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The cyber-intelligence complex and its useful idiots
Those who tell us to trust the US's secret, privatised surveillance schemes should recall the criminality of J Edgar Hoover's FBI
Barrett Brown
theguardian.com, Monday 1 July 2013 11.21 EDT
It's a fine thing to see mainstream American media outlets finally sparing some of their attention toward the cyber-industrial complex – that unprecedented conglomeration of state, military and corporate interests that together exercise growing power over the flow of information. It would be even more heartening if so many of the nation's most influential voices, from senator to pundits, were not clearly intent on killing off even this belated scrutiny into the invisible empire that so thoroughly scrutinizes us – at our own expense and to unknown ends.
Summing up the position of those who worry less over secret government powers than they do over the whistleblowers who reveal such things, we have New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who argues that we can trust small cadres of unaccountable spies with broad powers over our communications. We must all wish Friedman luck with this prediction. Other proclamations of his – including that Vladimir Putin would bring transparency and liberal democracy to Russia, and that the Chinese regime would not seek to limit its citizens' free access to the internet – have not aged especially well.
An unkind person might dismiss Friedman as the incompetent harbinger of a dying republic. Being polite, I will merely suggest that Friedman's faith in government is as misplaced as faith in the just and benevolent God that we know not to exist – Friedman having been the winner of several of the world's most-coveted Pulitzer Prizes.
If Friedman is, indeed, too quick to trust the powerful, it's a trait he shares with the just over half of Americans, who tell pollsters they're fine with the NSA programs that were until recently hidden from their view. Why, our countrymen wonder, ought we to be disturbed by our state's desire to know everything that everyone does? Given the possibility that this surveillance could perhaps prevent deaths in the form of terrorist attacks, most Americans are willing to forgo some abstract notion of privacy in favor of the more concrete benefits of security.
Besides, the government to which we're ceding these broad new powers is a democracy, overseen by real, live Americans. And it's hard to imagine American government officials abusing their powers – or at least, it would be, had such officials not already abused similar but more limited powers through repeated campaigns of disinformation, intimidation and airtight crimes directed at the American public over the last five decades. Cointelpro, Operation Mockingbird, Ultra and Chaos are among the now-acknowledged CIA, FBI and NSA programs by which those agencies managed to subvert American democracy with impunity. Supporters of mass surveillance conducted under the very same agencies have yet to address how such abuses can be insured against in the context of powers far greater than anything J Edgar Hoover could command.
Many have never heard of these programs; the sort of people who trust states with secret authority tend not to know what such things have led to in the recent past. Those who do know of such things may perhaps contend that these practices would never be repeated today. But it was just two years ago that the late Michael Hastings revealed that US army officials in Afghanistan were conducting psy-ops against visiting US senators in order to sway them towards continued funding for that unsuccessful war. If military and intelligence officials have so little respect for the civilian leadership, one can guess how they feel about mere civilians.
Not that anyone need merely guess. Discussing the desirability of such "information operations" in his 2001 book, retired USAF Lt Col George Crawford noted that voters tend to view these sorts of programs with suspicion. "Consequently," he concludes, "these efforts must take place away from public eyes."
And so they do. If we want to learn a thing or two about the latest round of such programs – that is, if we are willing to disregard the Thomas Friedmans of this world – we must look not just towards the three letter agencies that have routinely betrayed us in the past, but also to the untold number of private intelligence contracting firms that have sprung up lately in order to betray us in a more efficient and market-oriented manner. Our lieutenant colonel, scourge of "public eyes", is among the many ex-military and intelligence officials who have left public service, or public obfuscation – or whatever we're calling it now – to work in the expanding sphere of private spookery, to which is outsourced information operations by the Pentagon, spy agencies, and even other corporations who need an edge over some enemy (in Crawford's case, the mysterious Archimedes Global).
So, how trustworthy is this privatized segment of the invisible empire? We would know almost nothing of their operations were it not for a chance turn of events that prompted Anonymous-affiliated hackers to seize 70,000 emails from one typical firm back in early 2011. From this more-or-less random sampling of contractor activity, we find a consortium of these firms plotting to intimidate, attack and discredit WikiLeaks and those identified as its key supporters, including the (then Salon, now Guardian) journalist Glenn Greenwald – a potentially illegal conspiracy concocted on behalf of corporate giant Bank of America, which feared exposure by WikiLeaks, and organized under the auspices of the Department of Justice itself.
We find several of the same firms – which collectively referred to themselves as Team Themis – involved in another scheme to deploy sophisticated software-based fake people across social networks in order to infiltrate and mislead. For instance, Themis proposes sending two of these "personas" to pose online as members of an organization opposed to the US Chamber of Commerce, another prospective Themis client, in order to discredit the group from within. Yet another revelation involves a massive cross-platform military program of disinformation and surveillance directed at the Arab world; still another relates how one NSA-inked firm can monitor and attack online infrastructure throughout the world, including western Europe, and will rent these capabilities out to those with a few million dollars to spend on such things.
And Booz Allen Hamilton, which has received some belated scrutiny as the eminently powerful employer of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, was apparently in talks with Themis participant HBGary Federal regarding its own still-secret "project" involving, again, WikiLeaks. These are simply a few of the revelations stemming from a portion of the email correspondence among a handful of major contracting firms – a tiny, serendipitous sampling of what such firms are doing for their government and corporate clients as they compete for contracts.
Hundred of these sorts of companies have come about in the last few years, operating in close partnerships with the state, yet existing beyond the view of Congress, the media and "public eyes". Even in the unlikely instance when their activities come to light, potentially illegal behavior goes unpunished; even calls by congressmen to investigate the sordid Themis conspiracy were ignored by the Department of Justice, which, of course, set the whole thing in motion to begin with through its recommendation.
This, then, is the environment in which public officials and Beltway insiders like Friedman are asking us to trust the intelligence community and its private partner firms with increasing power over information. It's an age in which even the limited rules in place can be broken with impunity by the powerful – even as journalists and activists who cross them are targeted for destruction by state-corporate alliances armed with increasingly sophisticated cyber weapons, propaganda techniques and surveillance authority.
This is the world we accept if we continue to avert our eyes. And it promises to get much worse.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/01/cyber-intelligence-complex-useful-idiots
The Strange Case of Barrett Brown
Amid the outrage over the NSA's spying program, the jailing of journalist Barrett Brown points to a deeper and very troubling problem.
