If A Leak Never Happens

There’s been a lot of news regarding supposed Russian involvement in our electoral process.  So far the press has covered it like a sporting event:  Trump leads by one, Clinton slashes back and picks up two runs by saying Trump’s in bed with the dreaded and re-set Russians.  The press and pundits seem to be taking bets on when the next release of emails will occur and how it will impact the presidential race.  Will it be an “October Surprise,” or will something juicy come out sooner? What the press hasn’t given much thought to is, what happens if there is no release of new and embarrassing information?  There’s a reason they may want to spend more time pondering about this.

By now, all reasonable people know Clinton’s bathroom server was hacked.  It’s almost comical to believe the Russians were interested in the correspondence between political hacks at the DNC, the DCCC or the Clinton campaign, but had no interest in learning our foreign policy secrets by hacking into the less-protected clintonmail.com server.  If you believe the Russians were involved in the DNC hack – and it’s amazing to me the Democrat spin doctors are trying to use this fact as a plus for them – then you have to assume the Russians got the goodies on Hillary’s server.  It would have seemed like a better move for her allies to say some random guy in his basement sitting in his underwear was the culprit than to push the story that the new Cold Warriors of Russia did the dirty deed since it reminds the world how vulnerable Hillary left our state secrets while acting as our chief diplomat.  But I’ll leave this up to the brighter minds of the Clinton campaign.

It would be fortunate for candidate Clinton if no more secrets came out.  However, it would be most unfortunate for the country if nothing else hits the wires and we end up with a President Clinton.  The reason is quite simply blackmail, and it wouldn’t be the first time a President Clinton faced this with the Russians.

I have a thread entitled “me in the middle of things” and I happened to be in the middle of Russian blackmail with the first candidate Clinton in 1992.  Some of this may be news to you, but I had a “friend” who looked after me while I was attempting to raise the GDP of Russia and bankrupt myself.  It was nothing Bond-like, but my friend was an FBI counter-intelligence agent that I’ll simply refer to as Raul.  Raul was interested in who was interested in me, and by me simply showing him business cards I collected, I was able to get a better idea about who I should stay away from.  Raul would sift through my business cards whenever I returned from Russia and if there was a name on the card that could be a threat, he would tell me they gave him “heartburn.”  While there were several people who gave him heartburn, there were two who constantly swirled around my brother and me that I will refer to as Boris and Vlad.  I should also point out I had heartburn whenever I was around them, too.

Boris and Vlad were very friendly to us and loved to ask a lot of questions about what we did in the U.S. and how our systems worked; particularly how our political and defense systems operated.  They had pulled up an article in the LA Times that was about my weird little niche in politics.  In the article, it noted I was working with the George Bush re-elect campaign by registering voters and doing GOTV activities.  This meant to Boris and Vlad that I was best friends with George Bush.  This made Boris and Vlad even more interested in me and made Raul suck down a box of Tums to cure his indigestion. 

In October of 1992, my brother was eating lunch at a hotel that was known for the kind of shady happenings that were in vogue in Russia in 1992.  Boris came up to my brother’s table with a large grin and said he had something for him and that I would love it.  Boris told him he was in possession of a 16 mm video of a bearded Bill Clinton on his visit to Leningrad in 1968.  The future president was seen on the video stomping on an American flag and cursing and spitting on it.  We never saw the film so I don’t know the context, but Boris assured my brother it was a doozie and that I would be happy to present it to President Bush to shift the election back his way.

My brother called me in the U.S. over a Russian landline and tried his best to tell me what had been offered without giving away all the facts.  He failed miserably and I – along with the phone listeners – knew exactly what he was talking about.  After hanging up with my brother, I made two phone calls: one to my friend in the Bush campaign and the other to ask Raul if I could meet with him.  Raul suggested we meet the next day.  My campaign friend called me back within 20 minutes and told me the information I had went straight to the president and they, reluctantly, decided to take a pass on obtaining the video (I’ll explain the reason why further down).  A few minutes after that, I got a call from Raul inviting me to come to his office and it would be really cool if I did it immediately.

