Rick Scott Is a Major Scandal But Barely a Blip On The National Radar

It's been months, and it's barely been covered by anything resembling the national media, but recently Salon.com posted an article on the ongoing scandals of Rick "No Ethics" Scott here in Florida (an article which quickly slid under the radar with all the more current craziness dominating the news).

Comparing Scott's woes to the fall of another governor, Oregon's John Kitzhaber, writer David Dayen tries to point out why criminal Scott won't be leaving office the way Kitzhaber did:

In any normal political environment, the charges would lead to calls for resignation or impeachment proceedings. But Scott appears insulated by the very expectation of his corruption. In idealistic Oregon, Democrats controlled every level of government, and forced out a member of their own party. In Florida, the governor is supposed to be a scoundrel...

Dayen covers three of the ongoing scandals pursuing Scott: the more public disaster that has been Bailey-Gate, the questionable firing of a well-liked FDLE department chief over what seems to be Bailey's refusal to play Scott's partisanship games; a lawsuit over a disputed land use proposal to expand the governor's mansion that led to the revelation that Scott has been - and might still be using - illegal private emails in violation of Florida's Sunshine laws; and another lawsuit from political opponent George Sheldon over Scott's differing financial disclosures to both the federal Securities Exchange Commission and the state's ethics board.

Scott's refusal to play by the rules of ethics - both over the secret emails and over his financial chicanery - ought to be major strikes against him:

This is critical because public officials in Florida are subject to the release of emails from their official accounts, like those former Gov. Jeb Bush released last week. The use of private email accounts to conduct state business violates the law, especially if they aren’t turned over when asked for. Andrews got a judge to allow him to amend his complaint to say that the governor knowingly violated public records requests, an impeachable offense in Florida. The administration continues to fight to get the suit tossed...

It'd be nice to think that under normal circumstances Scott would be facing impeachment over his misconduct.  He's earned that much from his scornful performance.  Other governors - Blagojevich, remember him? McDonnell.  Now Kitzhaber - have gotten charged, impeached, driven from office for similar unethical conduct.  But this isn't a normal circumstance here in Florida.

Here in Florida the f-cking game is rigged.  Regarding Sheldon's ethics case, for example:

Sheldon believes that Scott has maneuvered money through a network of trust accounts to hide it from public scrutiny. Scott has refused to deliver information on the trusts, calling the lawsuit a “frivolous partisan attack” and claiming that the discrepancies with the SEC documents have to do with Scott’s wife Ann’s money. Scott’s lawyers want to move the case out of court and into the state ethics commission, currently chaired by a Republican appointed by the governor.

Yup. Scott wants his case reviewed by a political ally.  Oh, of course, don't be too surprised when the ally turns a blind eye or dismisses the charges or even gives Rick "What Part of Medicare Fraud Did You Voters Ignore" Scott a gold medal for being "a sweet little angel". (insert choking noise here)

We're not going to see the state government do anything about Rick Scott's ethical failures because the agencies that are best positioned to do something about it - the state legislature in particular - are in no rush to rock the boat or turn against one of their own partisan hacks.

We're talking about a state legislature that is so firmly entrenched with Republicans in power that the state House and Senate plan ahead who their legislative leaders - House Speaker, Senate President - will be (due to a term-limit law at the state level, there's a cap on how long a legislator serves as Speaker).

The only other method to confront Scott over these scandals is the court system... and Scott has enough money and lawyers on payroll to game the courts long enough to avoid answering for his sins well until he leaves office in 2018.

It'd be nice to think the federal government could step in, force a more serious and more public investigation - in particular, Scott's questionable filings with the SEC should be sending up the right red flags - that could embarrass the state Republicans to abandon Scott.  But that doesn't seem like it's going to happen.  And outside of this one Salon article, it doesn't look like the national media is willing to pay attention long enough for the state party to feel any shame or pressure to change their tune.

We're pretty much at the point where Rick "HE'S A CROOK VOTERS, WHAT THE HELL" Scott can knock over a string of liquor stores between Orlando and Miami and still never answer for anything.

Thanks a lot, Republican voters who VOTED FOR AN UNETHICAL MEDICARE FRAUD.  Thanks a lot, Democratic voters who REFUSED TO SHOW UP TO VOTE FOR CRIST BECAUSE HE WASN'T PURE ENOUGH FOR YA.  /headdesk

Read more ...

Here's Your Duly Elected Governor, Florida Voters, Caught Lying and Acting Like a Crook January 2015 Edition

This has been building up the past few weeks.  There were questions back when it happened, but since this last weekend the questions about why Rick Scott forced a well-respected state-level law officer - FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey - to resign got louder, and the accusations - how it was over unethical and potentially illegal misconduct in Scott's administration - got serious.

It's gotten to the point where even Scott's Cabinet - fellow elected officials from the same hard-core Tea Partier faction of the state GOP - are backing off from their rubber-stamping of Scott's move and acting like they're not involved in any of this.  Via Daniel Ruth:

A week after Gov. Rick Scott misled, undermined and duped the independently elected Cabinet into going along with his baseless firing of long-serving Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey, (Chief Financial Officer) Atwater finally woke up and perhaps said to himself, "Hey, wait a minute here. This whole thing smells sorta fishy."

Do you think?

Perhaps Atwater had an inkling he had been played for a chump by Scott when Bailey bluntly denied he had resigned from his post and that the governor was a big honking liar for suggesting otherwise.

When your own people are backing away from a bad story, it's time to break out the lawyers.  Via another article at the Tampa Bay Times:

(Attorney General Pam) Bondi on Wednesday became the last of the three elected Republican Cabinet members to distance herself from the ouster last month of Gerald Bailey as commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Bailey alleges that Scott and his aides meddled in law-enforcement business and used strong-arm tactics to pressure him to resign.

Taking indirect aim at Scott on his preference for secrecy over transparency, Bondi said she and the public have a right to know the truth, and that she would insist that the Bailey matter be discussed "thoroughly and in the sunshine" at the next Cabinet meeting Feb. 5.

This is Bondi coming out against Scott on this matter.  The same Bondi who is neck deep in the beach sand at vacation spots paid for by lobbyists just happening to get her to sell out the state to their whims.  The hypocrisy of this would be laughable if it weren't so horrifying.

Scott's move to fire Bailey was such a shock to the Tallahassee power circles - the Commissioner had served without a problem under other Republican governors and was liked and respected - that questions were unavoidable.  What made it worse for Scott was his own damn mouth: having spent more than four years - dear God, it's been that long already - making false claims and refusals to answer direct questions, when pressed on an issue he couldn't avoid he simply lied about it.  Problem was, the person he lied on - Bailey - was someone the media respected, so that when Bailey charged back accusing Scott of flat-out lying, the papers and politicos believed Bailey over Scott.

And this is more than Scott being a liar.  The reason(s) why Scott pushed Bailey to resign - trying to get state cops to help with the re-election campaign, abusing state transportation, making up a criminal investigation against an Orange County Clerk of Court - point to a political office that tried to force a state agency to "submit" to Scott's political agenda.  Those reasons deserve greater scrutiny as possible criminal acts.

Unless someone in the proper authority can push for a legit independent investigation - the GOP-controlled legislature will be loathed to go that far against their own, and it's a question of who can approach the federal Justice Department to start a probe - this scandal won't go very far.  All it will do is highlight once again how much of a fraud Rick "No Ethics" Scott has been and will continue to be.

This is who you voted for, Floridians.  Both the partisan Republicans who held their noses to vote for this stinkpatty of a lifeform, and for the cowardly Democrats who refused to show up to vote last November in a chance to vote him out.  This is what we're getting, Florida.  Four more years of bullying and lies.

Read more ...

What The Hell Is He Hiding?

This is a thing.  Rick Scott is "shielding" about $200 million in assets from required state disclosure forms that he had to report to the federal oversight (Securities and Exchange Commission (the OTHER Sec)) people (via the Tampa Bay Times):

Gov. Rick Scott has failed to report more than $200 million in assets on his state financial disclosure form in violation of the Florida Constitution, Democratic attorney general candidate George Sheldon alleged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday...