Peter Ludlow June 18, 2013
In early 2010, journalist and satirist Barrett Brown was working on a book on political pundits, when the hacktivist collective Anonymous caught his attention. He soon began writing about its activities and potential. In a defense of the group’s anti-censorship operations in Australia published on February 10, Brown declared, “I am now certain that this phenomenon is among the most important and under-reported social developments to have occurred in decades, and that the development in question promises to threaten the institution of the nation-state and perhaps even someday replace it as the world’s most fundamental and relevant method of human organization.”
By then, Brown was already considered by his fans to be the Hunter S. Thompson of his generation. In point of fact he wasn’t like Hunter S. Thompson, but was more of a throwback—a sharp-witted, irreverent journalist and satirist in the mold of Ambrose Bierce or Dorothy Parker. His acid tongue was on display in his co-authored 2007 book, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny, in which he declared: “This will not be a polite book. Politeness is wasted on the dishonest, who will always take advantage of any well-intended concession.”
But it wasn’t Brown’s acid tongue so much as his love of minutiae (and ability to organize and explain minutiae) that would ultimately land him in trouble. Abandoning his book on pundits in favor of a book on Anonymous, he could not have known that delving into the territory of hackers and leaks would ultimately lead to his facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison. In light of the bombshell revelations published by Glenn Greenwald and Barton Gellman about government and corporate spying, Brown’s case is a good—and underreported—reminder of the considerable risk faced by reporters who report on leaks.
In February 2011, a year after Brown penned his defense of Anonymous, and against the background of its actions during the Arab Spring, Aaron Barr, CEO of the private intelligence company HBGary, claimed to have identified the leadership of the hacktivist collective. (In fact, he only had screen names of a few members). Barr’s boasting provoked a brutal hack of HBGary by a related group called Internet Feds (it would soon change its name to “LulzSec”). Splashy enough to attract the attention of The Colbert Report, the hack defaced and destroyed servers and websites belonging to HBGary. Some 70,000 company e-mails were downloaded and posted online. As a final insult to injury, even the contents of Aaron Barr’s iPad were remotely wiped.
The HBGary hack may have been designed to humiliate the company, but it had the collateral effect of dropping a gold mine of information into Brown’s lap. One of the first things he discovered was a plan to neutralize Glenn Greenwald’s defense of Wikileaks by undermining them both. (“Without the support of people like Glenn, wikileaks would fold,” read one slide.) The plan called for “disinformation,” exploiting strife within the organization and fomenting external rivalries—“creating messages around actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization,” as well as a plan to submit fake documents and then call out the error.” Greenwald, it was argued, “if pushed,” would “choose professional preservation over cause.”
Other plans targeted social organizations and advocacy groups. Separate from the plan to target Greenwald and WikiLeaks, HBGary was part of a consortia that submitted a proposal to develop a “persona management” system for the United States Air Force, that would allow one user to control multiple online identities for commenting in social media spaces, thus giving the appearance of grassroots support or opposition to certain policies.
The data dump from the HBGary hack was so vast that no one person could sort through it alone. So Brown decided to crowdsource the effort. He created a wiki page, called it ProjectPM, and invited other investigative journalists to join in. Under Brown’s leadership, the initiative began to slowly untangle a web of connections between the US government, corporations, lobbyists and a shadowy group of private military and information security consultants.
One connection was between Bank of America and the Chamber of Commerce. WikiLeaks had claimed to possess a large cache of documents belonging to Bank of America. Concerned about this, Bank of America approached the United States Department of Justice. The DOJ directed it to the law and lobbying firm Hunton and Williams, which does legal work for Wells Fargo and General Dynamics and also lobbies for Koch Industries, Americans for Affordable Climate Policy, Gas Processors Association, Entergy among many other firms. The DoJ recommended that Bank of America hire Hunton and Williams, explicitly suggesting Richard Wyatt as the person to work with. Wyatt, famously, was the lead attorney in the Chamber of Commerce’s lawsuit against the Yes Men.
In November 2010, Hunton and Williams organized a number of private intelligence, technology development and security contractors—HBGary, plus Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies and, according to Brown, a secretive corporation with the ominous name Endgame Systems—to form “Team Themis”—‘themis’ being a Greek word meaning “divine law.” Its main objective was to discredit critics of the Chamber of Commerce, like Chamber Watch, using such tactics as creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” giving it to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then subsequently exposing the document as a fake to “prove that US Chamber Watch cannot be trusted with information and/or tell the truth.” In addition, the group proposed creating a “fake insider persona” to infiltrate Chamber Watch. They would “create two fake insider personas, using one as leverage to discredit the other while confirming the legitimacy of the second.” The leaked e-mails showed that similar disinformation campaigns were being planned against WikiLeaks and Glenn Greenwald.
It was clear to Brown that these were actions of questionable legality, but beyond that, government contractors were attempting to undermine Americans’ free speech—with the apparent blessing of the DOJ. A group of Democratic congressmen asked for an investigation into this arrangement, to no avail.
By June 2011, the plot had thickened further. The FBI had the goods on the leader of LulzSec, one Hector Xavier Monsegur, who went under the nom de guerre Sabu. The FBI arrested him on June 7, 2011, and (according to court documents) turned him into an informant the following day. Just three days before his arrest, Sabu had been central to the formation of a new group called AntiSec, which comprised his former LulzSec crew members, as well as members as Anonymous. In early December AntiSec hacked the website of a private security company called Stratfor Global Intelligence. On Christmas Eve, it released a trove of some 5 million internal company e-mails. AntiSec member and Chicago activist Jeremy Hammond has pled guilty to the attack and is currently facing ten years in prison for it.
The contents of the Stratfor leak were even more outrageous than those of the HBGary hack. They included discussion of opportunities for renditions and assassinations. For example, in one video, Statfor’s vice president of intelligence, Fred Burton, suggested taking advantage of the chaos in Libya to render Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who had been released from prison on compassionate grounds due to his terminal illness. Burton said that the case “was personal.” When someone pointed out in an e-mail that such a move would almost certainly be illegal—“This man has already been tried, found guilty, sentenced…and served time”—another Stratfor employee responded that this was just an argument for a more efficient solution: “One more reason to just bugzap him with a hellfire. ”
(Stratfor employees also seemed to take a keen interest in Jeremy Scahill’s writings about Blackwater in The Nation, copying and circulating entire articles, with comments suggesting a principle interest was in the question of whether Blackwater was setting up a competing intelligence operation. E-mails also showed grudging respect for Scahill: “Like or dislike Scahill’s position (or what comes of his work), he does an amazing job outing [Blackwater].”)
When the contents of the Stratfor leak became available, Brown decided to put ProjectPM on it. A link to the Stratfor dump appeared in an Anonymous chat channel; Brown copied it and pasted it into the private chat channel for ProjectPM, bringing the dump to the attention of the editors.