When I got to Raul’s office, I went to a conference room and it seemed the meeting had drawn a crowd of other interested parties.  In addition to others in Raul’s organization, there were two more who were there representing another agency with three letters.  They asked me to describe everything over and over again but since I only had about a three-minute cryptic call with my brother, I had very little more to tell them. I was told that they knew this video existed and that the way it was described to us was very much in keeping with what they knew about it.  They also knew that Boris would have access to this video.  I was told to tell my brother to stay away from the video as it was a KGB document and he would be arrested if he tried to take it out of the country.

After the meeting ended, I asked Raul why there was a need for the larger crowd.  The president had passed on it and we already had second thoughts on ever talking to Boris again.  I said he didn’t need to worry about us.  Raul said he wasn’t worried about us (thank you very much), he was worried about the video NOT being released.  In October it was becoming very apparent Bill Clinton would be the next president and Raul was now very worried the video would be used to extract favors out of him in exchange for the video being buried.  He was worried the Russians would play to Clinton’s larger political fears and do whatever they wanted.

After my meeting with Raul and my new friends, I called my brother back on his Russian landline and told him that whatever he planned to do, he shouldn’t take the “gift” as it would end up being very bad for him.  He laughed and said, “Too late.  Two French Reuters reporters already took it from Boris.”  I called Raul back and said there was urgent information to tell him.

Within an hour I was back in the same conference room with a smaller audience, but with a new person from their Washington, DC office who must have been lurking about during the first meeting.  When I explained the video was now in the hands of the French reporters, every person in the room slumped over in their chairs with devastated looks on their faces.  They asked me 10 or so times if I was sure this was the case and told them Boris had made this point clear.  My brother and I had known these reporters as they were frequent guests at a hotel restaurant we often visited.  We even got to know them a little bit.  It certainly wasn’t surprising these two would have had the stones to take the video out of the country (I learned later they took it to their embassy). 

Raul made me sit in the lobby for a bit and when his meeting ended, he walked me out again.  I suggested to him that it was better the French had it then the Russians.  Surely the French were friends of ours where the Russians weren’t.  Raul explained to me that the French were perhaps the most proficient users of information in the world.  What they didn’t need to spend on a large army like the U.S., they spent to create an enviable spy network.  He even said many Air France flight attendants were actually working for the DSG and looking and listening for information that could be used to help French intelligence or businesses.

A month later, Clinton was elected president.  A year or so had gone by and nothing had happened to suggest Clinton was blackmailed.  Then I read a story about the French Finance Minister being arrested for pushing huge government contracts to his girlfriend.  It was quite a sensational scandal in France (not that the married Finance Minister had a girlfriend, but that big money was changing hands).  As a footnote at the end of the news story, it mentioned the investigation included whether or not the two companies involved, Elf Oil and Alcatel, were guilty of violating U.N. sanctions for selling technology and buying oil from Iraq following the first Gulf War.  Later I read the sanctions violations were removed from the charges at the request of Russia and the U.S., two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.  I guessed this was the quid for the pro quo to keep secret films forever secret.

So, keep an eye on what comes out of the hack.  If nothing or very little comes to light, you’ll have a pretty good idea that something bigger is kept quiet for greater use later on.  For those who think Hillary was wrongly persecuted for her lax security, this is the principal reason we have such laws on the books.  Here’s hoping the Russians would rather keep her out of the White House than prey on her moral flexibility if she was elected.

Footnote on George H. W. Bush:  I’m told the main reason Bush opted not to use the film is because he thought it would backfire.  I’m sure it’s easily slipped down the memory hole, but Bush got beat up pretty badly after it leaked that his State Department was looking at the travel destinations of key Clinton campaign leaders.  I was told it included Cuba, Nicaragua, Russia and other interesting places that should have been a negative reminder of who Bill Clinton was.  But a guy named Dennis Ross, who was Number Two at State, blew the whistle on the Bushies so he could stay Number Two in a Clinton Administration, which he did.  I thought Ross did a great job managing the end of the Soviet Union with his Russian counterpart, but I lost all respect for him when he did this.

When Is It Obama's Fault?

President Truman famously had a plaque on his desk that read, “The buck stops here.”  Events that happened the last century are often frowned on and those who focus on historical statements are derided as someone who wants to take us back to the Fifties.  But, every now and again, our old, white male leaders made an important point.

If in 1946 the buck stopped with the president, where does the buck stop now?  From the way the current president has talked the last five-plus years, the buck seems to hit his desk and ricochet back in time to the desk of George W. Bush.   Can anyone think of something negative President Obama took responsibility for?  He has no problem touting good news that happened while he’s president, but he’s something of a savant at deflecting the blame for gloomy news to others.

