Month: October 2010

It’s Time For Jail Terms

by digby

So I’m listening to Andrea Mitchell and Jim Cramer explain the Foreclosure Fraud Crisis as they wail and rend their garments about how terrible it will be for just everyone if these poor banks are held responsible for this problem because the whole economy will implode.

That’s nonsense. People should go to directly jail at this point, do not pass go. The real estate market is still officially fucked and while everyone wants it to “find its bottom” coddling the big financial institutions and their crooked subsidiaries and contractors has not worked all that well for average Americans at any point in this ongoing crisis (or for Democrats for that matter.) The only people who are benefiting from the capitulation to the Big Money Boyz’s threats and hoary predictions on this one are the Big Money Boyz and the GOP. The economy still sucks and will continue to suck until the incentives for this criminal behavior and self-destructive malfeasance are stopped.

Here’s how the Washington Post describes the “problem” today:

Beyond sloppy documents, the foreclosure debacle has exposed one of Wall Street’s little-known practices: For more than a decade, big lenders sold millions of mortgages around the globe at lightning speed without properly transferring the physical documents that prove who legally owned the loans.

Now, some of the pension systems, hedge funds and other investors that took big losses on the loans are seeking to use this flaw to force banks to compensate them or even invalidate the mortgage trades themselves. Their collective actions, if successful, could blow a hole through the balance sheets of big banks and raise fundamental questions about the financial system, financial analysts and a lawmaker said.

….Local laws in most states dictate that each time a mortgage changes hands, the transaction needs to be recorded in courts or county offices. But the speed with which the loans were being generated during the housing boom and then pooled together and passed around Wall Street meant that big financial firms took shortcuts, consumer lawyers said.

Well no kidding. It’s not as if the people in charge weren’t warned: Here’s a piece I wrote way back in 2007

And speaking of Big Shitpile, one of the big problems in this fetid mess is the complexity of it. Bankruptcy courts are having a hard time even figuring out who actually owns these properties that are in foreclosure. You can be sure that this is not the only case where “ownership” in American has become vague and obtuse. And there’s a reason for it.

Bill Moyers Journal featured an piece not long ago in which this issue was discussed in depth:

Exhibit #1: Habana Health Care Center in Tampa, Florida, purchased by a group of private equity firms in 2002. “Within months, the number of clinical registered nurses at the home was half of what it had been a year earlier…budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities and other services also fell…” “When regulators visited, they found malfunctioning fire doors, unhygienic kitchens, and a resident using a leg brace that was broken…” Basing its report on state government data, the TIMES says 15 at Habana died from what their families contend was negligent care. But when families sue, they often can’t find out even who owns the nursing homes because of the complex corporate structures private equity firms have created to cover their tracks. It’s this kind of capitalism that drives John Bogle up the wall, as you’re about to learn. John Bogle believes owners should be in charge — and accountable. He’s known and respected world-wide as the father of index funds and the founder of The Vanguard Group, one of the largest mutual funds anywhere, with over a trillion dollars in assets. FORTUNE magazine named him one of the four giants of the 20th century in the investment industry. TIME magazine called him one of the world’s 100 most powerful and influential people. Among his six books is this one THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM and more recently THE LITTLE BOOK OF COMMON SENSE INVESTING. In the current issue of DAEDALUS, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has a blockbuster of an essay on democracy in corporate America. You’ll find it on our Web site at pbs.org. I talked with John Bogle when he was in town earlier this week.

BILL MOYERS:What does it say to you that the real owners of the nursing home, the private investors have created this maze of smoke and mirrors that make it virtually impossible to find out who the owners really are?

JOHN BOGLE:Well, that’s so typical of much that’s going on in American finance, the way we structure these financial instruments, which are stock certificates or debt instruments. But it’s the same thing of the removal of your friendly, local neighborhood bank holding the mortgage and being able to work with you when you fall on hard times to some unnamed, often unknown, financial institution who couldn’t care less.

BILL MOYERS:These private equity firms that own these nursing homes wouldn’t even talk to THE NEW YORK TIMES. They won’t talk to reporters. I mean, there’s no accountability to the public.

