As you may recall, I expressed some dismay upon learning of the Eric Holder nomination for AG. Back in June of this year, Kirk Murphy had done a piece on Holder’s involvement in negotiating a plea deal for Chiquita that included no criminal consequences to the executives who made payments to terrorists. Teddy weighed in as well relaying problems with Holder’s performance was he was a US Attorney. I pointed out that Holder spent over a year trying to get special treatment for Marc Rich. Bmaz weighed in, too.
Glenn Greenwald has opined that blaming Holder for the Chiquita representation is somehow analogous to blaming the ACLU for representing Gitmo detainees and has restated the truism that all criminal defendants are entitled to a defense. I am an open and public admirer of Glenzilla’s writing, and it is rare for me to disagree with him, but he’s got his apples and oranges mixed up.
I do not fault Holder’s representation of an unpopular client — in fact I don’t see that client as all that unpopular, I eat their bananas all the time. Nope, I fault him for NOT adhering to his obligation to represent his client Chiquita.
Chiquita, as a corporation, is an incorporeal being. It acts only through the activities of its Board of Directors, officers and employees. it is owned by its shareholders. Eric Holder’s obligation was to those shareholders, and to a lesser extent, to the employees who earn their living from the company and the consumers who need those bananas to slice over their cornflakes. He did NOT have an obligation to the executives that made the payoffs. Yet, he protected those executives at the expense of the corporation, his client, causing the corporation to take the criminal hit and pay a $25 million fine, while the executives who actually committed the crime in the name of the corporation got off scot free.
This was in direct contravention of the DOJ’s "Thompson Memo", real title "Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations" which stands for the proposition:
Prosecution of a corporation is not a substitute for the prosecution of criminally culpable individuals within or without the corporation. Because a corporation can act only through individuals, imposition of individual criminal liability may provide the strongest deterrent against future corporate wrongdoing. Only rarely should provable individual culpability not be pursued, even in the face of offers of corporate guilty pleas.
[Note: the Thompson Memo was superseded by the weaker McNulty Memo in 2006, however, the McNulty memo adopted, verbatim the language quoted above.]
So, you see, the position of the Holder’s client, Chiquita, should have been in conflict with that of the executives who authorized and made the payments to the terrorists, yet Holder put the welfare of the executives (don’t know if they were technically his clients as well, though they shouldn’t have been due to the glaring conflict of interest) ahead of that of his corporate client. He violated his fiduciary duty of loyalty to Chiquita and its shareholders and non-criminal employees, to get special privileges for fat cat insiders.
Likewise, in his year long behind the scenes adviser role as Marc Rich’s unpaid lobbyist, Holder violated his fiduciary duty of loyalty at DOJ and did an end run around the US Attorney handling the case. If he honestly believed that Mary Jo White’s office had gotten the charging decision wrong, there are procedures in place at DOJ for reviewing that decision and asking her to modify it. He didn’t do that, instead he stabbed his own teammates (both USAO SDNY and the Office of the Pardon Attorney) in the back. Why? To get special privileges for a fat cat insider.
See the pattern? If Holder had represented his own client (whether Chiquita or DOJ) zealously, I wouldn’t be spending my weekends writing blog posts about him. My problem with him is his pattern of ignoring both the rules and his loyalty obligations to get special treatment for rich people. There should not be two standards of justice in this country.
Do I think the guy should be tarred and feathered? Do I think he is even close to be the moral equivalent of the horrible John Yoo? Of course not, I just don’t think that his appointment at DOJ sends the message that the Department is going to be cleaned up ever any time soon. We can do MUCH MUCH better.
Which I will discuss in Part II.
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Great post, LHP.
The guy is a fixer willing to work for anyone if the money is right.
The GOP will have a field day at his confirmation hearing is there anybody who Obama is appointing less likely to get through the confirmation process from his own party?
Supposedly, Obama will be making major cabinet announcements on Monday. This is really my last chance to try to make an impression.