Brown began looking into Endgame Systems, an information security firm that seemed particularly concerned about staying in the shadows. “Please let HBGary know we don’t ever want to see our name in a press release,” one leaked e-mail read. One of its products, available for a $2.5 million annual subscription, gave customers access to “zero-day exploits”—security vulnerabilities unknown to software companies—for computer systems all over the world. Business Week published a story on Endgame in 2011, reporting that “Endgame executives will bring up maps of airports, parliament buildings, and corporate offices. The executives then create a list of the computers running inside the facilities, including what software the computers run, and a menu of attacks that could work against those particular systems.” For Brown, this raised the question of whether Endgame was selling these exploits to foreign actors and whether they would be used against computer systems in the United States. Shortly thereafter, the hammer came down.
The FBI acquired a warrant for Brown’s laptop, gaining the authority to seize any information related to HBGary, Endgame Systems, Anonymous and, most ominously, “email, email contacts, ‘chat’, instant messaging logs, photographs, and correspondence.” In other words, the FBI wanted his sources.
When the FBI went to serve Brown, he was at his mother’s house. Agents returned with a warrant to search his mother’s house, retrieving his laptop. To turn up the heat on Brown, the FBI initiated charges against his mother for obstruction of justice for concealing his laptop computer in her house. (Facing criminal charges, on March 22, 2013, his mother, Karen McCutchin, pled guilty to one count of obstructing the execution of a search warrant. She faces up to twelve months in jail. Brown maintains that she did not know the laptop was in her home.)
By his own admission, the FBI’s targeting of his mother made Brown snap. In September 2012, he uploaded an incoherent YouTube video, in which he explained that he had been in treatment for an addiction to heroin, taking the medication Suboxone, but had gone off his meds and now was in withdrawal. He threatened the FBI agent that was harassing his mother, by name, warning:
“I know what’s legal, I know what’s been done to me.… And if it’s legal when it’s done to me, it’s going to be legal when it’s done to FBI Agent Robert Smith—who is a criminal.”
“That’s why [FBI special agent] Robert Smith’s life is over. And when I say his life is over, I’m not saying I’m going to kill him, but I am going to ruin his life and look into his fucking kids…. How do you like them apples?”
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The media narrative was immediately derailed. No longer would this be a story about the secretive information-military-industrial complex; now it was the sordid tale of a crazy drug addict threatening an FBI agent and his (grown) children. Actual death threats against agents are often punishable by a few years in jail. But Brown’s actions made it easier for the FBI to sell some other pretext to put him away for life.
The Stratfor data included a number of unencrypted credit card numbers and validation codes. On this basis, the DOJ accused Brown of credit card fraud for having shared that link with the editorial board of ProjectPM. Specifically, the FBI charged him with traffic in stolen authentication features, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft, as well as an obstruction of justice charge (for being at his mother’s when the initial warrant was served) and charges stemming from his threats against the FBI agent. All told, Brown is looking at century of jail time: 105 years in federal prison if served sequentially. He has been denied bail.
Considering that the person who carried out the actual Stratfor hack had several priors and is facing a maximum of ten years, the inescapable conclusion is that the problem is not with the hack itself but with Brown’s journalism. As Glenn Greenwald remarked inThe Guardian: “It is virtually impossible to conclude that the obscenely excessive prosecution he now faces is unrelated to that journalism and his related activism.”
Today, Brown is in prison and ProjectPM is under increased scrutiny by the DOJ, even as its work has ground to a halt. In March, the DOJ served the domain hosting service CloudFlare with a subpoena for all records on the ProjectPM website, and in particular asked for the IP addresses of everyone who had accessed and contributed to ProjectPM, describing it as a “forum” through which Brown and others would “engage in, encourage, or facilitate the commission of criminal conduct online.” The message was clear: Anyone else who looks into this matter does so at their grave peril.
Some journalists are now understandably afraid to go near the Stratfor files. The broader implications of this go beyond Brown; one might think that what we are looking at is Cointelpro 2.0—an outsourced surveillance state—but in fact it’s worse. One can’t help but infer that the US Department of Justice has become just another security contractor, working alongside the HBGarys and Stratfors on behalf of corporate bidders, with no sense at all for the justness of their actions; they are working to protect corporations and private security contractors and give them license to engage in disinformation campaigns against ordinary citizens and their advocacy groups. The mere fact that the FBI’s senior cybersecurity advisor has recently moved to Hunton and Williams shows just how incestuous this relationship has become. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is also using its power and force to trample on the rights of citizens like Barrett Brown who are trying to shed light on these nefarious relationships. In order to neutralize those who question or investigate the system, laws are being reinterpreted or extended or otherwise misappropriated in ways that are laughable—or would be if the consequences weren’t so dire.
While the media and much of the world have been understandably outraged by the revelation of the NSA’s spying programs, Barrett Brown’s work was pointing to a much deeper problem. It isn’t the sort of problem that can be fixed by trying to tweak a few laws or by removing a few prosecutors. The problem is not with bad laws or bad prosecutors. What the case of Barrett Brown has exposed is that we confronting a different problem altogether. It is a systemic problem. It is the failure of the rule of law.
http://www.thenation.com/article/174851/strange-case-barrett-brown
has anyone been following the CCC (3oC3) Chaos Communication Congress conference in Germany?
This is a pretty definitive conference with speakers discussing the Snowden revelations about the NSA capabilities to an audience of "hackers" sys admins.
to my mind it is worthy of spending some time listening to the various presentations by the speakers about the Manning trial, the various exploits by NSA to hack all electronic communications (WORLDWIDE) for total information awareness and control.
instead of accepting the predigested and acceptable bumper sticker slogans about national security and our privacy, listen to the cases made by people who have been involved in keeping the internet free for a long time and judge for yourself
here is the source I found a lot of the conference videos on:
http://leaksource.wordpress.com
hello Sideeki
many happy returns!
and the worm continues to turn.
i agree that no problems facing humankind (and animal kind) should be reduced to oversimplifications.