...Sheldon is asking a judge to order Scott, Florida's wealthiest governor, to "immediately and accurately disclose all assets he owns or controls," and to declare the governor's "blind trust" in violation of the blind trust law he signed.

"The lawsuit asks the court to remove the blindfold that Rick Scott has put on the people of Florida so that they cannot see what is going on with his personal assets,'' Sheldon said at a press conference. "The governor likes to talk about how much he has disclosed. The lawsuit is about how much he has not disclosed."

The Florida Constitution requires elected officials every year to make a "full and public disclosure" of their assets and liabilities "in excess of $1,000" so that the public can monitor any potential conflicts of interest...

The complaint follows a Times/Herald story published Sunday that raised questions about the completeness of the governor's financial disclosure in light of the blind trust he created, numerous trust accounts he has established, and the differences in which he reports his finances to the federal government and the public...

...Sheldon's suit argues that a lawsuit is necessary because the Florida Ethics Commission, which oversees the financial disclosure law, does not have the power to compel the governor to file a complete return, only to fine him after the fact. By contrast, he notes, failure to accurately report financial information to the federal SEC or IRS could result in jail time.

Four things:

• Let's be fair and note that Sheldon - the plaintiff - is a major Democratic candidate for office this year, going against Scott's major political ally Pam Bondi (for state AG).  Let us also note that the only ones who would notice Scott was BS'ing his disclosure statements would be his political opponents (one of the advantages of a multi-party government system over a single-party authoritarian regime: there's someone in a position to actually complain about the high-powered corruption).
• This isn't some minor blip on an Excel spreadsheet, where someone types in the wrong digit and OOPSIES 200 million bucks just disappears.  It takes effort to ignore all that money in one report filing and then remember it for another report filing.
• This is money tied into - directly or with his so-called "blind trusts" - corporations doing business here in Florida and doing business with Scott's office and governor's departments.
• This has got to be f-cking against the law. (Oh, it is!)

Remember what I said before kids: Rick "No Ethics" Scott is only in this for Rick Scott.  He's not interested in serving the public trust: he's interested in taking as much money from the public for himself and his cronies as he can get away with.

For the LOVE OF GOD VOTE THIS CROOK OUT OF OFFICE.

Read more ...

Why Do Scandals Get Worse

The thing that always surprises me is how a bad story - someone being violent, someone being inept, someone being greedy - goes from minor league to nuclear catastrophe within a heartbeat of the story getting out.

It's not even when a revelation about a minor crime turns into an expose of a major conspiracy, like Watergate.  It's just in any situation where there's a powerful person or an organization suddenly confronted with a problem he/she/they just doesn't know how to handle it, and then BOOM the entire structure of that person's powerbase implodes or that organization's impressive administrative order collapses.

I'm bringing this up in the wake of the NFL's (and commissioner Goodell's) Very Bad PR Week of mishandling the Ray Rice incident.  What went from a horrifying interpersonal assault in an Atlantic City casino back in February - that could have been calmly handled in the courts and through massive amounts of counseling - instead degraded into a months-long argument over how poorly the NFL handles domestic violence cases overall (in short: not well).

When Goodell handed down a mere (!) two-game suspension on Rice in July, it opened up the arguments about how tone-deaf the sports league was towards how domestic violence literally destroys women.  That the punishment for assaulting a women was less than a punishment doled out to a player caught with marijuana in his possession or his biosystem (and while pot is illegal, so is assault: and you can forge a strong argument that assault is a more serious crime than pot).  You could see in real-time the scrambling and back-pedaling that the NFL Front Office went through looking to come up with a stronger punishment code...

And then this past Monday just as Week One of the regular season kicked in, the media got ahold of the full video of what Ray Rice really did to his fiancee-now-wife Janay.

By that afternoon Ray Rice had been kicked off his Ravens team and the NFL had banned him indefinitely (although he could always get re-instated).

But this was getting worse and not better for the NFL and Goodell.  Because it begged the question: how the hell could a powerful organization like the NFL - an organization known to have its own army of investigators, and had months to get it - fail to see this video?

Each explanation - each excuse - that Goodell tried to offer came up more hopeless and inept and ill-advised than any of the earlier ones.  Reports kept cropping up that the NFL did get a copy of the video, that at least one executive did see the video, that all the league had to do was ask the casino for it and not the police or prosecutors' offices.  It wasn't helping that other players in the league facing the same legal issues as Rice - Greg Hardy, Ray MacDonald are two - are still playing without suspension... even though Hardy especially has been convicted in court of assaulting and threatening his ex-girlfriend.

The hypocrisy.  The sloppiness.  The willful ignorance of a powerful, money-driven organization.

How could the NFL - an organization that can successfully bully communities into building multi-billion-dollar jeweled stadiums for them even while generating profits from massive TV and marketing deals - be so clumsy, stupid and tone-deaf now over something like this?

Because of one simple, universal constant that happens to those in power: they lose any perspective about things like accountability and honesty.

It's not so much that power corrupts, it's that power puts people on a different level of authority and responsibility.  It's at a level where things like accountability - where you answer to a higher power than yourself - fade away, because you no longer have as many bosses or overseers watching your mistakes and correcting what you did wrong (either through training or dismissal).

That lack of accountability in high places creates a void of sorts: it creates an environment where the people in power believe themselves infallible, untouchable.  All because they rose to a level of prominence that makes them seemingly superior to all other mere mortals.

That's what happened, is happening here.  Goodell and the NFL - the owners, the players' union, the networks and corporations co-thriving with it all - view themselves akin to Gods On Earth: rich and powerful men (it's mostly men) who make life-and-death decisions about a money-generating sport/entertainment that enough people can't look away from.  Why should their judgment be questioned or their values argued?  Why are we blowing something like this out of proportion?  Don't we know who they are?

It's the same in politics and their media bubble, it's the same in any church of size and power, it's the same in any organization with money in its coffers and power to its name.  They simply can't comprehend why we'd raise a fuss over something they think they've already solved.

So they do the next step in the process of self-immolation.  The person/organization of power begins to lie about what they did.  He/She/They begin to claim "oh well we did X so therefore we're blameless", or "well it was someone else's fault".  They make up a half-truth story that slides into flat-out lying as the need to shift the blame elsewhere grows.

This is from the knee-jerk reaction: the self-defense.  The refusal to admit wrong-doing as that somehow looks worse than the growing web of lies to cover up the earlier mistake(s).  The person of power, the organization of power dare not consider the slight possibility of "OOPS that's on me," because such sloppiness and failure does not belong in "my" world.

And then those in power wonder why they fall.  They're compounding earlier mistakes with fresh ones.  Because lying at that level of responsibility and power is reckless: because there's bound to be someone out there with the evidence to prove you are lying.  Because the more you try to cover it up, the more people and resources you are dragging into the mess: people who may not want to lie to cover your ass; resources that may not fit the gaping holes in your faltering stories.

That's why scandals get worse.  The people in power refuse to hold themselves accountable and refuse to make genuine efforts to fix the problems that arise.  They'd rather lie, blame someone else, and let the problem fade away.

What's sad is why those in power already think that way: because that's how they acted on their way up the chain of command to the high seat they now hold... because they made all that money and gained all that influence through lying and blaming others in the first place.  Because there's a broken system of accountability in place already: they're merely profiting from the status quo.

We are as a nation and as a culture in dire need of reform.  Of bringing accountability and truth-telling back, of ending the fraud and spiritual wickedness in high places.

Read more ...

The Real Voter Scandal Continues: The Turnout Sucks, Florida 2014 Primary Edition

(update: hello to the people linking in via Crooks and Liars.  Thank you Batocchico for the promotion! please check out the other recent articles while you're here...)