BTW, the Time Magazine piece was written by Samantha Powers who is part of the transition team, albeit for foreign policy.
So, Mitchell has at least one fan in the Obama inner circle, though I suspect his fans there are far more than just one.
Your not giving up on killing this nomination are you LHP?
Oooops. That comment belongs to Part II. Sorry to confuse everyone.
its posts like this that keep FDL at the top of my news crawl. outstanding.
Digg please
The nomination hasn’t happened yet, there is still time to have our say.
Not giving up, running out of time. I think their going to announce on Monday.
My thought was, get this out here today in the faint hope of getting somebody to talk about it on the Sunday talk shows and maybe, maybe, maybe–if all the planets align just right–it penetrates the bubble around Obama.
I know, if wishes were horese we’d all be riding…..
We should demand that Holder tell us who wrote the Death Squads a check.
Diggs are nice because it gets the word out to more readers. “Spotlight” is a fave of mine because it gets the word out to MSM –with much bigger megaphones than I have.
Feel like spotlighting to the Sunday talking heads?
Actually, if there was an indictment–as opposed to a pre- indictment plea deal–that info would be in the indictment. I don’t know what district the case was in–Kirk Murphy probably knows off the top of his head–but it might be in a press release on the relevant US Attorney’s Office website
Thank you for splaining it so well, lhp.
Here’s from Sunday Talking Heads, it has the email contacts for them all; may I suggest the direct route?
There is plenty of time the GOP has to give Obama a hard time at the confirmation hearings and Holder is the biggest target. Obama said no free trade deal with Columbia because of the dead union workers and McCain made a face hiring the lawyer who protected the death squads money men…well that is the kind of thing Rush Limbaugh lives for. The GOP needs to fight, Holder is a target. Holder taints Obama and destroys the change message.
The only way Holder is getting confirmed is if the death squad deal does not get mentioned during the confirmation hearings by the GOP.
The only way that happens is if the GOP gots a deal with the Fixer about war crimes?
maybe david rovics would write a song for holder and chiquita – something like his “coke is the drink of the death squads” ?
Senate GOPs will have a field day with Holder’s nomination, given what we already know. Why would Obama buy himself this kind of trouble? Getting a clean, unambiguous confirmation is especially important for the Attorney General, who has a massive task and needs Congress’s support in the years ahead.
There must be someone better.
I had a dustup with another commenter over Holder’s Chiquita stint. I have absolutely no problem using a lawyer’s clients and how he represents them as one of the criteria for judging his character and therefore his suitability for one of the highest public offices in the country. And on this Holder would seem to fall short.
Sure all clients deserve lawyers, but lawyers who represent the worst of the worst understand that they will not be considered for AG on that score alone. Denying someone AG because you don’t like his clients is a completely reasonable thing to do.
OT The NYT spun Obama’s naming James Jones National Security Adviser:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11…..=1&hp
This appears to be both the Obama and media line. Obama appoints conservatives and the media calls them moderates, a designation that applies apparently even to a Secretary of Defense for the worst President in our history.
Maybe not so off topic, given this is what the Holder nomination is all about as well.
There is more to it the name(s) of the people who wrote the checks were kept out of the press? As LHP points out the corporation not the person(s) took the hit.
Someone the CIA maybe wanted to keep their name out of the press, someone with clout at the Dept of Justice!
Holder is someone’s Fixer.
I think you people are wasting your time, and more important, your energy on this issue.
Just who does the press call conservative these days? Is the name conservative to negative right now to mention?
Bwahahah!
Your pro death squads? Do you think we can’t kill the nomination?
No, and, No.
why?
But it’s worse than that. Took me a while but I finally figured out what’s wrong with the U.S. foreign policy cabal. No matter what side of the aisle they claim to be on, their first choice for a foreign problem is war. The right wants war to go after the bad guys, and the left wants war to go after the bad guys. The only diff is the rationalization for who the bad guy is: WMD purveyor vs. humanitarian reasons, for example.
You won’t find a single foreign policy expert who will not find a reason for war under their own favored circumstances.
