but Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach is trying to invoke the heretofore not used in a Senate race no backsie rule:

Chad Taylor doesn’t want to be in the race for U.S. Senate, but he’s going to remain on the ballot at least for now.

 Taylor, the Democratic nominee for Senate and district attorney of Shawnee County, submitted a formal letter to the Secretary of State’s Office to withdraw his candidacy on Wednesday, the deadline to drop out of the race.

 Political analysts said his withdrawal would give a boost to independent candidate Greg Orman against U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts in November. But Secretary of State Kris Kobach announced Thursday afternoon that Taylor must remain on the ballot.

 A few hours later, Taylor announced plans to challenge that decision, saying that Assistant Secretary of State Brad Bryant had assured him he met all the requirements to withdraw.

 “I specifically asked Mr. Bryant if the letter contained all the information necessary to remove my name from the ballot. Mr. Bryant said, ‘Yes,’ affirming to me, and my campaign manager, that the letter was sufficient to withdraw my name from the ballot,” Taylor said in a statement

Kris Kobach has been at the forefront of the Republican efforts to keep Blacks and Hispanics to vote, and he’s on Senator Roberts’ steering committee, but it appears that the words “ethics” and “recusal” are not in his vocabulary.

This ratf%$# makes Katherine Harris look like a responsible public servant.

But having a completely corrupt partisan in charge of the election is not enough for the national Republican party, so they have brought in national political operatives to run the Roberts campaign:

National Republicans on Thursday moved to take control of the campaign of Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas by sending a longtime party strategist to the state to advise him, a day after his hopes for re-election and those of his party for taking control of the Senate were threatened by the attempted withdrawal of the Democrat in the race.

………

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is sending Chris LaCivita, who has served as a political troubleshooter in past Republican campaigns, to counsel Mr. Roberts and help oversee his campaign. The committee will also seek to hire a local lawyer in any legal challenge against Mr. Taylor, who had tried to drop off the ballot on the last day candidates were allowed to do so.

Just when I think that Republican politics can’t get any more repulsive, they exceed my own low expectations.

The Revolving Door Spins Again

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A Russian bank targeted by US sanctions, has hired Trent Lott and John Breaux as lobbyists:

Gazprombank GPB (OJSC), a Russian bank targeted with sanctions by President Obama over the Ukraine crisis, has hired two former U.S. senators to lobby against those sanctions, according to a new disclosure filed with the Senate.
Gazprombank is controlled by Russia’s state-owned energy company Gazprom, the country’s largest gas producer; it supplies about a third of Europe’s natural gas.

 In a filing submitted Friday and effective that day, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and former Senator John Breaux, D-La., are listed as the main lobbyists under the Gazprombank account for the firm Squire Patton Boggs, lobbying on “banking laws and regulations including applicable sanctions.”

Truth be told, the fact that these two are lobbying for Gazprombank is not the real problem, it is the fact that they never went home, and are now paid obscene amounts of money as employees of Squire Patton Boggs (BTW, the Boggs in the name of the firm is Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr., son of Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr., former House Majority Leader).

More back loaded bribery of our elected officials.

James Foley was Tortured Before Being Beheaded Because We Tortured

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Dan Froomkin, in a post on the continuing efforts by the US state security apparatus to use redactions on the Senate torture report to conceal the nature torture, gives us this tidbit:

Feinstein also agreed with [NBC reporter Andrea] Mitchell’s suggestion that Islamic militants in Syria tortured Americans — including journalist James Foley, who was reportedly waterboarded before being beheaded — in a “rebuke” to the U.S. for its own use of torture during the Bush administration.

 “The United States military has always prevented any kind of torture or waterboarding because they felt that then, whatever the enemy was, would come back and do it to our people,” she said. “In this case, the enemy came back and did it to one of our citizens.”

So, torture does not work, and it gets our guys tortured.

BTW, it’s clear that the CIA is attempting to change the conclusions of the report through supposedly security related redactions:

Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein expects the executive summary of her staff’s long-awaited report on the torture of American detainees to be ready for public release before the end of September, she said in an unaired segment of her “Meet the Press” interview this weekend (starts at 10:25 of the video).

The torture report, which was five years in the making, was sent to the White House for declassification in April. But the exhaustive redactions that Obama administration officials sent back in early August included such things as the elimination of pseudonyms, apparently to make the report too confusing to follow, and the blacking out of copious supporting evidence, such as proof that information derived from torture actually came from other intelligence sources.