So here we are in Florida, 2014, everyone in the state knows what is at stake - GET RICK "NO ETHICS" SCOTT OUT OF OFFICE - and we get our August Primary up and everything.  And there are actual choices for both major parties this primary: Democrats choosing between Crist or Rich; Republicans choosing between Scott (augh), Cuevas-Neunder, or someone named Yinka. (slow pause)  Yeah, well, anyway, there's every reason to think that with choices to be made for the big state-wide vote, we'd see a large number of voters showing up.  We've got 11 million-plus registered to vote, and although the NPA voters couldn't vote in the party primaries we've still got 8 million or so Republicans and Democrats on file available to make their choices known.

And what happens with the voter turnout?

We've have rat farts that made a bigger impact on things.

(copied from the Tampa Bay Times)

Governor - GOP Primary

5802 of 5804 Precincts Reporting - 99%

Name Party Votes Vote % Scott, Rick (i) GOP 833,585 88% Cuevas-Neunder, Elizabeth GOP 100,585 11% Adeshina, Yinka GOP 16,880 2%

Governor - Dem Primary

5802 of 5804 Precincts Reporting - 99%

Name Party Votes Vote % Crist, Charlie Dem 620,689 74% Rich, Nan Dem 214,111 26%

According to the state's Supervisor of Elections page, there's 4,152,489 Republicans, 4,608,759 Democrats (with NPA and third parties at 3,083,202).  I'm counting less than a million voters turning out for Republicans, waaaay less voters turning out for Democrats.  Less than a million for each party.  That's less than 25 percent (a quarter) of registered voters this Primary.  Our turnout didn't even get to the 39 percent failure I railed about in the FL-13 Special election a few months back.

WE ARE NOWHERE NEAR EITHER PARTY MAKING A MAJORITY DECISION ON WHO THEY WANT AS THEIR CANDIDATES.  We are nowhere near a 50 percent of voter turnout, where a solid majority of fellow Floridians can stand up and say "hey, this is who we want representing our interests!"

To hell with the screeching over "voter fraud" (which happens on such a meager scale - less than a percent - to be non-existent), the real screeching needs to be over the FAILURE of registered voters to actually show up and f-cking vote.

Because this is what happens when those registered voters don't show up: their interests will not be addressed.  Their real-world needs such as good jobs at good wages, working schools, functioning roads and bridges, clean water, affordable housing and utility bills... none of that will be properly addressed because we'll end up with elected officials who KNOW that a majority of Floridians didn't even care enough to show up.  Those officials know all they have to do is indulge the voters who DO show up, who always show up regardless, and they'll be able to keep their comfy, full-pension-in-4-years jobs.

And the voters who DO show up?!  They're the wingnuts.  The extremists.  The single-issue crazies obsessing over hating gays, worshiping guns, shooting doctors, and nuking the social safety nets like Medicare Social Security and Medicaid.  This is why abortion remains a major campaign issue even when a majority of Americans don't even consider abortion a Top 10 Topic: it's still red meat for the extremist voters, and the politicians know who they have to pander to.

It may be so easy for a majority of citizens to tune out, to disengage, to walk away from politics because of all the negativity and social warfare (some of it literal).  But that disengagement has a price: OUR NEEDS AS A STATE AND AS COMMUNITIES SUFFER.  They suffer because the needs of the minority (by number, not ethnicity) extremists will be sated at the expense of the many.

Worse, the minority group getting the special treatment above all others tend to be the uber-rich billionaires making themselves richer by getting their cronies they elected to hand over more and more tax breaks and free access to our public funds.  And then people wonder why income inequality has become a huge problem: IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE LETTING THE CROOKS WIN RE-ELECTION.

This is frustrating.  This is insane.

It ought to be illegal.  There ought to be a rule making damn sure no election is certified until a solid majority (I'd love for it to be 60 percent super-majority) of voters available for that election have placed their ballots for counting.  And if that means extending the voting times, so be it (and have the parties PAY for those extensions: it'd be a good way to force them to get better at GOTV efforts).  If people don't like the choices being offered, every election - even the closed party primaries - ought to have a blank space to add a write-in vote.

WE OUGHT TO HAVE OUR ELECTIONS BE BUSINESS AND SCHOOL HOLIDAYS TO GIVE PEOPLE ENOUGH FREE TIME TO SHOW UP AND VOTE (most people don't even realize they have a right to leave work for an hour to go vote, and because they work during election hours few of them even make the effort).  We ought to move elections to Fridays or Saturdays, on weekends: this isn't 1880 when people had to travel during business hours to the county courthouse to file their ballots while they conduct business in-town.

We can do these things: except we can't.  BECAUSE BOTH MAJOR PARTIES PROFIT FROM THE BROKEN ELECTORAL SYSTEM.  Yes, even Democrats.

I remember from a political science class back in college where two professors discussed how political parties figured out a rule: that the fewer people who showed up to vote, the EASIER it got to control that election's results.  Because the ones who always turned up were the single-issue wingnuts, and those were easy to manipulate and control.  If voter turnout grows, the number of more moderate, more complex-thinking voters who can't fit within the square pegs increases to where the campaigns can't dictate the results (which really scares them, 'cause they hate to get off-message).  I'd love to remember what the name of that rule was: I did not write it down then because it was tangent to another topic discussed that class.

And so, nothing will get done.  At least, not by the parties' separate leaderships.

If anything is going to fix this, it's going to have to be from the voters ourselves.  WE NEED TO SHOW UP AND VOTE.  We need to make our voices heard.  We need to get state amendments on-ballot to reform our broken electoral system.  We need to get 8 million voters showing up for Primaries.  We need to get 11 million voters showing up for the General Election.

We need to wake up, and we need to get in the faces of the status quo a-holes running our political parties into the ground.  They need to respect the voters better, and that means showing up and making them aware we are not their puppets.

Dammit, Florida.  GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT.

P.S. just for the Love of God DO NOT VOTE FOR RICK "MEDICARE FRAUD" SCOTT.  I'm serious.  Rick Scott is not running for Governor to work for our state: Rick Scott is running to make money for Rick Scott.  That is all he represents.  Just PLEASE do not vote for him...

Read more ...

Anniversary: When Impeachment Was Real

Doonesbury: the stonewall (1974)

On this day in 1974 President Richard Nixon went before the nation and offered his resignation, effective the next day.  Gerald Ford, recently installed as Vice President, would be sworn in as President on August 9.

What began as an investigation into a puzzling break-in at the Democratic Party's headquarters in the Watergate Office Complex in June 1972 turned into a revelation of reckless law-breaking by a political campaign awash in slush money, political dirty tricks, warrant-less wire-tapping, interdepartmental warfare reaching well into the White House itself, and Paul Newman being on Nixon's Enemies List.

The rot with the Nixon administration was top-down, but up to a certain point most of the damage to Nixon himself wasn't threatening to his position (when the November 1972 vote was held, Nixon still won because most voters didn't think Watergate or the cover-up attempts involved him).

By 1974 the situation changed.  The revelation in 1973 that Nixon had been taping all conversations in the Oval Office (it was actually a practice begun during the FDR years, but not to the extent Nixon set up) created a Constitutional crisis.  The relationship - the system of checks and balances - between the three branches of the federal government were strained to a point not seen since the start of the Civil War, especially between the Executive and Legislative branches.  Court fights over the tapes and transcripts carried on for over a year.  By the time the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 in US v Nixon in favor of releasing the tapes, we were facing the likelihood of a President openly defying SCOTUS as well as defying Congress itself.

Impeachment - the removal of the President for criminal or unethical misconduct - was openly discussed.  And seriously - as opposed to other moments - considered...

The history of impeachment itself as a mechanism for cleaning corrupt officials out of power is kinda checkered.  For non-elected and (usually) non-partisan officials like judges, the system was even-handed.  There'd only been 62 proceedings in the House to consider impeachments, with only 19 proceeding to the Senate since 1789 up to today, making it a rarely used process.  But when it comes to the big chair of the Presidency... well...

