Sat, 19 May 2012 14:32:28 -0500WeeblyThu, 17 May 2012 13:31:42 -0500http://lebelvedere.weebly.com/2/post/2012/05/freedom-house-pay-it-again-sam.html                                                                                                                            Judge not, that ye be not judged.
                                                                                                                                                    -- Matthew 7:1-5 --





We all like freedom.  Same holds for house.

How, then, could anybody possibly complain about an organization named Freedom House? 

In its own words,

“Freedom House is an independent watchdog organization that advances freedom around the world by supporting democratic change, monitoring freedom, and advocating for human rights.

Today, more than two billion people worldwide live under authoritarian regimes that deprive them of the most basic freedoms, the ones many of us take for granted: the freedom to vote, to voice opinions, to seek justice, to live where they want, or choose their own faith. Support Freedom House today and help the women and men who live in societies where freedom is denied or under threat.”

There is a key unspoken assumption in that declaration.   Societies actually exist in which freedom is (i) not denied and/or (ii) not under threat.  That assumption – very American –  is unacceptable because freedom everywhere is always under threat and/or denied.

We will return to this freedom-has-been-acquired presumption.   It is culture-bound at best, an outright lie at worse.

Usually, whenever the words Freedom House appear, two other words instantly follow:  non-government organization.   Is Freedom House what it claims to be -- independent?

Is Freedom House free?

One tiny  bit of information is missing on the web site of these give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death freedom fighters:  who are these masked men anyway?  Who pays their bills?  When I lived there, rents on Dupont Circle where Freedom House´s main office is located, weren`t free.  And what about its 150 employees?  How do they put hamburgers on the table?  Freedom House, for some strange reason, does not tell us.

For financial  information we had to look elsewhere – to Wikipedia.

80% of Freedom House`s budget is paid by the United States Government.  Federal dollars increased from $12 to $20 million in 2004-2005 (Bush years), so Uncle Sam clearly felt he was getting his money`s worth.   

He who pays the fiddler calls the tune.  With the government paying most of the tab, Freedom House is non-governmental in name only.  Watch out -- this self-proclaimed independent watchdog organization needs to be watched.  The judge of entire nations needs to be judged.

As for the fiddler´s tune, pay it – I mean, play it – again, Sam…

On May 1, 2012, Freedom House released a report, “Freedom of The Press 2012.”    Its core finding:

“Of the 197 countries and territories assessed during 2011, … a total of 66 (33.5 percent) were rated Free, 72 (36.5 percent) were rated Partly Free, and 59 (30 percent) were rated Not Free…The analysis found that only 14.5 percent of the world’s inhabitants lived in countries with a Free press, while 45 percent had a Partly Free press and 40.5 percent lived in Not Free environments.”

Dear Reader, I know the following conclusion will astonish you, given who is giving Freedom House this day its daily bread:   the United States has a free press.  It scored 18 points (0 to 30 qualifies for a “Free Press” merit badge, 31 to 60 as “Partly Free” and 61 to 100 as “Not Free.”)

Free, Not Free:  Of course, everything depends on definitions.  In that regard, Freedom House presents its methodology with one of the most incredible boasts I have ever seen:

“The foundation of Freedom House`s work is its analysis…Freedom House's rigorous research methodology has earned the organization a reputation as the leading source of information on the state of freedom worldwide.” 

The leading source on freedom.  Talk about thinking big.  If the assertion is true, Freedom House is truly a great organization.  If not, well, it is something else.

Let`s take a look at the methodology so highly vaunted.  First, though, I had better explain something to all you non-social scientists out there:  the necessity to operationalize abstract concepts and terms.

To start with,  what is freedom?  To make the word meaningful, I need to operationalize it, i.e., define it in terms of indicators that are observable, objective, not artibrary and preferably quantifiable.  An example of one such indicator of freedom:  the ability to travel around one`s country without prior government approval.  Note:  official travel control is observable and identifiable.  It is also not debatable:   Either a prior approval (i) exists or it (ii) does not.  In that regard, my personal opinion about it – “I don`t believe approval is needed" -- means nothing.

I will say it again:  any real indicator is observable, concrete.  For that reason, to say that an indicator of freedom is “justice combined with equality,” is false.  Here I have defined one abstraction in terms of another abstraction.  No real indicator is present.  Stated differently,  I have not said what I mean.

With those notes in mind, how does Freedom House´s methodology stack up? 

The methodology Freedom House uses to evaluate freedom of the press around the world consists of 23 questions.  I saw on its web site a reference to 109 indicators; I ran a search and couldn´t find them.  However, I did locate 124 bullets or subpoints for all questions.  I assume they are the indicators, and will proceed accordingly.

Any reasonable review of the 23 questions instantly raises yet more questions:

A specific case.  Question A7:  “Are media regulatory bodies, such as a broadcasting authority or national press or communications council, able to operate freely and independently?”  Obviously, freely and independently are subject to all sorts of interpretations; they are abstract.  Hence, they need to be defined by indicators.  Freedom House offers this indicator:   “Are decisions taken by the regulatory body seen to be fair and apolitical?”   Here freely and independently has been defined as fair and apolitical.  Two abstractions have been defined in terms of two other abstractions.   Around and around we go, floating around in the clouds, never touching earth.  Which is why no real indicator was offered.

As for the word seen (to be fair):

Freedom House`s methodology is flooded with subjective, arbitrary, imprecise terms.  Throughout the 124 indicators you will find the words regularly, routinely, undue interference, unduly onerous, extensive, substantial, undue influence, adequate presence, sufficient level, highly concentrated.  They are a clue to what we are in for:

We are in the realm of judgment, not facts.  Real indicators deal with the latter.  (To clarify:  a real indicator would define routinely as once a week, once a day, etc.) 

Presenting phony indicators, that is to say, defining one abstraction or opinion/evaluation in terms of another, is not Freedom House`s only problem.  Some questions and their indicators are blatant tautologies.  In such cases, the assumption is the conclusion; the conclusion, the assumption.  Example:  question B4:  “Do journalists practice self-censorship?”  Here is one  of Freedom House´s indicators:  “Is there widespread self-censorship in the state-owned media?  In the privately-owned media?”

Self-censorship is a crucial phenomenon.  But what is it exactly?  At first blush, such terms (pornography, national security, middle class, organic food, etc.) seem obvious.  On closer examination, however, they melt in the hand.  Because its indicator only rephrases the term it supposedly defines, Freedom House tells us that self-censorship is…self-censorship.  We are sent from Pontius to Pilate.

To conclude this point:   Freedom House makes no attempt to do what it demands of others, i.e., use non-arbitrary objective criteria (A4).  Research tools exist which work to accomplish that goal.  My first research job in grad school was a content analysis of a certain nation´s government radio broadcasts.   Thousands of hours were spent coding and entering data, then analyzing them with the Statistical Package for The Social Sciences, notably factor analysis.   The key question:  did the broadcasts become more bellicose when a future act of agression by that country was at hand?  Did the broadcasts  predict war?   The word bellicose had to be defined precisely, objectively, nonarbitrarily.  In such matters,  personal opinions and judgments not only don`t count, they bias and defeat the purpose of the study.  Human lives were at stake.  Given its nonsubjective approach, the research successfully answered the key question.

Freedom of the press can and should be defined by objectve, nonarbitrary indicators, then measured and analyzed quantitatively, using content analysis of actual media reports.  On the other hand, if you want to measure PEOPLE´S OPINIONS  about freedom of the press in their or other countries, go ahead.  That is, in fact, what Freedom House is doing; it admits in its methodology presentation:

“The findings are reached after a multilayered process of analysis and evaluation by a team of regional experts and scholars. Although there is an element of subjectivity inherent in the index findings, the ratings process emphasizes intellectual rigor and balanced and unbiased judgments.

The research and ratings process involved several dozen analysts—including members of the core research team headquartered in New York, along with outside consultants—who prepared the draft ratings and country reports. Their conclusions are reached after gathering information from professional contacts in a variety of countries, staff and consultant travel, international visitors, the findings of human rights and press freedom organizations, specialists in geographic and geopolitical areas, the reports of governments and multilateral bodies, and a variety of domestic and international news media.”

The  judgments of visitors, professionals, etc., then, are what Freedom House collects.  In and of itself, nothing is wrong there.  However,  you should NOTclaim -- as does Freedom House -- that you are measuring freedom of the press per se.   By disregarding that distinction, Freedom House falls off a cliff.
 

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Freedom House asks this question (B1):  “Is there official or unofficial censorship?”

About official censorship, Freedom House has plenty to say.  Too much, in fact.  That is because
unofficial censorship is where Freedom House`s freedom ends. 

Freedom House, I don´t like to be the one to tell you but in your self-proclaimed opposition to ideas and forces that challenge the right of all people to be free, you are not the leader.  That honor belongs to one man -- a beacon, an icon.  He is no longer with us.  You know who I mean.

George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm, indefatigable fighter of official censorship, came to an astonishing conclusion.  The most serious censor is not official, governmental.  He wrote:

“Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship (except security censorship, which no one objects to in war time) over books which are not officially sponsored. But the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of…any official body.  If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves [my emphasis]… 

The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news - things which on their own merits would get the big headlines - being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that 'it wouldn't do' to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.” 

Out of 124 indicators of freedom of the press, Freedom House offers only 6 of the veiled censorship Orwell warned about.  The reason for this glaring inattention is simple:  in Orwell`s words, the media are owned by wealthy men, i.e., the oligarchy.  America now has an oligarchic political system with democratic decor, accessories (see post of 9-22-2011 "The Ultimate Taboo Question").   Now, by definition no oligarchy  permits real and meaningful criticism of it.  Indeed, in the U.S. the oligarchy doesn`t even allow one to say America has an oligarchic political system.  Freedom House is no more free to criticize the oligarchy than is anybody else, perhaps even less.  150 staffers working in high rent districts:  better look once more at who is paying their bills. 

One of Freedom House´s questions for evaluating freedom of the press obliquely touches on Orwell´s concern:  “B1. To what extent are media outlets’ news and information content determined by the government or a particular partisan interest?”  [My emphasis]   I am sure some Freedom House staffer will jump up and down, contending that the underlined wording "covers" the problem of unofficial censorship.  To which we respond:  Why, then, don´t you just spit it out?  To wit:  To what extent are media outlets´ news and information content determined by wealthy media owners?  That is the question.

Freedom House busies itself with official censorship issues.  It does not – because it cannot – look too deeply into unofficial ones.  If it did, would Freedom House discover that the United States has one of the most censored presses in the world?  That conclusion, as Orwell put it, wouldn`t do. 

Libertinage for media oligarchs always parades as freedom of the press (see post of 2/12/2012 "One-Eyed Jacks Versus Rafael Correa").  In leaving the issue of media ownership latent, Freedom House makes manifest for whom it is working.   But let`s look further into this matter:

Freedom House and media owners, you love to associate freedom of the press with democracy itself.   Fine, since you asked for it, let`s do it:

In truth, the United States never had a democracy.  It had a политей or polity, an oligarchy/democracy hybrid tending toward democracy and moderated by a large middle class (see post of 10-24-2011 "The Great American Illusion").   Look high and low,  you will not find that 100% Aristotlean conclusion expressed anywhere but on this blog.  You want a specific, concrete case of unofficial veiled censorship – there it is.

What it all comes down to:

As this blog has consistently maintained, democracy is a direction, not a place.  You will never get to A north; no such place exists.  You can only get more or less north.   The same is true for democracy.  Now, if there is no democracy per se anywhere, then there is no freedom of the press per se anywhere.   If that is true, then Freedom House´s judgments  of nations as  “Free” and “Not Free” are as nonsensical as Freedom House´s self-designation as a “non-governmental organization."



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 Freedom House:

"Stand with us in opposition to ideas and forces that challenge the right of all people to be free.”

Freedom House, do you actually do what you claim?  Support and advocate human rights?

Shortly after the 2000 election took place, I wrote an article about how George Bush may have stolen the election in Florida.  No newspaper in America, among them the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times, would print it, even as a letter to the editor.  The reason takes us directly to Orwell:  (i) the conclusion that the United States President might be a thief wouldn`t do. 

More pointedly, (ii) the media are owned by the oligarchy; George Bush was their preference.  Given (i) and (ii), veiled censorship of the article was the only possible outcome .

With minor changes, here is the censored article.  Freedom House, fearless foe of anti-freedom ideas and forces, let us see what you do with it.



                                    How To Steal An Election And Not Get Caught – Until Now


Did George W. Bush steal the 2000 election in Florida?

12 years later, the question is still hanging in the air.  There may be a way to answer it.

To my knowledge, the election scam I will present here has never been revealed. [i]  Insider stuff.

First, three facts were known before the 2000 election took place:

(1) The closeness of the election. One election eve headline said it all:

"Race for White House Is Seen by the Polls As Closest in 40 years." [ii]

(2) The same article noted that George Bush

"remained behind in some polls in Florida, a populous state where his brother, Jeb, is governor."

(3) Florida held the key to the White House.  A report published election morning noted that Al Gore

"had waged an all-night blitz in Florida, which he told supporters, 'may very well be the state that decides the outcome of this election.'" [iii]

Close election; Bush in trouble in Florida; Florida the key.  Clearly, there was a motive to cheat.  But was there opportunity?

Election night, the Florida vote count dribbled in. There was

"a double turnaround by television networks which, using computer projections, reported that Mr. Gore had won Florida before deciding that that was premature, and then gave the state and the presidency to Mr. Bush before deciding again that they had drawn a hasty conclusion." [iv]

What on earth (or elsewhere) was happening?

Forget the butterfly ballot; forget hanging chad.  Or rather, do not forget, but look past them.  They may have been diversions.

Starting in 1974, I directed many candidates' get-out-the-vote drives on Election Day.  I saw many strange things.  Among them:  dead people voting.

The usual explanation:  somebody collects names in cemeteries and registers those names to vote.  Live people then appear at the polls using the dead people's names.

Frankly, I doubt that scam occurs to a significant degree:

First, it is too risky. All it takes is one flabbergasted precinct worker confronted with a would-be voter posing as the worker's dearly departed husband and the whole scheme is torn to shreds.

Second, the cemetery ploy relies on the live person to be honest and vote the way he is told.  Well, we know about his honesty. Once the curtain closes, who knows what happens? Simply put:  buying a person is one thing; will he stay bought is another.

And third, there is another way for dead people to vote without either of the disadvantageous just mentioned

I am not excluding the cemetery ploy -- just discounting it.  How, then, do dead people vote?

Here is the scam I mentioned.  So far, it has been 100% safe; otherwise, you would know about it and would not be reading these words.  100% reliable, too.

Being unmentionable, the scam has no name. I will call it "The Long Count" in honor of the 1927 heavyweight championship fight between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney.

To wit:

Election night.  Their civic duty ended, the voters go home.  The precinct officials search the building, lock the doors.

Alone at last, the officials change hats.  An uncivic duty begins.  They open voter rosters along with a bottle or two (optional).  Forget upstream brew -- this is a Gatorade and bourbon crowd.

The roster is the document with names of registered voters that you sign immediately before you vote.

The night crew no longer cares about voters.  Their attention is fixed on non-voters -- the names with no signatures.

Roster in hand, Crew Member 1 signs the name of a person who did not vote.  He signals to Crew Member 2 standing in a voting machine.  Crew Member 2 pushes the button for straight Democrat, straight Republican, George Bush, Al Gore -- whatever.  More sophisticated election night crews pass the rosters around; otherwise, the similarity of signatures might attract attention.

Of course, when Crew Member 1 sees a blank space beside a name on a roster, he does not know if the person is alive. When he signs a name, guess what can happen?

Now you know how dead people vote.  Lots of them.  In the "right" way, too -- always.

Dead people who vote are Democrats and Republicans, men and women, old and young.  Cheating is an equal opportunity employer.

The signing of rosters and button pushing takes time.  That is why delayed reporting of election returns is the telltale heart of The Long Count.

How many votes are enough?  In Florida 2000, Bush's margin was less than 600 votes.  That question brings us to the second cause of The Long Count:

The final vote total is the topic of a fast and furious communications.  The election crew boss passes the word up the line:  we want this...we want that... He has every reason to drag out the talks, unlike the candidate.  This leads to interesting -- if not always civil -- dialogue.

Theoretically, The Long Count is possible anywhere.  However, the county clerk must be in on it, or at least be willing to look the other way.  I know, I know:  you think the clerk would not let candidates of his or her own party crash and burn.  I hate to tell you, but I have known public officials who would sell out for a baked potato at the palace.  

The Long Count leaves traces. They are so obvious they are overlooked.

To find them, go hunting where the ducks are.

Start with precincts in isolated, rural areas. Those are the easiest ones to control physically.  In Florida that means the northern counties. Two facts about them: (i) Most of them voted for Bush in 2000. (ii) I spent six years there.

The traces:

(1) Precincts with unusually high turnouts.  Look not only at 2000, but also prior elections.  Either those precincts are full of good citizens or they are full of something else.

(2) Among the group of precincts with abnormally high turnouts, look for precincts with abnormally high percentages for Bush.  If Republican candidates usually get 70% of the vote in a precinct but Bush got 90%, a red flag should go up.