The fact that billions of our fellows are undernourished, millions are starving is unavoidable.
there are truly mountainous problems to be solved regarding climate change and our adaptability to it, energy sources that do not poison the very air and water that we need to basically survive.
so it is not merely that we already overpopulate the globe on tenuous coastal areas prone to storm and flooding, and that our effluents mix with our water supplies, and that diseases are likely becoming resistant to our medicines. science may well find answers to these problems (indeed, we must to survive). but then there are survival issues which are the problems of economic justice, political justice, religion, which also need solutions, but these will not come from science.
cup half empty, cup half full. some days one, other days the latter. these are troubling times.
one can hardly disregard the suffering of such a large part of our world.
don't mean to be raining on this day of the ten best this. or ten most wonderful that.
we can only do what we can do, the best way in which we can do it.
my warm regards this new year to you
fuagf - a very happy new year to you, too.
i often enjoy your follow throughs on many a sundry subject.
something I recently learned is that there is no Nobel Prize for economics.
http://exiledonline.com/the-nobel-prize-in-economics-there-is-no-nobel-prize-in-economics/
OCTOBER 12, 2012
THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS? THERE IS NO NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS
By Yasha Levine
This article was first published on AlterNet
It’s Nobel Prize season again. News reports are coming out each day sharing the name of the illustrious winner of the various categories — Science, Literature, etc. But there’s one of the prizes that’s a little different. Well, that’s putting it lightly… you see, the Nobel Prize in Economics is not a real Nobel. It wasn’t created by Alfred Nobel. It’s not even called a “Nobel Prize,” no matter what the press reports say.
The five real Nobel Prizes—physics, chemistry, literature, peace, and medicine/physiology—were set up in the will left by the dynamite magnate when he died in 1895. The economics prize is a bit different. It was created by Sweden’s Central Bank in 1969, nearly 75 years later. The award’s real name is the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.” It was not established by Nobel, but supposedly in memory of Nobel. It’s a ruse and a PR trick, and I mean that literally. And it was done completely against the wishes of the Nobel family.
Sweden’s Central Bank quietly snuck it in with all the other Nobel Prizes to give retrograde free-market economics credibility and the appearance of scientific rigor. One of the Federal Reserve banks explained it succinctly, “Few realize, especially outside of economists, that the prize in economics is not an “official” Nobel. . . . The award for economics came almost 70 years later—bootstrapped to the Nobel in 1968 as a bit of a marketing ploy to celebrate the Bank of Sweden’s 300th anniversary.” Yes, you read that right: “a marketing ploy.”
Here’s a Nobel family member describing it: “The Economics Prize has nestled itself in and is awarded as if it were a Nobel Prize. But it’s a PR coup by economists to improve their reputation,” Nobel’s great great nephew Peter Nobel told AFP in 2005, adding that “It’s most often awarded to stock market speculators. . . . There is nothing to indicate that [Alfred Nobel] would have wanted such a prize.”
Members of the Nobel family are among the harshest, most persistent critics of the economics prize, and members of the family have repeatedly called for the prize to be abolished or renamed. In 2001, on the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prizes, four family members published a letter in the Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet, arguing that the economics prize degrades and cheapens the real Nobel Prizes. They aren’t the only ones.
Scientists never had much respect for the new economic Nobel prize. In fact, a scientist who headed Nixon’s Science Advisory Committee in 1969, was shocked to learn that economists were even allowed on stage to accept their award with the real Nobel laureates. He was incredulous: “You mean they sat on the platform with you?”
That hatred continues to simmer below the surface, and periodically breaks through and makes itself known. Most recently, in 2004, three prominent Swedish scientists and members of the Nobel committee published an open letter in a Swedish newspaper savaging the fraudulent “scientific” credentials of the Swedish Central Bank Prize in Economics. “The economics prize diminishes the value of the other Nobel prizes. If the prize is to be kept, it must be broadened in scope and be disassociated with Nobel,” they wrote in the letter, arguing that achievements of most of the economists who win the prize are so abstract and disconnected from the real world as to be utterly meaningless.
The question is: Why would a prize that draws so much hatred and negativity from the scientific community be added to the Nobel roster so late in the game? And why economics?
To answer that question we have to go back to Sweden in the 1960s.
Around the time the prize was created, Sweden’s banking and business interests were busy trying to ram through various free-market economic reforms. Their big objective at the time was to loosen political oversight and control over the country’s central bank.
According to Philip Mirowski, a professor at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in the history economics, the “Bank of Sweden was trying to become more independent of democratic accountability in the late 60s, and there was a big political dispute in Sweden as to whether the bank could have effective political independence. In order to support that position, the bank needed to claim that it had a kind of scientific credibility that was not grounded in political support.”
Promoters of central bank independence made their arguments in the language of neoclassical market efficiency. The problem was that few people in Sweden took their neoclassical babble very seriously, and saw their plan for central bank independence for what it was: an attempt to transfer control over economic matters from democratically elected government and place into the hands of big business interests, giving them a free hand in running Sweden’s economy without pesky interference from labor unions, voters and elected officials.
And that’s where the Swedish Central Bank Prize in Economic Sciences came in.
The details of how the deal went down are still very murky. What is known is that in 1969 Sweden’s central bank used the pretense of its 300th anniversary to push through an independent prize in “economic science” in memory of Alfred Nobel, and closely link it with the original Nobel Prize awards. The name was a bit longer, the medals looked a little different and the award money did not come from Nobel, but in every other way it was hard to tell the two apart. To ensure the prize would be awarded to the right economists, the bank managed to install a rightwing Swedish economist named Assar Lindbeck, who had ties to University of Chicago, to oversee the awards committee and keep him there for more than three decades. (Lindbeck’s famous free-market oneliner is: “In many cases, rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing.”)
Notice there's no mention that Hayek actually won the Swedish Central Bank Prize in Economics...
For the first few years, the Swedish Central Bank Prize in Economics went to fairly mainstream and maybe even semi-respectable economists. But after establishing the award as credible and serious, the prizes took a hard turn to the right.
Over the next decade, the prize was awarded to the most fanatical supporters of theories that concentrated wealth among the top 1% of industrialized society of our time.
In 1974, five years after the prize was first created, it was awarded to Friedrich von Hayek, the leading laissez-fair economist of the 20th century and the godfather of neoclassical economics. Milton Friedman, who was at the University of Chicago with Hayek, was not far behind. He won the prize just two years later, in 1976.
Both Hayek and Friedman were huge supporters of the political independence of central banks. In fact, they built their careers on bashing government intervention in economic matters. Hayek developed a whole business cycle theory that blamed government and government-controlled banking systems for all economic problems. Friedman came out with a whole new subsection of neoclassical economics called “Monetarism” that had a scientific formula worked out, specifying exactly how much money central bankers needed to keep floating around in the economy to keep inflation low and unemployment high enough to keep big business happy. No democratic control over banking policies needed, just let the free-market do its thing! The Swedish central bankers couldn’t get better spokesmen for their cause.
But Hayek and Friedman’s usefulness went way beyond Sweden.
At the time of the prizes, neoclassical economics were not fully accepted by the media and political establishment. But the Nobel Prize changed all that.