“What we are engaged in is working with the administration to see that the redaction is such that it does not destroy the report,” Feinstein told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “If you redact the evidence — heavily — then we cannot sustain our findings. We will not put out a report that does not enable us to sustain our findings. And I believe that that is understood.

………

People who have seen the report’s executive summary have told reporters that it discloses abuse that was more brutal, systematic and widespread than generally recognized — and presents extensive evidence that officials most closely linked to the torture regime lied to others inside the CIA and the Justice Department, as well as to Congress and the public, about what they were doing, what they had done, and what it accomplished.

The evidence is quite clear at this point:  The CIA is actively obstructing the oversight process, and as such, it should have no input whatsoever in clearing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report.

Obama should, but won’t, remove the security review process from the CIA, so the Senate Committee should do release it on it’s own, as its right under statute.

Least Surprising News of the Day

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Eric Cantor gets is back loaded bribe, because, after fighting financial reform tooth and nail, he will now make millions of dollars at a Wall Street firm:

Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), who resigned last month after losing renomination to an underfunded college professor, spent much of his 13-plus years in the U.S. Congress advancing the agenda of Wall Street investment firms. This week, he announced that he will be joining a Wall Street investment bank as its new vice chairman.

Cantor will be joining Moelis & Co., the investment bank said, to “provide strategic counsel to the Firm’s corporate and institutional clients on key issues,” to “play a leading role in client development,” and to “advise clients on strategic matters.” The announcement press release praised Cantor as a “leading voice on the economy and job creation,” who worked in Congress “to lower taxes, eliminate excessive regulation, strengthen small businesses, and encourage entrepreneurship.” The deal reportedly includes a $1.4 million signing bonus and at least a $2 million annual compensation package.

Moelis and Co. will not get a value of $2 million a year from Eric Cantor, but that is not the purpose of their offer to him.

The purpose of their offer to him is to show people who are still in Congress that, if they play nice with the banksters, then when they retire, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, they will be set for life.

It’s the proverbial offer they cannot refuse.

Arbitration is a Corrupt Fraud

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This little story of the corruption that is a feature, not a bug, of the arbitration process has made it to the New York Times:

Five years ago, Sean Martin, a registered representative at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York, saw something troubling on his trading desk.

A few of his colleagues, he said, were letting preferred hedge fund clients listen in on confidential market commentary by the firm’s analysts before their views were made public. He alerted his superiors and was almost immediately given a negative review, a first in more than 10 years at the firm, he said. His bosses also removed him from the group he’d been working with and cut his compensation.

Mr. Martin, who continues to work at Deutsche Bank, said he believed that he was being punished for reporting misconduct and took the one avenue of redress that was open to him. In August 2012, he brought an arbitration case against the firm, contending retaliation and asking to recover his lost earnings. As is typical in the financial industry, his employment contract required that any dispute between him and his employer go through private arbitration, not the courts. Mr. Martin’s matter is being heard by three arbitrators associated with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a self-regulatory organization that operates the largest dispute resolution forum in the securities industry.

But Mr. Martin’s experience with arbitration, both he and his lawyer say, has raised questions of fairness in the process. The three-member panel hearing his case has barred him from testifying about certain crucial aspects of what he saw at Deutsche Bank and disallowed the introduction of documents that bolster his claims. This led his lawyer to conclude that the panel was not interested in specifics of the behavior at the heart of his accusations — and to ask a state court to step in.

“When I filed this arbitration, I expected that Finra would resolve the dispute between Deutsche Bank and me in a fair way,” Mr. Martin, 41, said in a statement provided by his lawyer. “I was surprised and disappointed when the arbitrators refused to listen to important parts of what I wanted to say and rejected or redacted my exhibits. I can’t see how a dispute can be fairly resolved if one party is not even allowed to tell their side.”

………

“How can a panel of arbitrators for the regulator justify not hearing evidence of wrongdoing?” asked Robert Kraus, a partner at Kraus & Zuchlewski in New York, who represents Mr. Martin. “It is completely upside-down.”

………
But Mr. Kraus, worried that his client would not get a fair hearing, last week filed a motion in New York State Supreme Court asking to stay the arbitration hearings. Arguments are on the docket for Wednesday in Manhattan. If the judge grants Mr. Kraus’s request, the court will hear arguments on whether the arbitrators should be removed.

………

Mr. Kraus said he did not take the decision lightly to file his request with the court. He said he’s had success in other Finra arbitrations over the years but that this case was different.