(3) The clincher:  dead people voted.

When all 3 traces are present, something was -- as we say in the political trade -- "wired up."  Put The Long Count at the top of the list. A handwriting expert should be called in to examine signatures in any dubious precinct roster.

I must emphasize that even if the Bushes used The Long Count, that fact does preclude the possibility that Democrats, too, exercised it.  Look at both sides, and not just in Florida.

The three-point Florida study outlined above would make an excellent political science master's thesis. And it might solve once and for all the mystery of did-he-or-didn't-he.

Whatever the study's findings, a 23-year-old graduate student will see his or her name in lights.  Start with “60 minutes.”
_______________

[i] A similar process took place in the 1988 presidential election in Mexico.  The defrauded candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, and three researchers, José Barberán, Adriana Lopez Monjardín, and Jorge Zavala wrote an outstanding study, Radiografía del fraude (Editorial Nuestro Tiempo, Mexico, 1988).  I interviewed three of the authors, including Cárdenas.  When I informed him I was looking all over town for a copy of Radiografia, he laughed -- “and you couldn’t find it anywhere.”  He called the publisher who set aside a copy.

José Barberán noted in a letter in 1989 that the truth “will eventually come out.”  It did; today, nobody disputes that the PRI party stole the election.  Given the present state of American scholarship and journalism -- both are limited cultural maximizers -- Bush need not fear the same outcome.

[ii] Brian Knowlton, International Herald Tribune, November 7, 2000.

[iii] Brian Knowlton, "Exhausted Candidates in a Photo Finish," International Herald Tribune, November 8, 2000.

[iv] Florida has a history of prolonged ballot counts; hence the title of the article by John Vanocur, "Election may Seem Unusual, but in Some Ways It's Déjà vu all Over Again," International Herald Tribune, November 9, 2000.

I should note that I am an accredited expert witness on politics in federal court.  If I were testifying in a lawsuit, I would say what you just read.  I would also prepare the pertinent statistical exhibits.
]]>Wed, 02 May 2012 12:01:52 -0500http://lebelvedere.weebly.com/2/post/2012/05/lobbyists-4-snowflake-and-mr-beer.htmlHow can a bill have

(1)    An outstanding lobbyist.  He was an astute lawyer and former senator, knew the legislature backwards and forwards, was greatly respected by all law-makers, and was a recognized expert on the bill´s subject:  liquor laws.

(2)   A professional and perfectionist, the lobbyist had done a superb job.   Nearly all of the Democrats, who were in the majority in the House of Representatives, cosponsored the bill, which meant there were enough signatures to pass it outright.  My boss, the Majority Floor Leader, was among them.  Ballgame over.

(3)   The bill did not create a major change.  It merely put into law a practice that had been in effect for 30 years.

(4)   The bill was a special interest measure, but of very small consequence overall.  The benefactor was a strong family man, a community leader and a fervent Catholic who practiced what others preach.  He was also a fire-breathing Democrat who at the drop of a hat who would serve as finance chairman of any Democrat´s campaign.  If he liked you he would throw a dinner and raise 20-30 K; presto, for a House campaign your money problems were solved.

Yet, the bill crashed and burned?

The lobbyist and his client committed the biggest mistake possible:  the bill´s primary sponsor was, to put it diplomatically, a jerk.

The following case study is intended to show the complex relationships among lobbyists, their clients and legislative leaders.   Contrary to everything you have seen, read or heard, no street among them is entirely one-way.

Before proceeding, I had better explain something…

When is a day not 24 hours?

Answer:  when it is a “legislative day.”  Many if not most state legislatures work by legislative days, which may or may not correspond to calendar days.  To be sure, for the first and the last day of a legislative session, calendar days and legislative days coincide.  In the meantime, a legislative day is determined not by the sun or stars, but by the leadership moving to “roll the clock.”  When that happens, a new legislative day begins.  Rolling the clock is routine and can happen any minute.

You ask, what´s the deal?  Why not just have calendar days and be done with it?

 I suspect the origin of legislative days has to do with the troublesome relationship between law-makers and the law; after all, if they have the power to make laws, they must somehow be outside them – that is to say, above them.  To prove it, first, many law-makers feel a compulsion to break the law, which is happening right now someplace.  Second, to show they control laws, they place themselves in charge of time itself; they have the power to say when days end and begin.  Third and finally, the phenomenon of the legislative day allows for certain “flexibility.”  What that means in practical terms remains to be seen…


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My boss, the House Majority Floor leader, was fit to be tied, which means his remarks were unfit for publication here.

“Snowflake has done it again!  Tied up my bill in House Judiciary Committee!  This is absolutely the last straw!”

In legislatures a flake is the lowest of the low, something akin to child molesters in prison.  You can be a flaming liberal or a diehard conservative; nobody cares.  You cannot, however, be a flake.  Flakes are used and abused, to be thrown out with the rest of the trash.

Snowflake was surely one of the biggest flakes in history.  A freshman legislator in his second year, he would wait in committees for tie votes and then abstain.  The law-makers were then “invited” to his office to iron things out.  Sometimes when they returned, one person had changed his vote to allow for passage/failure – whereupon Snowflake would vote the opposite way, thus creating another tie.  Again, the law-makers were invited to his office...  At other times he would vote with the majority, which made the majority happy and the minority disgruntled.  An hour or two later, he would move to reconsider the vote, making the majority furious and the minority confused.  He never laughed or smiled; never said hello.

End product:  a congenital cold fish.

Everybody hated Snowflake, including the telephone operators and doormen.  One morning I overheard two infamous Monkey Girls (see post 3-28-2012, “Lobbyists (1):  Tips, Tricks, Traps”) discussing Snowflake.  One of them sighed, “It´s like being kissed by a snail.”

As for the “Snow”:  the allusion was to his facial complexion which was a whiter white.   I don´t know how he did it but he was a perfect candidate for a Tide commercial or a part in “Night of The Living Dead.” 

Snowflake hated me from day-one.  I was the only other Ph.D. in the place; he could not pull rank.  His was in mathematics.  The leadership speculated that Snowflake was engaging in some sort of advanced, complex mathematical strategy, e.g., he was collecting IOUs from legislators for a future run for governor.  In grad school I took a political coalition seminar centered on William Riker´s Theory of Political Coalitions.  The book’s advanced calculus was beyond me; however I knew enough to know that no Master Strategy whatsoever was occurring in Snowflake´s case. 

Why, then, was he such an obsessive obstructionist?  Inquiring minds wanted to know.  The leaders talked to him; as always, he said little or nothing.

Eventually, the conundrum was solved not in the legislature but a block away, at the local political watering hole.  I happened to see Snowflake enter the premises and slightly duck so as to avoid banging his head on the top of the doorway.  The event would have been unremarkable had the doorway not been some nine feet off the ground.  There it was, hidden in plain view -- Snowflake´s mysterious inner essence:  The Ego is Refreshed by Frequently Parading in Public.

The Majority Floor Leader stood with arms akimbo, gave me a scary look.  “See if you can´t come up with a way to get rid of that creep.  This is his last session!”

I had a new assignment.


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The following day something incredible happened:

Snowflake sponsored a bill of the floor of the House.  

Flakes usually sponsor no legislation.  To do so would show they want something.  A flake by definition wants nothing -- at least nothing identifiable.  His reasoning:  to want something definable would define him, hence weaken him.  And so, if you want something, he believes, that is your weakness.  He wants others to guess, surmise, wonder, and above all, to talk.

In short, a flake is pure process, no reality.  He is active inactivity incarnate. 

This bill was Snowflake`s pet bill.  That conclusion was obvious because the bill consisted of a convoluted mathematical formula.  What it actually did:  create a legal monopoly to sell beer at the State Fair for one man, Mr. Beer, the state distributor for a well-known brew.   Nobody else would qualify -- the bill´s hieroglyphics and verbal gymnastics made sure of it.  Mr. Beer had held the State Fair monopoly for 30 years, so nothing new would happen; the bill simply would put legal icing on the cake.

With little or no discussion, Snowflake´s bill had sailed through the House Government and Public Affairs Committee.  All the Republicans voted against it; they hated Mr. Beer almost as much as Democrats loved him.   But the GOPs were in the minority so their objections were instantly overruled.

I looked at the calendar for that day’s floor action.  Snowflake´s bill was coming up for a vote in an hour.  Given the Democrats´ unflinching support, the bill would pass by a comfortable margin; there would be a round of applause and backslapping -- the customary rite of passage when a freshman legislator gets his first bill through the House.  The rest would be history:  the bill would sail through the senate and go to the governor for his signature. 

Holding the calendar in my hand, I noticed something.  I turned to the Floor Leader:  “Confirm something.  We are 3 legislative days behind calendar days.”

“What of it?” he asked/answered.

“I see a Movida.”

We hashed out a plan…

First stop:   the Democrat Whip next door.  The Whip is well named; he rounds up his party members for floor votes.

“Make sure 10 members wander off the floor when Snowflake presents his bill.”  The Whip made us repeat the order; it was diametrically opposed to everything he had seen or done. 

Second stop:   the Minority Floor Leader's office.  That´s right -- the Republicans.

Their Leader looked up, astonished.  “What´s up?”

I pointed to Snowflake´s bill.  “Can you make sure all your members are present this morning?”

“Wait a second,” he responded, buzzing the Minority Whip next door.  “Bob isn´t going to believe this.”

Bob The GOP Whip instantly appeared.

“We are hoping you will all be there and vote against Snowflake´s bill,” I explained.

The Minority Floor leader sensed a trap.  “What if we vote against it?” he asked:  “You guys have the votes to beat us.”

“Don´t worry,” I responded.  “That won´t happen.  It´s wired up.”

The two Republican leaders looked me up and down in disbelief.  The Floor Leader laughed:  “Snowflake and Mr. Beer go down together.  It´s rare to get two for the price of one.”

A few minutes later, at 10:00, the floor session started.   The roll call showed all House members were present.

Snowflake´s bill was first on the agenda.  Freshmen legislators often present 2 bills in succession; the strategy is to let the first bill get debated, trashed, knocked out.  Thereafter the legislators pause, feel guilty about so mercilessly beating up their poor little colleague´s bill, hence they pass -- often unanimously -- his second bill.  The second bill is of course the “real” bill.  In this manner all sorts of trash is passed which normally wouldn´t get to first base.  Snowflake had no phony “lead” bill to sacrifice, which meant he and his lobbyist were absolutely, positively, definitely sure of passage of Mr. Beer´s bill.

Snowflake, as usual, didn`t have much to say.  Bored, boring, he mumbled and rambled from a text the lobbyist has prepared.  The Republicans then took the floor and fervently denounced the bill as a monopolistic measure detrimental to other beer companies in particular* and to capitalism in general.  In the meantime, Democrats quietly slipped out the back floor.

To be a legislative leader, you must know how to count.  I watched the electronic vote tally board light up for the vote.  The Whip had not done his job brilliantly.  Because of the absent Democrats, the “Nays” barely outnumbered the “Ayes.”

The Floor Leader and I watched anxiously one light in particular:  Snowflake`s.  It was on “Aye” until the last two seconds, when it switched to “Nay.”  His bill failed by 3 votes.

Why on earth -- you are no doubt wondering -- would Snowflake vote against his own bill? 

After a saccharin memorial honoring somebody´s hometown basketball team loaded with prospering B squaders, the Floor Leader moved to roll the clock twice.  Presto:  two legislative days flew by in a few seconds.

We shook hands.  The trap was set.

In that afternoon´s floor session, all house members were present.  I watched Snowflake obsessively count off the Democrats, then grab his microphone and demand to be recognized.

“Mr. Speaker,” he intoned, “having voted with the majority, I now move that the vote by which House Bill (number) failed to pass this House now be reconsidered.”

“Gentleman from (Snowflake´s county), you are out of order,” the Speaker said.

“Mr. Speaker, what…what do you mean, `Out of order`?  I voted with the majority!  That gives me the right to move to reconsider the vote by – “

“Motions to reconsider must be made the same or the following day, Gentleman from (Snowflake´s county),” the Speaker explained.

Snowflake was stupefied.  “This is the same day, Mr. Speaker!  The vote in question took place this morning!  Four hours ago!  I was right here!  In fact, I was the one who --”

The Speaker´s patience evaporated.  “´Day´ in this case is legislative day, not calendar day.”

I watched in bemused horror as Snowflake stood there with ass in hand.   Finally, his facial complexion changed -- to caboose red.  I say horror because if he had a machinegun he would have mowed down everybody in the place, visitors and press included.


                                                                                *          *          *


                                                                                    Epilogue 


A few beads were left to string.

I went to see Mr. Beer.

I knew him well from past campaigns.  I would go to his office and gave him the latest, top secret poll results to which, as Finance chief, he was fully entitled.  At the appropriate moment, I would look at the floor. 

“We´re running low on beer at the headquarters.  I was wondering if -- ”

At this point Mr. Beer would invariably cut me off.  A prepared speech appeared. “Tom, I´m a wholesaler.  I can´t sell beer to private individuals.  It´s illegal. The reason is I could easily undercut every retailer out there, put them out of business.  However, I can give you all the free beer you want.”

“How about 5 cases?”

“Fine, Tom.  I´ll have my men put them in your car.”  Off I went.

I always dreaded going to his office, not because of Mr. Beer who was always a pleasure to talk with, but because of the neighborhood where his beer distributorship was located.  Until you got inside the front gate, you were taking your life in your hands.

For this particular meeting, I had called ahead.  I knew we were in for a serious session when I noticed all the window blinds were shut.

I apologized profusely for the untimely death of his bill.  I told him his lobbyist had done an excellent job and had nothing to do with the defeat.  However, the simple fact of the matter was that because Snowflake was the primary sponsor, the bill was in trouble.  I described in great detail how Snowflake was a chronic, neurotic nuisance.

Mr. Beer nodded knowingly, sighed.  “Tom, you are confirming what everybody else has been saying.  The guy can´t hack it.  I let him sponsor the bill because he married one of my in-laws.  That´s the only connection.”

I told Mr. Beer that the Majority Floor Leader had talked with the governor.  The State Fair was run by a commission of 5 people appointed by the governor for staggered 6-year terms.  The commission was already stacked with Mr. Beer´s men.  The governor promised to renew their appointments.  Thus, Mr. Beer´s de facto monopoly was safe for many years to come.  In the end, the only thing Mr. Beer lost was legal, formal approval.

“I can live with that,” he said.  I mentioned the possibility of introducing the same bill in the senate.   He shook his head:  “No need for that now.”

Which meant there was no longer any need for Snowflake.  A week later Mr. Beer turned up the heat; Snowflake melted, declined to run for re-election.  I later heard he divorced Mr. Beer´s in-law, left town, disappeared.

I can´t help but wonder what happened to Snowflake.  I don´t think he ever appeared in a Tide commercial or horror movie.  Sometimes I picture him in a fish canning factory in Alaska, working alongside a book editor who turned down Harry Potter. 

Sitting in Mr. Beer´s dim office decorated with a few dusty sports team trophies and off-center Chamber of Commerce plaques, it was hard to believe he was one of the wealthiest men in the state.  By the same token, it was easy to believe he had other priorities than impressing people or selling beer.

Mr. Beer showed me to the door, saying he would call the lobbyist and tell him everything was all right.  He even acknowledged that the fault was his own, that the lobbyist had questioned Mr. Beer´s choice of primary sponsors, but Mr. Beer had insisted.  I reiterated that the lobbyist was the best man for the job, that he was a walking encyclopedia of liquor laws from Alabama to Zimbabwe, and that legislators could always count on him for fast, reliable information.

Mr. Beer shook his head.  “Damn.  I knew all along…Flake...You should see the guy at family reunions.  At least, that´s what they used to be.”

I wasn´t sure Mr. Beer was truly satisfied with the outcome until he opened the door.

“Tom, do you need any beer?”

                                                                                Post epilogue


It is there, somewhere, in an official House of Representatives Journal.

We have all heard the rule that nobody is perfect.  We also have heard that there is an exception to every rule.

When Snowflake voted against his own bill, he flaked out on everybody -- including himself.

100%.  Perfect.

_______________

*No beer distributor ever stepped up to the microphone and complained about Mr. Beer´s State Fair monopoly.  I suspect a secret quid pro quo was in place:  Mr. Beer got the State Fair in exchange for…

NOTE:  as always, in order to perplex and confound the enemy, some details in the above account have been changed.
]]>Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:03:33 -0500http://lebelvedere.weebly.com/2/post/2012/04/lobbyists-3-patton-boggs-and-torture.htmlNOTE:  please read previous posts (1) and (2) on lobbyists.



Strange isn´t it, how after a war ends, the winners end up imitating the losers?

As noted in Lobbyists (2), Ecuador paid the American lobbying firm Patton Boggs $65,000 a month for services.

Under existing circumstances, I would not hire Patton Boggs if Patton Boggs paid me $65,000 a day.

The reason:  Patton Boggs condones torture.

Patton Boggs has, according to its own reckoning, “600 lawyers and nonlawyer specialists to provide our clients with the competitive edge required to succeed.” 

600…definitely one of the big lobbyist firms.  As for competitive edge:

I am going to pass over the Metabolife and “The Price of Sugar” controversies Patton Boggs was mired in.  I´m also not going to mess with conflict of interest allegations against it.