JOHN BOGLE: There’s no accountability. And it’s wrong. It’s fundamentally a blight on our society.

BILL MOYERS:What does it say that big private money can operate so secretly, with so little accountability, that the people who are hurt by it, the residents in the nursing home have no recourse?

JOHN BOGLE:It says something very bad about American society. And you wonder — the first question anybody would have after reading the article — how in God’s name do they get away with that? Well, we have all these attorneys that are capable of devising complex instruments, and money managers who are capable of devising highly complex financial schemes. And there’s kind of no one to answer to the call of duty at the end of it.

The fallout from the Bush market is likely to be immense and just as with everything else of this era, it’s going to be nearly impossible to hold anybody responsible.

Sweet.

Even those with good motives among the powers-that-be (and there’s reason to be suspicious about many of them) continue to believe they can finesse this problem with band-aids or superficial remedies to keep the rubes quiet until the invisible hand fixes everything. They are petrified in the meantime that unless they give the oligarchs what they want, they will pull the plug and then where will we be?

This is magical thinking. There is not going to be any easy way out of this. The invisible hand may be working but it often works on a very, very long timeline and many bad things can happen to a society while it does its thing. Meanwhile, every incantation and folk medicine they’ve applied to this problem has resulted in another round of infection. It’s time to open up the wound and completely clean it out. The patient will heal much faster and it’s far less likely to die in the meantime.

Alan Grayson has been way ahead of the curve on this and Democrats across the country are following. There’s no excuse not to unless they actually want to further destroy the economy and lose their elections.
You can sign Grayson’s petition “Not Too Big To Jail” here. Here’s the letter he sent today to Robert Mueller and the US Attorney of Florida today:

Dear U.S. Attorney O’Neill and Director Mueller,

When it comes to foreclosures, there is mounting evidence of a state of rampant lawlessness in Central Florida. There are increasing signs that big banks routinely evade laws meant to protect homeowners, in many well-documented cases of ‘foreclosure fraud.’ Despite the demonstrated existence, for instance, of ‘robosigners’ signing affidavits attesting to documents that they have never seen, the parties engaging in such misconduct are not being brought to justice. Big banks are mischaracterizing this as mere ‘technical problems,’ and apologizing only where there is clear and very public evidence of harm.

It is not enough for big banks only to apologize for fraud, perjury, and even breaking and entering – when they are caught. It is time for handcuffs. Fraud does not become legal just because a big bank does it.

On September 20, 2010, after my office found evidence of systemic foreclosure fraud perpetrated by big banks and foreclosure mills, I called for a halt to illegal foreclosures.

Since then, big banks such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, GMAC, PNC and others have suspended foreclosures or foreclosure sales. These banks are still claiming that the massive fraud they have perpetrated amounts to nothing more than a series of technical mistakes. This is absurd. This is deliberate, systemic fraud, and it is a crime.

To give but two of the many available examples, attached is a deposition from an ex-employee of one of the largest ‘foreclosure mills’ in the state, the Law Offices of David Stern. In it, this employee testifies under oath that it was routine for that office to falsify documents regarding military records, in order to move foreclosure cases along more quickly.

The local media has reported on the case of Nancy Jacobini; a contractor for JP Morgan Chase broke into her home after the bank mistakenly foreclosed on it. JP Morgan Chase ‘apologized’ for terrifying her. But , US ; we have a system of laws. I am writing to ask you to enforce them.

The organized and systematic manufacturing of falsified documents to deprive people of their homes is not only a threat to the integrity of the legal system. It also aggravates and extends the weakness in the housing market. Who is going to feel comfortable buying a home if a big bank can simply take it, whether or not that bank has a right to it? Given the securitization of mortgage-backed securities, this misconduct is a threat to our securities markets as well. But fundamentally, this is a question of protecting basic
property rights – if you don’t own it, then you shouldn’t try to take it. Without clear property rights, and a legal system that insists on clear proof of those rights before transferring ownership by force, the economy will fall apart.