What started as a project to help the Bank of Sweden achieve political independence, ended up boosting the credibility of the most regressive strains of free-market economics, and paving the way for widespread acceptance of libertarian ideology.
Take Hayek: Before he was won the award, it looked like Hayek was washed up. His prospect of ever being a mainstream economist was essentially over. He was considered a quack and fraud by contemporary economists, he had spent the 50s and 60s in academic obscurity, preaching the gospel of free-markets and economic darwinism while on the payroll of ultra-rightwing American billionaires. Hayek had powerful backers, but was stuck way out on the fringes of reactionary-right subculture.
But that all changed as soon as he won the prize in 1974. All of a sudden his ideas were being talked about. Hayek was a celebrity. He appeared as a star guest on NBC’s Meet the Press, newspapers across the country printed his photographs and treated his economic mumblings about the need to have high unemployment as if they were divine revelations. His Road to Serfdom hit the best-seller list. Margret Thatcher started waving around his books in public, saying “this is what we believe.” He was back on top like never before, and it was all because of the fake Nobel Prize created by Sweden’s Central Bank.
"Unemployment iz necessary karmic price ov past inflationary policies"
Billionaire Charles Koch brought Hayek out for an extended victory tour of the United States, and had Hayek spend the summer as a resident scholar at his Institute for Humane Studies. Charles, a shrewd businessman, quickly put the old man to good marketing use, tapping Hayek’s mainstream cred to set up Cato Institute in 1974 (it was called the Charles Koch Foundation until 1977), a libertarian thinktank based on Hayek’s ideas. [Read eXiled eXclusive: Charles Koch told Hayek to use Social Security.]
Even today, Cato Institute pays homage to the Swedish Central Bank Prize’s marketing role in the mainstreaming of Hayek’s ideas and Hayek’s influence on the outfit:
The first libertarian to receive the Nobel Prize was F.A. Hayek in 1974. In the years leading up to the prize announcement, Hayek had reached a professional and personal nadir. Unable to maintain an appointment in the United States, Hayek had returned to Austria to take up a position at the University of Salzburg, Austria. With the announcement of the prize in 1974, however, Hayek’s work, and the fortune of Austrian economics, took a remarkable turn.
Hayek’s influence on Cato is profound. Two of Cato’s first books were by Hayek: A Tiger by the Tail: The Keynesian Legacy of Inflation & Unemployment and Monetary Policy: Government as Generator of the “Business Cycle.” Perhaps more than any other intellectual in the twentieth century, Hayek has inspired Cato and its researchers to develop policies that ensure a free society. When Cato moved into its current location in 1992, its auditorium was named in Hayek’s honor.
Friedman’s Nobel Prize had a similar impact. After getting the prize in 1976, Friedman wrote a best seller, got his own 10-part PBS series “Free to Choose” and became President Ronald Reagan’s economic advisor, where he had a chance to put the free-market policies he developed in Chile under Pinochet.
Like Hayek, Friedman was a big Pinochet fanboy. He would spend the rest of his time denying it, but he was deeply involved and invested in the Pinochet’s totalitarian free-market experiment. Chilean economist Orlando Letelier published an article in The Nation in 1976 outing Milton Friedman as the “intellectual architect and unofficial adviser for the team of economists now running the Chilean economy” on behalf of foreign corporations. A month later Letelier was assassinated in D.C. by Chilean secret police using a car bomb.
Friedman’s monetary theory was used by Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Paul Volcker to restrict the money supply, plunging American into a deep recession, doubling the unemployment rate, and had the added bonus of getting Reagan elected President. . . . And Hayek and Friedman were just the beginning.
For instance, in 1997 two economists won an award for their derivative risk models that minimized risk, just before derivatives would explode in the 2000s real estate-bubble.
The award was shared by economists Robert Merton and Myron Scholes for their work in figuring out how to value derivatives so as to minimize risk. The two economists used their Nobel-worthy economic models to run “the world’s biggest hedge fund,” which was called Long Term Capital Management (LTCM). And the fund really lived up to its name. Nine months after winning the Swedish Central Bank Prize in Economics, LTCM went belly-up, racking up over $1 billion in losses over a period of just two days. It was of course bailed out by then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who considered LTCM “too big to fail.”
Then there’s Vernon Smith. In 2002, Vernon Smith, adored and funded by Libertarians like Charles Koch, won the “Nobel” — his patron looked at the money he spent funding Smith’s academic career as a successful speculatory venture, saying simply: “The Koch Foundation’s gift was an excellent investment.” Smith’s research basically entailed setting up theoretical “wind tunnels” to test how free-markets would respond in various conditions—all in a way that has nothing to do with reality.
As of 2011, 10 out of the 69 economists who’ve won the fake Nobel prize are Koch-connected libertarians.
It will take a brave act to bring this sham to the attention of the public. One year, one of the prize winners will have to speak out, and explain this ruse to the public as he wins the award.
This article was first published on AlterNet
***
Yasha Levine is an eXiled editor and co-founder of the S.H.A.M.E. Project. Read his book: The Corruption of Malcolm Gladwell.
and a happy new year to you as well, Stephanie.
keep up the good work.
it is hard to imagine that this concept regarding mankind has just occurred for the first time.
although it may well be.
I never would have imagined such an incredible resistance to change via denialism in our world.
the video, purported to be Carl Sagan's last, which has recently bubbled to the surface of the internet, gives a kind of explanation for the phenomena of denialism.
if science has a role in a solution to these seemingly intractable problems, does it make sound in a forest of ignorance?
god, i hate doomsdayers.
sorry, tis the season. fa-la-la!
wishing for the best, hoping for the best, but scarcely believing it it.
but the pope says atheists are OK w/jesus.
so, maybe there is reasonable hope after all.
Bless us all.
happy holidays from the northwestern nethers.
I am a lucky man to live in these modern times.
and lucky to have health insurance.
my wish and hope is for all americans to be able to benefit from these modern medical miracles.
great joy and prosperity for all: from each according to his means, for each according to their needs, or some acceptable approximation thereof.
we used to have so much in this country when the rich paid their fair share: infrastructure, education, jobs.
but you have by now probably seen DT Suzuki's analysis:
David Suzuki explains the limits to growth using a test tube of bacteria food slowly filling with bacteria as a metaphor for our overconsuming planet.
In this four minute video, assuming exponential growth, we see the screen gradually fill with digital bacteria. The test tube fills with bacteria in an hour and there is no food left. But at 55 minutes it’s only 3% full, at 58 minutes it’s only 25% full and at 59 minutes half full.