The media never seems to call him on it so, let’s pretend this blog is an actual news service that has finally asked the question, “When is it Obama’s fault?”

This post was spurred in part by a news story that pointed out the lack of inventory for home sales in the wealthiest zip codes.  It seems the nation’s richest homebuyers are ready to write a check, but there aren’t enough 20,000 square foot homes for hungry real estate agents to show them.  What this dire circumstance in real estate demonstrates is, under Obama, the rich have indeed gotten richer and the poor and middle class – now with record numbers on food stamps, unemployment and disability – have gotten poorer. 

Spoils going to the wealthy aren’t supposed to happen under a democratic administration but the storyline goes that they are under greedy republican polices.  The facts tell us the reverse is the truth and particularly are so under this president.  Wall Street is in the midst of an embarrassing shower of riches of late, created in large part by democrat-backed legislation such as Dodd-Frank, the auto bailouts and the nearly $1 trillion economic stimulus that was little more than corporate welfare that picked survivors out of the bucket of democrat contributors. 

And there have been plenty of contributors from Wall Street as nearly all lined up to support Obama’s 2012 campaign.  Of course this is nothing new as big business always supports the party in power.  Wall Street never cares about a candidate’s foreign policy or social policy, but it cares mightily about how much they can continue to utilize a financial system they lobbied to create.  It’s precisely why Wall Street supports immigration reform.  It’s not about poor immigrants yearning to be free, it’s a little about brining in new customers and a lot about cheap labor.  The bottom line always trumps good policy.

Nothing that Wall Street and corporatists are doing is new.  What’s new is how shameless Obama talks of division of the classes; saying he’s working hard for the middle class as if he’s only president for one segment of our population.  However, the middle class has been hit the hardest under his presidency and will be hit even harder once Obamacare is fully implemented.  It would be more accurate to say he’s been the president for the One Percent.  If the Occupy Wall Street crowd needs to occupy a CEO’s private residence, may I suggest 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.?

Lemmings Over The Cliff

If one were to be getting their news about the “fiscal cliff” from any news outlet – and Lord have mercy on them if they are – you’d swear the debate is simply about one side (republicans) wanting to protect their rich friends and the other side (democrats) trying to protect the poor from mean-spirited budget cuts. Can I say poppycock in my blog?

For the past five years we have been building up debt in this country at an unprecedented and unsustainable way. Both parties are to blame for this because elected politicians of any stripe would much rather give than walk away from the revenue trough. The reasons for our debt, now 105% of our annual gross domestic product (which is the total output of our entire national economy), are very complex. But to simplify as much as possible: it’s too much going out the door and not enough coming in.

As would be the case in your own finances, imagine that your paycheck has been cut, your bills have gone up and you’ve had to max out your credit cards just to stay afloat. To make matters worse, the interest you’re paying for borrowing all that money on your credit cards is so high that making the minimum payment barely cuts into your overall credit debt. In a nutshell, that is how our government works. The U.S. economy has the lowest percentage of people in the workforce since the Great depression (let’s call it a pay cut since fewer workers means less tax revenue), Federal spending as a percentage of GDP is at an all time high (let’s call that an increase in your bills) and 45 cents out of every dollar the Federal government spends goes to pay interest on the debt (let’s call that the credit card problem).

Assuming you have the lower pay, higher bills, and higher interest problem in your own household, what would you do? I suspect you’d get a second job to offset the loss of pay and then use that money to pay down the principal on your debt, getting it more under control. That would be a common sense approach. However, that’s not the general thinking among those we elect and trust to look after the public purse. Their plan – minus all the details, of course – is to increase costs on the wealthiest taxpayers, many of them employers, and expect higher revenue. While this may have a short term gain, it will ultimately lead job producers to either pass along those higher costs to consumers (difficult to do in a global economy) or to cut jobs to save costs, leaving more taxpayers out of work and unable to contribute to the overall economy.

As to cutting the debt, Congress and the president, with three trained economists among them, believe they can solve the problem of spending beyond their means by spending more money. They also do something we all wish we could by printing more money to pay the bills. Politicians seem to ignore the economic reality that printing money cheapens the dollar (meaning consumers can buy less with the money they have), will eventually lead to high rates of inflation, and has to be paid back with interest to whomever is dumb enough to buy our crashed debt-rated bonds.