If perpetrators of perjured affidavits and other systematic criminal activity can get off simply with civil liability – or even less, an insincere bureaucratic apology – the freedom that Americans enjoy will erode quickly in the face of lawless seizures of property. I appreciate your work on the joint Middle District of Florida’s Mortgage Fraud Initiative, and respectfully request that the efforts of your offices turn towards reining in this rampant criminality.

Barry Ritholz agrees:

The absurdity of illegal activity, criminal conduct, rampant fraud has reached a point where the nation much declare “No More.” We must begin the process of identifying criminal actors — and prosecuting them.

The latest twist on the criminality/foreclosure fraud: The hiring of untrained, incompetent burger flippers to act as lawyers or paralegals in the processing of foreclosures.

As I wrote yesterday, these banks are once again holding the country hostage with their threats that if anything should be done about their criminality they’ll blow up the whole damned place. Well, they already are —- in slow motion. If we want to find a “bottom” to this market, they need to institute a serious cram-down program to help real people work out these messed up mortgages instead of allowing the banks fix their balance sheets through fraud and the market to stabilize by throwing people into the streets. It’s not working.

And everybody needs to stop worrying about the moral hazard of letting average people off the hook for their mortgages and worry a little bit more about the moral hazard of continually allowing these huge financial institutions to get away with murder.

Update: Somebody needs to start thinking like Iceland.

Update II: Democratic Senators are on the case and send a letter to Geithner and Bernanke:

WASHINGTON, DC— U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Mark Begich (D-AK) today sent a letter to Obama Administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, urging action following recent news reports of widespread improprieties and mistakes in the foreclosure processes employed by mortgage servicers.

“There have been attempts to dismiss the reported violations as minor technical paperwork errors, and to employ the defense that these were harmless errors because the homeowners were in foreclosure and would have lost their houses anyway. These are not technicalities, they are not isolated cases – it is likely that over 200,000 foreclosures have now been suspended – and these improprieties cast doubt on the foreclosures in question,” the senators wrote.

“The systemic problems that are being uncovered in the current mortgage market are remarkably similar to the predatory practices employed during the subprime mortgage crisis,” the senators continued. “Your agencies have tools at your disposal to address the substantial challenges facing homeowners in the mortgage market, and you are able to respond more nimbly than Congress to this emerging crisis. The ample record of homeowner abuse should compel you to act expeditiously in the best interest of homeowners and investors.”

Has even one national Republican said anything about this?

Could someone in the press find it in themselves to ask one of them about it? (If it’s too complicated, maybe someone could call a banker a “whore” so they’d have a hook.)

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They Need The Money

by digby

Eric Boehlert has been closely tracking the bizarre beltway press’s attitude toward this Chamber of Commerce scandal and comparing it to the non-stop frenzy of the 90’s in which they chased every silly GOP allegation of “foreign money.” (My personal favorite was the hysteria over Gore’s appearance at a Buddhist temple in which it was alleged he took illegal Chinese contributions. It was idiotic, and the money involved was peanuts, but it didn’t stop the press from slavering over it for years.)

Boehlert writes today:

The Beltway press coverage of the still-unfolding U.S. Chamber of Commerce story continues to be quite timid and overly deferential toward the powerful, pro-business lobbying group. Legitimate questions have been raised about some of the money the Chamber has raised and whether it’s being used as part of a massive $75 million attack campaign targeting Democrats this year. The question is, does some of the Chamber money come from overseas, and if so why is the Chamber using foreign dollars to influence U.S. campaigns? As noted yesterday, today’s timidity stands in stark contrast to the Clinton `90’s, when the press corps ran itself ragging, eagerly chasing similar allegations about overseas dollars being spent to influence stateside elections. Back then when the charges were lodged against Democrats, they were taken extremely seriously. So, if that was the standard then, why are so many in the press basically playing the role of stenographers today and simply dictating the Chamber denials, and why aren’t reporters doing original work to advance the Chamber story? (For now, that task has been left solely to ThinkProgress.) The nothing-to-see-here-folks message is impossible to miss in recent coverage.