“Unlike other hearings where you question a ruling here and there, these arbitrators repeatedly excluded evidence that lies at the heart of our case,” Mr. Kraus said. “From time to time, you get these panels that go off the rails, and then the question is how do you remedy that?”

This is not surprising.

The private arbitration system is inherently corrupt.

The continued employment of arbitrators is dependent upon satisfaction the firms, and not the employees of customers, so their rulings invariably favor the big corps, at the expense of due process for the little guys.

For Once, Labor Beats the Asset Strippers in Management

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Arthur T. Demoulas will be buying out the other side of the family for the Market Basket grocery chain:

After the intervention of two governors and an enormous public outcry, the chaos that has paralyzed the Market Basket supermarket chain ended Wednesday night with a deal between the two warring factions of the Demoulas family, the company said in a statement.

The deal approved by the chain’s board essentially meets the sole demand of the workers who have been staging huge public rallies for six weeks: that Arthur T. Demoulas, who was president until June, be reinstated to lead the company.

His cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas, and his allies agreed to sell their 50.5 percent stake in the company to Arthur T. Demoulas and his allies, who own 49.5 percent, according to the statement.

As part of the deal, Arthur T. Demoulas will return immediately “with day-to-day operational authority,” according to the statement. But he will not technically become chief executive until the deal is finalized over the next several months.

The current co-chief executives, Felicia Thornton and James Gooch, who were installed by Arthur S. Demoulas, will “remain in place” until the deal closes, the announcement said.

It was the firing of Arthur T. Demoulas and the installation of Ms. Thornton and Mr. Gooch that touched off protests by employees in mid-July. The deal includes a set of penalties and incentives intended to get Arthur T. Demoulas to finalize the transaction by the end of February.

The settlement would end one of the strangest labor actions in American business history, one that disrupted a low-price grocery chain that attracted two million shoppers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. And perhaps most surprising, it ends with the sole demand of the workers, from top management to the lowliest clerks, being met.

Basically the good Arthur, Arthur T., was given the boot, and the evil Arthur, Arthur S., brought in some MBA types to do their magic:

After a long family feud, the majority stockholders fired their cousin, longtime CEO Arthur T DeMoulas. He had built the business on low prices, high wages, and ZERO company debt- All employees get profit sharing and a livable wage, and many have been with the company 20, 30, even 50 years.

Arthur T. was replaced with the former president of Radio Shack, with an evident goal of strip mining the wealth from the company–raising prices, cutting benefits, loading up with debt, and selling off real estate–in order to pay out higher stock dividends to the controlling shareholders.

The employees revolted. Top executives walked off the job and picketed in front of headquarters. Employees from managers to baggers are using their vacation time to protest outside stores. 68 out of 71 managers have pledged to quit unless Artie T is reinstated or allowed to purchase the remaining 51% of the family-owned company. Deliveries have stopped and twitter is full of photos of completely bare shelves. The board has responded with termination letters and threats.

In case you think that this was a fever dream, it should be noted that, at the start of this conflict,”The board voted to distribute $250 million to family shareholders, an action opposed by Arthur T.”

The 50.5% stake was purchased for $1.6 giving a market value of $3.2 billion (probably less; it appears that Arthur T. probably overpayed a bit.), and they wanted to make a payout of nearly 10% of the value of the company to shareholders.

You know how it works:

  • New management.
  • Financial engineering generating cash from monetizing assets.  (i.e. eating your seed corn)
  • Raiding the retirement fund
  • Destroy the lives of the employees.
  • The suits get golden parachutes.

For once, it got stopped.  The good guys won.

I will note that the culture of business in the United States is profoundly dysfunctional.

Stupid Uber Tricks

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It has been revealed that Uber has been mounting a sophisticated program of industrial sabotage against their rival Lyft:

Uber is arming teams of independent contractors with burner phones and credit cards as part of its sophisticated effort to undermine Lyft and other competitors. Interviews with current and former contractors, along with internal documents obtained by The Verge, outline the company’s evolving methods. Using contractors it calls “brand ambassadors,” Uber requests rides from Lyft and other competitors, recruits their drivers, and takes multiple precautions to avoid detection. The effort, which Uber appears to be rolling out nationally, has already resulted in thousands of canceled Lyft rides and made it more difficult for its rival to gain a foothold in new markets. Uber calls the program “SLOG,” and it’s a previously unreported aspect of the company’s ruthless efforts to undermine its competitors.