Let´s cut to the chase.  Or rather, the Fox hunt.

In a moment I will invite you, Dear Reader, to watch a short video.  First, however, as a trailer for the coming attraction, I offer two clarifications: 

(1)   The words enhanced interrogation techniques are Bush/Obama newspeak for torture.  To cite the most-publicized case:

(2)   Waterboarding is torture -- not something else.  You disagree?  Then why don`t you volunteer to be waterboarded?  You aren`t…afraid, are you?  If you need less drastic convincing, you can watch waterboarding being performed on someone else.

Now, click on the Fox Network video, “How Did U.S. Get Information for Pakistan Raid?”   The broadcast was made on May 3, 2011, 8:41, two days after bin Laden was killed.  As for its contents, look below the video:  “Patton Boggs partner Scott Louis Weber discusses the role of enhanced interrogation techniques in Osama bin Laden raid.”

I assume you watched the video.

Note, again, the topic for discussion, “How did U.S. get information for Pakistan raid?”  The broadcast does not answer the question.  Rather, it presents catch-as-catch-can three alternative explanations: 

Version I.  This is the version we have all heard.  It is served up by Patton Boggs man Scott Lewis Weber.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,* Number 3 in al-Qaeda, was captured in 2003 and sent to Guantanamo.  He was waterboarded 183 times.  After four years he broke and gave the name of the courier of bin Laden.  The courier was trailed to bin Laden´s compound in Pakistan.

Version II is offered by Dan Gerstein (note:  for a more complete presentation, click on this New York Times article).  Waterboarding did not break Khalid.  Rather, after “winning his trust and from standard interrogation techniques,” Khalid gave the name of the courier. 

Version III:  offered by White House spokesman Jay Carney.  He says “it simply strains credulity to suggest that a piece of information that may or may not have been gathered eight years ago somehow directly led to a successful mission on Sunday [that killed bin Laden].”  Implied therein is that both Versions I and II are wrong; numerous sources and techniques were involved.  Note:  Carney does not deny that waterboarding was used, nor does he confirm or deny (“may or may not”) that the courier was the key.

Version IV is offered here: 

Versions I, II and III are wrong.   Version III comes closest to the truth. 

The story that bin Laden was tracked down by following his courier makes as much sense as a screen door on a submarine: 

Put yourself in bin Laden`s shoes.  (In a minute we will see why Patton Boggs man Weber is unable to perform this essential role.)  You need to stay in contact with your organization but must hide out; the U.S. has a $25 million price tag on your head.  You cannot pick up the phone or send an email or use Western Union; you must use a courier to contact your people.  There it is:  the indispensable courier is the weak link in the chain to you.

In 2003, one of your top lieutenants, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is captured.  You know this because…there he is on CNN.  You also know Khalid will be tortured and sooner or later give the name of the courier.

Common sense dictates that you…get another courier.

Boggs man Weber notes he has “several” security clearances.  He says that even so, he is only entitled to know a small part of what happens.

I am sure the Secret Servicemen and military personnel cavorting in Cartagena hotel rooms with hookers had security clearances of the very highest order.  What their quicky and quirky "Dirty Dozen" remake  proved, unfortunately, does not need to be proven:  common sense trumps security clearances every time.

In truth, no security clearance whatsoever is needed to answer the question, "How did U.S. get information for Pakistan raid?"

Somebody in bin Laden`s camp betrayed him.  And somebody in the U.S. government, probably the C.I.A., dreamed up the story of the courier to protect the informant so that he/she could take the reward money and live happily ever after.  I think the White House realized that the courier story is patently preposterous, and therefore invented as an alternative the many-sources version voiced by Carney. 

An intriguing question remains.  Did the C.I.A. or U.S. military kill the informant during the raid (or elsewhere), thereby avoiding the $25 million payout?  Instead of reporting on Michelle Obama´s toned arms, the U.S. media should find out if the reward was paid.  If it wasn´t, where is the money?  Cartagena?


                                                                                *          *          *


Time to focus on the arguments of Scott Lewis Weber, Boggs´ man. 

Before beginning, one can argue that Weber was acting on his own on the Fox broadcast, speaking as an individual -- that he did not represent Patton Boggs.   But look closer:  beneath the video you will see the words “Uploaded by Patton Boggs May 4, 2011.” Weber, then, represented Patton Boggs.  He is Boggsman.

1.       “We´re not dealing with angels.  We´re dealing with the exact opposite.”

We are dealing with devils, then.  Unlike Biblical times, there are now multiple devils.  What caused the upsurge, the proliferation?

Boggsman’s assertion is a residue of the Christian crusades underlying and contaminating over 90% of Western analyses of terrorism.  I will not repeat facts and arguments presented elsewhere.  The Source of Terrorism:  Middle Class Rebellion analyzed in depth The Official Explanation -- Islam is the source of terrorism -- and showed why it makes no sense whatsoever.

I wish the nonsense ended there...

Boggsman`s summary judgment of terrorists as devils cuts off at the knees any ability to put oneself in terrorists´ shoes, to think and feel as they think and feel, to see the world through their eyes.  Patton Boggs and Homeland Security, you may have fun venting your spleen, but you will never thereby arrive at an understanding of your adversary.  

2.      Boggsman:  “And counter terrorism is an ugly business because you´re dealing with ugly psychotic people that don´t respond to ordinary stimuli.”

Because.  Boggsman´s working assumption becomes apparent.  Counterterrorism would not be ugly, i.e., use torture, if terrorists were not ugly psychotic people.  Thus, it is their fault if torture is used.  If only they would respond to normal stimuli then waterboards, etc., would not be needed.

There is not a shred of evidence to support Boggsman`s contention that terrorists are psychotic  people.  On the contrary: 3 decades of research weigh against him.  The foremost example:   Marc Sageman,  a psychiatrist who worked for the C.I.A.:  “The failure of mental illness as an explanation for terrorism is consistent with three decades of research that has been unable to detect any significant pattern of mental illness in terrorists. Indeed, these studies have indicated that terrorists are surprisingly normal in terms of mental health.”

Surprisingly normal.  In viewing terrorists  as psychotics, Boggsman is alone, twisting in the wind, in total disagreement with scholars and his C.I.A. minders.**  The finding that terrorists are suprisingly normal corresponds to my own personal experiences (see below).

Psychotic:  here Boggsman makes a singularly revealing word choice.  Tell me: do terrorists suffer from prominent hallucinations?  Disorganized speech?  Disorganized or catatonic behavior?  Those are recognized symptoms of psychotic people.  It appears that Boggsman commits a common error any Psych 101 student will be quick to correct:  he confuses  psychotic with psychopathic.  (For an introductory discussion of the difference, go to this article.)

I have worked with psychotics and psychopaths.  I don´t think there is a mental health professional in the country who will support the conclusion that psychotic = psychopathic, any more than a single real terrorism expert will support Boggsman`s notion that terrorists are psychotics. 

We come to a startling but necessary conclusion:

Let us return to Boggsman´s premise:  because terrorists are psychotics who don`t respond to normal stimuli, extraordinary stimuli -- torture – are necessary.  Well, since terrorists are not psychotics and hence do respond to normal stimuli, Boggsman´s entire case for supporting torture evaporates. 

Before leaving this point, it is important to note that the C.I.A., which views terrorists as mentally normal, nevertheless tortured them.  (Khalid was waterboarded 183 times.)  Why? 

As I wrote in the post of 4-22-2011:

“I oppose torture in interrogations.  Time and again, poor results show that anybody will say anything just to stop the pain.  Which poses this question:  sadism aside, why inflict it?  The real purpose of torture, I submit, isn't information or confessions, but rather to cement the solidarity of the group performing the torture.  Thus, torture serves as an indicator that the group practicing it had severe unity problems to begin with, long before the first victim entered the room. “

Watch the masked torturers in the waterboarding video cited above.  There it is, right in front of you.  A unity, a team, a commonality,  a shared interest.  A solidarity.

3.       Boggsman:  ”They took 4 years to break these people down in Guantanamo Bay before they got the identity of the courier.  That shows you the steadfast resolve of the folks that we have working for us…”

I discussed torture with political prisoners who had been tortured.  One major finding:

Everybody knows and accepts that torture eventually will make you talk.  So, why not just give the authorities your information and be done with it?

The answer:  timing.  If you are being tortured, your goal is to hold out as long as possible so as to give your collaborators and families the time to flee, hide, change operations.  If Boggsman is correct in saying that Khalid identified the courier four years after being captured, then Khalid did exactly what he was supposed to do:   stall.  By the time the U.S. got the courier´s name, the courier had been changed (probably more than once), making Khalid´s “revelation” worthless.

Steadfast resolve?  There is another interpretation of the time flow.  The four years needed to get information shows in demonstrable terms a conclusion noted in a former post:  when it comes to terrorists, the C.I.A. has no idea whom it is dealing with.

Come on, you say.  You find my conclusion exaggerated at best, false at worst?  Indeed, I know of only one other group in the world that agrees with it…the C.I.A.

The post of 4-28-2011 on Khalid:

“Welcome aboard a trainload of discrepancies, denials,  distortions.  In all the slag, a thimbleful of truth glistens:  the CIA simply did not know how to handle terrorists. The CIA made that admission in a New York Times article.

´“I asked, ´What are we going to do with these guys when we get them?´  recalled A. B. Krongard, the No. 3 official at the C.I.A. from March 2001 until 2004.  “I said, ´We’ve never run a prison. We don’t have the languages. We don’t have the interrogators.”´

The CIA's resounding inexperience, plus a political pressure-cooker atmosphere to ‘do something,’ doomed the agency to follow the path of least resistance.  The Times article continues:

‘In its scramble, the agency made the momentous decision to use harsh methods the United States had long condemned. With little research or reflection, it borrowed its techniques from an American military training program modeled on the torture repertories of the Soviet Union and other cold-war adversaries, a lineage that would come to haunt the agency.’”

Steadfast resolve, as Boggsman claims, or hopeless obstinacy?  Take your pick -- only one is right.  The four years needed to get information only confirms that the C.I.A. simply did not understand terrorists.  Likewise, waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques favored by Boggsman also demonstrated -- at least 183 times -- the C.I.A. did not understand terrorists. 

Dear Reader:  you are,  I hope,  wondering, “Yeah, but what´s the alternative?”  Go to my post of 06/23/2010 (“Who Are You?”).  You will see how a French interrogator broke a hardcore terrorist in a matter of minutes.  No waterboarding was necessary -- just good old-fashioned common sense and intuition about people.

We come to the core of the matter.  Boggsman:

4.      “We need to get out fingers deep, we need to get down in the mud. That´s how you get the intelligence that you need to be able to go and find Osama bin Laden.”

I was surprised by that direct, naked, no-holds-barred, let-ér-rip statement.  No lawyer weasel words, no fudge factor anywhere.   Torture, pure and simple -- that´s how you get information you need:  period.

But Boggsman goes further.  He is not content with extolling torture; he must deny and bully anybody who disagrees.  When Dan Gerstein asserts that Khalid confessed after winning his trust and using non-torture techniques, Boggsman butts in, cuts him off:  “You don´t really know that because you weren´t there with the interrogators...There is only so much that those of us on the outside know…”

Well, Boggsman, you weren´t there either.  By your own admission, you have only a small piece of the puzzle.  Maybe, the C.I.A. gave Khalid candy and flowers:  Boggsman, you don´t really know because you weren´t there.  Incredible but true:   Boggsman leaps from his own self-confessed, nearly total ignorance to a full and complete knowledge that torture is absolutely necessary.

There is nothing new in Boggsman´s flight of fancy.  Any extreme viewpoint or feeling always contains its opposite, albeit latently.  Strange, isn´t it...that coexistence of opposite extremes characterizes middle class rebel ideology, the platform from which terrorism takes off.  That point was analyzed at length in The Source of Terrorism. 


                                                                                *          *          *


I don`t know when Boggsman was born, but I guess the 1960s.  The simple fact of the matter is, in 1969-70, while he and his Homeland Security colleagues were being toilet-trained, I was interviewing political prisoners in the infamous Lecumberri Prison in Mexico City.  By today`s official U.S. government reasoning, they would be defined as terrorists.  (Note:  I disagree with all official definitions.***)

Of course, as Boggsman shows, anybody can say anything.  To prove I was there:

How did I get inside?  It’s impossible. 

Well, not entirely.  A close friend´s brother-in-law was a political prisoner.  Had my friend not been a lawyer working as an Agente del Ministerio Público in the Procuraduría (Attorney General´s Office) in Mexico D.F., I could not -- indeed, would not -- have made the journey.  Would not because between the Mexican Secret Police and the prisoners, you don`t stand a chance.

Sunday was visitors´ day.  The authorities write down your name and address and give you a chip.  “Don`t lose it,” my friend warned, “ If you do, they won´t let you out.”  I kept the chip in my hot little hand the entire time.

At the end of the walkway to the cellblocks, a man was cheerfully greeting as many visitors as possible.  A gatekeeper...

“Where did you get the beautiful suit?” I asked him.

“Right here!” he responded to a round of laugher.

I later learned he was a drug kingpin.  His “suit” was a standard prison uniform that he had sent to Italy.  They had cut it up and sewn it together, transforming the striped pattern into a stunning design, then tailor-made it.  But why was he greeting everybody like a politician running for office?

The deal was this:  the kingpin spent Sunday afternoons greeting visitors so as to make his presence known -- in exchange for being released the rest of the week.  In that manner, he had his freedom and the authorities escaped media scrutiny of this tourist prisoner.  The next time you play Monopoly take a look at the get out of jail free card; you will grasp instantly the essence of this arrangement.

They didn`t call the Lecumberri "The Black Palace" for nothing.  The cellblocks formed a circle around a dilapidated tower.  They were something out of Dante`s inferno: gigantic gates with huge Alice in Wonderland chains and padlocks.  Crazed, stoned prisoners grabbed at everything and everybody passing by.  My friend said if you wanted to speak to somebody in one of those cellblocks, the prisoners would bring him to the front gate and you would talk between the bars.  You could not go inside; you would not last a minute.  With growing unease, I approached the political prisoners’ cellblock, making sure my chip had not dematerialized.

Their area was entirely different.  It consisted of separate cottages, a few men per cottage.  Sparse, but neat as pins; no army barracks could be cleaner – suggesting a tight organization.  There was even a garden, plants, greenery.  Not bad, I thought, until I noticed a dried blood smear on the wall and a smashed transom in the first cottage.  The prior week the political prisoners had held a hunger strike.  To break it, the authorities threw a party in which they loaded up common prisoners with booze and dope, then opened the gate.  Finding the door to this cottage blocked, they tried to climb through the transom.

They failed.  The political prisoners had weapons, even cameras.  

My contact was Federico Emery Ulloa,  head of the Maoists.  The baddest of the bad, according to government logic.  My friend had introduced me to him a few years earlier at a fiesta in Dolores Hidalgo.  We chatted.  Apparently convinced I was serious, he presented me to the other prisoners.  Later, we corresponded.  I mention him by name only because he passed on in 2004.  For the same reason I will give the name of one other prisoner, Dr. Fausto Trejo, a psychiatrist.

Before going to Mexico, a professor and member of my Ph.D. committee, who had worked with George Luckacs in Hungary, reaffirmed the core of my dissertation project.  “Those guys won`t want to talk about Marx.  Rimbaud, Baudelaire, the Dadaists, Breton, Max Ernst, nihilism, surrealism, Lautreamont:  that´s who they´re into.” 

Indeed, the prisoners never discussed the War in Viet Nam or Khrushchev.  Once they were on text -- debating why the archetypal rebel Arthur Rimbaud turned into a mild mannered coffee exporter -- there was a volcano.  We tapped into an international subculture of revolt that nobody had pieced together.

Understanding that subculture is essential to understanding middle class rebellion and its derivative, terrorism.  In particular, if you haven´t read Albert Camus´ The Rebel, not only are you never going to get to first base, you aren´t even in the ballpark where the game is being played.  If Cartagena is any indication, the Secret Service and Homeland Security are not in the country, much less the state or city, where the ballpark is located.

On the way out, the drug kingpin asked me what I thought of “his” Lecumberri.  “In a place like this,” I said, “you don`t want to look back.  You may have a knife in it.”  He and his body guards judged this remark to be humorous, made me repeat it.  An initiation rite had been performed; you had to show you would be a fun person to get drunk with.

After returning to the U.S., I went over the material with my Ph.D. committee.  Since we were unable to determine what the repercussions would be on the prisoners and their families if the Mexican government disapproved of what I wrote, I dropped the project.

The material was not lost, however.  It is there -- all of it -- in The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion. 


                                                                            *          *          *


Get ready -- torture and waterboarding are about to fly off Internet pages into mainstream media headlines.  The trial of Kahlid Sheika Mohammad will start soon.