He notes that if scientists invent three new test tubes of food in that last minute (i.e. capitalism’s technological solution for the limits to growth – the equivalent of 3 new planets), all four test tubes will be full in 62 minutes!
Spend a minute in a test tube with David Suzuki.
We need system change, not climate change!
I agree as well
happy holidays
Alan Grayson, another.
there are a few.
Bernie Sanders
a voice in the wilderness...
Carney: DOJ Looking Into Issues Raised By Reuters DEA Report
PERRY STEIN 3:14 PM EDT, MONDAY AUGUST 5, 2013
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that the Department of Justice is "looking into" some of the issues raised by a Reuters report revealing that a secret unit within the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration "is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans."
(my bold)
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/carney-doj-looking-into-issues-raised-by-reuters
sounds like this is OK with you?
as our rights as citizens slide into oblivion...
read it and weep.
From the Obama administration. How do we excuse this?
I'm sure this is for our own good.
Say it isn't so.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805
Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans
By John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke
WASHINGTON | Mon Aug 5, 2013 9:11am EDT
(Reuters) - A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.
Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.
The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.
"I have never heard of anything like this at all," said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.
"It is one thing to create special rules for national security," Gertner said. "Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations."
THE SPECIAL OPERATIONS DIVISION
The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.
Today, much of the SOD's work is classified, and officials asked that its precise location in Virginia not be revealed. The documents reviewed by Reuters are marked "Law Enforcement Sensitive," a government categorization that is meant to keep them confidential.
"Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function," a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD's involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use "normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD."
A spokesman with the Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA, declined to comment.
But two senior DEA officials defended the program, and said trying to "recreate" an investigative trail is not only legal but a technique that is used almost daily.
A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. "You'd be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said.
"PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION"
After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as "parallel construction."
The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods. "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept."
A dozen current or former federal agents interviewed by Reuters confirmed they had used parallel construction during their careers. Most defended the practice; some said they understood why those outside law enforcement might be concerned.
"It's just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean," said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates legalizing and regulating narcotics.
Some defense lawyers and former prosecutors said that using "parallel construction" may be legal to establish probable cause for an arrest. But they said employing the practice as a means of disguising how an investigation began may violate pretrial discovery rules by burying evidence that could prove useful to criminal defendants.
A QUESTION OF CONSTITUTIONALITY
"That's outrageous," said Tampa attorney James Felman, a vice chairman of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association. "It strikes me as indefensible."
Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey defense lawyer, said any systematic government effort to conceal the circumstances under which cases begin "would not only be alarming but pretty blatantly unconstitutional."
Lustberg and others said the government's use of the SOD program skirts established court procedures by which judges privately examine sensitive information, such as an informant's identity or classified evidence, to determine whether the information is relevant to the defense.
"You can't game the system," said former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. "You can't create this subterfuge. These are drug crimes, not national security cases. If you don't draw the line here, where do you draw it?"
Some lawyers say there can be legitimate reasons for not revealing sources. Robert Spelke, a former prosecutor who spent seven years as a senior DEA lawyer, said some sources are classified. But he also said there are few reasons why unclassified evidence should be concealed at trial.
"It's a balancing act, and they've doing it this way for years," Spelke said. "Do I think it's a good way to do it? No, because now that I'm a defense lawyer, I see how difficult it is to challenge."
CONCEALING A TIP
One current federal prosecutor learned how agents were using SOD tips after a drug agent misled him, the prosecutor told Reuters. In a Florida drug case he was handling, the prosecutor said, a DEA agent told him the investigation of a U.S. citizen began with a tip from an informant. When the prosecutor pressed for more information, he said, a DEA supervisor intervened and revealed that the tip had actually come through the SOD and from an NSA intercept.
"I was pissed," the prosecutor said. "Lying about where the information came from is a bad start if you're trying to comply with the law because it can lead to all kinds of problems with discovery and candor to the court." The prosecutor never filed charges in the case because he lost confidence in the investigation, he said.
A senior DEA official said he was not aware of the case but said the agent should not have misled the prosecutor. How often such misdirection occurs is unknown, even to the government; the DEA official said the agency does not track what happens with tips after the SOD sends them to agents in the field.
The SOD's role providing information to agents isn't itself a secret. It is briefly mentioned by the DEA in budget documents, albeit without any reference to how that information is used or represented when cases go to court.
The DEA has long publicly touted the SOD's role in multi-jurisdictional and international investigations, connecting agents in separate cities who may be unwittingly investigating the same target and making sure undercover agents don't accidentally try to arrest each other.
SOD'S BIG SUCCESSES
The unit also played a major role in a 2008 DEA sting in Thailand against Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout; he was sentenced in 2011 to 25 years in prison on charges of conspiring to sell weapons to the Colombian rebel group FARC. The SOD also recently coordinated Project Synergy, a crackdown against manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers of synthetic designer drugs that spanned 35 states and resulted in 227 arrests.
Since its inception, the SOD's mandate has expanded to include narco-terrorism, organized crime and gangs. A DEA spokesman declined to comment on the unit's annual budget. A recent LinkedIn posting on the personal page of a senior SOD official estimated it to be $125 million.
Today, the SOD offers at least three services to federal, state and local law enforcement agents: coordinating international investigations such as the Bout case; distributing tips from overseas NSA intercepts, informants, foreign law enforcement partners and domestic wiretaps; and circulating tips from a massive database known as DICE.
The DICE database contains about 1 billion records, the senior DEA officials said. The majority of the records consist of phone log and Internet data gathered legally by the DEA through subpoenas, arrests and search warrants nationwide. Records are kept for about a year and then purged, the DEA officials said.
About 10,000 federal, state and local law enforcement agents have access to the DICE database, records show. They can query it to try to link otherwise disparate clues. Recently, one of the DEA officials said, DICE linked a man who tried to smuggle $100,000 over the U.S. southwest border to a major drug case on the East Coast.
"We use it to connect the dots," the official said.
"AN AMAZING TOOL"
Wiretap tips forwarded by the SOD usually come from foreign governments, U.S. intelligence agencies or court-authorized domestic phone recordings. Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a caller's citizenship can be verified, according to one senior law enforcement official and one former U.S. military intelligence analyst.
"They do a pretty good job of screening, but it can be a struggle to know for sure whether the person on a wiretap is American," the senior law enforcement official said.
Tips from domestic wiretaps typically occur when agents use information gleaned from a court-ordered wiretap in one case to start a second investigation.
As a practical matter, law enforcement agents said they usually don't worry that SOD's involvement will be exposed in court. That's because most drug-trafficking defendants plead guilty before trial and therefore never request to see the evidence against them. If cases did go to trial, current and former agents said, charges were sometimes dropped to avoid the risk of exposing SOD involvement.