Yes it is. But a smart commenter of mine pointed out that this might not be Clinton Rules or even the usual Villager social bias. This Chamber money is being used for a very specific purpose — advertisements. In these lean economic times, it’s not impossible to believe that the media behemoths simply don’t want to kill this golden goose. After all, in our American Corporateocracy, we now have such companies openly contributing to political parties.

This possible explanation simply can’t be dismissed.

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Mercenary Child Protectors

by digby

So the state determines that a known violent wife and child abuser should not be allowed near his newborn baby and they remove it from the parents custody. (The wife refuses to leave, apparently.)In the affidavit they file with the court seeking permission, it mentions that he’s also a member of a radical, right wing militia type movement called the Oath Keepers. What happens? The libertarians go wild, claiming that the jackbooted thugs are removing children from parents who are merely exercising their constitutional rights to join a militia. They picketed the hospital where the baby was born and they picketed the paper and engaged in online flame wars even when the full affidavit was revealed with the father’s long history of violence toward his wife and children.

Slate takes up the story:

Is it relevant to a child-protection case that a man with a history of violence is connected to a group which believes Americans are in imminent danger of being herded into concentration camps? Or is apocalyptic anti-government scenario-spinning inherently political and protected? In a country where the FBI is confused (or worse) about the legality of peaceful protest, this is a discussion worth having.

Just don’t go looking to the New Hampshire picketers for that debate. The ones who made it into the Concord Monitor, anyway, are sad crackpots. “The fact that there are documents about it is meaningless,” one told the paper

That baby chose to be born of an abusive father and a battered mother and he’s the individual responsible for that choice. That’s called freedom folks.

This is not to say that libertarians don’t have good solutions for such problems, they do:

“The family should be left to resolve it on their own,” Biondolillo said. “Or private enterprise – private companies can contact the family and say, ‘We heard you were hitting your kids. Can you stop that?’ “

That sounds like a hell of a business opportunity. As the article points out, it’s unclear who or how one would pay for such a service, but I believe it’s almost certain that since it’s a private sector, non-state, non-coercive enterprise that it would be successful. Aren’t they all?

And anyway, you have to protect that family’s right to abuse its children. It’s fundamental to our liberty.

I am skeptical of state police power and I know there are instances where kids are removed for improper reasons. If this guy’s only crime had been belonging to a nutty, violent right wing militia, obviously it wouldn’t have been enough reason to remove the kids. But he was a violent abuser with a house full of guns (including tasers) and he also happened to belong to a nutty, violent, right wing militia. That combination, if true, is enough reason to fear for a little baby’s safety so until Dagny’s Mobile Parenting Advice Corporation gets off the ground, the state will have to continue to do this unpleasant business. Contrary to what right wing libertarians believe not everything in life comes down to property rights.

h/t to @allisonkilkenny
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Case Closed

by digby

Liars:

The billionaire Koch brothers have long claimed that they have no direct connection to the Tea Party, denying that their vast oil wealth is directly funding corporate front groups like Americans For Prosperity (AFP), the key organizers of the fake grassroots Tea Party movement. David Koch told New York Magazine earlier this year, “I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.” But the Guardian reports that footage has emerged showing David Koch at the podium during an AFP gala receiving direct and detailed reports from his astroturf AFP army on their efforts to organize tea parties around the nation. Watch the clip from the new documentary (Astro)Turf Wars: How Corporate America Faked a Grassroots Revolution

Inclusion

by digby

God, I hope this is just bullshit spin and not what he really thinks:

Obama expressed optimism to me that he could make common cause with Republicans after the midterm elections. “It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, they feel more responsible,” he said, “either because they didn’t do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn’t work for them, or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.”

I asked if there were any Republicans he trusted enough to work with on economic issues. The first name he came up with was Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who initially agreed to serve as Obama’s commerce secretary before changing his mind. But Gregg is retiring. The only other Republican named by Obama was Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who has put together a detailed if politically problematic blueprint for reducing federal spending. The two men are ideologically poles apart, but perhaps Obama sees a bit of himself in a young, substantive policy thinker.