For a preview, see my post of 4-22-2011:

“Not surprisingly, KSM now disavows his 2007 testimony, claiming it was obtained under torture.  A captive of his own unconscious ambivalence, in typical middle class rebel fashion KSM can't come up with anything better than to push the ´yes´ and ´no´ buttons simultaneously.   He thereby conjures up a dilemma:  was he lying then or is he lying now?  We've already seen this tactic, the open secret, in the case of Luis Posada Carriles, a.k.a. Bambi (see post of 3/27/2011).  ´Aye´ as well as ´nay´:  that is how KSM votes ´maybe.´ Ambiguity, however  -- not Guantanamo -- is the middle class rebel's hell.  What the hell, he might as well make the most of it.  It's called using the tools at one's disposal.  And KSM does it; he uses ambiguity as a lever to gain mechanical advantage.  The latter, by the way, is something he is well versed in; he has a degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University (1986). “

We come to the punch line:

Patton Boggs, when it comes to terrorists, you don`t know what you are talking about.  Neither does the C.I.A.  The only difference is that the latter agrees with that conclusion. 

An error acknowledged is an error abolished.  Torture degrades America,  but it degrades even more those who perform and advocate it.  We call upon Patton Boggs to repudiate categorically (1) torture in general**** and (2) waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques in particular.  We also (3) call upon Scott Lewis Weber to retract his offensive and inaccurate statements in support of torture made on the Fox Network.

We will be pleased to print the repudiation and retraction here. 

Yes, I am aware that, on occasion, Patton Boggs defended victims of torture.  In that regard, it is now apparent that nobody explained something to its 600 lawyers and specialists, so we will do it here:

Albert Camus poses this hypothetical case:  you see a bully beating up a small guy.  You step aside, saying you are neutral.  In fact, you are not neutral: you are on the side of the bully.  Patton Boggs, you want us to believe by your client list that you represent torturers and tortured alike, that you are “impartial” and "neutral" – just a hired gun.  By that fact alone, you are neither:  you are on the side of the torturer.

Patton Boggs, are you in or are you out?  You can´t vote “maybe” on torture -- although (curious coincidence) like somebody else, you can try.

In conclusion, the Fox Network broadcast inadvertently showed the astonishing ignorance of terrorists that prevails in U.S. security circles. But even more astounding, the broadcast displayed that ignorance advertently:

K.T. McFarland, ex-Pentagon employee: “This is a different kind of adversary we have…We don´t know what his ideology is.”

Sorry, K.T. -- (i) there is precious little that is new about the adversary and (ii) we know his ideology only too well.

A RAND study (see below) pointed the way forward in its final conclusion about terrorism: “Other explanations appear to be needed.”   Patton Boggs et al, you might start looking for them where they are -- not where they are not.  Torture, to mention one.

_______________

*See this blog´s three-part series on Khalid:  4-22-2011 “Make Whatever You Want,” 4-28-2011 “Catch 23,” and 5-22-2011 “The Showdown.” 

A mechanical engineer, Khalid is a vintage case of the middle class rebel analyzed in The Source of Terrorism:  Middle Class Rebellion.

** Here is Claude Berrebi’s review of the serious literature on terrorism and mental health.  It is from Social Science for Counterterrorism:  Putting The Pieces Together, (pp. 167-169), published by the National Defense Research Institute of The RAND Corporation, The publication, prepared for the Secretary of Defense, is available at:  http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG849.pdf

Mental health is crucially important in evaluating whether rational choice

behavior is a good model. If terrorists were disproportionately

mentally ill, there would be no point in searching for indications of

rational behavior or in using rational-choice theory to analyze such

behavior. In such a case, evidence about the characteristics of terrorists

that seemingly contradicted potential rational-choice explanations

would not be puzzling. On the other hand, if we were to find out that

terrorists, including suicide terrorists, are not typically mentally ill, we

would be compelled to continue our search for better explanations,

keeping in mind that costly behavior does not equal crazy behavior.27

Therefore, I have searched for evidence regarding the mental health of

terrorist operatives.28

Martha Crenshaw (1981) has concluded from her studies that:

No single motivation or personality can be valid for all circumstances.

What limited data we have on individual terrorists . . .

suggest that the outstanding common characteristic of terrorists

is their normality.

Ariel Merari, a psychologist who has studied the psychological

profiles of suicide terrorists since 1983 through media reports that contained

biographical details, interviews with the suicides’ families, and

interviews with jailed would-be suicide attackers, concluded that they

were unlikely to be psychologically abnormal (Merari, 2006). Hudson

and Majeska (1999) also suggest that the-terrorists-as-mentally-ill

approach appears to be contradicted (pp. 20–21).

Similarly, in a study of suicide terrorism, Scott Atran (2004) finds

that:

Overall, suicide terrorists exhibit no socially dysfunctional attributes

(fatherless, friendless, jobless) or suicidal symptoms. Inconsistent

with economic theories of criminal behavior, they do not

kill themselves simply out of hopelessness or a sense of having

nothing to lose.

Marc Sageman (2006) finds a near-total lack of mental disorders

in his sample of al-Qaeda–affiliated individual terrorists. He explains

that this makes sense, as individuals with mental disorders are usually

weeded out early from any clandestine organization for security

reasons.

Anat Berko, a criminologist and colonel in the IDF who studied

the inner world of suicide bomber terrorists through a series of prison

interviews she conducted with ‘would-be’ suicide bombers whose mission

was foiled either directly by the IDF or by some technical failure

in the mechanism of the explosives they were carrying, noted (Berko,

2007):

. . . many of the suicide bombers do not have financial

difficulties . . . not only do they generally not have economic

problems, but most of the suicide bombers also do not have an

emotional disturbance that prevents them from differentiating

between reality and imagination. . . . (p. 9)

In their work on the psychology of terrorism, Kruglanski and

Fishman (2006), reach similar conclusions:

Terrorists do not seem to be characterized by a unique set of

psychological traits or pathologies. . . . The vast heterogeneity

of terrorism’s users is consistent with the ‘‘tool’’ view, affording

an analysis of terrorism in terms of means-ends psychology. The

‘‘tool’’ view implies conditions under which potential perpetrators

may find terrorism more or less appealing. . . .

In an article that reviews the state of the art of available theories

and data regarding the psychology of terrorism and relies on data and

theoretical material gathered from the world’s unclassified literature,

Victoroff (2005) concludes that terrorists are psychologically extremely

heterogeneous. He explains that whatever the stated goals and group

identity, every terrorist, like every person, is motivated by his own complex

of psychosocial experiences and traits. I interpret his conclusion

to mean that we should not expect terrorists to be disproportionally

insane.29

 

Summary

 

In summary, individual terrorists do not fit the profile of poor, ignorant,

or religious individuals with low opportunity cost and no valued

marketable skills; nor are they mentally unstable. The various “root

causes” that have long been discussed may well be at work, but in complicated

and sometimes nonintuitive ways, and apparently not in decisive

ways. Other explanations appear to be needed.

 

The RAND Corporation is closely associated with the C.I.A.  Thus, in disputing the RAND`s conclusion that terrorists are not mentally ill, Boggsman is picking a fight not just with scholars and medical doctors, he is taking on the epicenter of the United States security establishment.

***My definition, analyzed at length in The Source of Terrorism (p. 141):

A terrorist is most often a middle class rebel (1) experiencing magnified marginal and/or transitional conditions, who (2) voluntarily (3) goes through certain rites of passage, among which are (4) clique membership and (5) a deliberate decision to commit a criminal act which is almost always (6) violent and usually (7) murder, in (8) the name of higher intentions or convictions without (9) retaining consciously the ambiguity of his criminal act and his higher intentions/convictions. He manifests powerful, unconscious, ambivalent emotions in two ways: (10) converting his intentions/convictions into idées fixes or absolute truths, the opposite extreme from ambiguity, and (11) wielding uncertainty as a weapon. That uncertainty is total, as demonstrated by the fact that (12) everybody -- allies, non-combatants, even himself -- is a potential victim. A concluding note:  it is the syndrome, the running together of components, which counts -- not components in isolation.

****Regrettably, the Fox broadcast is no isolated incident.  For previous Patton Boggs ties to torture, see their Guatemalan interlude and work for the Egyptian military under Mubarak.]]>Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:17:06 -0500http://lebelvedere.weebly.com/2/post/2012/04/two-hoaxes.htmlWe are ready to post Part 3 in our series on lobbyists.  However, two hoaxes are currently making the rounds.  

Both purport to strengthen democracy; both undermine it.

I.  The Organization of American States Summit in Cartagena, Colombia.  This meeting of our hemisphere´s presidents has been permanently soiled by 11 United States Secret Service and military personnel whooping it up in hotel rooms with prostitutes, booze and who knows what else.

For those who view security clearances as merits, I am sure the 11 had the highest clearances possible; look what they bought us.   "Gidget Goes Bonkers"  playing in a theater only too near you.  The soundtrack is from 1978:  "Sea, Sex and Sun" by Serge Gainsbourg.  You don`t have to know French to get the idea.  You do, however, have to have some knowledge of the ways of the world.  In that regard, the Secret Service is obviously in need of instruction.

Along with presidents, 700 business chiefs were invited to the summit.  As Banacek observed, when an owl shows up at a mouse picnic, it´s not there to enter the sack races.

In contradistinction to the 700, the United States vetoed an invitation to Cuba to attend the summit.  The reason:  Cuba is not a “democracy” and consequently is unacceptable.  Indeed, in the preambule to the OAS Charter its signatories declare:

“Convinced that representative democracy is an indispensable condition for the stability, peace and development of the region;” …

President Rafael Correa of Ecuador boycotted the Summit because Cuba was not invited.  Members of ALBA, the Andean nations, have announced they will not attend another Summit unless Cuba is invited.

Is the OAS cracking?  Going the way of the League of Nations?  Eastern Airlines?  Lehman Brothers?  Did President Correa do the right thing not to attend?

The dispute over Cuba brings to a light a fundamental issue discussed numerous times in this blog. (See in particular the post of October 24, 2011, “The Second American Revolution:  Part 9.  The Great American Illusion”):

The United States does not have a democracy.  It never did; it never will.  Its governmental system was a Политей – a polity, or hybrid of oligarchy and democracy moderated by a middle class and tending toward democracy.  For political reasons, the Founding Fathers (notably James Madison)  substituted the word "republic" for "polity." 

In 2008-2009,  the American polity went the way of all polities.   Aristotle had warned that the major threat to a polity is posed not by outside enemies, not by the poor, not by the middle class, but by the wealthy:

“[Forgetting the claims of equity], they not only give more power to the well-to-do, but they also deceive the people [by fobbing them off with sham rights]. Illusory benefits must always produce real evils in the long run; and the encroachments made by the rich [under cover of such devices] are more destructive to a constitution than those of the people.”

(Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle, translated and edited by Ernest Barker, Oxford University Press, New York, 1962,  op.cit, p. 186. (Book IV, Chapter XII).  Brackets made by translator.)

If, under the glare of TV lights and astonished eyes worldwide, billions of  Bush-Obama dollars handed over to American oligarchs were not "encroachments made by the rich," what are?

Founded in 1789, the American polity, which changed world history and was the envy of the world, died in 2008-2009.  As Aristotle predicted, the polity was replaced by an oligarchy with democratic accessories -- hats, gloves, wallet, shoes.

The OAS has a wonderful opportunity to lead the world.  I have not examined all of its members´ governments; however, I venture to say that among them polities prevail, and that there isn´t a single democracy.  (Democracy is a direction, not a place. A north doesn´t exist:   you will never get there.  You can, however, move more or less north).  All the OAS has to do is openly acknowledge a self-evident truth – it will be the first time in world history – by changing its Charter, replacing the world "democracy" with "polity."

That admission would bring to light a basic truth.  Cuba´s problem isn´t that it is not a “democracy” – again, there isn`t a single democracy among the OAS members.  Rather, Cuba does not have a polity because it does not have an oligarchy, viz., a rich class.  No oligarchy, then, is the real reason why Cuba is unacceptable to the United States -- a nation now ruled by an oligarchy.

The definition of "hoax" by Merriam Webster:  "to trick into believing or accepting as genuine something false and often preposterous."

"Convinced that representative democracy is an indispensable condition"..., the OAS Charter declares.   Preposterous -- again, there isn´t a single "democracy" in the OAS.  Will the OAS admit that obvious fact, proclaim that it is an organization of polities, and start to lead?  Will it stop being a dead puppet show? 

Ask the indispensable 700.

II. Reapportionment lawsuits.

I wrote in the post of 10-3-2011 (“The Second American Revolution.  Part 7:  Reapportionment:  In Search of The Silver Bullet”):

“If you are very quiet, you will hear knives coming out.

The 2010 census is finished.  Reapportionment wars and lawsuits are just around the corner.  Expensive -- hideously expensive -- lawsuits.  Throughout America, lawyers in hair suits are making frenetic phone calls, holding hectic Monday morning strategy sessions, rounding up plaintiffs, corralling expert witnesses.

Economic catastrophe is staring America in the face.  No catastrophe has ever blinked.  Is there a way your tax money can be saved for something other than reapportionment wars?  Public education?  Infrastructure?  Social services?  Law enforcement?  Debt service?  Environmental protection?  Health care?  Energy conservation?”

We are barely into the new decade, and a forest of knives has sprouted.  According to The New York Times,  reapportionment lawsuits have been filed in over half of the states.

Among them is New Mexico, one of the poorest states in the nation. Five million dollars are being sought in legal fees.  We looked at that state´s reapportionment problems of 1982 in the post cited above.

Apparently, in the intervening 30 years nothing has been learned.  Zero.  Rien.  Nix, null, nada.  In reapportionment work all over the country, the American taxpayer is not just being taken to the cleaners; he is now working for them...

I have reapportioned districts from congress on down.  In my opinion:

(1) N.M. overpaid for its reapportionment plan.  What would have been a reasonable price?

The two main variables in statewide reapportionment are (i) the number of house and senate districts to be redrawn and (ii) the number of precincts in the state.  Let us assume a normal amount of complicating technical factors, e,g,, the creation of new precincts when an old one is split due to population growth, and making population counts gathered in census enumeration districts fit into precincts (precincts and enumeration districts often do not have the same boundaries).  Let us assume further that, to reduce costs, the state will contribute computers, personnel, supplies and other necessities to the reapportionment project.  Finally, let us assume the state has 1,000 precincts and 100 house and senate seats to reapportion.  A reasonable cost would be $250,000 – about a third of what N.M. paid.

(2)   The fact that Indians are suing suggests that the reapportionment project was not carried out properly.  By properly I mean including – not excluding – the general public with open arms, from the very beginning, every step of the way.  Not one of our plans was ever sued because public meetings were held in which everyone was invited to submit and criticize plans.  The only limits were, first, the plans had to be legal – I worked with lawyers who made that determination -- and second, the plans had to be complete for the area in question (e.g., an entire city or county), viz., because the design of one district impacts on others, no participant was allowed to draw up one or two ideal districts for his buddies and go home.  Finally, we provided "kits" to interested citizens who wanted to try their hand at redistricting.

The end product was a formidable community consensus that no lawyer in the nation was foolish enough to challenge.

Zero lawsuits, zero legal bills.  And the best way to avoid lawsuits is to make the community part of the solution.  (A personal note:  I have been on reservations and in Navajoland.  These are poor people – why the state would want to give them a hard time is beyond me.)

(3)   The state should demand full disclosure of anyone seeking a reapportionment consulting contract or any lawyer who either sues or wants to represent the state.  Do they have political candidates as clients?  How about other contracts with the state, media outlets, political parties?

Any reapportionment designer should qualify as an expert witness in federal court. The reason:   if he is not qualified, in the event of a lawsuit the state will have to bring in an outside expert to defend the plan.  That outsider will have to start from ground zero; guess who will pay the tab to bring him up to par.  A needless duplication of effort, if there every was one. 

(4) Regarding the $5 million legal bill for New Mexico, let me ask you something:

Are you crazy?

According to the figures the Santa Fe New Mexican released, N.M. could have redrawn its entire plan five times for $5 million.  I am unaware of any lawsuit ever in which all districts were contested.

So, to begin to formulate a ballpark guess of a reasonable legal fee,  we will assume 10 districts are legally contested.   In contrast to everything that lawyers, politicians and consultants will tell you, this stuff isn´t rocket science.*  The number of legal alternatives in drawing districts is extremely limited.  For 10 house and/or senate districts (especially if they border each other)  we may be looking at the most at 30 optional plans, not 300 or 3,000.   30 plans is a month or two of work.

Governor Martinez and Legislative leaders:  do not let your residents be the target of a ridiculous ripoff.  The bottom line:  a reasonable starting point for legal fees is $500,000 -- not $5,000,000.   By starting point I mean N.M. state authorities should start with the former figure and work up, not from the latter figure and work down.

All states should consider legislation to pùt caps on the amount of money awarded in reapportionment lawsuits.  Don´t tell me it cannot be done;  we did it on medical malpractice lawsuits.  It took six months of hearings and negotiations, but the results were satisfactory to all concerned, especially the consumer.  

New Mexico has 2 million people.  That is less than 1% of America´s population (316 million).  If the $5 million legal fee which New Mexico could end up paying is any indication, we are looking at an outrageously obscene bill for the nation as a whole.  One billion, anybody?  Two?

