Who's the Bossie? (SCOTUS Treason, Part 3)

One of the enduring stereotypes of the 60's is the anti-war, free love, dope-smoking, long-haired hippie protester. Having been on college campuses at the time, I can attest first hand that such people actually did exist. (And they seemed to be having more fun than everyone else).


Not nearly as celebrated is the growth during those same years of a much quieter but eventually far more subversive organization called the College Republicans. Although founded in the late 19th century, the organization nearly went under during the 50's and 60's as Democrats generally controlled both houses of Congress and the hearts and minds of most college students.

But not all.

In 1967, using a grass roots, get-out-the-vote campaign that would do MoveOn.org proud, a chapter of the College Republicans effectively won a Kentucky gubernatorial election for a candidate whose political calling cards were anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism and a vow to overturn an order that gave minorities equal access to previously whites-only public facilities. Suddenly, College Republicans became an 'in crowd'. Competition for leadership positions became so fierce that in 1973, the disputed election for the group's national presidency would only be decided when a prominent national Republican--George H.W. Bush--unilaterally declared the winner. That victor was a young dirty trickster who had already been investigated by the Watergate special prosecutor: Karl Rove. In fact, the legacy of the group extends non-stop to the present day, with direct descendants including the late Lee Atwater and the still fully fulminating Grover Norquist...as well as second-level connections to right-wing notables as diverse as direct-mail maven Richard Viguerie, Phyllis Schlafly and Left Behind author Tim LaHaye.

But the College Republican of the hour...and perhaps eventually the most important of them all...is a lunatic named David Bossie. He left that group to help grow a new organization called Citizens United, whose work has included the infamous Willie Horton ad, revelations of the 'liberal' secrets hidden by noted radical John McCain, and foremost--forever and a day--the dogged, demented, perpetually discredited attacks on the family Clinton. It was Bossie's documentary called, Hillary: The Movie that was the center of the treacherous Supreme Court decision granting corporations dominance over the national election dialogue.

In 2005, Citizens United went to court to use the McCain-Feingold provision of federal election law to prevent TV ads for the upcoming movie, Fahrenheit 9-11, a product of director Roger Moore. (The law limits how special interest cash can be spent 30 days before a primary election, and 60 days before a general). Bossie lost that case. Which may have helped spur the lawsuit ruled on this week by the Supreme Court, in which Bossie demonstrated a jaw-dropping (choose your own descriptor here) irony or hypocrisy, claiming the same legal strictures he attempted to invoke in 2005 now should not apply to his own film. Truly, the mind boggles.

When I say Bossie's two decade obsession with the Clintons is psychotic in nature, I'm not alone. He invented the Whitewater 'scandal' in his own mind...and then successfully persuaded the New York Times that it was true. After Enron fell, he claimed that both political parties were to blame, since President Clinton also hosted Enron chief Ken Lay as an overnight guest in the White House. Except that it never happened. He was the driving force trying to tie the Clintons to the 'murder' of Vince Foster. In an ultimately shamed attempt to try to link Bill Clinton to the suicide of a pregnant woman (in his mind, Clinton was the father, of course), he stalked the woman's mother relentlessly, despite her repeated statements that Clinton had nothing to do with it. (This mania ultimately led Bossie to sneak pass security and storm into a hospital room to confront her, where her husband was recovering from a stroke). But when he distributed doctored tapes of an interview edited to create a false impression smearing Hillary, even his party brethren had had enough. George H.W. Bush sent letters to his contributors, urging them not to support Citizens United. Newt Gingrich, while House Speaker, forced the firing of Bossie from his job as a Senate staffer. Enough, they seemed to say, was enough.

But there is no stake sharp enough to pierce Bossie's Clinton-hating heart.

The ridiculous contention of his Hillary case in the Supreme Court was that his film should not be considered as promoting a vote for or against a specific candidate (thus exempting it from the regulation). The Federal Courts got it right when they said there was no other way to possibly interpret it. So they threw the suit out. But with Ted Olson leading the appeals charge in the Supreme Court (the same Olson who had argued the 'winning' side of Bush v. Gore before the high court--see previous post), Bossie knew the votes would be aligned in his favor.

In fact, the entire Citizens United case was a travesty. (A well-reasoned analysis is here). It was pushed through on an inexplicably fast track...it defied a century of precedent...and it deliberately dismissed the narrow issue of the argument in order to purposefully explode it to historic proportions, which allows the ruling to now taint all federal elections for the foreseeable future. The College Republicans win.