But we are all told this is just about the rich not paying their fair share and the poor getting stepped on because of budget cuts.

Let’s get real. The amount of money that could be raised by increasing taxes on households earning more than $250,000 per year, as first proposed by President Obama, would run the current annual budget for just eight days. The republican’s version of taxing earners with more than $1 million in annual income would run the government for half that time. If this is a revenue problem, the only revenue solution is to tax everyone regardless of income. But do any of us who pay taxes really believe we’re not giving enough of our income to provide needed revenue to the government?

Which brings us to cutting the Federal family budget. All proposed spending cuts are for merely cutting the planned increase, not cutting any amount currently being spent except in one place; the defense budget. So when you hear about harsh budget cuts, the fact is that the Federal budget will still increase under anyone’s proposal. Under Obama, it increases at a faster pace and even includes more stimulus spending to build the infrastructure that was supposed to be built under Stimulus I and II.

Which brings us to the harshest of harsh budget pain: the Fiscal Cliff (cue horror music). The fiscal cliff was a designed time bomb set to go off on January 1 because Congress and the president couldn’t decide how to fix the problem 11 months ago. So they did what Washington does best and decided to kick the can down the road and fix it later. But before they kicked the last can, Congress and the president decided to create an incentive to do their job and put tax increases and spending cuts on autopilot in the event they couldn’t come up with a plan that everyone liked. It’s now later and the problem isn’t fixed and both sides are acting like a college student cramming for a final at the last moment and hoping to do just enough not to flunk.

The headlines talk about trillions of dollars every time the fiscal cliff is mentioned. In one of the latest bits of political trickery, all plans are added up over 10 years to make them look more serious by using the magic word: trillions. The Soviets had a five-year plan, our current government seems to prefer the 10-year plan. Of course the only actual effect on these 10-year plans is for the first year since one Congress can’t bind a future Congress on spending. For honesty’s sake, we can only look at one year. On January 1, taxes will go up for all taxpayers back to Clinton-era rates. It will raise enough revenue (assuming no job losses) to run the current budget for 21 days. Then the automatic cuts would be $130 billion on defense (40% of its budget) and $109 billion on social programs. That’s all on a budget of $3.8 trillion. That would be the same as you owing $38,000 on credit cards and paying $2,300 to reduce your overall debt and thinking you solved your credit card problem.

To make matters worse, we’re adding $1.2 trillion to that $16 trillion deficit every year. Using the government’s 10-year plan, we will add $12 trillion to our deficit in ten years, only cutting that to $10 trillion under proposed budget cuts and an additional $1 trillion under the rosiest of revenue plans. The problem is, the cost of borrowing even at current historic low interest rates will consume nearly 100% of the budget, which will overwhelm any spending priorities.

So with such a miniscule divot in the Federal purse and increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans (now agreed by the president to be only household incomes more than $400,000), why can’t the two sides agree? The answer is pure politics. Unless one side can gain a political advantage over the other, the automatic spending cuts and tax increases are a certainty. If this happens, both sides win because both sides can be seen reducing taxes by peeling them back to their current rate for all but the wealthiest. Taking away and then giving back, the perfect dream of a politician! We’ll build statues to them for their kindness. To make that deal work best, there will be bipartisan support to “save” certain programs and restore the already planned increases. Medals for everyone, I say!

Back to the beginning, however, and how our ignorant media has portrayed this. Since this is a true partisan battle, I will put it in partisan terms. President Obama is either an idiot or he hopes to go over the cliff just so he can save us all from the rascally republicans and “cut” taxes, despite raising them through laziness and wanton political gamesmanship. Obama’s latest ask isn’t just for tax increases on incomes over $400,000. He’s also asking for an extension of unemployment benefits, an extension of a cut in social security taxes, larger cuts to defense among most of a very general plan for non-specific budget cuts, $50 billion in new “stimulus” spending, and the kicker, to give a two-year reprieve on the debt ceiling (the only real stopgap to increased spending) and the ability to veto any attempts to block future increases, a constitutionally protected responsibility of Congress. That’s an offer even Don Corleone would blush to make.

Random Thinking....