Perhaps due to the growing catastrophe, my posts on reapportionment of 10-3-2011 and 10-11-2011 are receiving an extraordinary amount of hits.  It is a pleasure to share  information and observations with you; however, do not write or call for reapportionment work.  I stand by my post of 10-11-2011 (“Part 8:  A Formula to Achieve One Person One Vote”).  Once that formula is accepted, it is difficult to regard any conventional practice or claim to One Person, One Vote -- a fundamental article of democracy -- as anything other than at best mistaken, at worse a hoax.  In either event, a dead puppet show.
_______________
*To speed things up, reapportionment software is available.  I used Lotus 1-2-3 for years; worked fine. 
]]>Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:02:19 -0500http://lebelvedere.weebly.com/2/post/2012/04/lobbyists-2-naming-names.html                                                        May your life be filled with lawyers.
                                                                            -- Ancient Aztec curse –






NOTE:  please read prior post, “Lobbyists (1):  Tips, Tricks, Traps.”  There is far more interest in this subject than I had anticipated – over 190 hits in three hours.

An expansion follows…

I.  Although our topic is lobbyists, we cannot leave out pr firms.  As chronic gripers will note, snakes travel in pairs.

The minute you announce you are running for office, salesmen will knock on your door.  I especially liked the fat, ballpoint pen and button guy. 

Also, for general elections, people from the national Republican or Democratic party, as well as all sorts of consultants from WASHINGTON D:C. will magically materialize to “help you,” to give you the “benefit” of their “experience,” they have "contacts" and can "plug you in" to "big money" --  i.e., try to sell you something.   I always listened politely to these Beltway bandits.  If you hire one, get ready:  they will spend a lot of time learning facts about your state that your third-grader knows (“The capital is…”) -- time which guess who will pay for. 

In searching for a pr firm, when in doubt use common sense.  Find somebody else´s political campaign ads you like.   Contact the campaign or look at their filing report.  You´ll have the name of the media firm that morning. 

Pr guys are like pharmacists:   they always try to sell you the most expensive medicine first.  Don`t buy it.  In truth, sometimes the best ad is no ad:

I was working for a candidate who was behind but had The Big Mo -- momentum.  Suddenly, the opponent, an incumbent, came out with a brand spanking new TV ad.  Spanking was right -- I have to hand it to those guys; it was the best attack ad I´ve ever seen. 

We were doing tracking polls.  The attack ad was starting to kill our momentum.  The election was a month away.  We knew it would be decided by less than 4,000 people.

What to do? 

Our media consultant favored a new pricey ad with all manner of bells and whistles.  I saw our campaign director´s jaw hit the floor when a figure was mentioned.  I turned to her.

“How much cash do we have in the bank?”

“$20,000.”

“I´ll explain later.  Cut a check for $20,000.  Make it out to…” 

I rushed downtown to a TV station.  The news director knew me; years earlier, I had done election night analysis for him.  I said I wanted one ad run five times a day until the money ran out.  I showed him the check; his mouth watered.

“Good idea,” he wisely counseled.  He stuck his hand out:  Your ad, please.

“You already have it.”

He blinked.  “Oh, you mean the one about the …”

“No.  The ad that shows ...”

He blinked again.  “Tom, I believe that is your opponent´s ad.”

“You are correct.”

“O.K., let´s see if I´ve got this right.  You want to pay $20,000 to run your opponent´s ad.”

“Yes.  And we want to start tonight on the weather report.”  I looked at my watch for emphasis.

“Ah… that…I´ve never heard of such a thing.  I have to call the station manager.”

The manager said the ad was the opponent´s property and we did not have the right to run it.  However, if the opponent approved, there was no problem.

The News Director called him and explained the proposition.  There was a long silence.  The Director then asked if he wanted to talk to me.  I heard a shuffle; the campaign manager came on the line.

“Ha, how obvious!” he shouted:  “If Dr. Movidas wants to run our ad that means there´s something wrong with it.” 

Not only was permission not granted, the ad was pulled.  It sank beneath the air waves forever. 

The reason why our outrageous nonsense was neither outrageous nor nonsense:

We knew the opponent was not polling on his ad, hence lacked knowledge of its effectiveness.  We knew that because…they had polled me at home.  I pressed the record button; we had the whole thing.  It was one of those motorized polls of randomly-chosen phone numbers, with the dead surf Nazi computer voice droning forth from some place back East.

II. As for hiring lobbyists, also start with common sense.  Find a hard-won victory in your subject area.  Attention: mini-bantamweight wins don`t count. In the sort of legislative politics, there is no mini-bantamweight class.  Call around; you will have the victorious lobbyist´s name that day.

I always asked prospective pr firms and lobbyists the same question:

“Who is the best in the world at what you do?”

Inevitable answer:  “We are.”

“O.K.  Then, who is the second best?”

Inevitable pause.  “Well…”

Nearly all of them mentioned the same firm.  I contacted it, looked at their stuff; we hired them.  Our candidate won in an upset.  No second best there.

Beware of lobbyists who drop names.  Jerry Wexler, producer at Atlantic Records and discoverer of Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, was a close family friend.  He and his wife, the novelist Jean Arnold, chowed down many times on stone crabs at our place; in return, we drank wine and discussed R & B (Joe Turner, Little Junior Parker, B. B. King, “60 Minute Man,” Hank Ballard, The Five Royals) at his Siesta Key home where there was a photo of Jerry and Bob Dylan on the living room coffee table.

I will now say a few words the likes of which have never been said before, anywhere, by anyone,  and which will probably never be said again -- so get ready.  Here goes:  However, that does not mean I could get you a recording contract or arrange for you to meet Bob Dylan.  Shocking, no?  

I know, I know:  chances are you are absolutely convinced that IF THE KING ONLY KNEW  your life would instantly become an infinitely better place.  Sorry -- chances are the king already knows, at least in a general way, but can´t do a thing.  While we are at it, lobbyists as well as political consultants meet all kinds of politicians and public figures from presidents and prime ministers and senators on down.  But when all is said and done -- and it usually is rather quickly -- so what?

I discussed at length the quasi-religious Cult of The Contact in The Source of Terrorism:  Middle Class Rebellion.  The mystification of Access by lobbyists is one of numerous stale derivates of that universally-held urban myth.

Like you, I have heard a thousand times:  “It´s not what you know but who that counts.”  Bull.  In the political world you need both.  If you are persistent, the first will get you the second.  In the music world, too, come to think of it.  At least that´s what Jerry Wexler told me.

                                                                                    *          *          *

I will now give the once-over to six real live pr firms and lobbyists.  Why they were selected and the dollar amounts noted beside them will be explained shortly.  I´ll tell you right off the bat there is only one I would not hire.

There is no conflict of interest.  I have never worked for any of the firms or their opponents.

Finally, I will base my opinions entirely on public information.  I found over 90% of it on the firms´ own web sites.  After all, if they cannot present themselves well, why should they be able to faithfully re-present you -- i.e., present over again somebody who is not there? 

The task at hand:  weeding out pr firms and lobbyists afflicted with the incurable Big Mouth Small Brain Syndrome.  What matters in this quest is not this or that detail but the logic involved, the reasoning process, the type of questions asked.  Here they are.

As always, you be the judge:

1.      Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter and Associates.    $100,000 paid for distribution of printed material.  A logistical, mechanical service, probably all right as far as it goes.  I would be reluctant to take this firm further, however.  Watch one of its members, Beau Phillips, in action:  Was my computer on the blink?  I didn´t hear a single new word or profound thought anywhere. 

Gaffs are the result of unconscious forces.  Part of the offender´s psyche does not want him to succeed and is sabotaging him.  Freud discussed in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life how lapses such as Perry had in the debate Phillips discussed, slips of the tongue, forgetting, bolts from the blue, are not accidental.  Also, C.G. Jung analyzed at length the “trickster figure,” an unconscious archetype common to all Homo sapiens that trips them up, makes them say and do stupid things. 

I never worked for gaffers.  I did, however, work against them on several occasions.   

What a gaffer is unconsciously looking for is confirmation -- final, indisputable -- in hard electoral numbers, that he is a worthless human being, stupid, a scammer and put-on, that he is unfit to be president or representative, husband, friend or father.  The voters are ready, willing and able to hand him the judgment he so desperately craves.  I would develop this point but see no reason to help Mitt Romney, Joe Biden and other gaffers get where they really want to go.  It is not the White House. 

For me, Chlopak et al lacks focus, e.g., one of the partners “co-owns a winery and is one of Virginia’s longest goat farmers.”  As everybody knows, there´s nothing worse than a short goat farmer.  O.K., communications experts:   Why are you telling me this?

2.      DTB Associates LLP. $241,000 paid for political consulting and international relations advice. Craig Thorn is the chief lobbyist.

This is the quiet little company nobody is talking about.  DTB specializes in agricultural affairs and associated trade negotiating.  Its lobbyists have held positions of responsibility in government in the relevant area.

The web site is a no-nonsense presentation, direct, to the point.  Not a whiff of blue smoke anywhere.  As for knowledge of their field, look at their reports and articles, e.g., "Corn and Biotechnology - An International Perspective."

I found only one name dropped, Senator Dick Lugar.

Agricultural politics is a world unto itself.  Manuel Clouthier, Mexican PAN presidential candidate who I interviewed in 1988 and who was killed shortly thereafter in a mysterious car accident (see post of 3-19-2012 “´Intellectual Cowardice´ – George Orwell”) talked my head off about duties on tomatoes.   The agricultural area is complex; don´t try this at home or without parental guidance. 

DTB is small, knowledgeable, experienced.  The profile I like. 

3.      Fenton Communications.   $1,152,000 for media relations, public relations.

What Ailes Roger?  It could be this issue-oriented, progressive, media campaign organization.     

I worked with many pr firms on political campaigns, mostly shaping our poll results into their TV, newspaper and radio ads, mailers and brochures.  I judged their work according to the following criterion: 

In politics you want each thing you say and do to serve numerous constructive purposes; you want, in short, to be economical. In that regard, a publicity spot should appeal to the widest possible voting-age audience.  To do so, the spot must bring into play all four psychic functions (Jung):  thinking, intuition, sensation and feeling.  (By the way, that instantly knocks out 95% of Hollywood-style movies; they are 95% sensation – car chases and crashes, explosions.  Their goal is not to get voters to the polls but to herd male teenagers to theaters on opening weekend.)

Fenton´s video against puppy farms (click on “studio”) is a perfect example of a publicity spot firing on all four cylinders.  The escaped cartoon character engages the unconscious, which is where the real action is.*

Overall, Fenton´s works have the type of energy that only personal commitment to a cause can generate.

4.      Blue Star Strategies, LLC.   $92,000 paid for public relations.

Click on “What We Do.”  The real question is, “What do we not do?”  One partner “focuses on the Latin America practice, specifically in the areas of infrastructure, education, energy and international relations.”  Do you also do kitchen sinks?  Pheew -- makes me exhausted just thinking about it. 

As the prior post warned, be leery of political contacts. Blue Star:  “In late 2002 after having led President Clinton’s transition to New York and having established his post-presidency office and philanthropic work, Karen Tramontano returned to Washington, DC, joining Sally’s practice.”  There are different ways to read this experience:  (see this blog´s post 11-10-2011, “The Second American Revolution:  Part 10,” for an article on Clinton`s philanthropy).  Sure, politicians like Clinton have friends; they also have enemies.  Who is the chairman of the committee who will be hearing your bill?  Better find out…

Too much fluff for my taste.  Specific example:  click on  “Case Studies.”   You will see that, for a strangely-unidentified Eastern European nation that hired Blue Star:  “The two major results were (1) key officials from around the world began to pay attention to the election, and (2) as a direct result our client received many more votes on Election Day.  With this margin they were then able to leverage his success into an influential role in the new government.”  Key officials -- who they? Around the world -- where that? Began to pay attention -- what that?  Many more votes -- what them?  3,740?  26,490?  How measured?  Influential role?  O.K., I give up.  What are we supposed to do with such statements?

In 1990, I was living in the Holiday Inn in Mexico City.  We were lining up at the buffet when I saw behind me The One, The Only boxer Jorge “El Maromero” Paéz,   He was preparing to defend his featherweight crown.   I told him to go first:  "I want to see what champions eat for breakfast."   During that week in the gym his team and I talked.  We agreed that election campaigns are a lot like boxing.  What it all comes down to was stated in four little words by Angelo Dundee, trainer of Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, in the title of his book:  I Only Talk Winning (1985).  Me too.  Margins are marginal.  Sorry.

Finally, click on Blue Star´s “Recent News.”   Talk about being all over the place…You will see a photo of the airport in Nice, France.  Gosh, the French Riviera.  Are we supposed to think of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, fireworks?  Romance, fame, fortune?  I lived in Nice for 5 months with French families.  Great pizza and salads; if you`re into Matisse you`ll be on top of the world.  Wonderful light if you`re a painter.  Yep, Monaco is just down the road; don`t miss the Cousteau aquarium and the botanical gardens.  Other than that, I hate to tell you this but people in Nice get up and go to work pretty much like they do in (GASP!  SHUDDER!!) New Jersey.

5.      Foley Hoag, LLP.   $121,365.64 paid for lobbying, legal and “other” services.  A law firm, one of the biggies; specializes in business and industry.  If I had a business problem, particularly copyrights, with a government at home or abroad, I would definitely give Foley Hoag a call.  Click on their “services” to get a global idea of what they offer.  I can`t say enough about this firm, so I won`t.

Finally, we come to

6.      Patton Boggs.  $664,669.06 for public relations.  Tack on $65,000 per month for “Legal advice and representation of Ecuador in meetings with functionaries of the Executive branch and congress of the United States.”  

Ecuador:   Now you know who the client was for the above list.  The Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo published an article giving the names of the six United States pr firms/lobbyists the government of Ecuador contracted with for 2007-2012, and how much was paid.  An Ecuadorian friend (not a government official) wanted to know what I thought of the American firms. 

Patton Boggs´ signature statement is “Where others see challenges, we see possibilities.”  

Well, Patton Boggs, where you see possibilities, I see problems.  Gigantic, messy problems. 

I will discuss one of them in the next post.
_______________

*Unconscious elements in the art of convincing were discussed in The Source of Terrorism and in three articles on momentum.  Via musicology -- a completely unacceptable field in the social sciences -- we entered the logic of emotions.  After discovering who was interested and why, I dropped all further inquiry into this fruitful but dangerous area.
]]>Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:53:00 -0500http://lebelvedere.weebly.com/2/post/2012/03/lobbyists-1-tips-tricks-traps.htmlCan you recommend a good lobbyist?

I wish the government got a buck every time somebody asked that question.  It would pay off the national debt.

I worked for years in a governor`s office in the legislation section, and later as the chief aide to a Majority Floor Leader in a House of Representatives.  At one time or another, every lobbyist operating in that area of the country floated through my office.  Hundreds of them, in all shapes and sizes, from silk stockings to hair shirts, from Wall Street top guns to Costa Rican bottom feeders.

First, I can honestly say I never met a lobbyist I didn`t like.  Being likeable is the sine qua non for a lobbyist.  Indeed, an unfriendly lobbyist is a walking oxymoron.   Then again, maybe the fact that one of my functions was to supervise bill analysts for committee chairmen may have had something to do with it.  The lobbyists feared a thumbs-down recommendation on our part as retribution for real or perceived injustices.   Of course, being true professionals, we would never do such a thing, although I must admit the idea crossed my mind once or twice.

As for lobbyists and corruption…

Contrary to popular belief, a great deal of legislation does not involve big money.   Amendments to the Juvenile Code are one example, consequently no money accompanies them.

As for the other stuff, well… that´s when legislators` doors start closing.

I remember a bill that would have allowed truckers to use triple trailers.   State law was silent on the subject.  To think about triple trailers is to see them.  Not only are they dangerous, they wear out roads paid for with taxpayer money.

Triple trailers are strictly a lone haul affair, cross country.   You wouldn´t hire one to move your stuff across town.  The bill was sold as an economic development measure.  JC booster babies across the state swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.  I say swallowed because  the state where I worked had higher gas taxes than its neighbors.   Truckers would fill up out of state, then sail through ours without stopping even for a cup of coffee.    We called around:  not a single in-state trucker wanted to use triple trailers.  In sum, we are looking at a law that would benefit aliens only.  

Visions of sugar plums danced in the heads of trucking company owners and stock holders; the economic benefits were as obvious as they were enormous.  Since there was absolutely no positive public policy reason whatsoever for the state to allow triple trailers, the issue would have to be decided on, well, another basis.

The triple trailer bill flew through the senate and was on its way to the House.   I went to see the chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, who had led the fight against it.  He saw me coming 100 feet away.  “I know why you`re here,” he declared:  “All I can say is, I got tire tracks up and down my back.”*   After relating the gory details, he shook his head, then shook my hand:  “You got about as much chance as a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest.”   Nevertheless, he wished us the best of luck.

Before continuing I had better note something.  All houses of representatives work via committees. Typically, each legislator is assigned by the Speaker – the man in charge who is elected by the house every 2 years -- to two committees to which the Speaker refers legislation for study, public hearings, etc. The committees then report to the full house their recommendation – Pass, Do Not Pass, Table.  Over 90% of committee reports are adopted.