In the review of Presidential character I did last year, I pointed out - in cases like John Tyler and Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton - that the partisan nature of the fights between the White House and Congress skewed the need to impeach.  As I said in a follow-up:

...Congress talked impeachment only rarely: in a case like John Tyler (when Tyler seemed to betray the Whig Party on a personal level); and in a case like Andrew Johnson (when party foolishness put a Democrat in the line of succession, leaving a Radical Republican Congress to reach for any excuse to purge him). The impeachment process against Tyler went nowhere because the Whigs couldn't garner enough votes in the House: the impeachment against Johnson came one vote shy of success, which historians still argue was the closest we'd ever gotten to a political coup in our nation's history. Both times, impeachment was used as a means to remove a President simply because of ideological conflict: neither one really broke the law (technically Johnson broke the Tenure of Office Act, but that law was specifically written against him, and the courts ruled it unconstitutional), they both were radically opposed to what Congress wanted...

This is the danger of impeachment: meant to be a tool to remove a powerful political figure that might otherwise be above the law, impeachment has rarely been used as such (only once)...

You'll notice that I gave one exemption ("only once"): that exemption was Nixon.

As Watergate's revelations unfolded, even the partisan backers of his own party - Republicans - began to step away.  Unlike Tyler and Johnson, there was something criminally wrong with Nixon's White House that even the most biased supporter couldn't defend.  It didn't help Nixon that the Congressional investigations especially in the Senate were fronted by respected pols - Sam Ervin and Howard Baker - known for their bipartisan work.

As long as Nixon kept hidden any evidence of criminal wrong-doing, of unethical activity, he was still safe behind the argument that Watergate was a political witch-hunt.  Which was why he and his lawyers fought hard to keep those tapes away from the public.  When the Supreme Court said that the tapes had to come out, there was nowhere to hide.  Other than outright law-breaking, full shutdown of the government, a White House coup making Nixon full-on dictator...

If there was anything in Nixon's soul, even it balked at taking that one step.  Nixon turned over the tapes.

The House Committee considering impeachment charges voted on July 27 to charge Nixon with obstruction of justice with a 27-11 vote, with enough Republicans on the committee voting for it.  The "smoking gun" tape - the one that caught Nixon telling six days after the Watergate break-in to get the CIA to block the FBI investigation, specific proof of obstruction - went public August 5th.

Word was, even Barry Goldwater and other GOP leaders were warning Nixon he was "toast."

Rather than face the ignominy of being the first President ever impeached - a legitimate possibility, one even Andrew Johnson was able to avoid - Nixon resigned.

It's never been that close a call.

In Andrew Johnson's defense, the law he was getting impeached over was a sham.  In Bill Clinton's defense, his actions trying to hide his affair with Monica Lewinsky didn't rise to an impeachable offense.  In all the other cases where impeachment was argued, pursued, wished for - Tyler, Bush the Lesser, and Obama (present tense) - the stench of partisan obsessiveness made it too reckless and either failed on a floor vote or failed (and should fail in Obama's case) in committee.

It was forty years ago, we came this close to a genuine impeachment trial, and for all that meant.  It was forty years ago our nation pulled back from a very dangerous political cliff.

We still have morons desperately trying to drive us back over that political cliff for all the wrong partisan reasons.

Read more ...

The Ethics Of Rick Scott

Basically, he doesn't have any.

Yes, let's do start off with the fact he ran a corporation that committed billions in Medicare Fraud to where the company had to fire him and pay $1.7 billion total in fines.

He still - God help us - bought his way into the Governor's office in 2010.  So let's look at a lot of the questionable things he's done in office:

His hand-picked Lt. Governor Jennifer Carroll had to resign over her own ethics conflicts and criminal investigation involving Internet gambling cafes.

His hand-picked Education Commissioner had to resign over evidence he intervened in falsifying school evaluations owned by a prominent Republican Party fundraiser at his previous employ in Indiana.  So far, Scott isn't showing any skill in hiring the best of the best to work with him.  Speaking of...

He's had a high turnover rate of staff moreso than other governors, either due to scandal (see above) or internal office conflicts that point to a chaotic and mismanaged office.

He had on staff during his transition period one Adam Hollingsworth, who advised against the high-speed rail deal, then promptly went to work for a rail company pushing the All Aboard Florida project that rivaled the high-speed rail plan.  Thing about All Aboard Florida is that its:

...256-mile rail service has been touted from the beginning as a completely privately financed project that will not cost the state a dime, which is the reason Scott said he supports the plan... At this point, though, the project is seeking $1.5 billion in federal loans that could be key to refinancing its existing debt, and more than $230 million in state dollars already have been set aside for projects that either will directly or indirectly benefit All Aboard Florida’s rail line...

Too much of this reeks of inside dealing.  As an op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times says:

It's now clear that All Aboard Florida was seeking special treatment from the governor's office as soon as Scott won the 2010 election... Meanwhile, state transportation officials have enabled All Aboard Florida to hide behind exemptions in the public records law to avoid releasing some documents, including a ridership survey that was part of its loan application process. Leaked documents obtained by the Scripps/Tribune Tallahassee bureau show much of the financial plan will rely on land development along the tracks, not ridership per se, just reinforcing that there is more the public deserves to know. Now Scott is asking the company to slow down to hear from concerned citizens, particularly those between Palm Beach County and Orlando, where no stops are scheduled. This is after he signed a budget that would pay for "quiet zones" in those neighborhoods and after his transportation agency had signed off on the project... Scott is all over the map on rail. ...Now he deceives voters by claiming no public money is going toward All Aboard Florida while millions in state dollars will be spent to make it work, his chief of staff has lobbied for it for years and his transportation department refuses to release documents that should be public...

Another questionable policy push Scott has been working on has been to force state employees and residents applying for financial aid of any kind to get drug-tested on a regular basis.  Despite the facts that 1) a majority of workers and benefits seekers ARE NOT DRUG USERS, and 2) the costs to the state to pay for all that testing was ridiculous.  It doesn't make sense until you consider that Rick Scott's pre-governor gig was being CEO for a chain of state-wide health clinics, which would have seen money pouring in from Scott's enforced drug tests.

Then just a few weeks ago, Scott's campaign committed a breach of campaign rules by having on-duty police officers appear at a rally, giving the impression that law enforcement was backing him for re-election.  Psst: you're not supposed to do that:

...Under Florida law, it's a first-degree misdemeanor for a public official to "directly or indirectly coerce" any employee to engage in political activity, and employees are prohibited from doing so while working.

Scott's campaign said it made its intentions clear but a high-ranking member of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office insisted that he believed he was going to a state event to meet the governor and discuss ways to reduce crime, which is why he asked several deputies to come along.

"We obviously didn't know we were going to a campaign event," said Hillsborough Col. Jim Previtera. "Had we known it was a campaign event, we wouldn't have been there."

Previtera said he was working on Friday, the Fourth of July, when Cody Vildostegui, a Scott campaign aide, asked him to attend a press conference Monday about reducing crime. Previtera's boss, Sheriff David Gee, who supports Scott, was unable to attend.

Also in attendance was another Scott supporter, Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who said the same campaign staffer made it clear to him that it was an event promoting Scott's re-election bid.

When asked about it, repeatedly, by reporters at a following event, Rick Scott basically zoned out and refused to directly answer, giving either rote responses or trying to deflect the question.  It made him a punchline for CNN for God's sake.

And now we're getting reports of how his "blind" trust is making money from a pipeline deal one of his staffers promoted while on his payroll:

Upon his election, Gov. Rick Scott’s transition team included a Florida Power & Light executive who pitched his company’s plan to build a major natural gas pipeline in North Florida to fuel a new generation of gas-fired power plants in places like Port Everglades...

...Five months later, the Florida Public Service Commission, whose five members were appointed by Gov. Scott, unanimously approved construction of Sabal Trail as the state’s third major natural gas pipeline. More approvals are needed from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which the governor oversees.

What wasn’t publicly known in 2013, however, was that Gov. Scott owned a stake in Spectra Energy, the Houston company chosen by FPL that July to build and operate the $3 billion pipeline. Sabal Trail Transmission LLC is a joint venture of Spectra Energy and FPL’s parent, NextEra Energy.