Gregg and Ryan are two of the worst fiscal trainwrecks in the congress. Not to mention that Gregg, at least, is a fairly nasty, thin skinned jerk.

And then there’s this, which I would say was probably inevitable regardless of how this election goes. Democrats always tack right when they are in a presidential general election:

Tom Daschle said Obama would have to reach out to adversaries. “The lessons of the last two years are going to be critical,” he told me. “The key word is ‘inclusion.’ He’s got to find ways to be inclusive.”

He’s going to need Christine O’Donnell to cast a spell on the Teabag Republicans because that’s the only way they are going to do anything remotely bipartisan. Even if he agreed to reduce millionaires’ tax to zero and barnstorm against gay marriage and abortion, they would not help him. They want to beat him, not govern.

If Obama goes too far in trying to appease these people, he’d better hope to hell the Republicans run the Palin/Paladino ticket because that will be his only hope for reelection.

I don’t think he’s a dumb person so I’m hopeful that this is pre-election spin designed for political purposes. I’m not sure what those are, but I simply can’t believe that he’s serious after what we’ve seen.

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Plutocrats Clutch Their Pearls

by digby

The Chamber of Commerce responds to Think Progress’s expose of their foreign money laundering into the election with “I know you are but what am I” silliness:

Having been roundly repudiated in the mainstream media over their allegation that the U.S. Chamber is using money from American Chambers of Commerce abroad (AmChams) to fund political ads, John Podesta and his folks at ThinkProgress have shifted to a new target in their increasingly pitiful attempt to silence the voice of business in the upcoming election–our bilateral business councils.

This allegation is equally false and baseless, not to mention tiresome and desperate…

ThinkProgress is grabbing at straws. We look forward to debunking some of their upcoming “investigations”: “U.S. Chamber Using Cash From Space Aliens to Fund Political Advertising” and “U.S. Chamber Producing Counterfeit Currency in its Basement to Pay for Attack Ads.”

ThinkProgress, huh? Hurling unfounded allegations for political gain is progress, with a sputtering economy and near 10% unemployment? How about: ThinkRationally? These wild and irresponsible allegations make you wonder who is funding ThinkProgress … and why.

That’s the Chamber of Commerce blog, not some idiotic poster on Red State. And people wonder why our economy is a disaster …

Here’s an official spokesman for the Chamber, obviously another member our elite American business braintrust, sniveling about how multi-millionaires and corporations need to remain secret because they are in physical danger from liberals:

Joston: …We’re under no obligation as any organization or association in the United States is, to divulge who its members are, who its contributors are. We are under legal obligations to account and have an accounting method that ensures that in our accounts that funds or any aspect of money that comes from a foreign source is not in any way utilized in any political sense. We ensure that we do that…

What this administration wants is a list of who the companies are who are contributors, and we saw last year, Jake, why, when we very publicly ran ads against the Patients Protections and Affordable Care Act, quoting the CBO, quoting the head of CMS, the Centers for Medicare Services, that it would not in fact bend the cost curve down, that it would bend the cost curve up as they testified before the senate finance committee, there was an attempt to try and find out who were the corporations that were contributing to that effort.

When some of those corporate names were divulged, not by us, by others, what did they receive? They received protests, they received threats, they were intimidated, they were harassed, they had to hire additional security, they were recipients of a host of proxies leveled at those companies that had nothing to do with the purpose of those companies. So we know what the purpose here is. It’s to harass and intimidate…

Much like we’ve seen in California with ballot initiatives — when the proponents of ballot initiatives’ names have been divulged to the public — those people were harassed, they were threatened with violence and they were intimidated…

A year ago when we ran issue ads across this country, hundreds of them, against the patients protection and affordable care act, citing the CBO report, citing the Center for Medicare Studies–Services report, the companies that got divulged publicly were harassed, were intimidated.

TAPPER: How?

JOSTEN: The outside allies of this administration, the SEIU, the AFL-CIO, HCANN – Health Care Action Now network and Moveon.org, all combined and coordinated protests at those companies, at the CEOs’ homes in some cases, as they did here with us. And they began a proxy campaign, through outside groups, the Center for Political Accountability, and another group, Walden Asset Management. This is a game, ok? And they like to play that game out. So it’s clear that the game here is to harass and intimidate.