Together, the interviews and documents show the lengths to which Uber will go to halt its rivals’ momentum. The San Francisco startup has raised $1.5 billion in venture capital, giving it an enormous war chest with which to battle Lyft and others. While the company’s cutthroat nature is well documented, emails from Uber managers offer new insight into the shifting tactics it uses to siphon drivers away from competitors without getting caught. It also demonstrates the strong interest Uber has taken in crushing Lyft, its biggest rival in ridesharing, which is in the midst of a national expansion.

This kind of crap is why Uber, Lyft, and their ilk need to be required to actually have employees with hack licenses drive their cars.

What happens if Uber, a company that employs price gouging as a significant portion of its business model, actually becomes the 800 pound gorilla in the commercial personal transport market?

It won’t be pretty, it will make Comcast look like Mother Theresa.

The US State Security Apparatus has Dropped Even the Pretense of Cooperating with the Senate Intelligence Committee on Their Torture Report

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Because they have put a defense attorney who represented some of the CIA torturers in charge of making the CIA’s redactions in the torture report:

The background of a key negotiator in the battle over a Senate report on the CIA’s use of interrogation techniques widely denounced as torture has sparked concerns about the Obama administration’s objectivity in handling the study’s public release.

Robert Litt, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is a former defense lawyer who represented several CIA officials in matters relating to the agency’s detention and interrogation program. Now he’s in a key position to determine what parts of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,300-page report will be made public.

Litt’s involvement doesn’t appear to be an ethics issue, at least by the legal definition. But experts say that while it may be acceptable on paper, his involvement in the review should have been a red flag.

Seeing as how Obama has seriously drunk the CIA’s Koolaid, the only way that the torture report will see the light of day in any meaningful way is if the Senate votes to declassify it on their own, which they are authorized to do by statute.

Pass the Popcorn

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Pass the Popcorn

In 2012, Michelle Bachmann accused the Ron Paul Presidential campaign of bribing Iowa state senator Kent Sorenson for his changing his endorsement from her to the Libertarian stalwart.

Well, it turns out to be true.

Sorenson has pled guilty to taking at least $25,000.00 to switch his endorsement.

While this bit of of corruption may not seem significant beyond an indication that the Iowa caucuses are too corrupt and thus should lose their first in the nation status, there is actually more to this.

Specifically, it appears that Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign manager, Jesse Benton, is hip deep in this.

How is is significant today that the campaign manager for an iconoclast’s 2012 campaign is implicated in  bribery scandal?

Here’s how:

Neither Lori Pyeatt, Ron Paul’s granddaughter and the treasurer of his 2012 presidential campaign, nor Jesse Benton, who was Paul’s campaign manager (and is now manager of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s re-election campaign), had responded to requests for comment at the time this post was published.

(emphasis mine)

So Mitch McConnell’s campaign manager is implicated in a bribery scandal, and what’s more, it appears that he might be rolling over to prosecutors:

It isn’t clear if the investigation is continuing, but Sorenson has been granted immunity from further prosecution on federal and state charges, as has his wife, according to the plea agreement. OpenSecrets.org has learned that two grand juries have been investigating the events in Iowa, one focused on the Paul campaign and one on Bachmann’s. Last August, OpenSecrets.org published a copy of a memo written by Aaron Dorr, the head of the Iowa Gun Owners, in which he outlined Sorenson’s demands to switch his endorsement. Included in the emails surrounding the negotiations were several top Paul campaign officials, including Benton.

(Again, emphasis mine)

So Sorenson is singing to the feds like a canary, and Mitch McConnell’s (soon to be former?) campaign manager is clearly in the prosecutor’s cross-hairs.

New York Times Declines to Endorse Andrew Cuomo

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I still think that Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu are unbelievably long shots, and that the putative Republican nominee is pretty much the only in ‘Phant in New York willing to be that embarrassed in a state wide campaign, but the fact that the New York Times has refused to endorse him for reelection is a pretty big deal:

More than four years ago, while announcing his campaign for governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo stood in front of the Tweed Courthouse in downtown Manhattan and said Albany’s antics “could make Boss Tweed blush.”

 New York had had enough corruption, he said, and he was going to put a stop to it. “Job 1 is going to be to clean up Albany,” he said, “and make the government work for the people.”

 Mr. Cuomo became governor on that platform and recorded several impressive achievements, but he failed to perform Job 1. The state government remains as subservient to big money as ever, and Mr. Cuomo resisted and even shut down opportunities to fix it. Because he broke his most important promise, we have decided not to make an endorsement for the Democratic primary on Sept. 9.