BrowardBulldog.org’s review of financial records made public last month by Gov. Scott show that as of Dec. 31 his portfolio included several million dollars invested in the securities of more than two-dozen entities that produce and/or transport natural gas – including some, like Spectra, with substantial Florida operations.

His stake in Spectra Energy was reported as being worth $53,000 that day.

Florida’s ethics laws generally prohibit public officials like the governor from owning stock in businesses subject to their regulation, or that do business with state agencies. A similar prohibition exists on owning shares in companies that would “create a continuing or frequently recurring conflict” between an official’s private interests and the “full and faithful discharge” of his public duties...

The problem is that the stock purchase happened while his portfolio was under a "blind trust".  While Scott isn't supposed to have any interaction with his trust, there's no guarantee he didn't get word to his handlers to put a little money in on a company he knew was going to do some profitable business.  Similar to Scott's push to drug-test everybody (okay, I exaggerate, Scott doesn't want to drug-test Florida elected officials), this is where Scott's policy actions are directly affecting his business holdings.

All of these things taken separately, you don't see much: maybe you see an elected official's office in a level of disarray.  But if you put it together... if you see the habits that Scott keeps, and the environment in which he puts himself...

What I see is an ongoing pattern from well before his governorship of running his office with disregard for rules.  A disregard to the point where laws get broken in the pursuit of personal profits.  It's a habit that didn't stop the second he took his oath of office.  An oath he doesn't take seriously.

Rick Scott performs his job as governor to enrich Rick Scott the businessman and no one else.  He holds no ethical values that would conflict with his self-serving wants.  He pursues personal profit at the expense of the public interest.

This is not a man who deserves our vote.  This is not a man to put in a position of public trust.
 

Read more ...

Trying to Rank Scandals, Phase Four: When It's More About Humiliation Than About Justice...

It's been awhile since I've written about scandals - and how we need to form an unbiased effective means of determining which scandals need investigating and which deserve to get ignored - but an update with one of the events talked about - the GOP obsession with Benghazi - has taken place:

It is by sheer coincidence that just as Obamacare recedes as an issue, House GOP leaders have announced their intent to create a Select Committee on Benghazi—something they've long resisted—and that Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, perhaps overcome by zeal to maintain control over the issue, subpoenas Secretary of State John Kerry to testify about the 2012 attack—despite the fact that Kerry was a senator at the time, and hasn't been invited to testify, and is currently visiting Sudan.

The pretext for all this is the release of an email from White House adviser Ben Rhodes, which includes as a bullet point the goal that in speaking about the attack, then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice should "reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges."

Slate's Dave Weigel did a great job earlier this week of placing the email in chronological context, to discredit the argument that the email represents evidence of a "cover-up." And while it might appear a bit unseemly for administration officials to be concerning themselves with the president's image and the administration's competence in the midst a crisis… this is actually completely uncontroversial. Would John Boehner and Darrell Issa have preferred it if Susan Rice went on TV that week and granted that the administration was in complete disarray? Or had refused to take a position on the administration's handling of the situation?...

The early responses from the left side of the aisle has been "Oh great, they're finally going there" alongside analysis that the Republicans are desperate to re-stage another round of Benghazi investigations because their 2014 Midterms talking point of "ObamaCare is broken and must be repealed" is falling apart as enough voters don't believe it's broken and are seeing enough benefits out of it.

But it's problematic to just dismiss the Republican obsession with Benghazi off-hand.

The reason the Republicans keep jumping on Benghazi is because it is a legitimate tragedy: four people died due to errors in security.  This isn't like the Far Right harping on Obama's birth certificate, or mocking whether or not Obama uses a teleprompter, or whether Obama ties his shoelaces in a proper American fashion.  This isn't even the matter where an IRS office in Ohio investigated Tea Party SuperPACs (the other big scandal the wingnuts obsess over, but which is meaningless because the IRS office investigated a lot of other SuperPAC 501s as well).  Benghazi is a real problem because people died.

But the Republicans have to realize they're pushing a scandal well out-of-proportion to the facts, and pushing it in such a way that all other outside observers will view it as insanity.  The Republicans seem to focus on how the Obama White House was handling the "messaging" in the wake of the attack, as though that was a cover-up worth having (or that the messaging would reveal malign intent of some kind).  The GOP House is looking into the standard back-and-forth of interoffice communications rather than focus on the real scandal: how the security systems for our overseas consulates broke down (and what can be done to re-enforce that security).

But I doubt the Republicans will want to dig too deep into the real scandal of Benghazi: that's the problem behind the GOP's All-Benghazi mission.  The Republicans' objective isn't to fix the problems: the Republicans' objective is to make Obama look like a failed President (and the Democrats all look like librul un-American incompetents).  At all costs.

The other reason the GOP is hitting hard on Benghazi is that it's also a way to attack the supposed front-runner for the Democratic Presidential primaries for 2016.  As Secretary of State at the time, Hillary Clinton is someone the Republicans want to have held accountable: they want to drop the four dead State employees around her neck like a millstone.  The Republicans want to turn this tragedy into another Chappaquiddick, another Willie Horton.

It's as TBogg writes over on Raw Story: Benghazi is all they got (remember Solyandra?  Remember the Birth Certificate?  Remember Rev. Wright's radical Christianity and Obama Still being a Secret Muslim on the side?  Remember Death Panels?  Remember a failed website rollout?  Remember nationalizing the auto industry?  Remember how Obama ties his shoes, even when he wears loafers?).   Just like pursuing Bill Clinton over Whitewater and Vince Foster led to getting impeached over blowjobs: the Republicans do not care about the facts or about justice, they only care about purging anybody who stands in their way of achieving their "permanent majority rule" of their 100-year Pax Reaganicus.

Someone tweeted or blogged a quip that ended up in the recent Balloon Juice take on the Benghazi obsession: Who could’ve predicted that when the GOP establishment handed Nixon the pearl handled revolver in the parlor, we would have to impeach every Democratic President for the next forty years to balance things out? It seems that way, doesn't it?  I mean, granted they never impeached Carter, but that's because Democrats controlled Congress his term of office (and Carter still angered Congress enough to hover on the edge of impeachment).  It's been noted before how it's gotten to where it's expected for the Republicans to impeach a Democratic President because they can't handle the idea of a Democrat sitting in the Oval Office... the current GOP can't seem to handle the idea of honest bipartisanship... the Far Right can't accept the possibility of making political deals and compromises of any kind, and there's no moderate faction (hello, RINO purity purge) to make those deals anymore...

So we get this: a partisan response to investigating a scandal.  What happened in Benghazi does deserve investigation... but not as a political attack aimed to humiliate Obama or Hillary.  That way lies madness, and a refusal to make things work in government while the powers-that-be pursue a bullsh-t political agenda.

This is not how we should fix the nation's woes.

Read more ...

Trying To Rank Scandals, Phase Three: Separating Schadenfreude From Serious Scandal

The scandal of the last two weeks - the ongoing BridgeGate matter of Chris Christie, which is becoming more like BullyGate well heck BullyGate's taken by the Dolphins, what are we gonna call the blocking of relief funds to Hoboken - has a parallel scandal erupting in another state (Virginia) as I write tonight: the ongoing federal corruption probe into former Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife has led to 14 counts of corruption handed down by the grand jury investigation.

McDonnell addressed media hours after a federal grand jury delivered a 14-count indictment against the governor and his wife, Maureen. The charges stem from state and federal inquiries into the couple's relationship with a prominent donor, Jonnie R. Williams, the head of a dietary supplements manufacturer. Williams showered the McDonnells and their family with gifts and favorable loans, but the former governor insisted all have been repaid and none of the gifts were meant as a way to curry favor.

Based on the previous article I wrote, these is seriously damaging to McDonnell's political career: Corruption scandals hurt more than any of the others (Financial, Sexual, Political).