A couple of stray points. I don’t know that much about Mary Jo White’s role in the Chiquita affair but she has been something of a corporate fixer since she left the DOJ. And I’m not so sure what went down here was so much different than what she did in the Oxycontin case. (See items 229 and 324 of my scandals list.)
Other point: Samantha Power is one of the 14 members of Obama’s State Department transition team. No word on how Hillary feels about this. Maybe Samantha is working on brownie points for husband Cass Sunstein’s nomination to SCOTUS.
aargh! i can’t keep track of all the code words for batshit crazy establishment: bipartisan, pragmatic, center, experienced, moderate.
Or is Holder really the best lawyer we got for the job? The best African American? The best unindicted (yet) Lawyer from Illinois, the Best Unindicted (yet) African American Lawyer from Chicago?
Because it is going to happen anyway, and there are lots of other things that would be more productive for you to spend your energy on.
Rand
Gotta keep up demand for them war machine makers.
Oh dear, Hugh, how behind the times you are. Powers apologized for calling Hillary a monster, so everything is hunkey dorey now. /s
OK, what’re numbers 1,2 on your list?
This was in response to #24.
Exactly.
No one is proposing disbarment for representing Chiquita. We’re simply saying Obama could find a better choice than Attorney General. It’s not disqualifying Holder as an attorney; everyone, even evil corporation executives, needs and deserves representation. But, an attorney makes a choice, and Holder’s choice was to represent them.
He also chose to be interviewed by American Lawyer magazine while prepping his Chiquita executive client for 60 Minutes, so he doesn’t see the difficult optics involved in this representation. We need an Attorney General with a better eye for how things are, and also how things look.
Of course, for the kinds of wars likely to be fought these days, you don’t need all those expensive military toys, but shhhhh, don’t tell anyone.
ding!
only none of them actually want to go after any bad guys – that’s just the excuse they both use to get support from us. i conclude this because if any of them really cared about what the bad guys were doing, we fucking stop supporting them.
Glad someone sees it the same way I do. I can’t imagine why Glenzilla has a blind spot on this one.
Restoring the constitution, and, restoring integrity to our government.
imo samantha power is far, far more dangerous a hawk than clinton, jones and gates combined.
Well, and this is exactly the point isn’t it? The DOJ has been eviscerated and turned into a political/business fatcat machine by the Bushies. Someone who has, really, those same values when it comes to coddling fatcats and big business is not the one to right the ship.
Not to mention that Holder, I have been told, was not exactly a “team builder” within the ranks of DOK when he was there under Reno. In fact, my understanding is that he was divisive and “factionalizing”. This is NOT what is needed right now at DOJ. He is just flat out a piss poor choice for the job at hand in the DOJ. In different times, I would not like him, but would not consider it a wholly terrible choice. Right now, it is a tragically poor choice. Different ethics and a different skill set are desperately needed.
Lotsa people thought Larry Summers was going to be Treasury Secretary, too — and the Brennan nomination for CIA Director was thought inevitable. Neither is happening.
These trial balloons are floated for a reason. This discussion is part of the reason. We aren’t wasting time and energy; we’re previewing the issues that will be raised at confirmation. If Obama wants his AG to take this baggage into the nomination fight, that’s a fine choice.
But it is important to understand all that will be thrown at Holder. I don’t want any surprises. Do you?
The first eye opener for me was the wnyc interview of Wesley Clark. After that I was sensitized to war mongering Ds. And when you look for it, it leaps out at you. Yes, “bad guy” is just an excuse, which is why I used the word rationalization.
i agree with both of you – shocking, i’m sure. *g*
citizen vetting.
Well, that makes 3 of us. If we pick up another, we can play bridge. Otherwise it’s 3-handed pinochle.
I’ll play the dummy
You didn’t state whether Holder was an Employee of Chiquita, and if so what his contract read, or if a hired gun, what his scope of work was. That he’s tainted by his actions re Rich may be a given, but not necessarily Chiquita.