Obama gets to play with his military toys: Due to the ever-changing situation in Libya, this thought may have a shelf-life of a few hours, but I find it humorous that our Nobel Peace Prize winning president decided to lob Trident missiles into Libya to save the Libyan people. It made me turn to me DVD library to watch a few clips of Team America: World Police when they destroyed Paris to save the city.

Most presidents who take us into war (what else can you call it – certainly not a “kinetic military action"?) give Americans a bit of a pep talk before the bombing begins. They’ll make a case to the American people about why we’re blowing up things, the goals and who is supposed to die for messing with us, or our “vital national security interests,” before they give it a mission name like Operation Wag The Dog. The Libyan attacks by a coalition of the unwilling seems more like letting a few Europeans show off their new combined EU defense industry products, ready for sale. Although it’s a sad day indeed when you throw a war with European countries and the Germans decide to sit it out.

Our historic president decided to be historic once again, giving his unwatched speech to America in what, in the end, seemed more like a justification than a call to arms, and did so nine days after the first missiles were launched. Perhaps future presidents will take the 20/20 hindsight approach in addresses to the nation on all sorts of matters. A president is more apt to appear he made all the right moves when you get to back into your remarks rather than try to back out later, as George W. Bush discovered in declaring Mission Accomplished about eight years too early in Iraq.

The president even took the opportunity to slap himself on the back a few times, comparing how long it took him to order the missiles compared to the time that passed for President Clinton to kill civilians to stop the killing in the Balkans – either a slap in Ms. Clinton’s face for getting him into this mess, or he somehow thought the press forgot where the Balkans are (most did, likely). In all fairness, President Clinton was hiding under his Oval Office desk while Madeline Albright got the Balkan War up to a fever pitch, and it appears President Obama was also cornered by his Secretary of State to stir up some desert dust – so much for feminist talk that only men create wars.

While he was given less of a pass by the press than normal on his tardy talk, I don’t think anyone with the courage to watch his non-fireside chat found a greater understanding of our mission in Libya. Key questions left unanswered: Are we out to kill Gaddafi, or just trying to send a message by blowing up his palace? Who are the rebels and why were they only mentioned in passing? Are we arming the rebels with Stinger missiles so they can take out Libyan air force jets and the occasional commercial 747? Why did we hand off command and control to NATO when the top two commanders of NATO are American, we are the major funder, and they still need our advanced weaponry to enforce a no-fly zone and to make big holes in the ground where once strategic targets were? And, finally, it’s quite worldly of us to jump into such a fray to spare innocents, it’s just sort of puzzling why innocents in South Sudan, Congo, Syria, Ivory Coast, Bahrain and the protestors in Iran in 2009 don’t warrant the same compassion. Look, the president is just too damn smart for us regular folk to understand such nuance – even with 20/20 hindsight. Let’s just hope he picks his battles better than he does his Final Four picks.

The facts are in: California sucks. There was an interesting article by Forbes naming the Top 15 cities where things are getting worse. The major criteria were unemployment rate, the expectation for future job growth, and percentage of homes in foreclosure. Of the top seven cities, six are in California. This little tidbit coupled with a $26 billion deficit and bond rating that just slipped below Louisiana to come in at number 50, can lead one to wonder about the effectiveness of our elected leaders.

While we’ve had our boneheaded governors in the Golden State, there have been two constants in California politics since 1995: a huge left-wing democrat majority in the legislature beholden to special interest and a small and right wing minority of republicans beholden to the voices in their heads. The theory of “never the twain shall meet” is alive and kicking among our politicians and no amount of gunplay is apt to change things.

There was a day in California when the majority of legislators were lawyers prior to entry into public service. Say what you will about lawyers, but they know how to draft laws, take their one-third, and get out of town. Now the majority of legislators’ previous employment was the staff of former legislators, thanks in no small part to term limits and the idiots who put it on the ballot (me!). As a result, the main form of legislating is towing the company line and, presto, all problems over the past 15 years have been kicked down the road so far that we’ve finally found the dead end. I say give them all a year’s paid vacation just so they’ll leave us alone for a year and maybe things won’t get any worse. We’ve tried everything else, let’s get innovative.

Why one shouldn’t fly with Russian passengers: You’ve all heard that flight attendant’s speech prior to take off; that one that mentions 30 times to shut off all electronic devices, check to make sure your seat belt is fastened, and how much the various meats on a stick will cost. There are certain sounds only dogs can hear, but I’m guessing there are other sounds that only Russians can’t hear. One of them is to shut off all electronic devices.