The charges represent a stunning fall from grace for McDonnell, the Republican governor from a swing state that doubles as a political seat of power. Mitt Romney considered the governor as a potential running mate in 2012, before the 2013 trial of a former executive chef for McDonnell on unrelated charges unearthed details about the governor's relationship with Williams.

McDonnell's early response to this has been to avoid blame by pointing out he never did favors in exchange for all these gifts, and arguing that if what he did was truly criminal the federal prosecutors would have to arrest every other politician from Obama on down.  I'm slightly surprised he didn't outright blame his political opponents or any "vast liberal conspiracy".

Because, let's be fair, the ones most likely to push any criminal or corruption investigation would be your political opponents.

This is THE problem with creating an honest-to-goodness ranking system for political scandals: It's that there is a bias one way or another over each and every scandal (and inflated non-scandal) when they erupt.  Even when there is a legitimate crime taking place, like covering up illegal wiretapping, or selling arms to Iran and then using that money to fund rebel forces in Central America, or outing a covert CIA operative as political payback: there is a bias to the force that pushes those investigations into the open.

And it's not exactly wrong for an opposition party or faction to be obsessed with finding fault with the person or party in charge.  Just look to those nations with one-party or authoritarian regimes (cough China cough): without an outside faction with some legitimacy and ability to investigate, corrupt forces within that one party will remain unchecked until serious disaster happens. And by then - with hundreds if not thousands dead, or with a government bank bled dry - it'd be too late.  This is the one advantage democratic institutions have: opposition parties help keep the other parties (relatively) honest, or at least give the disgruntled suffering masses another banner to rally to.

The problem with a partisan investigation is the schadenfreude that propels it, the malicious joy the opposition forces are feeling whenever their hated rival(s) are stewing in a hell of his/her/their own making.  That schadenfreude - that desire to humiliate the suspected wrong-doer not only for the crime committed but for merely existing - may drive the investigation into improper actions all its own.

What happened to Bill Clinton is a perfect example.  By 1992 there were legitimate questions into Bill and Hillary's financial dealings in land developments, well enough that by 1993 a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate.  The original investigator had been appointed by Clinton's AG (Janet Reno), but the courts determined there was a conflict of interest and so appointed Ken Starr, who was scrupulous enough to have served as a judge but was partisan (conservative Republican).  Driven and supported by anti-Clinton factions both in private and in Congress, Starr dug into every rumor and every misdeed in an attempt to get "something" on Clinton, even when it didn't relate to Whitewater (or to the Vincent Foster suicide, which was included in Starr's investigation).  In the end, all Starr could turn up was a college-age intern named Lewinsky who had an adulterous affair with the married President.  That was pretty much all Starr and the Republicans had on Clinton when Congress pushed for impeachment.  All it did was make the Republicans look like idiots and haters to the majority of Americans, and Clinton left office unimpeached and (still) popular.  All because Clinton's attackers overreached.

To a lesser extent, the investigation into the Valerie Plame reveal has a partisan edge as well.  A serious security breach occurred when one (or more) White House officials leaked to various columnists that the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who criticized Bush the Lesser's assertions that Saddam Hussein had secured weapons-grade uranium, was working for the CIA (implying that Wilson was siding with the CIA, which opposed Bush and Cheney's assertions about Iraqi WMD efforts, because of who his wife was).  Problem is, revealing a covert agent (No Official Cover, or NOC) is a serious federal felony (doing so has gotten people killed).  The investigations got as high up the chain of command as Karl Rove and "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's Chief of Staff.  The far left - which opposed the Iraqi invasion, and was horrified by Bush the Lesser's entire administration - openly pined for the grand jury probe headed by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to line up every possible suspect - from Cheney to Rove to even Bush himself - for indictment.  Just Google (tm) search the word "Fitzmas": there was literally a high level of giddiness among the liberal columnists that the Plame investigation would bring an end to the Bush/Cheney regime.  It ended up indicting just one person - Libby - while letting Rove (who was caught lying multiple times to the FBI) and Richard Armitage (revealed to be the one who DID leak Plame's employment) and Cheney (whose office benefited most from destroying the CIA's credibility) off the hook.  The best that could be said about Fitzgerald's efforts is that he didn't let the schadenfreude get the better of his investigation: but it was there, at least in the media coverage.

What's going on right now with Obama's administration is another example.  There's been an obsession by the GOP House - alongside their far right media supporters - to investigate (almost) every little thing that has happened and is happening.  Rep. Darrell Issa, head of the Congressional Oversight committee, has been pursuing a handful of "scandals" - an IRS regional office investigating partisan superPACs like Tea Party organizations, the failure of security at the Benghazi embassy that left four dead, a gun-smuggling operation involving ATF that got out of control - that most observers (both Right and Left) deem as attempts to get impeachment proceedings established.  But Issa's investigations, even after months (now years) of digging, have led nowhere: official investigations into all three haven't turned up the "holy grail" of evidence that Obama had a hand in any of them, or even that Obama's major allies (Hillary Clinton (again), AG Holder) were complicit or committed crimes.  What's driving Issa's investigations is the hatred the Far Right have for Obama, to the point where the Republicans are convinced that Obama is guilty of all of these things regardless of the uncovered facts and that all they need is the flimsiest thread (my Shoelace Hypothesis) they can find to stop him.  That partisan need is blinding the Far Right, making them cry Wolf every hour of every day.

So the big question: how can we separate schadenfreude - worse, partisan anger - from what's deemed scandalous?  How can we establish a truthful measurement of a scandal and its importance that's not blinded by political opposition?  What can we agree on is a true scandal and not a witch-hunt?

I'll save that for Phase Four...

Read more ...

Trying to Rank Scandals, Phase Two: The Preliminary Chart

As from the first post, my project for this year seems to be coming up with a ranking / grading system for scandals.  I've got a basic understanding that financial scandals rank higher than sexual scandals: however, there are other types of scandals that need configuring into the scale.

Thompson had located a study that broke the scandals into three types: Corruption (bribery, extortion, etc), Financial and Sexual (most likely referring to Personal bad behavior, more on that in a second), and Political (involving electoral or procedural misconduct).  And they scale in that order by level of outrage / loss of voter support.

Personally, I'd shift Financial scandals over to Corruption as they both cover the same things: greed, greed, misuse of funds, greed, and more greed.  Personal financial misdeeds like tax evasion or questionable spending habits tends to bleed into things like taking bribes or selling favors anyway.  The only time Sexual misconduct carries over into financial matters if there's payoffs or hiring of call-girls (most sexual misconduct either goes into extra-marital affairs or underage partners).

Just to be safe, I'll put Financial scandals separate from Corruption and Sexual, so that gets us four categories to work with.

Corruption

Financial

Sexual

Political

But Thompson also points out that there can be a difference in type of scandal that affects durability, or longevity of scandal: those that are substantive rather than salacious.  The word substantive has a few meanings, but the one relevant to politics would be "relating to an essential legal principle administered by the courts."  That it has real-world legal impact.  Salacious is "obscene" or "indecent", but in this application would be outside of legal implications (that is, something that didn't implicitly break a law).

I'm just wondering, can "substantive" apply to sexual scandal as much as "salacious" would apply to it?  Can a corruption scandal be "salacious"?  Political scandal, I'm pretty sure, can be both... could I draw up a chart like this as a basic scandal go-to chart?

	Substantive Scandal?	Salacious Scandal?
Corruption
Financial
Sexual
Political

This might not work in the long-term.  There's more to this, obviously.  Gonna need to break this down some more.

Any suggestions from the seven people reading this blog would be nice...

Read more ...

Trying To Rank Scandals, Phase One

(UPDATE below)
Like I asked earlier trying to differentiate between BridgeGate and Benghazi, we need to come up with a ranking system so we can firmly establish the proper level of outrage to shocking (and non-shocking) revelations.

I saw on The Atlantic per Derek Thompson that some people are trying to track such things already, albeit in the form of current news and public interest:

A Pew poll from this week found the public paid little attention to Christie's BridgeGate — less than the polar vortex (which was, after all, truly nation-wide) or even the Washington debate over unemployment benefits and the jobless rate. Meanwhile, national opinion of the governor has barely budged...