DC is the worlds largest revolving door; leave your ethics outside and become pragmatic.
As someone who has to deal with the justice system regularly, I can think of few greater prerogatives than restoring its health. Holder is a crappy, at best, selection for accomplishing this. If this is the disdain with which supposed “Constitutional scholar” (that is a joke) Obama holds the DOJ and federal justice system, it bodes not well. The next piece of shit move he will make is nominating the blithering flexible values jackass Sunstein to SCOTUS. These asswipes are mediocre crap when we need outstanding. I thank LHP and all for going after them.
We Deserve Much Better.
LOL. Since I haven’t played bridge for about 4 decades, perhaps I should be considered for that role.
Death Squads, dead brown people, nobody cares, just pay a fine.
Shoplifters get their name in the local paper’s crime section. Holder however gets his client’s name kept out of the paper.
Forget Law and Ethics this guy is a Fixer he greases the wheels at a time when the justice dept was announcing the arrest of every crazy who wanted to blow something up Holder kept the name of the Chiquita employee out of the press?
If the Devil had a Lawyer it would be Holder. I can’t prove he bribes people to get his cases settled but it sure looks that way.
Holder could cast Obama Hispanic and Union votes. I hope the Obama people read this!
He was not an employee; he was an attorney/consigliere. All criminal mobs have them…..
Boy, you read the tea leaves a lot differently than I do. Summers and Brennan were never ’sure things’ in what I was hearing.
As far as surprises, no I don’t like them either, but I must admit I think the Obama people are pretty good on the vetting stuff.
BMAZ, I have also had a few experiences with the justice system, but I really think you are into kool aid drinking on this Holder thing.
Thought you might be in a better mood this morning after the UCLA game!
you
are probablymay be right. But if knowing you were going to succeed was a pre requisite for even trying, few people would ever try.It’s my time and my energy and my Saturday spent pecking away at the computer instead of out hiking in the preserve.
Ah, the Big Game is next! You going?
lol. it’s only been about 20 years for me. didn’t play enough to get very good, but had a ton of fun (probably because my partner was both very good and an excellent teacher and my boss, who organized the games, kept us well supplied with good champagne)
On a guilty of supporting Terrorism charge after 9/11? Does anyone think that billionaire Marc Rich didn’t pay for his pardon?
As you say, it is your time and energy. But it is also my time and energy to state my opinion on this issue, which I kind of thought this blog was all about.
Holder was partner at the law firm of Covington and Burling during his representation of Chiquita. If you click on the links above, questions like that re covered. According to the American Lawyer article linked to above, when Holder went from DOJ to private practice he was worried about his ability to bring in clients.
Now of course if you handle your representations in such a way that it makes clear to high ranking execs (the guys who decide which lawyer to hire) that you will represent the corporation in such a way that the execs know their butts will be covered by you—guess who they are going to want to hire?
No. I’m sorry to say, but I rarely go to Arizona sporting events except for the Ladies Softball.
I don’t think he bribes people. Guys at his level don’t have to do that. It’s all “favor bank”–remember the favor bank from “Bonfire of the Vanities”?
It’s insiders taking care of each other. That’s how Alberto Gonzales got through life. We don’t need any more of that. No more mutual backscratching
which is so true and why we are (I am) so glad to be able to discuss with you your thoughts and ideas.
Heh. The champagne will do it every time.
Think I may have told this bridge story here before, but it’s good enough to repeat. Playing with another couple at their apt. Phone rang, she answered it & talked for a fairly long time, maybe 10 minutes. The 3 of us chatted in a desultory fashion, waiting for her to return. I casually, in full view of the other 2, arranged a spade every fourth card. They never noticed. She came back, I presented the deck to her to cut, which she did. I dealt. Her eyes got bigger & bigger as she picked up her cards. She got the 13 spades. Bidding started, but I couldn’t follow thru, had to admit to my shenanigans. She was soooo disappointed.