The Speaker supported the triple trailer bill, and referred it to only one committee, the House Transportation Committee controlled by the truckers.  (A referral to two committees is bad, a triple referral is fatal).  Conclusion:  the trucker bill was, as we say in the trade, “wired up,” “greased.”  The trucking industry lobbyists had done their job:   No problem.   A Movida,** if there ever was one.

To celebrate their impending victory, the lobbyists threw a party.  The Majority Floor Leader instructed me to go.  “Stay until the end.  See who is talking to whom.  And try not to get so drunk you can`t remember.”  

The next morning I reported back.  Excluding one person of note, everybody was present and accounted for, including the infamous Monkey Girls.  They were so-named because, when stalking the bars and capitol corridors, they formed a line and held hands.   I have no idea where they went when the legislative session ended, or if they even existed.

I went to see the Speaker as a courtesy and to see what was up.   He told me he liked the triple trailer bill but indicated, via physical gestures, not strongly.  Interpretation:  if we killed it, no hard feelings.  We will see why he was ambivalent in a moment.   In the meantime, his single referral to Transportation made the trucker lobbyists happy, happier, happiest.   Having done his part, as far as he was concerned, the matter was closed

And so, triple trailers were just around the corner, headed our way.  The Floor Leader and I met:  we needed a strategy and tactics fast.  For every Movida there is an equal and opposite Movida. 

Legislatures have a deadline for introducing bills, typically the halfway point.  We were past it.  So why didn’t we introduce earlier a bill against triple trailers ?   Had we done so, the Speaker would have given it a triple referral, making it dead on arrival.  And even if he did not, the senate would have killed it.  Nobody would have taken it seriously. 

Too late --  which was exactly the point...   

A handful of bills introduced a minute before the deadline for introducing legislation all have the title:  “A Measure for the Public Peace, Health and Safety.”  If you look at their contents you will see…absolutely nothing.  These are dummy bills reserved for the Majority Floor Leader and Speaker who instantly and automatically refers them to the House Rules Committee.  There, consistent with their non-contents,   dummy bills are tabled.  Which is to say, nothing happens.  Nothing.  So, why do dummy bills exist?

If somebody wants a measure introduced after the deadline, it is done by:  (1) having the Rules Committee give a dummy bill a Do Not Pass recommendation, then (2) creating a House Rules Committee substitute bill.  The substitute is nothing less than the measure somebody wants introduced.   (Note:  if you are an outsider or a lobbyist and want the dummy bill trick performed, all I can say is, stand before a mirror and practice begging, hand wringing.  Crying and whining are frowned on.  Tip:  putting an orange smile sticker advising “Have a nice day” on your bill draft will not improve its chances.)  

On Friday morning the Floor Leader and I cooked up a two-minute bill.  I went down the hall and handed it to the Rules Committee Chairman.  He was an elderly gentleman with impeccable integrity: he was also the only noteworthy legislator mentioned above who was not at the truckers´ party.  He effused a Santa Claus chuckle, took a dummy bill off the shelf and informed me the Substitute Bill would be ready Monday afternoon.

I went back to the Floor Leader´s office and placed a call to a media friend.   TLC, I will call him.

TLC here does not mean “Tender Loving Care.”

The media covering politics are comparable to crows on a telephone line.  You can throw rocks at them all day and they won´t move.  Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, one crow takes off, and all the other crows will fly away in the same direction.   My media friend was The Lead Crow; he was a crusty wire service reporter who had covered the capitol for 40 years (his pet theory was that legislators are elected because that`s the only way their constituents “can get the jerks out of town” for a few months). 

Having spoken with TLC, all further media contact was dispensed with.  No need; crows will be crows.  Note:  if you want to identify The Lead Crow covering your legislature, start by eliminating all the Aaawwww – I knew that! reporters and editors.  In point of fact, they don´t know that, never will.   Indeed, not knowing explains why they cannot hold their ink.  They are the counterpart to another group to be identified shortly.

There was a remaining obstacle – a big one.  TLC had wrecked his car on numerous occasions while DWI.   His favorite joke was to get hammered, then sheepishly look you in the eye:  “Want a ride home?”  The Floor Leader and I dreaded that TLC could end up in the cooler that night, thereby derailing our Movida, which was dependent on TLC getting drunk but staying free long enough to tip off the truckers that a Movida was headed their way. 

That night I dropped by the local political watering hole.  TLC had safely made it home.  I tried to buy a beer but the bartender said it was “covered,” then pointed to a crowd of trucker lobbyists ensconced at a large table.  I did the proper thing, went over and thanked them.  They pulled out a chair.***  The conversation was short.

“Tom, you bastard:  touché.”

“I don´t see why you´re upset.”

“What´s the matter with our champagne and our Coquilles St. Jacques flown in from Normandy?  At our party you -- ”

“I hate to tell you, but your champagne is to champagne what military music is to music.  As for your Coquilles, I know a real one when I see it.  You guys were serving cookie cutter shark meat.”

“My bags were packed, ready to go.  I even called a taxi.  Then the phone rings; a little birdie tells me that a bill outlawing triple trailers was about to climb off the table in the Rules Committee.”

“Again, why are you upset?   You now have a reason to come back next year and start all over."

"Tom, how much are they paying you to cook up shit like this?”

“I make in a month what you make in the course of this conversation.”

“Touché, you bastard.”

Laughter, click of classes.

Way down deep, the lobbyists loved our bill.  It placed the triple trailer affair in the category of shameless shakedowns occupied by the Right To Work bill (see the post of 9-26-2011 “Goodbye, Tweedle-dum.”)   To wit:  with the touch of a ballpoint pen, the triple trailer bill had been magically transformed into a Lawyers and Lobbyists Full Employment Act in which they could and would try, try and try again.  Now you know why the Speaker was ambivalent about our Rules bill.

The truckers anticipated the avalanche of unfavorable media coverage our Rules bill would set off.   Wives and children, neighbors and friends would ask how in the hell any law-maker in his right mind could oppose outlawing triple trailers.  Under the withering TV lights, facing a jungle of microphones, legislators would start to wonder, waffle, request a “study” of triple trailers; the wheels would begin to come off the truckers´ bill.

As for identifying the authors of the Rules Movida, it took the truckers 3 seconds.  To repeat, only the Speaker and the Majority Floor Leader controlled dummy bills, and the killer bill was not the Speaker´s.

In the end, a deal was cut.  The triple trailer prohibition would not leave the Rules Committee in exchange for the truckers letting their bill quietly and demurely die on adjournment.   Thus, the roads were safe for another year.

You don´t believe in happy endings?   Them, us:  everybody involved was happy, except the trucking company owners who never knew what hit them. 

                                                                             *          *          *

How can you avoid ending up as lobbyist cookie cutter shark meat? -- the hapless victim of a Movida in which your loss is your lobbyist´s gain?

Good lobbyists come and go; bad ones accumulate.  If I recommended a “good” firm, the chances are personnel have changed since I dealt with it and the firm is now, well, something else.   More important than offering names of individuals or companies, then, is the thinking process involved in screening bad ones out and good ones in.  Here, as everywhere else, if appearance and reality always coincided, there would be no need for education.

(1)     Many ex-legislators farm themselves out as lobbyists.   They supposedly have contacts, know the ropes, etc.   Seems to make sense, doesn´t it.  Watch out!  First, if these former law-makers were in leadership positions they undoubtedly made enemies in the legislature who are primed and ready to pounce on any opportunity to get even.  Your bill may be it.  And second, here´s a dirty little secret every law-maker knows but won´t tell:  in any senate or house, only the leadership (Speaker, Majority Floor Leader, committee chairmen) has any power.  The rest are “bumps on a log” as one Appropriations Chairman put it.  The image is excellent.  The bumps have no idea what is going on.  They gaze up at the electronic vote board, see how their floor leader votes, then push the same button.   Such is the content and limit of their “expertise.”   I don´t want to sound hard-hearted, but, personally, I wouldn´t hire one of those guys to carry out my trash.

The bumps -- 90% of all legislators -- are the counterpart to the flock of media crows discussed earlier.  There is, in fact, a direct correlation between them.  A government is only as good as the media covering it.  Which means, in the United States, we have serious problems.  Perhaps fatal.

(2)    It would seem logical that you would want to hire a lobbying firm that is big, hence powerful.  Sadly, all too often the giants will accept your project, then coolly view it as another card in their hand.   I know, I know:  you believe you will have a better chance by working with lobbyists who have major league clients.  Unfortuntely, the opposite is too often true.  As the game progresses, if need be, the card you paid somebody to hold will be discarded.  You, Mr. Little, will be sacrificed in the interest of Mr. Big.  I saw it happen so many times I stopped shaking my head.

(3)    Will you need to pay bribes?  No.  Bribes of course do occur, especially on big money measures which are politically unpopular and blatantly against the public interest.  I recall a waste disposal lobbyist from out-of-state -- picture a Texas Woody Woodpecker -- inviting me to the political watering hole referred to above.  I told him thanks but no thanks; the legislature was paying me for an 8-hour day and it was only two in the afternoon.   He looked at the frozen, snow-covered ground:  “We can make it worth your while.”

The ground stayed frozen.

The truth is the opposite of what he said.   Laws regarding payoffs are written to be evaded.  Campaign contributions, phony consulting contracts, picking up the tab for hotel rooms and meals so that legislators can pocket the per diem taxpayers pay them:  those are just a few of hundreds of ways which are perfectly legal to buy somebody -- "honest graft."   Perhaps now it is understandable why law-makers regard any politico who takes money illegally as a complete fool.

A concrete case of honest graft:

In the legislature where I worked, year after year, a bill allowing interstate banking was introduced.  The measure would allow for an instate bank to buy an out-of-state bank.  Like the triple trailer measure, the bill was sold as a wholesome, all-American economic development measure.  Here, too, the JC booster babies were out in force; I kept waiting for balloons and cheerleaders to pop out of the woodwork.  The measure sounds great, but look out.  No instate bank ever stepped into the spotlight and took responsibility for the bill.

The constant, total, top secrecy suggested a Big Movida was in play.   The Floor Leader and I decided that, given the contorted logic of Movidas, the real issue had nothing whatsoever to do with buying an out-of-state bank but rather precisely the opposite, i.e., selling an in-state one.  Somebody was really determined to get this measure through yet stay hidden.  There was only one explanation:  megabucks were involved.

Secret, salacious, shady, big money:  it was entirely fitting that the interstate banking bill had fallen into the shameless shakedown category cited above.

I had the staff prepare a study of who had sponsored and cosponsored interstate banking down through the years.   We suspected that the interested party would, as elsewhere, cover his tracks and not want to be publicly identified; hence, the nonsponsors, not the sponsors, interested us.  The pieces started to fall into place. Via a process of elimination, we finally tracked down the man behind the curtain:  a legislator who had a bank in his district, which had an out-of-state suitor.  Were we right?

All I can say is, a few days before the bill passed the legislature, the bank´s stock more than doubled.  Insiders had run down to Merrill Lynch and placed their bets.  Was the hidden legislator among them?  If he was, at the time there was absolutely nothing illegal involved.

The Floor Leader and I joked about selling the bank short, then going upstairs and convincing the governor to veto the interstate banking bill.  With great fanfare, the profits would have been donated to charity.  It would have been a Movida which the pillage and plunder crowd nationwide would never forget.  

(4)    It has been my experience that anybody peddling influence doesn´t have it.  Good lobbyists provide good information; they will research your questions and give reliable answers fast.  They will also give the pros and the cons of their bill, and of course explain why the former outnumber the latter.   Finally, they always work directly with the leadership and don´t waste time talking to bumps on a log.  Be leery of lobbyists who preach otherwise; what they are really looking for is an excuse to keep their meters running.

To find the good information people, focus on lobbyists who have experience and expertise in your area:  agriculture, TV cable companies, whatever.  Above all, beware of the Big Mouth Small Brain Syndrome afflicting lobbyists.  Lawyers in particular love to pretend they can handle any area of the law.  Politely listen to their spiel, then screen them by, again, focusing only on specialists in your area.  After all, you would not ask a psychiatrist for a facelift even though legally, as a MD,  he is allowed to perform one.  Sounds like simple common sense, yet you would be amazed at the number of people who don´t follow it, and end up with empty wallets and their noses upside down.

(5)    All legislation has a financial impact.  But if it is small, is in the public interest, and/or is not controversial -- we put in a bill outlawing dog fighting; not a single person showed up to testify against it – you don´t need a big league lobbyist.  Indeed, maybe you should register as a lobbyist and push the measure yourself.  (i)  Normally, you will need to talk to only about 10 people – the leadership.  (ii)  Do it before the session starts and lawmakers get busy.  (iii)  To help convince a leader, try to bring with you one or more of his constituents; also, never forget your own representative.  (iv)  Pick your bill sponsor with great care; see who has carried what and what happened in past sessions.   It`s all public record.  You will have to prepare press statements and speeches for the sponsor and support him in a myriad of other ways.   After all, in the end it is your bill, not his.  (v) Notify the governor´s office early.  Do not lobby them, however, until your bill has passed the legislature. They will view you as a pest.

A legislative session is like an electoral campaign.  Most of the time, it only confirms and consolidates what is already in place.   With the leadership “on board,” the ballgame is over before the first pitch is thrown.  The trucker lobbyists were experts at this process, and were running on all cylinders six months before the legislature opened its doors.

If you decide to do it yourself, you will rub elbows with other lobbyists in the mail room, committee hearings, hotels, parties, restaurants and bars.  You will quickly discover that in the world of lobbyists (1) there are more con men per square inch than in any prison.  (2)  Only one trade surpasses lobbyists in the Big Mouth Small Brain Syndrome:  literary agents.

Next Post:  Lobbyists (2):  Naming Names.   

NOTE:  in the above account, some details and events have been altered, but not to protect the innocent.

_______________

*This from a man who entered local mythology: 

An out-of-state lobbyist once was granted the privilege of joining Mr. Chairman for lunch.   Apparently determined to break the ice with a joke, he told Mr. Chairman:  “I hear your hometown is so poor, a tornado ran through it and caused $2,000,000 worth of improvements.”  Mr. Chairman floored him with one punch, then yanked the tablecloth and dumped the silverware and place settings onto the startled patron´s head.   “Vain attempt at humor:  F,”  Mr. Chairman entoned, then left the premises before the cops arrived.

**Definition.  Movida:  1.  A clever bit of mischief.  2.  Somebody else´s attractive girl friend.  Synonyms:   Maneuver.  Trick.  Stunt.  Fake out.  Ploy.

***Outsiders are always amazed at how political opponents can even speak to each other, much less be friendly.   Actually, there is nothing amazing about it.  Think back to phys ed class, and the choosing up of sides for touch football.  Your teammate and friend today may be your adversary tomorrow.  I will go into this in a future post.
]]>Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:41:02 -0500http://lebelvedere.weebly.com/2/post/2012/03/intellectual-cowardice-george-orwell.htmlErnesto S., Patty J., Manolo G., you wanted an elaboration on the February 12 post´s definition of urinalism, particularly point 6:   The claim to journalism unsupported by a willingness to take risks.

You are right:  implied in that definition is that Emilio Palacio is not a journalist.  When the going got tough, Palacio got going all the way to Miami, where he is presently requesting political asylum.  He left it to others back home to carry his dirty water for him.  The same reality applies to the three publishers of El Universo, Palacio’s newspaper, who also left Ecuador.

Since Palacio is no longer employed by El Universo, makes you wonder who is putting his hamburgers on the table.  I spent a year in Coconut Grove, outside Miami.  I can assure you, Dear Reader, you may do many things in life; living on no money in South Florida is not one of them. 

I must note that President Correa recently dropped all charges against Palacio and the Universo owners. Over 70% of Ecuadorians support his decision.

Ernesto and Manolo, you want to know what gives me the right to talk about such things as journalism, urinalism and a willingness to take risks.  Excellent question, especially in light of where you live. 

Let’s look closer at the willingness to take risks.

Seven journalists have been killed in Syria since the recent violence began.  It has been my experience that the general public regards them as either super courageous or incredibly foolish.  Taking journalists as a group, I suspect the truth is neither.

In 1988-89 I was travelling in Latin America writing articles for the El Paso Times.  First stop:  Mexico, where a dubious presidential election had taken place.

The defrauded candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, and three researchers, José Barberán, Adriana Lopez Monjardín, and Jorge Zavala, wrote a pioneering study, Radiografía del fraude (Editorial Nuestro Tiempo, Mexico, 1988).  I interviewed three of the authors, including Cárdenas.  When I informed him I had looked all over town for Radiografia, he laughed -- “and you couldn’t find it anywhere.”  He called the publisher who set aside a copy.  It is an absorbing study; I read it in one sitting. 

The atmosphere in Mexico City was -- to put it mildly -- tense.  While I was there, one of Cárdenas’ political advisors was murdered.  In those days, the danger came not from drug cartels but the government, in particular its terrifying servicio secreto apparatus which, among other things, had murdered countless students during the 1968 disturbances.  The SS was later disbanded, however, it hooked up with other military personnel, and formed the Zeta cartel.

The proverbial knock on the door, the car filled with plainclothesmen pulling up beside you and telling you to get in:  what goes through your head in such circumstances?