When I cited what took place in California, there is a gentleman who has done research for the Institute for Justice in California, on Prop 8 and what happened with the CA marriage protection act, when personal information about those donors to support Prop 8 was posted on the internet.

It led to death threats. It led to physical violence, vandalism and economic reprisals from against those people and their homes. So we know, how the public, if outed in supporting some controversial causes, if you will, we know what happens. We know what happens to our people.

Oh boo fucking hoo.

He even has the brass to compare these cowardly oligarchs to civil rights workers.

Ayn Rand would turn over in her grave if she heard these so-called “leaders” whining like a bunch of babies and refusing to own their ideology. Who in their right mind would trust any of them if, with all their billions, they run to the Chamber to launder their money so they don’t have to take responsibility for what they are doing. Of course, that’s pretty much how the titans of commerce in America operate these days. They screw everything up, take their profits, fuck over the plebes and then run and hide.

I don’t think there’s a better example of the American elite failure than these pearl clutching plutocrats. Yuck.

*Read the whole Tapper interview with the psycho Chamber spokesman. These people really need to stop powering the diet pills and Red Bull.

Update: Oh, and I just want to thank the mainstream media for their epic failure on this as well. As Eric Boehlert points out, there was a decade or so when the press was thrilled to chase every convoluted financial scandal the crazy wingnuts dreamed up, regardless of the evidence. Now they’ve decided that such allegations are unsubstantiated merely on the word of a powerful partisan institution. It’s quite an evolution.

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No on Prop 23

by digby

Speaking of California, the No on Prop 23 folks have come out with a powerful ad that should be seen by everyone who lives here:

Deceptive Proposition Would Kill California Clean Air Standards & Kill Clean Energy Jobs

Two Texas oil companies are spending millions to push Prop. 23, a deceptive ballot proposition that would kill California clean energy and air pollution reduction standards. Four years ago, California passed a clean air law (AB 32) that holds polluters accountable and requires them to reduce air pollution that threatens human health and contributes to global climate change. This law has launched California to the forefront of the clean technology industry, sparking innovation and clean energy businesses that are creating hundreds of thousands of new California jobs.

The tragic oil spill in the Gulf reinforces the urgent need to reduce our dependence on costly, dangerous oil. But the oil companies’ Prop. 23 would allow polluters to avoid our state’s clean energy standards, kill competition and jobs from California’s clean technology companies, and keep us addicted to dirty oil.

Prop. 23 – The Texas Oil Companies’ Dirty Energy Proposition is deceptive.

* The primary funders of Prop. 23 are the Valero and Tesoro Texas oil companies. They are among the nation’s biggest polluters, and their California oil refineries are among the top ten polluters in our state.
* Valero and Tesoro claim Prop. 23 would only “suspend” California’s air pollution and clean energy standards until the economy improves. In fact, Prop. 23 – The Dirty Energy Proposition – would repeal our clean energy law and harm the economy.
o The fine print in Prop. 23 reveals their plan is to kill these standards by prohibiting them from being enforced unless unemployment drops to a fixed level that has rarely ever been achieved.

read on …

Even Dianne Feinstein came out against prop 23, which is sort of a miracle since she doesn’t buck the big money all that often. Her argument is that this is about green jobs which is true. But it’s also about Big Money.

In fact, this whole election is about Big Money, especially in California, where we have the Big Plutocrat Whitman, followed by her mini-me Fiorina and huge amounts of secret cash flowing in from all directions. It’s mind boggling.

This campaign is one of the clearest, strangely enough. These big oil companies have been exposed trying to turn back the will of the voters so they can pollute at will.
Circulate this Youtube to your friends and family in California to make sure they don’t get away with it.