I was on a flight to Moscow the other day and all Americans dutifully turned off everything they were required to, including the flight attendants. I kept my phone on a bit longer than normal because AT&T’s service is so incredibly awful, I had to wait five minutes for an e-mail to clear my outbox. I was reminded three times to shut off my phone and, with a feeling of lawlessness, I even chose to hide my phone to avoid further scolding. The Russians sitting in the row across from me? One woman had two mobile phones switched on and was showing her seatmate something on her computer while we were taking off. She also wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Not a single flight attendant said anything to her – likely because they knew it would do no good.

There is an old joke about an America, a Frenchman, and a Russian. The task is to get each one to jump off a bridge into the river. To the American, he’s told he’s lost all his money and, with nothing to live for, he jumps off the bridge. To get the Frenchman to jump, he’s told he’s lost all his lovers. To convince the Russian, a sign is placed on the bridge that reads, It’s forbidden to jump off the bridge. Now I’ve been on a lot of flights inside Russia and I can’t recall a single instance of a Russian turning off anything electrical, which makes one believe there’s nothing to this canard of electronic interference in the first place. But on the remote chance there is, my suggestion is flight attendants change their pre-flight announcements to say, It is forbidden to keep your electrical devices turned on.

Where Have You Gone Woodward and Bernstein?

My friend who goes by the moniker Agent 69 thinks I’m an interesting person. If anyone thinks I’m interesting I tend to want to hang out a bit more with them because, well, I don’t get that reaction very often. Although I must say it does bring to mind the Groucho Marx line of not wanting to be part of any club that would have him as a member. Nevertheless, I had a lunch with him today and, as often is the case, we grumbled about various political banalities. To our mutual credit, very few swear words were used in this session.

The subject came up about the political class and the media that write about them. Specifically, about the strange relationship of media and how it is billed as our guardians of truth and yet have a cozy relationship with the people we need guarding from. It was in evidence this weekend when President Obama was having a going-away party for administration hatchet man David Axelrod who was leaving to run the reelection campaign for the president. First, let me state my bias and pray that Mr. Axelrod is a complete and utter failure in his revised role. At any rate, as Egypt and much of the Middle East was burning, our tirelessly-working president was goofing off with his staff and a number of invited elite journalists.

It makes one scratch the balding side of the head to get around the idea that supposedly objective journalists could maintain that objectivity and still make the A List for future parties and sleepovers at the White House. If a reporter were to write a slightly critical story about the president, would he or she be taken off the invite list? The worry of losing the status – and the access – in this manner could make any reporter give pause about what they’d write.

When I was a lowly paid sportswriter, there was a definite dividing line about consorting with the athletes we were writing about. It was almost a point of professional pride that we could care less about hanging out with the athletes, invited or not. And, the bigger the name, the less we wanted to seem star-struck. The reporters who cover the White House these days seem to feel just the opposite and can’t wait to write in their diary about how the president remembered their name. In fact, there is a big snit going on from the reporters who weren’t invited to the White House soiree.

Back when it was cool to be an aloof sportswriter, I had a story lead that went, “The Texas Rangers stink, and Mike Hargrove was the stinkee.” I was proud of that line and proud that I had called out the Rangers’ only all-star player. With my chest puffed up, I proudly went to the Rangers’ practice field the next day and was talking to manager Bobby Valentine. As we were discussing what Valentine might do when he became a former manager, a baseball whizzed by my head and I could feel the wind of the ball as it missed my nose by an inch. Valentine looked down and tried to hold off a chuckle. I looked around and couldn’t tell who had thrown the ball, although my great deductive skills had narrowed the field to Hargrove, who was about 50 yards away. A moment later another ball zipped by my head and, putting two and two together, I figured Hargove was throwing the ball at me. So I said, “Skip, I think Hargrove is trying to hit me on the head with a baseball!” Valentine said, “Naw, if he was trying to hit you, he would have.” The next day, Hargrove went 0-4 in an 8-0 loss and I wrote of the Ranger’s star player, “Hargrove looked about as sharp as white sox and a black tuxedo, but he sure can throw the ball with great accuracy.” The 6'-4" Hargrove grabbed me in the clubhouse the next day and asked me to autograph my article. So much seems to have changed in the relationship with reporters and the people they report on. It’s also true that much has changed in the expectations placed on the reporters by those they’re covering. And that’s sad.