Current and former federal agents said SOD tips aren't always helpful - one estimated their accuracy at 60 percent. But current and former agents said tips have enabled them to catch drug smugglers who might have gotten away.
"It was an amazing tool," said one recently retired federal agent. "Our big fear was that it wouldn't stay secret."
DEA officials said that the SOD process has been reviewed internally. They declined to provide Reuters with a copy of their most recent review.
(Edited by Blake Morrison)
Bradley Manning Revealed Crimes Far Worse Than the Ones He Supposedly Committed
John Glaser.
Editor at Antiwar.com
Posted: 07/30/2013 6:10 pm
I agree with the author. thanks for bringing this to my attention.
what is one's duty to the country, and what is one's duty to fellow man?
what is most important? security? or honesty and integrity?
on the "whistleblower" issue.
while a "whistleblower" appears to be reprehensible to those who would have us covered by the NSA security blanket, all that they have done is to confirm, in a documentary way, what most of us have suspected all along.
Manning exposed a war crime or two, Snowden exposed examples of civilian surveillance. Ellsburg exposed the lunacy of Vietnam.
from Wikipedia:
A whistleblower (whistle-blower or whistle blower)[1] is a person who exposes misconduct, alleged dishonest or illegal activity occurring in an organization. The alleged misconduct may be classified in many ways; for example, a violation of a law, rule, regulation and/or a direct threat to public interest, such as fraud, health and safety violations, and corruption. Whistleblowers may make their allegations internally (for example, to other people within the accused organization) or externally (to regulators, law enforcement agencies, to the media or to groups concerned with the issues).
One of the first laws that protected whistleblowers was the 1863 United States False Claims Act (revised in 1986), which tried to combat fraud by suppliers of the United States government during the Civil War. The act encourages whistleblowers by promising them a percentage of the money recovered or damages won by the government and protects them from wrongful dismissal.[2]
Whistleblowers frequently face reprisal, sometimes at the hands of the organization or group which they have accused, sometimes from related organizations, and sometimes under law.
Questions about the legitimacy of whistle blowing, the moral responsibility of whistle blowing, and the appraisal of the institutions of whistle blowing are part of the field of political ethics.
it is no surprise to me that whistleblowers are met with reprisals rather than with applause: no one likes to acknowledge the feet of clay of our leaders and our institutions and our businesses.
the nerve that is exposed is painful to bear, but because of the whistle blowing, a society has the opportunity to make adjustments, and to grow better, if that is the tack taken.
all of this harsh judgement should be suspended pending the facts of the cases. unfortunately, no facts will likely be forthcoming; emotions will be stirred up, and society will continue to suffer and decline.
my opinion
one thing to consider as an actual effect of the security state would be the no-fly list.
those on the list are severely impacted.
are they all terrorists or potential terrorists?
in this regard, it can very well be that president Obama is not his own man. the alternative explanation would be that he has had a mighty change of heart.
thank you, fuagf, arizona and stephanie, for your feedback.
big question in my mind is why the president is pushing this agenda.
if what I am learning is correct, then Obama will lose any respect that i have held for him. I have excused so much that he has marginally done for citizens, on the grounds of a recalcitrant congress, that this potential TPP agreement will tip me completely over.
why would a moderate of any party seek to entrench corporate power to such a degree?
if that is not the case for this treaty, why on earth is this not a public process? are there some kind of national security issues? probably not.
politically, this is a tough nut to crack in our two party system wherein there are no alternatives.
Is there anything anyone has to say about the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement that is being developed by the administration?
from what i have read, it appears to be very one sided, favoring corporations over people. I would appreciate any comments on this subject.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/6/obama_backed_trans_pacific_partnership_expands
thanks, Stephanie. and thanks for the additional documentation.
reading the multitudinous postings from the new hampshire representative on the board was awful.
absolutely nothing in the way of a dialogue. or value.
good to see that you and Az are still posting here, with F6 and fuagf (among others) and keeping the wolves at bay.
i realize the rooster is a kind of pet here, but his offerings are pretty much in the same vein as newhampsha's.
such is life. how interesting it would be to hear a reasonable debate about policy without the standardized invectives by the right.
i suppose that may never happen on some chat board where some individuals without an empathetic bone in their bodies feel so free to just open up and pour forth.
actually, I believe that Detroit is now under the control of one of Snyder's "managers".
and, so , yes. maybe they are really hard up for dollars.
Arizona ... this is troubling .. it seems as if we have three guys here ... who do not like Chris
Hayes ... . .and for different reasons ... that is worrisome ...... .. at least MIGO loves him ! ............;)
in a soundbite world, Chris Hayes does nuance.
Hi Steph.
long tome no see.
been regularly reading, and could not help but respond to you.
I still love your enthusiasm, and your critiques.
not to mention F^ and fuagf's incredible stuff. I wish I had more time to delve into the myriad of subjects to their proper depths.
keep up the good fight.
geez. F^ indeed. I meant, of course, F6.
Hi Mark. you do great work.
my best to all here, I really come here for breaking news and great in-depth opinion. usually.
Arizona ... this is troubling .. it seems as if we have three guys here ... who do not like Chris
Hayes ... . .and for different reasons ... that is worrisome ...... .. at least MIGO loves him ! ............;)
in a soundbite world, Chris Hayes does nuance.
Hi Steph.
long tome no see.
been regularly reading, and could not help but respond to you.
I still love your enthusiasm, and your critiques.
not to mention F^ and fuagf's incredible stuff. I wish I had more time to delve into the myriad of subjects to their proper depths.
keep up the good fight.
quite probably has already made a real difference in what's happened/happening in this country
I also think that it has. articulate progressive voices have long been missing from the TV airwaves.
the country is so divided, and for so long the echo chamber of the right had the sole control of viewers' brains, that the growth of msnbc's lineup of progressives had to be influential to counter the fox and various appendages.
I have to wonder, who do we thank for that? and why? you know, current TV, and other cable channels that are trying to get a bite of that market do not seem to gain any traction or share.