Going to and coming from the interviews, I never looked in the rearview mirror.  The reason is that even if they were following me, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.  Same goes for phone taps in the hotel.  I never checked my baggage in the room to see if it had been searched or if somebody with dark glasses was waiting in the lobby. 

You are alert, but not afraid.  Again, that state of mind -- very unique -- has nothing to do with courage or foolishness.

The simple fact of the matter is, if they are going to kill you, torture you or throw you in prison, you cannot stop them.  So, you go ahead and do your work as if they did not exist; you don’t let them determine a damn thing.  You do it anyway because you believe the story is worthwhile.  And you believe it is worthwhile because you sense -- it is more a matter of intuition than thinking -- the truth is involved; it is a feeling and you either have it or you don’t.

I can tell you right now, Palacio and El Universo owners don’t have it.  Down deep, when they turn off the lights, they didn’t believe what they said -- that President Correa ordered the troops to fire on a hospital.  Otherwise, they would not have fled Ecuador.  Even more condemning, they would not have offered to print an apology IF the president would do something in return.  Sorry, gentlemen, your silly quid pro quo betrayed you; any journalist involved in the truth will tell you that no “deals” are possible -- ever.  But, gentlemen, you can settle the matter easily, simply:  submit to a lie detector test. 

If you are a journalist, the truth is your job; taking risks is part of it.  Same goes for miners, firemen. Nothing heroic or stupid involved.  It is comparable to taking out the trash, somebody has to do it. 

There is another problem with El Universo´s and Palacio’s claim to journalism.  As indicated in the definition, journalists -- unlike the people aping them -- are not content with one side of the story.  Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas is on the left.  As for the right, in 1989 I also interviewed Manuel Clouthier, head of the conservative PAN party, who was holding a hunger strike.  He died not long thereafter in a mysterious car accident.  (I suspect somebody thought he was getting too close to victory.  Indeed, Clouthier’s successor, Vicente Fox, became president of Mexico.)

I asked for an interview with the president, but was turned down.

I should note that from Mexico I went to Nicaragua where the Sandinistas were in power.  I interviewed Violeta Chamorro, head of La Prensa, a large opposition newspaper, as well as her son, head of La Barricada, the Sandinista newspaper.  Violeta Chamorro, who subsequently was elected president, told me in her office, “They know you are here.”  We did the only thing you can do in such a situation:  laugh.

As for El Universo and Emilio Palacio, let’s look at another part of the urinalist definition:  4.  Negative media stories that offer no fair opportunity for rebuttal.  Gentlemen, did you offer a chance for the people you attacked to respond?  President Correa noted of Palacio´s newly-minted American friends in the American press  that not one, ever, tried to contact him and get his version of the controversy. 

In 1989, Fraude author José Barberán wrote me that the truth “will eventually come out” about the Mexican presidential election.   It did.  Today, nobody -- not even the PRI party that committed the fraud -- disputes that Cárdenas was robbed.

Given the decrepit state of American scholarship and journalism -- both are limited cultural maximizers*-- George W. Bush need not fear the same outcome for the 2000 Florida election.  For the same reason, neither should Palacio or El Universo fear that their actions will be seriously analyzed, much less criticized, by U.S. media.

But is limited the right word?


                                                                                   *          *          *


George Orwell, author of 1984 and fearless foe of totalitarianism, wrote that the “chief danger to freedom of thought and speech” does not come from “any official body”:

“If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion…intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalists has to face…Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.”  (George Orwell, “The Freedom of The Press.”  (http.//orwellru/library/novels/animal_farm/English/efp_go)

The above excerpt is from Orwell’s “Proposed Preface to Animal Farm.”  Proposed because it was not published until 1972 in the Times Literary Supplement.  True to form, the original publisher had… suppressed it. 

Also true to form…

As mentioned, after our interview I gave Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas a copy of what I had written.  When I returned to the United States, I read what the El Paso Times had printed.  So did José Barberán and the other authors of Radiografia; he expressed their dismay at how “little respect” the Times had displayed toward my work; the editors had made serious, ah, “alterations.”

As for the Nicaragua interviews, the El Paso Times did no publish them.  Furious, I did the unprecedented:  I called them and asked why.  Must have been too much advertising that week was their answer.  My response:  “If I update the interviews, will you print them?”  Yes. 

I resubmitted them.  Again, nothing happened. 

The reason is simple:  Violeta Chamorro´s newspaper La Prensa did not fit the American totalitarian model in which no opposition press exists.  (The American government had characterized the Sandinistas as totalitarian and was arming  Contra military forces opposing them.)

After seeing what the El Paso Times had done and did not do, I could only wonder what I was doing working with them.  Hegel defined a perfect world as one in which intentions = consequences.  Such is decidedly not the case in our imperfect world where journalism can morph -- unnoticed, undetected and quickly -- into urinalism.

I came to certain conclusions, dropped the El Paso Times and stop being a journalist. 

No point looking further. In two words George Orwell summed up the secret inner essence of the American media:  Intellectual cowardice.  They censor more in two months than all governments put together censor in twenty years. 

Ernesto S., Patty J. and Manolo G., I hope that answers your questions.

POSTSCRIPT

Our post of February 12 concluded of the Washington Post: 

“The Post is a tool of the American government.  Obama, Bush, JFK, Pol Pot, Hitler, Hoover, Lenin, Reagan, Elvis:  it makes no difference who is in power, the Post does his bidding in exchange for…well, what, exactly?  Money?  Hot tips? Free Redskins tickets?  Gotcha’ sex rumors and phony confidences? Dinner with 200 other attendees?  A Rose Garden interview with softball questions?  An invitation to the White House Christmas party?”  

A month later, we got an answer:  hot tips.

Post columnist David Ignatius wrote on March 16 that bin Laden wanted to kill Obama and General Petraeus: 

“The scheme is described in one of the documents taken from bin Laden’s compound by U.S. forces on May 2, the night he was killed. I was given an exclusive look at some of these remarkable documents by a senior administration official.”

Exclusive look.  Senior administration official:   Boy, are we impressed!  Let´s see now:  U.S. forces break into bin Laden`s compound, kill him and take papers.   Question:  those papers are now in the hands of what government agency?  If you have trouble with this one, ask the nearest seventh grader; he or she will be happy to set you straight.

In case a teenager isn`t handy, we´ll go ahead and phrase the matter this way:  don´t look now,  Ignatius and Post, but your C.I.A. minders are showing.

We have dealt with Ignatius before.  The Source of Terrorism:  Middle Class Rebellion noted that, in America, the Official Explanation of terrorism is that Islam is the source of terrorism.  Patently absurd, it must be kept off camera, implied, insinuated, denied if mentioned directly.  Unable to sustain their position with facts -- there aren´t any -- adherents of The Official Expanation are doomed to become erstwhile practitioners of the Blivet Trick, i.e., try to shove 10 pounds of horse shit into a 5 pound bag.   Ignatius  is a textbook case.  The Source of Terrorism concluded of another Ignatius article in which, Blivet-like, he confirmed The Official Explanation by denying it:

"The Official Explanation, reasserts itself in spite of Ignatius’ direct claim to the contrary: if the painful transition to modernism and not the grievances of Islam is the source of terrorism, we need to ask: transition from what? Ignatius declares ´it is certainly true that Islam has yet to find an easy co-existence with the freedom and secularism of modern [sic] societies.´ Islam it is, then. Ultimately, Islam is the source of terrorism."  (p. 24)

Ignatius, in short, is a cultural maximizer par excellence.  He doesn´t just play ball with the system; he is the system.  As for the quality of the hot tip, you don`t have to have read The Source of Terrorism  to know a "bin Laden wanted to kill Obama" story is not newsworthy.  Or, in the peripatetic phrasing of a seventh grader who looked over Ignatius´ scoop:  “No shit, Sherlock.  Where did you find the clue?”

In the end, the Washington Post got what the bird left on the limb.  Which leaves us with this question. Washington Post, what, exactly, did you trade off for exactly nothing in return?
_______________


*“All great cultures, and those moving in the direction of greatness, have an elite which might be called the cultural maximizers whose function is to maintain or push further the culture’s greatness and integration…The functions of a cultural maximizer include organization (i.e., maintaining the level of integration of the culture as it is) and contributing certain qualitative features necessary to the continuance of the cultural life. His function is never to alter the culture radically. He may help to give more intense expression to features that already exist, but he never wants to bring about a fundamental change. Thus, those who have the capacity to maximize culture in this sense are among the elite in all highly developed civilizations.”  Jules Henry, Culture Against Man,  Random House,  1963, p. 31.

]]>Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:26:41 -0500http://lebelvedere.weebly.com/2/post/2012/03/alchemy-of-the-word.htmlI wrote in the prior post that the Washington Post was a “tool of the American government.”  The proof to support that statement was something I witnessed:  “The incident pertains to no small event but to the biggest affair imaginable:  world war.” 

World war.  Only one event can justify such words:

The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.

There was nothing like it before or after.  Those who lived it will tell you that (1) nobody knew how it would end; (2) everybody thought a nuclear war could occur.  Family in Florida called, said the sky was dark with planes flying south… everybody has their own true story. 

On October 14 U.S. aerial reconnaissance discovered and photographed missiles in Cuba.  On October 22 JFK gave a speech to a nervous nation.  An attack by a Russian missile launched from Cuba, he said, would be considered to be an attack by the Soviet Union.  America versus the U.S.S.R.:  the showdown had finally come.   JFK also announced a maritime “quarantine” of Cuba.  Or did he? 

A fleet of Russian cargo ships was on its way to Cuba.  Flyovers showed missiles were hidden under canopies on deck.  If these additional missiles reached Cuba, Khrushchev would have played his daring gambit and won.  Missiles in Cuba would have altered the political balance of power in the world.  The loss to America would have been unimaginable.  Makes you wonder how Obama would have handled it.

American ships hurriedly left port.  To keep the additional missiles from arriving in Cuba, a blockade was put in place.

Or was it?

No ifs, buts, maybes about it.   According to international law, a naval blockade is an act of war.  A blockade of Cuba would, in effect, declare World War III.

Well, the White House certainly did not want to declare World War III.  If only there was a way America could have a “not really” blockade, i.e., have the wherewithal to stop the Russian ships from arriving in Cuba but do so without the legal responsibilities and military consequences of a blockade.

Presto, thanks to Admiral Anderson, Chief of Naval Operations, a solution appeared.  The White House, Pentagon and State Department would not call a blockade a blockade.  Henceforce, the American ships surrounding Cuba formed a…quarantine.  Clever, no?  Pure alchemy.  We have seen such word substitutions before, notably of republic for polity (post of 10-31-2011).  We have also seen similar “not really” gaming of the system:  Blacks are not really human; only 3/5 (post of 9-19-2011).

Actually, such toying characterizes American culture in general.  You don’t think so?  How about that centerpiece of The Great American Pastime, the World Series?  Where are the Japanese teams?  The Cubans?  How about calling the disastrous one person, one person reapportionment (warm body counts only) “One Person, One Vote” reapportionment?  (post of 10-3-2011). Calling license for newspaper owners “freedom of the press”?

Would the Russians back down?  Would they try to run the blockade?  Flip a coin.  Everybody held their breath.  The utter recklessness of Khrushchev made the outcome absolutely unpredictable.  Or so we were led to believe…

I was a college student at the time, working in the newsroom of the Washington Post.  I was passing by the office of Al Friendly, Managing Editor, when I noticed a stack of letters on his secretary’s desk, between 30 and 50, awaiting signature.  What’s going on?

Curious, I leaned over…

The letters were brief and to the point.  They were to newspaper editors around the U.S.  The letters all said exactly the same thing:  Dear (insert offender’s name):  I noticed in your article about the Cuban crisis that you used the word blockade.  Blockade is incorrect.  Quarantine is the right word. 

One can argue that the Post assigned itself this “patriotic” “mission” purely out of the “highest” “public spirit,” that it only wanted to “help” the country, indeed the entire world, and thus took upon itself the “sacred” “civil duty” to…

Only one problem with all that volunteer stuff.  I do not know how many daily newspapers existed in America in 1962; a good estimate is 1,750.  The Washington Post did not have the time or staff to go through all those newspapers and find the ones who needed to learn the word quarantine.  Practical, logical conclusion:  somebody out there, somebody big -- no secretarial pool fueled by Dunken Donuts at a gaslight motel -- reviewed every single one of the nation’s newspapers and had made a list of misguided souls in need of correction.  The list was delivered to the Post. 

In a twice, the Washington Post changed hats, converting itself from mild mannered reporters for a large metropolitan daily into an ad hoc Ministry of Propaganda whose mission was to contact rápido editors who were “confused” over Kennedy newspeak.

To get a taste of the brave new world where the Post was headed, here’s a name for you:  Enver Hoxha.  Don’t forget the old boy’s agitprop films on the Internet.  Gosh, all those people sure are happy.

I believe in freedom of the press, not in license of newspaper owners.  The newspapers in the American heartland had a perfect right to call it the way they saw it without harassment from the Washington Post and its owners, the Graham family.  I also believe that, unlike the Post, they had done the right thing in calling a blockade a blockade.  There was a simple way, incidentally, for the White House to turn the ships around without a blockade and its de facto declaration of war; without making a mockery of international law; without twisting and insulting common sense with transparent quarantine not blockade nonsense.

Speaking of options, I’ll bet you think there has to be another explanation for that stack of letters.  You are right.

They were a psych 101 experiment.  Some Post editor’s kid handed over to Andover had read C.G. Jung’s Alchemical Studies, didn’t understand them, but, hells bells, decided to give it a go anyway.  The ultimate finding of a 17-year-old high school senior’s term project managed to be completely predictable yet still amusing, true and not without originality:  you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

I am ready and willing to take a lie detector test on the letters or any other thing I authored.  Of course, Washington Post chiefs will have to do likewise.  Question 1:  have you ever knowingly accepted money or other remuneration from the C.I.A.?  Better clear out your agendas, gentlemen:  you are in for a long afternoon.

PostScript.  Ever been to Russia?  I lived there for 5 months studying the language in 1994 and living with a Russian family.  The drive from the airport into town will convince anybody with normal eyesight that the country is underdeveloped.  It has pockets of development, e.g., the space program, nothing more.  Riding the trolley, you’ll swear you were in 1905.  The national sport, by the way, isn’t plotless video games in which you rack up points by killing and destroying, but mushroom hunting.

I agree with General Anthony C. Zinni, former commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command (post of 12-14-2011):  there was no way a real war could have started between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.  That includes the Cuban missile crisis.  Why?

Simply put, the idea that the Soviet Union could have won is preposterous.  Now you know what the Kremlin knew.  I am not so sure about the White House, which seemed to be caught in its own propaganda.

Despite its weaknesses, the U.S.S.R. won the Cuban missile crisis.  For removing the missiles, it extracted from JFK an agreement never to attack Cuba as well as the removal of American missiles in Italy and Turkey.  Those three concessions were kept secret at the time – they had to be in order to create the impression that the Soviet Union lost.  To show where our nation’s priorities are, the U.S. traded off a real material loss for a propaganda gain.  That gain, of course, instantly evaporated once the truth came out. 

As for the real loss, any chess player will tell you what happens when you lose actual pieces in exchange for the other guy giving up potential ones.  No alchemy there. ]]>Sun, 12 Feb 2012 17:51:17 -0500http://lebelvedere.weebly.com/2/post/2012/02/one-eyed-jacks.html                                               O wonder!
                                               How many goodly creatures are there here!
                                               How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
                                               That has such people in't!

                                                     --William Shakespeare, “The Tempest,” Act 5, Scene 1 --






Where does freedom of the press end and libertinage for newspapermen begin?

That is the question behind the recent tempest in the America media teapot over Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador.

Going over editorials from D.C, New York and San Francisco, one thing becomes clear:  they are not journalism but rather something resembling journalism. 

Which is not to say the editorials are not worth reading.  On the contrary.  In talking about others, the American press reveals a great deal about itself.

Too much, in fact.

O wonder!  Why so many newsmen are throbbing at the bone:

On February 6, 2011, El Universo, an Ecuadorian newspaper, published an article by its editorialist, Emilio Palacio.  On March 21, President Correa filed a defamation lawsuit against Palacio and the three newspaper owners.  On July 20, the ruling came down:  three years in prison for each owner and Palacio, plus a $40 million fine.  The decision is under appeal.  (UPDATE 2-16-2012.  Time 12:04.   Moments ago, President Correa won the appeal. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17060578 ).

Before continuing, I’d better explain something…

Once upon a time, back when the earth was still warm and there where goodly creatures, Western culture made a difference between fact and value, is and ought, description and evaluation.

If I say, for example, a movie “was released in 2011,” that statement pertains to an objective, impersonal reality in the realm of fact/is/description.  Released in 2011:  true or false?  If, on the other hand, I say the same movie is “lousy,” I am expressing something quite different -- an opinion, a value/ought/evaluation. There is no true or false opinion; you either agree or disagree according to your own tastes, experiences, sensitivities.

Objective versus subjective statements, then.  Unlike the thing resembling it, in journalism objective material  is placed everywhere but the editorial page, which is set aside for opinions.  Opinions, in turn, are confined to the editorial page.  Each in its place.