Years ago, I was traveling with a few old political hands and they were having fun telling me about all the dirty little secrets of California’s elected legislators. Republicans and democrats both had skeletons that needed to be nailed shut in the closet. One maintained a collection of child pornography in his office and another once punched his wife in the nose because she met the pizza guy half naked. Another was found in a hammock with a 16-year-old babysitter, another was considered the cocaine dealer for the Senate and its staff. Most were alcoholics and few had anything resembling scruples. But they had one thing in common: they were protected from any of this information coming out by the Capitol dome.

While we are led to believe that republicans hate democrats and vice versa, the simple truth is that they don’t hate each other enough to engage in mutually assured destruction. So the details of the frailties of our elected mortals stays in the family; in part because they are aware of their own frailties and in part because they are protecting the image of our elected officials as servants of the public and the essence of truth and justice. The real story couldn’t be farther from the truth.

And this is where we have to give the stink-eye to the media. If I know these stories, imagine what the seasoned journalists know. I once asked undoubtedly the most important political reporter why he didn’t write about the dirty secrets in the Capitol. He told me if he did, it would be the last story he’d write and he’d be out of job. While I know politicians have stirred us into a rough employment environment, I wonder what happened to the days when an editor would give a reporter the boot for sitting on a story that was far more in the interest of the public than remaining on the A list for party invites. Woodward and Bernstein, where are you when we need you?

Porkulus

In President Obama’s uninspiring Inaugural address he made it a point to stress bi-partisanship and, in reference to gloomy economic prospects said this, “We have chosen hope over fear.”

Whenever any politician speaks (and, sorry to say I include Obama as just another politician), you’d be foolish to accept the words have any meaning until they’ve been run through the reality-grinder. Because the very next week, in explaining why we need to spend another $800 billion after the first $850 billion had no positive effect, Obama was quoted as saying, "A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe." So much for hope over fear.

Bi-partisanship? Republicans, except Northeast whackjobs, weren't even invited to discuss the content of the latest spending spree.

It’s words like "catastrophe" that actually turn crisis into a catastrophe. Is there any evidence out there that indicates successful problem-solving by Congress when in the midst of crisis? We end up with quick fixes, pork-barrel spending to move reluctant legislators and a lot of proud back-slapping that the Union has been saved by their thoughtful and quick action. The problem is, it’s doubtful any of the owners of the slapped backs completely read what in the 1,000 pages they voted for. God forbid anyone have a chance to read it in its entirety – especially those prone to leap from buildings from such bad news.

There is a delicious irony that there are hearings on financial Ponzi Schemes in one part of the Capitol while Congress creates the world’s largest scam a few hearing rooms down the hall. The difference in the hearings is the victims of the Congressional scheme will be future generations saddled with debt that will bury them in red ink their entire lives.

This isn’t to say Obama is solely to blame (although I want to remember all the headlines referring to this as Obama’s stimulus bill). The new president is just another political snake oil salesman peddling the same cure Bush and his team offered just six months ago. In case you’ve forgotten about the purpose of the first $700 billion – with the added $150 billion Congressional surcharge – was to stabilize the financial services industry. Anyone out there try to get a loan for anything lately? Anyone see any difference before and after the government threw our money at the problem with little debate and little open information?

When the two “stimulus” packages are added together the cost to benefit ratio to the taxpayer is criminal. Obama’s stimulus promises tax breaks that work out to $13 per week and drop to $8 per week next year. By contrast, if they just gave each and every American a share of both programs, we’d each receive almost $7,000. That’s $28,000 for my direct family alone. And, what would we do with that money? Who knows? Maybe spend it, creating jobs, maybe save it, making banks more liquid and secure, maybe invest it, taking foreclosed properties off the books or save sagging stock values, maybe give it to charity, creating opportunity to others less fortunate. Neither stimulus bill does anything close to what the average American would do if given that money.

Of course when you get to the bottom line, spending priorities is far from the main point. Congress, which has only one trained economist among members, needs to remember that the money they spend has to come from somewhere. They either have to print it, borrow it from China or take it from taxpayers. Either way, it sure looks like we lose.