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Village Schoolmarm Ethics

by digby

The world is going to hell in a handbasket and Andrea Mitchell is obsessing over the fact that Jerry Brown’s staffer used the word whore and Brown hasn’t grovelled to her satisfaction. She’s brought it up in every segment this morning, she and Chris Cilizza rubbing their hands together gleefully at the prospect of the arrogant plutocrat Meg Whitman winning because she was victimized by some unknown staffer who said a bad word. Cilizza offered the sage advice that a politician must always sincerely apologize to the person leaving no doubt as to his deeply felt personal contrition. (Of course, in the real world of politics that’s total bullshit, but never let that stop the schoolmarms from issuing their useless directives.)

Mitchell also, incidentally, allowed Condi Rice to lie about it, saying that Brown took too long to apologize and then did it only “grudgingly” and “defiantly.” The truth is that his campaign apologized immediately and Brown apologized again in the debate last night. Unfortunately, once you get into the apology game, the Village schoolmarms are never satisfied, even if you publicly flagellate yourself with a cat-o-nine-tails.

I don’t condone the staffer’s use of the word whore obviously, (although the use in this context was metaphorical — as in selling herself to special interests not turning tricks on Wilshire Blvd.) It’s politically off-limits, especially when it’s employed against a woman and the staffer shouldn’t have used the word. But this Villager hissy fit is ridiculous. The state of California is in deep, deep trouble right now and to even spend a minute on something this vapid is truly an outrage. (Even the undocumented maid issue was a bit much, although it did expose the fact that Whitman has been talking out of both sides of her mouth on the issue of immigration, which is a huge one in California.) The Beltway, however, is taking this silly “whore” nonsense to extremes and it’s infuriating, especially considering the hideous treatment they themselves give to female candidates. Their glass houses are lying in shards all over the ground.

I would also just add, for context, the way a different late breaking scandal (far worse than calling a politician a whore for selling out to special interests) in a recent California Governor’s race was dealt with:

Long before the storm, Schwarzenegger had taken steps to insulate himself from the likelihood that his boorish behavior toward women might surface. When the Los Angeles Times did print graphic details from six women five days before the vote, he apologized immediately, if vaguely. Then he went right back to his bus tour and his throw-the-bums-out rhetoric, leaving reporters churning. “Arnold ran a very effective campaign of just saying there’s waste in government, there’s special interests’ influence and there’s job-killing legislation getting passed in Sacramento,” said Bruce Cain, a political science professor at the University of California-Berkeley. “That message drowned out everything else, including the sexual harassment stuff.” The message clearly resonated. Four in five voters interviewed as they left the polls Tuesday rated the California economy poor, and two-thirds disapproved of Davis. But what surprised political analysts most was that 43% of women stuck by the Terminator despite the harassment accusations. And they weren’t light charges. Going back 25 years to as recently as 2000, women said Schwarzenegger had grabbed their breasts, spanked them, pulled up their shirts and accosted them in elevators — all at a time when he reigned as one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures. […]

“Everybody jumped all over this, probably wrongly, as Gray Davis dirty politics, and voters discounted it,” Bowler says. It helped that Schwarzenegger’s aides, including experienced operatives who spent years in former governor Pete Wilson’s administrations, performed what Cain calls “textbook damage control” — then got aggressive. The candidate himself said most of the charges weren’t true without elaborating and blamed dirty politics.

The village press was so thrilled to be covering the big Republican movie star they could barely rouse themselves to ask questions much less call for the smelling salts. IOKIYAR writ large.

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Baby Doc Paul Tells Dagny She’ll Have To Wait

by digby

Rand Paul used to write letters to the editor. Greg Sargent has them:

In a 1983 letter about the Equal Rights Amendment to The Lariat, the paper at Baylor University, Paul wondered whether government should pass any laws to combat discrimination:

Should we enact laws that say “Thou shall not be prejudiced in business transactions,” and then hope that the courts interpret such laws in a rational manner? Or should moral questions such as discrimination remain with the individual? Should we preach in order to bring about change, or should we compel?

In that same letter, Paul also offered a rebuttal to a professor who had argued for equality of wages regardless of gender:

Equality? Since when have any two people ever been equal?…

Have you some magical equation to determine equality in work? The answer must of necessity be a resounding “no!” Equality is a thing of the mind, originated, conceived and promulgated on a subjective basis.