Sounds simple -- if not simple-minded.  Yet, I spent 3 months last year reading the Washington Post every day.  All sorts of opinions, evaluations, prescriptions, incitements to action and other subjective expressions were everywhere, including the front page.

Conclusion:  Washington Post owners, editors and reporters do not know the difference between opinion (a movie is “lousy”) and fact (the movie “was released in 2011.”)

Or do they?

In truth, it makes no difference if they know the difference.

American newspapers are not guided by the facts/opinions separation.  Their gold standard is Joseph Pulitzer, hard-charging publisher of New York World and the St. Louis Post Dispatch.  Pulitzer discovered that he could drive circulation and profits up by mixing opinions and facts, sensationalism and objective reporting.  

Pulitzer changed American media forever.  Out was journalism defined in the standard sense of Merriam Webster:  Writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation.  In  was journalism defined in a second sense, also offered by Merriam Webster:  writing designed to appeal to popular taste or public interest. 

I always found it prescient that the prize most coveted by the American press carries Pulitzer’s name.  That anybody could be proud of winning it is totally beyond me.  Receiving a Pulitzer is on the order of being awarded -- as was Henry Ford -- the Nazis’ Grand Cross of the German Eagle.  The reason for the comparison:  Joseph Pulitzer was an unabashed, unabridged war-monger.

Confounding of facts/opinions and hyperventilating advocacy of violence:  could there be a relationship? 

With that background, let’s look at the Correa affair, starting at its origin, the Palacio article.

My first question to American editors:  did you bother to read what Palacio wrote?  The article is a mere mouse click away:  www.eluniverso.com

What’s that you say?  You don’t understand Spanish?  You never let that stop you before from being experts on Latin America.  Read away, then.

Like everyone else, Emilio Palacio is certainly entitled to his opinion.  And I am entitled to mine…

I defy anybody who understands Spanish to read his article, “NO a las mentiras,” and not be struck by its brash shrillness.  It is an over-the-top piece; out of 600 words, you will find Dictador/Dictadura 11 times.  Apparently, Palacio thinks he can make his point by dulling his audience into submission.  In the process, he crosses the boundary separating anger from hate.[i]  And that’s not the only boundary the article crossed.

Fortunately, bad writing is not a crime.  Unfortunately, “NO a las mentiras” has other problems…

Its ideas are not only multiple but parallel, serial but discontinuous, additive and not cumulative, and if conflicting, allowed to conflict.  They brought back memories from long ago -- of schizophrenics I worked with in a large county hospital.  It’s hard to believe it, but the disconnected pieces once formed one-and-the-same firecracker that exploded and blew apart in all directions.  To those who want to reconnect them, I wish them the very best of luck.

That said, Palacio is an editorialist.  His article was on the editorial page, the realm of opinion.  He is a guy spouting off, that’s all.  He has a perfect right to do so…up to a point.

Frankly, I would write him off as a friendly neighborhood hysteric had he not tossed out a disastrous punch line:  he asserts that President Correa ordered the army to shoot “sin previo aviso contra un hospital lleno de civiles y gente inocente.”  (without warning at a hospital full of civilians and innocent people). 

Had -- as we do here -- Palacio prefaced his statement with In my opinion, it seems, perhaps, I wonder if, I suspect, I believe, etc., he would have stayed in the realm of opinion -- but he didn’t.   In fact, to this day he sticks to his guns (curious expression) that President Correa ordered the shooting.  He even rejected Correa’s offer to forget the whole thing in exchange for a simple apology. 

Ordered the shooting.  With that allegation we enter the realm of fact, not opinion.  Correa committed a crime against humanity:  true or false?  Palacio cannot escape responsibility by crawdading his way under the rock of editorialist -- a guy with an opinion.  With the genocide claim, he stepped over a line. 

What you just read is counter to prevailing thought in the U.S.  The New York-based Human Rights Foundation, for example, on October 31, 2011, published a legal report, The Case of Emilio Palacio Urrutia.  A major conclusion:

[A]ccording to international human rights law, the prohibition of the criminalization of expressions is applicable, with particular emphasis, in cases where these expressions were “subjective opinions” or “value judgements.”    

The opinions expressed by Palacio are part of the opinion section of El Universo -- not a news section. Their intent was not to report news events in a journalistic or documentary manner, but to express the point of view of the journalist.  Therefore, all of Palacio’s opinions must be considered subjective and value judgments, and they are protected under international human rights law. (p.21)[ii]

Sounds great, doesn’t it?  Beware.  What the Foundation lawyer in effect is arguing:  newspapers can say whatever they want as long as they put it on the editorial page.

In practice, the editorial page as Free Territory is tantamount to making defamation and libel legal.  I say that because if the Foundation’s position prevails, guess where newspapers are going to place certain, ah, “controversial” articles.  Result in real life:  the editorial page becomes the gateway for libertinage of newspaper owners.  Make no mistake, you who value freedom of the press:  what was originally intended to be a page for the free expression of ideas, opinions, judgments, evaluations and analyses, will become a weasel hole.   

As observed of the Washington Post, the trend is to put opinion everywhere – which means the editorial page is creeping, spreading over the entire newspaper.  What’s at the end of the trail:  absolute, not relative, carte blanche for newpaper owners.  Libertinage.

Don’t let them do it.  When they come after you, Dear Reader, and call you a traitor or a child molester, costing you your job and marriage, and get away with it because they put it on the opinion page, don’t say you were not warned. 

All of Palacio’s opinions must be considered subjective and value judgments.  Must?  Really?  By whom?  Not me.  Sorry,  Human Rights Foundation:  the claim that Correa ordered the army to shoot is NOT subjective or a value judgment.  It is (1) true or (2) false.  The fact Palacio printed it on the opinion page doesn’t change that reality.

Somewhere, on a parallel, serial, discontinuous, additive plane out there, Palacio has an inkling that he crossed the boundary between fact and appraisal.  He says “Si cometí algún delito, exijo que me lo prueben…” (if I commited a crime, I insist they prove it.)  He thereby acknowledges the possibility that he committed a crime, even though his article appeared on the opinion page and therefore (according to Human Rights Foundation) is ipso facto exempt from legal action.

In journalism, as opposed to the thing resembling it, if I write “You are a skunk,” it is not up to YOU to prove you are NOT a skunk.  The responsibility falls on ME, the maker of the claim, to prove that you ARE a skunk.  As any lawyer in the U.S. will tell you, that is not how it works in the U.S.; however, is that old-fashioned, common sense view of the burden of proof and responsibility still found in other places, e.g., Ecuador?  Apparently, Palacio had no evidence to support his factual claim that Correa ordered the army to fire away; hence the court decided against him. 

                                                                            *          *          *

As noted, the ruling against Palacio and El Universo came down in July.  Then something astounding happened all over the United States.  Nothing.   Nothing at all.   All Quiet on The Western Front.  The Eastern Front too, for that matter. 

Six months later, all hell mysteriously broke loose. 

The Washington Post grabbed the bugle and sounded the charge.  In an editorial[iii]  dated January 11 we discover that President Correa,

an autocratic acolyte of Hugo Chavez who is usually and deservedly ignored outside of his own country, will get a little attention Thursday when he hosts Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As he basks in the aura of a more notorious international pariah, allow us to recount what Mr. Correa really ought to be known for: the most comprehensive and ruthless assault on free media underway in the Western Hemisphere.

After reciting the Palacio case, we hear that El Universo, founded in 1921, is among “historic newspapers” and is “highly respected across the region.”

Assault.  Hmmm.  A strong word.   I wonder if…

Enter the New York Times, the Post’s arch-rival.  Or is it?  On January 23, an anti-Correa editorial appeared:

The United States and others only belatedly recognized what Mr. Correa was up to…There is no doubt that his assault on a free press is an assault on democracy…All of the hemisphere’s democratic leaders, including President Obama, need to push back against Mr. Correa.

Belately recognized.  Remember those words.  Also, assault – there it is again.  They are singularly revealing, although not in the way the New York Times intended.  We will return to them. 

The Los Angeles Times also weighed in on January 23 -- gosh what a coincidence:

Correa should address his government's poor record on freedom of expression instead of engaging in an international campaign against his critics.

International campaign:  another intriguing word choice.  Remember where you saw it.

Next came the San Francisco Chronicle on February 3. 

An attack on freedom of the press anywhere is an attack on freedom everywhere.

Such an assault is under way in Ecuador, a nation ruled with a heavy hand by a lightweight dictator who seems to wish he were Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

The target:  El Universo, a 90-year-old Guayaquil newspaper; one of the largest in Latin America and a leading voice for freedom and democracy in the region.

Wait a second.  Chavez flunky, 90-year old El Universo as universal freedom fighter:  I could swear I read that before.  Indeed, the Chronicle is regurgitating what we saw in the Washington Post.  There is more:

Assault:  there’s that word again, the third time.  The Chronicle takes things in hand and goes to the next level:  “Correa has made a crusade of controlling the media in the country he rules.”  Crusade:  another intriguing word.  Once more, keep in mind who used it. 

Also, don`t forget:  An attack on freedom of the press anywhere is an attack on freedom everywhere. Sounds like somebody wants to send in the troops.  A case -- maybe terminal -- of shameless Pulitzer jingoism, if there ever was one.  I think we had better cut to the chase, and quickly:

Is an attack on freedom what is taking place in Ecuador?  Or is it something else?

All of these fire-breathing freedom-fighters, the push-back guys in D.C., New York and California were nowhere to be found back in July, when the anti-Palacio ruling came down.  Silence, omerta.  American newspapers were perfectly content to let the El Universo twist in the wind, to let its owners and Palacio do hard time, to let $40 million be coughed up.  Nothing new in all that:  those same newspapers were perfectly content to pass over in silence the Bush Administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- until, of course, it was too late to make any difference.

I wish there were only two strikes against the American media; unfortunately, a third case of omerta is on the way.

Belatedly recognized:  what took the American press 6 months to get religion?  Their zeal -- that of a recent convert -- tells the true story:

The campaign waged by the American press has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue at hand, of Palacio and El Universo.  Something happened between July and January to get American newsmen lathered up.  Something big -- as big as the American government.

Here it is. 

In October, a Mexican firm, Consulta Mitofsky, released survey results of public opinion in Latin American.  Of all the leaders of nations in this hemisphere, President Correa had the highest approval rating, 75%.  President Obama came in 13th place at 42% behind Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo (43%). In case you’re wondering, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela ranked fifth at 55%.

Examples are contagious.  Stunned, vexed, the American Government felt the need to marginalize Correa -- usually and deservedly ignored outside of his own country.  Hence, the get-him campaign was launched, the let ´er rip attack, the assault, the no-holds-barred crusade of the American press belatedly, in 2012.

Bizarre, isn’t it, how in evaluating others, they describe themselves.

Actually, there is nothing odd about it.  We are looking at a textbook case of psychological projection.  Unconscious men manipulated by unconscious drives, puerile, violent -- there you have it.  Incidentally, it is their lack of self-awareness that dooms their international campaign to be what it is:  clumsy, naïve.  How could it be otherwise?

How beauteous mankind is.  The ad hominem attacks against Correa are -- like the Palacio article they defend -- scurrilous.  Lightweight dictator, international pariah:   we are looking at Pulitzer yellow journalism, not fact-supported arguments.  Which is why we are not looking at freedom of the press.  We are looking at license of newspapermen posing as freedom of the press. 

El Universo, Emilio Palacio and their newly-minted friends in American boardrooms and newsrooms want you to believe they are a beauteous brave new world; alas, they are only more of the cowardly old one.  Through it all, however, it cannot be said they failed to create anything. A new word arose:

Urinalism :  1.  Libertinage of media owners parading as freedom of the press.  2.  Lack of differentiation by the media of opinion and fact.  3. Ad hominem attacks by the media with no attempt to present supporting facts.  4.  Negative media stories that offer no fair opportunity for rebuttal.  5.  An editorial page serving as an excuse for defamatory articles.  6.  The claim to journalism unsupported by a willingness to take risks.  7.  Synonym: yellow journalism.

O.K., Post, the two Times, the Chronicle, El Universo:  which are you?  (1) Journalism and freedom, as you claim, or (2) urinalism and libertinage?

At bottom, the Palacio affair is a classic case of rights in conflict.  On the one hand, the press definitely, positively has the right to express itself.  On the other hand, citizens, including public officials, definitely, positively have the right not to be slandered.  In recognizing only the right of the press and not the conflict of rights -- the whole picture -- the newsmen tell us who they are.

Gentlemen, you are one-eyed jacks.  We just saw the other side of your face.

                                                                                *          *          *

The Chronicle concludes:

In democracies, this is recognized as a duty of the press:  to examine the moves of those in power.  News organizations in free societies take this responsibility seriously – or should.

I couldn’t agree more.  Which is why, rough tough Washington Post, give-me-liberty-or-give-me-death New York Times, fearless freedom fighter Los Angeles Times, you have some explaining to do.

I invite you to read this blog’s post of December 30, 2010:  “You Be The Judge.”  It discusses how George Bush may have stolen the 2000 election in Florida.  With modest changes, it is the same article I sent the three of you a week after the 2000 election and which you refused to print, even as a letter to the editor. Silence.  Omerta, American style.   Strike three.

I should note, Dear Reader, that I am an accredited expert witness on politics in federal court, which is more than any of the staffs of any of the three newspapers just cited can say.   12  years later, I stand by "You Be The Judge."

In closing, President Correa described the Washington Post as a “far-rightist” newspaper.  I have a different opinion:

The Post is a tool of the American government.  Obama, Bush, JFK, Pol Pot, Hitler, Hoover, Lenin, Reagan, Elvis:  it makes no difference who is in power, the Post does his bidding in exchange for…well, what, exactly?  Money?  Hot tips? Free Redskins tickets?  Gotcha’ sex rumors and phony confidences? Dinner with 200 other attendees?  A Rose Garden interview with softball questions?  An invitation to the White House Christmas party? 

A tool of the American Government.  Unlike Palacio and El Universo, I have evidence to support my statement even though, by one-eyed jack reasoning, I don´t need it.  It is something I witnessed while working at the Washington Post.  The incident pertains to no small event but to the biggest affair imaginable:  world war.

I will present that evidence in the next post.
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[i] If Palacio is so full of vitriol he can barely stand up -- why?

One probative explanation:  revenge.

Four years earlier, on May 19, 2007, in a public meeting at the presidential palace, Palacio repeatedly interrupted the president, who warned him to stop or he would be ejected.  Palacio continued, and was removed. 

President Correa called Palacio a “majadero” -- roughly “crude jerk.”

See and judge for yourself.  The altercation is at: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yANBg7fYlQE&feature=related .

[ii] The report is at http://thehrf.org/documents/Report_EPU.pdf:

The Human Rights Foundation further defends Palacio this way:

As previously stated, according to international human rights law, the prohibition against the criminalization of speech is especially applicable in cases where these expressions constitute a “faithful reproduction of information” or the “publication of information provided by third parties.”

As demonstrated above, many of Palacio’s statements are based on news reports previously published in several news outlets; hence, they constitute faithful reproduction of information or publication of information provided by third parties. (p.23)

Human Rights Foundation, I don’t want to be the one to tell you but that law is so full of holes a typical teenager can play it like a flute.  I can cut and paste previously published information and information provided by third parties so as to “show” that the Human Rights Foundation is really a front for the Klu Klux Klan, they murdered Martin Luther King, JFK and Whitney Houston; are members of a Mexican drug cartel and al-Qaeda; committed genocide in Uganda and Oklahoma; are… well, anything anybody wants or has in mind. 

The law referred to by the Foundation is, in sum, an open door not to freedom but to libertinage.

The Foundation would do well to show a balanced approach and shift its attention away from the rights of a handful of newspaper owners to the human rights of millions of citizens who risk being defamed under laws which are written to be evaded. 

[iii] For a point by point rebuttal, see “Lo Que No Dice El Washington Post” by Fernano Alvarado Espinel of January 13, 2012.    file:///E:/Lo%20que%20no%20dice%20el%20Washington%20Post%20_%20Fernando%20Alvarado%20Espinel.htm 

]]>Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:21:13 -0500http://lebelvedere.weebly.com/2/post/2012/02/postscript-to-prior-post.htmlCharlie C., you want to know how many hits the prior post, "Toward A New Political Economy," received.  Last time I looked, 292.  I don´t like citing that number, however, because not even Weebly is sure what is involved, e,g,, if I connect, then disconnect to eat lunch, then reconnect, am I one or two unique visitors?  And of course more than one person may be looking at the screen.

James S., yes there were numerous commentaries on the last post, but nothing to be published here.  There is plenty of interest in this subject -- period.  I will look into it further.

Bob S., you touch on a difficult subject.  Is the president of a country always the president, or can he be something else?  I addressed "Dr: Correa" and not "President Correa" because I was interested in him as an economist and the author of a book, not as a public official.  If and when he leaves office, the same interest will remain.  I probably would not have done so had he not shown a willingness to be considered as a private individual in his lawsuit against a newspaper (he is suing as an individual citizen against slander).

Brad D., Eddie L., indeed, Correa is a controversial president.  However, such subjects as relations with Iran or Venezuela are not on the table here.  If you wish to discuss them, many other blogs do so.



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