Pelosi: Not The Brightest Speaker We've Had

Imagine if a republican had said this at a press conference. Now, try to find this comment in any major newspaper.

Movin' On

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately because, well, I've had a lot of time to think.

The weeks since the presidential election, I have been getting dozens of e-mails ranging anywhere from urging me to make calls on behalf of both Senate candidates in Georgia, to dire warning of financial collapse because Obama is in the driver's seat on the Good Ship Recession, to even e-mails that explain in great detail how Obama is the Anti-Christ.

Enough!

So I don't feel like that Japanese soldier who gets stumbled upon in 1958 on an outer island still fighting World War II, I have decided to stop paying attention to these e-mails. I've also decided no more conspiracy theories and no more conservative talk radio for a while. I think it's time to move on politically and just have fun with the process of living. As one of our leading modern philosophers, Rodney King, once said, "Can't we all just get along?" Hope so.

Bailing Out The Big Three

Just a quick thought on hypocrisy and perception. Last month, CEOs of the Big Three automakers came to Washington in private jets to explain why they should be able to gobble up a big share of taxpayer largesse. All had received multi-million dollar bonuses for losing billions (I’m sure their bonuses were minor in comparison to the cost of the mistakes they all made) and each came with what seemed like a chip on their shoulders as they appeared to be demanding money.

They offered Members of Congress little more than threats of the imminent demise of the domestic auto industry and the loss of potentially millions of jobs (and, by implication, millions of votes). At no time did they offer a concrete plan on how they would rebuild their companies to turn or profit or even produce a product Americans want.

Since they were asking the taxpayer to take a stake in their company – and I’m still a taxpayer (for the moment) – it would have been nice for them to be a bit better prepared and give us more of a plan and fewer overt threats. I certainly couldn’t go to a bank and ask for a bailout on the basis that I would go out of business without their help. In fact, because of the actions of companies like the automakers, I can’t consider asking the bank for even a free toaster anymore.

Predictably our representatives in Congress used the Capitol pulpit to preach austerity to the CEOs, chiding them on wasteful spending, lack of leadership and poor planning. Just to be clear, weren’t these lectures coming from the same people who tacked on $160 billion in pork to the “bailout” bill and who seemingly have a blank check to spend our money buying up every industry that hasn’t moved to China? Isn’t this the same group that built the Capitol Visitor Center because Senator Reid had difficulty with “smelly” tourists visiting his office with an original price estimate of $71 million and a final cost of $650 million? Who are they to lecture, and who do we complain to when they blow our money like an alcoholic on pay day?

Eventually the automakers were shamed enough that they regrouped, huddled with their lobbyists, and went through a crash course on how to grovel with panache to elected officials who think they own the country. Two of three CEOs promised they would take only $1 in salary next year, which would leave them to have to live on the $30 million in bonuses they received the previous year (memo to self, let three of the maids and two butlers go to make it through the pay cut). On the second visit to beg for money, the CEOs chose not to fly their private jets – even went so far as to say they would sell them – and instead drove to Washington from Detroit (no details yet on whether or not they were chauffeured and if they ate breakfast at Perkins along the highway heading south).

Despite their new etiquette, it looks like it won’t be enough. Predictions by Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi indicate they don’t have the votes for a bailout of the domestic auto industry. It should be noted that Speaker Pelosi, who spared little sarcasm in her attack on the wealthy CEOs, doesn’t drive to out-of-town meetings or take the Metro to work. She flies on a taxpayer-funded Gulfstream G3, the same make and model flown by the automaker CEOs. Her reasoning is that the president and the vice president get their own planes to shuttle them around and, since she’s third in line to the presidency, she can’t be bothered going through security and sitting on JetBlue to fly between San Francisco and Washington. I’ve seen plenty of Congressional Members sipping wine with me in first class to Washington and even saw Janet Reno stuck in economy. I think Pelosi will be fine flying like the rest of us, and even picking up some frequent flyer miles for a really cool vacation!

In some way, I am interested to see what happens if they don’t get the money. It may tell us a lot about the use of taxpayer money to bail out any industry, including the banking industry. There are no visible signs that the financial services bailout has done anything for the average person and it would likely be a safe bet that the world will continue to spin on its access if the Big Three were forced to shut down or reassemble in a leaner, meaner fashion. It may tell us that the financial services sector should have been forced to do the same thing. I say, Let ‘em squirm.