Now it may be that this is still the early stages of BridgeGate - with the lack of solid details and the fact this is more a regional scandal than a national one - so the severity of public interest may change - especially if more salacious and criminal misdeeds are established, and after all it took months for WaterGate, ABSCAM, Iran-Contra, and the Lewinsky Affair to gel.

And personally, I'm kinda glad most Americans were more focused on the economy and on jobs/unemployment benefits than a scandal.  Good for you, America!

Meanwhile, Thompson digs deeper into what political scientists were trying to gauge with scandals: just how damaging are they to a political career, and how damaging are they to someone's Presidential aspirations?

...Scandals come in many flavors, and different scandals tend to enact different penalties. Corruption scandals (i.e.: bribery or obstruction of justice) cost incumbents about eight percentage points, on average. Next, financial and sex scandals shave off five points. And political scandals? They don’t appear to matter at all, according to a study last year by political scientist Scott Basinger.

Although sex scandals clearly make for the easiest headlines, a 2013 study found that the most durable scandals are substantive rather than salacious. Political science has already shown that half of American legislators have been implicated, somehow, in scandals; that politicians involved in scandals are viewed less favorably; that they attract higher-quality opponents and lose votes in the following election.

But researchers David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, and Michael G. Miller wanted to know what sort of scandals "stick." So they administered two online surveys, creating fake representatives undergoing a sex scandal or a tax scandal. Some participants would read that the scandals (e.g. sleeping with a staffer, or income-tax evasion) were recent. Others would read they happened decades ago. The results were fairly striking: Not only did people care much more about the tax scandal overall, but also they discounted the sex scandal dramatically when it happened years in the past. As for income-tax evasion, it didn't seem to matter if the news was new or old: It hurt favorability about the same.

Either this is an after-affect of the Clinton impeachment effort where a majority of Americans ended up not caring about the President's affair with a college intern - as long as it didn't affect national security or forced people to break the law, most sided with Clinton and didn't want him impeached over it - or else a lot of Americans were always blase about sex scandals (mind, Grover Cleveland in the 1880s admitted to an out-of-wedlock child... and still won the White House) despite the moral outrage of prominent media figures/other politicians.

Meanwhile, financial scandals such as tax evasion seem to hit harder.  It is that people view any financial misdeeds as a serious breach of public trust (especially since politicians are involved with taxpayers' money)?  It'd be nice if the scientists gauged other money-related scandals such as bribery, abuse of funds, hiring friends for no-show jobs, etc.

Because while the bridge-closing-for-retaliation plotline has some juiciness to it, Christie's facing additional charges about misusing Sandy relief funds... hmmm...

So, if anything, when we get around to measuring which scandals are worse than others, we can be certain to put sex scandals low and financial scandals high.  Got it.

Update: I've made this one of my projects for the year (the other project being GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT), so here's a link to Phase Two where I start drawing up a chart...

Read more ...

Differences Between BridgeGate and Benghazi

Because, as sure as sunrises and sunsets, the Far Right's primary defense of Chris Christie's involvement in shutting down an interstate bridge is "but what about BENGHAZI?"

(also, they're screaming about the IRS office in Cincinnati investigating Tea Party PAC groups, but "Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi" is easier to roll off the tongue during the shouting matches, and also because the investigations revealed progressive groups were targeted as well, muddying the outrage)

If the Far Right Noise Machine really thinks they can equate "BridgeGate" ("A Bridge Too Far Right" is too wordy) to "Benghazi," then they've got more problems than they realize.

For starters, what happened in Benghazi where our ambassador to Libya and other staffers were killed is pure tragedy.  What's happening in New Jersey where Chris Christie's staff used a bridge shutdown as political retaliation (against whom, the investigations are still trying to narrow down) is pure farce.

Four people died and various wounded in the Benghazi attacks.  One elderly woman needing medical help was stuck in that trapped bridge traffic and later died, and there were most likely a lot of people suffering stress and minor health issues as well.  The bridge shutdown also interfered with a missing child search (the girl was later found).

The causes behind the Benghazi attacks are not 100 percent clear, either a part of mass rioting going on throughout the Middle East over a really bad anti-Muslim film trailer making the rounds, or a coordinated attack by militia groups in recently liberated Libya influenced by Al-Qaeda.  The causes behind the bridge shutdown are not 100 percent clear, either a retaliation against the Fort Lee mayor who refused to endorse Christie for the governor re-election campaign, or a retaliation against the state Senate majority leader from that district who's leading efforts to block Christie's state judicial nominations.

The Benghazi scandalmongers are convinced the matter goes all the way up to the White House (Obama!) or at least the Secretary of State (Hillary!) in that there was a cover-up after the incident to "hide damaging evidence" that the State Department failed to adequately defend our embassy and consular offices in a war-zone.  The critics - mostly the Far Right as well as much of the Congressional GOP - also accused Obama of not taking the matter seriously and failing to call it an "act of terror."  However, despite all the screaming and more than a year of congressional investigating, most of those accusations have yet to be proven.  And Obama DID call the Benghazi attacks an "act of terror" the day after.

The BridgeGate scandalmongers are convinced the matter of the bridge shutdown being political retaliation point to the fact that the cover story - a "traffic study" - makes no sense (Traffic studies don't work that way, and if there was a traffic study there would have been public notices and meetings beforehand).  They also believe that the order for the retaliation goes all the way into the Governor's office, and can prove it because Christie's deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly was caught sending an email to a Christie-appointed official David Wildstein that "it was time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."  And while Christie himself has been firing staffers like Kelly as quick as possible and claiming "I didn't know," Christie's own public persona as a "hands-on" leader (as well as professional bully) makes his Sgt. Schultz-esque "I know notthink" excuse fall flat.  Meanwhile, the bridge closings has opened up a slew of investigations at the state AND federal levels (because closing an interstate bridge is a federal matter) with all affected parties - New Jersey, New York City and State, the U.S. - digging in.

So there you have it, the differences between Benghazi and BridgeGate.  

What this all means: we need a way to grade-scale our national scandals, because I'm sick and tired of every new scandal being labeled "Worse Than Watergate."

Read more ...

Republican Leaders Have a Problem: Not the Message, But the Attitude

I was going to title this article "Republicans Are -ssholes," but realized that's 1) pretty rude, 2) pretty flippant, 3) covering the fact that there's a good number of honest and/or decent Republican voters out there whose only crime is that they've got a party leadership that IS full of -ssholes. (warning: the expletive-deleting will end with this paragraph.  Cursing is ahead)

Dominating the news right now is New Jersey Republican governor Chris Christie trying to deflate an ongoing scandal where members of his inner circle used their control of the state's transportation offices to shut down a major bridge between Jersey and New York... all to punish a Democratic town mayor who failed to perform fealty to Christie during his gubernatorial re-election campaign last year (even as Christie was cruising to a landslide win).

That level of petty revenge - hurting thousands and risking lives just to embarrass a mayor from the opposing party - bordering on criminal abuse of political authority is deservedly a scandal and a cause for concern.  Christie was positioning himself as a viable GOP candidate for the Presidency in 2016, partly because of being a Republican in a Blue State, mostly because his brash angry public persona was a hit with the cheerleader battalions of the Beltway media elite.  But that persona is not an act: Christie - and his inner circle of compatriots - really does act this way behind the office doors as well as in front of the cameras.  It's an attitude towards power - "my way or the highway," "sucks to be you," "it's my party and you'll cry when I want you to" - that echoes back to the worst traits of various Active-Negatives in the White House: Christie is practically Richard Nixon - he who brought us the legal term "ratfucking" - without the subtlety.

That Christie - this blustering bully - was ever seriously considered a Presidential candidate speaks volumes to a major problem the Republican Party has this 2014: their leadership is made up of self-serving clueless assholes.

Granted, there are individual Democrats at the federal, state and local levels who fit the asshole category... but the entire party is not beholden to those types the way the GOP is.