 His opponent in the primary is Zephyr Teachout, a professor at Fordham Law School who is a national expert on political corruption and an advocate of precisely the kind of transparency and political reform that Albany needs. Her description of Mr. Cuomo as part of a broken system “where public servants just end up serving the wealthy” is exactly on point, but we decline to endorse her because she has not shown the breadth of interests and experience needed to govern a big and diverse state.

 Why endorse no candidate in a major state primary? Here’s how we see it: Realistically, Governor Cuomo is likely to win the primary, thanks to vastly greater resources and name recognition. And he’ll probably win a second term in November against a conservative Republican opponent. In part, that’s because issues like campaign finance rarely have been a strong motivator for most voters. Nonetheless, those who want to register their disappointment with Mr. Cuomo’s record on changing the culture of Albany may well decide that the best way to do that is to vote for Ms. Teachout. Despite our reservations about her, that impulse could send a powerful message to the governor and the many other entrenched incumbents in Albany that a shake-up is overdue.

So basically, the Times is disgusted by Andrew Cuomo, and they wanted to endorse Ms. Teachout, but she’s too much of a long shot for them.

The primary is in 2 weeks, September 9, and I am with Ryan Cooper when he says, “It’s time for Democrats and progressives to get rid of this toad.”

The bottom line is that Andrew Cuomo is the worst kind of backstabbing, triangulating “centrist” in the wretched No Labels mold. Better for liberals to beat now, or at least make his victory as unimpressive as possible, before we have to beat him in a presidential primary down the line.

Needless to say, the Zephyr/Wu ticket is on my Act Blue Page. 

While on the Subject of Right Wing Governors Facing Criminal Investigations………

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It turns out that Scott Walker was illegally coordinating with 3rd party groups:

Gov. Scott Walker prodded outside groups and individuals to funnel millions of dollars into Wisconsin Club for Growth — a pro-Walker group directed by his campaign adviser — during the recall elections in 2011 and 2012, according to court documents unsealed for a short time Friday afternoon.

The documents form much of the basis for prosecutors’ theory that Walker’s campaign and conservative groups illegally cooperated to help him and other Republicans. Walker and the groups deny they broke any laws, noting two judges have sided with them.

Among the funds that flowed into the Wisconsin Club for Growth was $700,000 from a company trying to build a massive open-pit iron mine in northern Wisconsin. Soon after the 2012 recall and general elections, Walker and Republicans eased environmental regulations, helping the firm.

“The Governor is encouraging all to invest in the Wisconsin Club for Growth,” said an April 28, 2011, email from Kate Doner, a Walker campaign consultant, to R.J. Johnson, an adviser to Walker’s campaign and the advocacy group. “Wisconsin Club for Growth can accept corporate and personal donations without limitations and no donors disclosure.”

In the email, Doner wrote to Johnson that Walker wanted Wisconsin Club for Growth exclusively to coordinate campaign themes. “As the Governor discussed … he wants all the issue advocacy efforts run thru one group to ensure correct messaging,” she wrote.

Walker’s campaign has paid Doner’s fundraising firm $1.26 million since 2011, including more than $70,000 in his latest spending report.

The hundreds of pages of documents that became available Friday afternoon also showed Walker’s team sought to solicit funds for the Wisconsin Club for Growth from an array of nationally known donors to fend off his 2012 recall. Real esate developer Donald Trump, industrialist billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson were all targets.

………

Mining company Gogebic Taconite LLC’s $700,000 contribution to the Wisconsin Club for Growth was not publicly known until Friday.

………

Gogebic first announced its plans in November 2010. By mid 2011, the company said that it wouldn’t move forward until Wisconsin changed iron mine laws to give more certainty to the regulatory process.

The company had an early hand in writing a mining bill and continued to play a key role throughout the legislative process. The bill, one of GOP’s signature pieces of legislation since Walker’s election, was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Walker in early 2013.

Why hasn’t he been indicted yet?

H/t Charlie Pierce, for this update on, “Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest facility formerly known as the state of Wisconsin.”

Dumbass of the Day

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Michael Lind.

It’s a completely incoherent analysis of the Rick Perry indictment.

Well, Mr. Lind in particular, and the self described “Radical Centrist” New America Foundation in general.

BTW, as a interesting note, the papers in Texas, from the the Dallas Morning News the flagship newspaper of the journalistic cancer that is A,H, Belo Corporation, to the relatively liberal Austin American-Statesman, have thought that the indictment was justified, and they are the ones who have been following this sh%$.