Well, Mark, as far as pure politics, Rachel's analyses are fantastic. usually.
and that is interesting and valuable as I try to keep up with the ins and outs of DC politics. I have been becoming more and more impatient with the "games" that politicians play (instead of doing even the minimum for what the country needs) and then off they go into lobby land.
it really is a bubble there, though Obama and his people seem to reach out beyond that bubble.
nevertheless, I think we are lucky to have both of them commenting on the scene.
migo -- ahh, a point of mild disagreement -- to me Rachel has it all over Chris -- much better centered and focused while never losing sight of the larger context -- Chris has what comes across to me as this college student thing of adopting/diving into notions, often as not significantly comprised as much or more of (shallow, simplistic) speculation than (any deep) insight and accordingly sometimes incisive and other times not, but either way in the process typically at least to some extent surrendering/losing contact with any real grasp of/keeping what he's saying sensible within the larger context -- my impression has always been that Rachel is considerably more knowledgable and intelligent than Chris, and, more to the point, far more intellectually mature
don't get me wrong, I like Chris; when he's good, he's really good -- but to me at least, he's no Rachel
Stephanie
you can watch his program "Up" on line at msnbc.com
as much as Rachel is good, Chris is vastly better and explores issues in greater depth and with interesting people.
i trust you are well.
yes. it is all of a piece.
pretty clearly identify WHY some people try politics.
here's a great definition of "class" as in style...
Staffers for millionaire/wrestling magnate/failed GOP Senate candidate say they were stiffed, got bad checks and condoms: "you're screwed"
NORTH HAVEN, Conn. (CBS Connecticut/AP) – Workers who helped with Republican candidate Linda McMahon’s Senate campaign were reportedly paid with bad checks that bounced when employees attempted to cash them.
M&M Check Cashing Co. has been responsible for cashing checks given to campaign staff throughout the race. However, according to Troy Stokes, who works for the check-cashing business, all checks dated Nov. 8 bounced, according to WTNH-TV.
“We’re out right now, $1,600,” Stokes told the station.
Campaign spokesperson Kate Duffy told the station that replacement checks have already been issued.
“Checks have been mailed to campaign workers. Replacement checks were issued for those who did not want to wait for the mail,” she explained. “The original checks were then voided once replacement checks were issued.”
Campaign staffer Twaine Don Gomes was reportedly among the first to make the matter of the bad checks public knowledge through local news media – an action which allegedly inspired the campaign to send a second check with something extra.
“Basically he handed me a check with a condom in it, told me I was screwed,” Gomes told WTNH. “That’s the rudest gesture you can ever do to a person, it’s like spitting in a person’s face.”
Duffy told the station in a second interview that the entire situation was a misunderstanding, and that they are working hard to pay everyone who worked on McMahon’s behalf.
And for Evette Brown, who said that she and many others worked for hours in the cold trying to rally campaign support, a resolution would be more than enough.
“I’m not blaming Mrs. McMahon for this, I’m not bashing anyone,” Brown told WTNH, “but I just want my pay for 16 hours.”
Spending was reportedly not an issue for the campaign in general, though it did not affect the outcome – Democratic Rep. Chris Murphy won his way into the Senate on Election Night after giving the pro wrestling magnate her second straight election-night smackdown.
With the loss, the Republican McMahon had spent nearly $100 million of her personal fortune trying to get elected to the Senate: more than $42 million this time and about $50 million against Democrat Richard Blumenthal two years ago.
Her campaign spending was even mentioned in Murphy’s victory speech.
“Tonight, we proved that what matters most in life is the measure of your ideas, is the measure of your determination, is the measure of your friends — not the measure of your wallet,” Murphy, 39, told a crowd of about 400 supporters at a Hartford hotel.
With her husband, Vince McMahon, the chairman and CEO of the WWE, in the crowd behind her, McMahon told disappointed supporters in Stamford that she had no regrets.
“I don’t think we left a stone unturned. I don’t think we would have done anything differently in the campaign,” said McMahon, who outspent her opponent by about 4½-to-1.
The three-term congressman from northwestern Connecticut will succeed the retiring Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent.
(TM and © Copyright 2012 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
http://connecticut.cbslocal.com/2012/11/21/checks-issued-by-mcmahon-campaign-reportedly-bounce/
oh, you do way better than just catching up.
I always enjoy your research posts.
we're left with the old standby kale in the garden, some beets and a few hopeful lettuce plants.
seems like I should be eating much more of the kale. thought about juicing.
that would be efficient way to use the benefits of the kale.
i think that this was the election that i contributed the most $ in a long time.
it was satisfying to see Obama win.
now to ensure that he leans more progressively. we have such a major issue in global climate change.
how do we deal with that? man, we don't even have the will to do small, simple things.
nevertheless, hello!
here we go. Occupy will be the name of the game going forward.
This is a pretty good idea. http://rollingjubilee.org/ I've looked at it and decided that it was worth an investment.
it's time to take these things in hand and do what we can to stop wall street's piggish ways.
Occupy wall street has produced a very able defender, Alexis Goldsmith. very knowledgeable and articulate, and will no be bullshitted.
passing on my joy at the defeat of the romulan shapeshifters. we still have to work to keep this president focused.
congratulations on increasing the progressive caucus. sometimes i begin to think that there is, indeed hope. (especially trying hard not to think of the millions who did vote for the shapeshifters.)
i have missed everyone here, but not your posts.
retiring in April, should I live so long.
hell, it's been a real trip, this election.
sending my best wishes for the holidays to all of my Tornado Alley friends.
this is a good time to remember our less fortunate neighbors.
a hearty amen to that!
there is a pretty great group of posters on this board who bring the news so quickly here.
that is my big thanks to Mark and the people here.
always good to remember and be reminded we are all a part of a larger community.
my sincere best wishes to all.
Mark.
i agree. but only a paragon such as yourself has the tolerance for the constant repetition of ignorance and unavailability for self awareness.
Teapee
if he spent more time listening...
hello back.
it is just hard to believe anyone can be so obtuse.
i guess the circus freaks are there to be gawked at.
it does shame me just a little to have such little understanding of my fellow man.
why anyone even bothers to respond to you is beyond my comprehension.
been following the Occupy movement. this is, or can be, big.
however:
hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WALL_STREET_PROTEST?SITE=NJMOR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Oct 13, 4:28 PM EDT
Protesters suspicious of plan to clean up NYC park
By VERENA DOBNIK and MEGHAN BARR
Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) -- The owner of the private park where Wall Street protesters are camped out gave them notice Thursday that after it power-washes the space it will begin enforcing regulations, which prohibit everything from lying down on benches to storing personal property on the ground...
more at the link.
this is aimed directly at breaking the back of the movement. every location for the occupation will be illegal, with the brunt of the police forces turned against the occupiers.
this may lead to a very real tahrir square in America.
now this is a voice worth listening to.
Carl Sagan inspires us to be better humans.
when i fall into a deep cynicism, his is the kind of voice that lifts me up.
thanks for the reminder, Mark.
god knows i need one.
more at this site.