However, Paul made it clear that he opposes discrimination in any form, arguing that “all must agree that bigoted discrimination is detrimental to the peaceful interaction of different sexes and races in the marketplace.” And he held out hope for the advancement of women, but through “voluntary cooperation.”

“Women inhabit virtually every sphere of our economic lives without the ERA,” Paul wrote. “Change comes slowly, but it does come.”

Back in the day the bigots were always lugubriously lecturing everyone that “you can’t legislate morality” so there’s nothing new there. (When it comes to bedroom habits, you’ll notice they have a slightly different standard.)

Paul was clearly a very romantic young fellow, in love with idea of Supermen and the women who loved them, as many Rand fans were and are. But I haven’t known very many libertarians or Randians who spent quite as much time worrying about civil rights as he has. They are usually a bit more abstract than this and certainly don’t aim their commentary at this aspect of “government intrusion” as much as Paul has done for the past 25 years. It’s fairly unusual.

As for his generous prediction that “change comes slowly, but it does come” well — only a man steeped in straight, male, white privilege would have the nerve to tell blacks, women, gays etc. that to their faces. Whose life are you condemning to second class citizen status until all of your pals decide it’s time to “grant them” equal rights, Rand? (I’ll give you Martin Luther King for a thousand, Alex.)

I’m no fan of Atlas Shrugged philosophy, as regular readers of this blog surely know. But Rand is beyond Rand, I’m afraid. He may be attracted to the laissez-faire message for any number of reasons, but it’s fairly clear that one of the reasons he likes it so much is because it gives him a way to excuse bigotry. Considering his father’s history on this, it isn’t surprising.

Indeed, this whole fight is over a facet of Rand Paul’s ideology that is nearly identical to his father’s. As Josh Marshall observes:

I fear though that that’s not the whole story with Paul — father or son. The truth is that there’s a long and hard to explain history of both Pauls being associated with a lot of people who are avowed or crypto-racists. There’s the well-known story of Ron Paul’s early 1990s era newsletter which was rife with racist and homophobic commentary. Paul later distanced himself from the newsletter, claiming that items written under his name were penned by a ghost-writer and that he wasn’t familiar with what had appeared there. And then there was the case back in December in which Rand’s Senate campaign spokesman Chris Hightower had to resign because of racist posts on his Myspace page. Looked at in broad terms you’ve got a couple of guys who apparently aren’t racist in any way but happen to stumble their way into close associations with racists with an astonishing frequency. It’s almost like a painful race version of that classic Onion headline: “Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My —-.” There is of course the fact that Ron Paul became the darling of numerous skinhead and white supremacist groups — but that’s in a very different category because you’re not responsible for who supports you but what you yourself support.

Recall, if you will, the contents of those Ron Paul newsletters

Considering that both Papa Doc and Baby Doc are racists and hard-core forced pregnancy zealots, I’ve never understood how anyone bought the idea that they are libertarians.
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The Masochism Party

by digby

The Democratic party can’t be bothered to do much to help incumbents like Alan Grayson or Raul Grijalva in this terrible electoral environment even though Grijalva is being targeted with death threats and Grayson has been on the receiving end of nearly 20% of all the independent expenditure money that’s been spent on the House races. (That’s correct — 20% on that one race.)

Perhaps you believe that’s natural since they are progressives who butt heads with the party and cause them grief. There’s a price to be paid for independence. But if that’s true, it’s only if you are a progressive legislator. If you are someone who votes with the Republicans most of the time and publicly disdains the leadership, they will reward you with cash and support:

Here’s the latest ad from Bobby Bright, one of those incumbents favored with generous support from the party:

And this one’s just awesome:

The Democrats have candidates in trouble all over the country. Grayson and Grijalva are just two of any number of incumbents who are in races that are going to be nail biters on election night. And yet the Party is standing behind people who are basically running against them and undermining everything the Democratic party allegedly stands for while ignoring those who are taking their fight to the Republicans.

This isn’t a strategy, it’s masochism.

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