And I can't help but wonder whether a betrayed attachment to the unholy alliance of his youth is behind Bossie's mental illness. After all, there is one big one who got away. One who once proudly pledged allegiance to the College Republicans...but lost faith during the Vietnam War.

That turncoat? Hillary Clinton.

Two Down, One to Go (SCOTUS Treason, Part 2)

Late last year, when anger was growing over the Congressional inability to rein in the criminal bankers who created a worldwide financial disaster, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin offered an uncomplicated explanation. "Frankly", he said of Wall Street, "they own this place." No one demurred. Yes, Congress is an extension of deep and private pockets. This isn't exactly headline news.

But Americans have long held out more hope for the judicial branch of government. That's the one where the scales of justice are so nicely balanced...where blind eyes are turned toward even a hint of favoritism. In fact, the historical record here is better. Sure, the Dred Scott decision was a clear violation of human rights for the benefit of southern slave owners, but by and large even the whoppingly bad decisions have not been necessarily due to corruption.


Enter Antonin Scalia.

For a man of modest height and advancing age, he's an unlikely candidate to perform Olympian contortions. But that's exactly what he executed in December of 2000, when he back-flipped over his own stated beliefs and the high bars of legal precedent in attempts to explain away a very awkward legal dismount: why would the high court withdraw its enduring affection for states' rights and due process in order to halt a Florida recount designed to determine who, exactly, had won a presidential election? The key quote from his opinion bears repeating:

"the counting of votes that are of questionable legitimacy does in my view irreparable harm to (Bush) by casting a cloud on what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election."

What Scalia's doing here is obvious: 1) rushing to the conclusion that Bush, indeed, is the president; 2) wetting himself at the thought of a recount that could show that Gore actually won; and 3) taking the necessary steps to make sure that #2 could never come to pass. Clearly, he is carrying water not for the laws of the United States...but for the Republican Party. For reasons he can not apparently fathom, this controversy has never fully dissipated. In 2008, he instructed 60 Minutes, "Get over it. It's so old by now."

Well, now Americans have another treasonous decision to 'get over'. The 5-4 ruling which allows the corporate howitzers to open fire on U.S. democracy is the legitimate heir to this illegitimate business of 2000. Then, the court ruled that they had the final vote in the election of a President. This week, they assured that they would also extend that self-privilege to every federal elective office.

Once again, Scalia is front and center for the junta. He was moved to write a supporting opinion for the majority that is, in effect, a simple attack on those on the court who disagree with him. It is filled with baseless assertions (e.g., just how did he conclude that Thomas Jefferson would like modern corporations? He doesn't elaborate). In the middle of his remarks, he delivers a typical piece of tortured logic. Dismissing the dissenters' expansive evidence that people even by the end of the 18th century despised and mistrusted corporations, he asks rhetorically, "if so, how came there to be so many of them?" This is like suggesting that if slaves in the south during the same period really didn't like working for slave owners, how come there were so many slave owners?

But his opinion really reveals more than his own intellectual shortcomings. Because in his closing, he betrays his own allegiances:

"...to exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy. We should celebrate rather than condemn the addition of this speech to the public debate".

Wow. So, Mr. Justice, let me see if I've got this right: at heart, this isn't really about freedom of speech..it's about your mythical 'free market', isn't it? And because corporations have so much money ('principal agents'), that not only settles the issue of whether a corporation should be afforded the same 'rights' as a citizen...they are actually entitled to an enhanced version that only money can buy.

Sir, again you are exposed--by your own words.

No matter. Scalia's cherished corporations have now captured both Congress and the courts. Two down, one to go.

In the latter stages of the Civil War, Confederate forces made a desperate push toward Washington. Even though they were being routed on their home ground, they realized the strategic and emotional value to be gained should they be able to fly their flag over the capital of the country. Stunningly, they came within five miles.

Today, the threat to democracy and freedom is even closer. The corporations are rapping on the very door of the White House. But now there is no desperation. All the weapons are in their possession.

It's only a matter of time.

Free Speech Gagged (SCOTUS Treason, Part 1)

When the U.S. Supreme Court took it upon themselves to defy both existing law and their own often-stated precedents to christen George W. Bush president late in 2000, I believed I would never live to see the day when our highest court could act more corruptly.

I was wrong.

If you've ever had a waking thought about the operation of our modern U.S. Congress, you already know that it is owned and operated by big money. And that counts the majority of Democrats as well as Republicans. But today, the shameful majority on the high court joined the craven ranks of these corporate Congressional tools. They are vile. They are anti-American. They are terrorists in robes instead of turbans. And most of all, they are wrong. Be very afraid.