How else to explain the ongoing image problem the Republicans have of wanting to cut back on food stamps and unemployment benefits?  This public disdain for the poor and their children, this insistence the GOP leadership has that the long-term unemployed are lazy rather than realizing this is (still) a terrible job market?

We're getting reports now of Republican congresscritters are getting "coached" into how they should show empathy to the unemployed.  Like compassion and sympathy and empathy are things to fake before a camera crew, rather than a genuine expression from the heart.  Do the Republicans even have genuine expressions from the heart for those struggling to find good jobs at good wages?

Just had a sob story in The Atlantic about GOP pollster/campaigner Frank Luntz, weeping about how he doesn't get the electorate anymore, trying to come up with pretty, pretty ways to sell the Far Right platform to voters who refuse to buy it.  He's thinking about quitting his current profession and getting a job in Las Vegas or Hollywood, while he's moping about depressed in a Los Angeles mansion he owns.  Not to kick a guy when he's down or anything, but Luntz might want to realize that the electorate he's trying to bullshit sell to isn't going to relate to someone who thinks he can easily quit his current six-figure job to find a new six-figure job (most Americans are terrified of losing the jobs they've barely held onto), all the while moping about in a fucking L.A. mansion.  Empathy, like respects, works both ways: you gotta show it to earn it.

We're coming off a 2012 election where the winning Republican candidate out of the primaries was a rich guy who had no sympathy for what he viewed was 47 percent of the American population, and dismissed them as "takers" and moochers.  And in the primaries, dear God, the other candidates were worse.

The Republican voters - some of whom are genuinely nice in the real world, and hug puppies and feed unicorns whenever possible - have a problem: the Republican Party they're stuck with has the habit of talking and acting like assholes.  There's no other way to describe this behavior.  And this behavior has been and continues to be a major drag on party membership.  Gallup is just polling how Americans self-identify to party: a record high 42 percent of Americans identify as Independent compared to just 25 percent (a record low) identifying as Republican.  Democrats dropped a bit to 31 percent, but in a 3-way choice (33-33-33) that's within norms.

How can the American electorate respect or even like a Republican Party that shows no respect to others?  How can there be any empathy or compassion for a political party that isn't even doing a good enough job faking compassion, or any emotions other than spite and hate?

Read more ...

Presidential Character: Week Twenty-Nine, Keep Your Friends Close Your Enemies Closer and Your Cronies Out of the Cabinet

A Friend Helps You Move.  A True Friend Helps You Move the Bodies. - Old Cardassian Proverb

Being President means being a leader of Men (in the plural gender neutral sense).  A leader of Men needs to be a good judge of Character, in order to grant authority to those working for him to do the best job possible.

So what happens when someone who's a terrible judge of Character gets the job of the Presidency?

We've seen earlier cases where Presidents proved a terrible judge of those serving under him: Grant in particular, with possible candidates in Madison and Pierce.  U.S. Grant's two-term administration was filled with questionable talent, cronyism, and corruption.  James Madison's Cabinet failed managing the War of 1812.  Franklin Pierce's was filled with pro-slavery elements that drove the nation further into division rather than compromise (and any administration with Jefferson Davis serving in it can't be called "the best and brightest").

Warren G. Harding topped them all in terms of setting up an administration brimming with corruption.  Even Grant, which honestly took some doing.  Harding's Passive-Positive character traits was one contributing factor: to be fair, being Pass-Pos doesn't automatically create a corrupt administration.  Taft's was relatively scandal-free and lacking in cronyism, and while Madison and Pierce presided over weak administrations corruption didn't make them that way.

What set Harding at the bottom of the heap was the man himself adhering to questionable behavior.  While Harding never profited from some of the largest scandals under his tenure, he was a hard-drinking womanizer creating a code of behavior that trickled down through the rest of his White House.  When the boss behaves a certain way, the others under his command tend to behave that way too.  Other Pass-Positives at least had the forgiving habit of maintaining scruples which added to their personal appeal.  Harding had to throw in some of the self-destructive habits of the Active-Negatives to boot.

A most appropriate and direct indictment of Harding comes on p. 222 of James David Barber's Presidential Character (the reference on which these reviews are based):

Advanced to the Presidency, Harding turned out to be venial only in his personal search for fraternal conviviality and sexual relief.  There were thieves all around him, but he did not steal.  Still, he could not face up to the spreading rot of his government - probably could not quite see it, because his attention was so heavily in the service of his need to believe his friends were really friends...

Harding achieved the Presidency as the compromise candidate of a Republican Party eager to win office after the disaster of Woodrow Wilson's second term.  The post-war mood of the nation has usually tended towards the need for "normalcy" and the Republicans sought to provide it.  Of the political bosses controlling the back rooms of the nominating convention, Harding quickly became the favorite: well-liked, media savvy (as a newspaperman, he had a solid sense of journalism, both tabloid and professional), and eager to help out his friends.  Basically easing into the job through one of the biggest popular vote landslides in American history (garnering 60 percent of the vote), Harding had it made.

Like other Pass-Positives, Harding filled his Cabinet with allies and cronies not truly suited to their jobs: Daughtery, the man who got him the nomination, asked for and got the Attorney General's seat; Albert Fall was first suggested for the State department but external opposition drove him over to the Interior; Charles Forbes was put in charge of Veterans Affairs.  With Fall you get the Teapot Dome Scandal, in scale of corruption and criminality topped only by Watergate itself; with Forbes you get a man who embezzled $225 million and wasted millions more; with Daughtery you get a Justice Department refusing to investigate complaints of criminal behavior, instead hiring questionable persons to investigate critics of the administration, and also getting charged with accusations of bribery, kickbacks and more.

To be fair, Harding put into office qualified men who ran their departments with skill, especially the likes of Herbert Hoover at Commerce, Charles Dawes as the first-ever Budget Director, and Charles Evans Hughes at State.  As a result, Harding's administration presided over a period of effective economic reform and foreign policy initiatives that would make an Active-Positive President green with envy.  Having worked as a key U.S. Senator to get the 19th Amendment passed for women to vote, having released political prisoners rounded up during Wilson's Red Scare period, and being the most vocal proponent against Jim Crow segregation since Roosevelt (he pushed for an anti-lynching bill that died in the very Southern-conservative Senate), Harding gained the reputation of civil rights advocacy that should impress progressives to this day.

But it was Harding's Ohio Gang (which hated the nickname because not every member was from Ohio) that would mark his Presidency... and Harding quickly realized it as the corruption exploded within his administration.  One of the Ohio Gang's lackeys had committed suicide just before Harding's boat trip to Alaska, and Hoover had suddenly invited Hoover to join him for the trip.  While Harding recognized Hoover publicly and privately as one of his most competent allies, the two were not close personally: Hoover too religious and clean-cut compared to Harding's fast-living style.  During the trip, Harding continued to get notices from the White House about various rumors and reports, and:

Finally, on the boat sailing toward Alaska, he asked...Hoover to come to his cabin. The President asked, "If you knew of a great scandal in our administration, would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly or would you bury it?" Hoover replied, "Publish it, and at least get credit for integrity on your side." ...Hoover asked what relation Harry Daughterty...had to the affair.  At that point Harding abruptly cut off the conversation and never resumed it... (Barber, p. 210)

Harding also said to fellow traveler and journalist William Allen White "I have no trouble with my enemies.  I can take care of my enemies all right.  But my damn friends, my God-damn friends, White, they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!" (same pg).

It was on this trip that Harding suffered from food poisoning, a heart attack, and finally a fatal stroke that ended his life in 1923.  The suddenness of the death caught a lot by surprise, and because the scandals haunting Harding had not yet become public, the nation mourned an incredibly popular President (think Reagan at the height of his popularity and add a bucket of happy puppies to get a good idea how popular Harding was).  Six months later the scandals started spilling out and Harding quickly became the second-most unliked President of the 20th Century.  Talk about a fate worse than death for a Passive-Positive.

Next Up: Bet We Can't Make This Guy Say More Than Three Words.

Read more ...