So now, corporations and other special interests are free to spend as much money as they like whenever they want to elect their servile slime to protect their interests. Of course, in keeping with the tenor of the times, they delivered the blow with the maximum dose of hypocrisy. Those supporting this bloodless coup wrapped their defense in a false fabric of free speech. In fact, this represents exactly the opposite. The airwaves and dwindling supply of print pages will now be sold to the highest bidders. The voices of the less well funded...and of mere citizens...will drown in a flood of cash designed to decapitate democracy.

I know this sounds hyperbolic. Understand that this is a reasoned opinion. We are entering Stalin-era territory here. Orwell was less than 30 years off. We will see rebirth of the term 'oligarchy', and see first legs given to the common discussion of 'corporatocracy'. When you watch failed bankers walk away from their ruins with millions in taxpayer-funded bonuses...while your neighbors lose their jobs...it is logical to believe that this simply can not be as unfair as it seems. Certainly some complexity must be at work that makes this farce make sense.

You would be wrong.

With this ruling, the Supreme Court speaks for its corporate masters in a new and fully unambiguous voice: "We never cared what you wanted. But now, we no longer have to pretend that we do."

Mad Man

When the four fat cat bankers sat down behind a Congressional microphone this week, network news producers held their collective breath. This was to be one of those moments; a pissed off public would find its release through a relentless grilling delivered by their elected officials.

Of course, that was never going to happen. The bankers knew they held the ultimate trump card. If pressed too hard on their role in setting the world financial markets on fire, all they needed to do was turn and ask Congress why it lit the match. After all, once Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999 (details here), everything that followed was inevitable. Including the 'perfect storm' defense from the bankers, who claimed that they were victims of circumstance, helplessly incapable of seeing the conditions that surrounded them. In fact, Michael Lewis has made a compelling case that these bankers are not ignorant, simply powerless to prevent the kinds of criminality that fuel their own bonuses:

"...when extremely smart people (find) extremely complicated ways to make huge sums of money, the typical Wall Street boss has seldom bothered to fully understand the matter, to challenge and question and argue. This isn't because Wall Street CEOs are lazy, or stupid. It's because they are trapped. The Wall Street CEO can't interfere with the new new thing on Wall Street because the new new thing is the profit center, and the people who create it are mobile. Anything he does to slow them down increases the risk that his most lucrative employees will quit and join another big firm, or start their own hedge fund. He isn't a boss in the conventional sense. He's a hostage of his cleverest employees."

But this doesn't mean the week was entirely devoid of entertainment because Wall Street, as always, could rely on its manic mascot, Jim Cramer, for a good laugh. After all, they don't call his cable show Mad Money without reason. Cramer embodies the three traits that television values most: he's obnoxious, he's self-absorbed, and he's stupid. Think of an American Idol where the judges are also the contestants. That's Cramer.

But what set his performance apart mid-week was the whopping dollop of hypocrisy which he ladled on top of his typical steaming pile of misinformation. His topic was how joblessness is actually a good thing--at least for investors. Because every time a job is shifted from an American citizen to a lower paid worker overseas, a share of someone's stock increases. The way he said it, it almost sounded like that sweet moment in It's a Wonderful Life when the little girl said that 'every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings'. (But of course, that's a bad example, because I'm sure when he watched the movie, Cramer thought the mean old banker in the wheelchair was the hero). In any case, Cramer came across just as blunt and cruel as this sounds--little people losing their jobs is a fair price to pay if it means a rich person can get a dollar richer. Sorry folks, that's just how a free market is supposed to work.

Except.

Except...

There was the priceless Cramer moment at the very height of the financial panic when the Mad Man truly earned his moniker. Even for someone who lives over the top, this performance was historic. His spittle filled the air. The veins in his skull seemed poised to pop. The occasion for this rant of rants was the collapse of Bear Stearns. Tens of thousands of investors lost hundreds of millions of dollars--these are the people whose interests Cramer lives to protect. Except that these investors were not in his thoughts this day. Instead, he was melting down at the sight of poor investment bankers thrust out on the street, carrying their belongings in simple cardboard boxes. "My people have been in this game for 25 years--and they're LOSING THEIR JOBS!!" (And those upper case letters are not hyperbole. He was screaming--literally, screaming). He thundered that the government had better step in and prevent any further shutdowns on Wall Street...before more of his 'people' were sent packing. The feds had to understand--people were losing their jobs!

Well, sorry, Jim. That's just how a free market is supposed to work.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, "the rich are different from you and me", to which Ernest Hemingway supposedly replied, "Yes--they have more money".

But too, they also have the craven and compromised Jim Cramer. Right in their deep pocket.