Nobody is censoring you however you have been around long enough to know that when you say something unpopular you will have to defend it. We all have said unpopular stuff here.
Not stopping you. Welcome your thoughts. Question: When you say Bmaz is drinking koolaide on this issue, do you mean on Holder being, um, less than we should hope for, or do you mean for thinking we have even a snowball’s chance in Hell of getting anyone to listen?
Well, all you’ve said is that the nomination is going to happen and that time’s being wasted trying to stop it. That’s an opinion, but do you support Holder? Or do you support all Obama’s nominations?
Why would you think the Obama people are pretty good at this vetting stuff when bloggers could stop Brennan, when Summers ended up not being Treasury Secretary, and when Holder’s nomination is as tainted as it is without even being an actuality? Does all that seem like great vetting to you? It seems to me that the Obama team needs help with their vetting.
And that’s why we’re here.
Sorry favors are bribes in my book.
Hugh said “…Obama appoints conservatives and the media calls them moderates,…”
The movement to leave prohressives under the bus and ally with wall street and K street fat cats is on big time. Obama and Joe Liarman looking more alike every day…it is only a month after the election and we are right of the Clinton administration.
The save the economy program is part of a anti union movement. Obama is no FDR. Obama is a corporatist. He is a FISA man, a war man, NAFTA jobs of shore, and welfare to work without jobs and he is a bargainer and deal maker. People are starving and the food stamp program is pathetically under funded. He is a puke.
That is what his administration is doing before he gets out of the gate. The republicans are loving him. So who won the election. He is a turd in a punchbowl. He gave away the treasury while holding hands with Bushco to bail wall street, that could have gotten us off of carbon/oil and thise transfer paymrnt to froiegn soveriegn funds.
Clinton’s team went to the right of center so Obama even much more so. Their will be no accountability under him just prisons full of dopers held accountable for drug abuse. The stupidity of it all has Frank Zappa rolling over in his grave. This is all about governing by faith too. It sucks more than I could have possibly imagined.
Maddow/Hamsher…we want to give him a chance…we gave Bush a chance. Hugh is spot on.
lol.
So did I until SDNY lost the Bess Myerson case. Jury seemed to think that bribes require brown paper bags with cash in ‘em
I didn’t mean it like it came out. The only time I have ever been told to shut up on this blog was a year or so ago when Christy cooled me down on getting too vocal on a women’s rights issue (I am a pretty fervent believer in women’s rights and got carried away).
As always, I enjoy the back and forth we have here.
So why don’t you type what you really think? *g*
I pretty much agree with you but am saving my invective language for his actions after inauguration, i.e., saving my ammunition. You seem to be following another model, i.e., training now to bulk up for bigger messes later. Whichever works.
yes.
well, if that’s what they want to do, the very least we can do is call it what it is – instead of letting them lie with impunity.
A Banana Boycott
No Hassle:)
BTW, I got an early read on being thrown under the bus when I went to the Obama booth at Netroots Nation in July to complain about his FISA reversal. They snottily asked me what choice did I have. That kind of attitude, we now know, flowed down directly from the top.
Yes, I support Holder.
If you think the blogs stopped Summers and Brennan from being nominated then you are drinking an overdose of kool aid.
I think that Obama’s nominations have been pretty solid so far. I am particularly satisfied with the pragmatism he has shown. That is what is going to be needed to get the Nation back on track. We don’t need a bunch of ideologues running the country.
Investigate the Jury?
I think it requires good policy and appointees who were not responsible for the mess to get us out of it. So far, Obama seems to have fallen short on both.
do you think summers is not an ideologue? i ask because that is not my read on him…. (i think he’s a raving neoliberal).
Actually, neither. When I refer to kool aid drinking, I mostly mean that we are letting our opinions/ideology get in front of our realistic examination of the facts of the issue. I guess I just try to be fairly pragmatic (not that I don’t get carried away occasionally myself).
You forgot to mention that they are moderate, centrist, bipartisan, and, of course, experienced, all words that the media has used to describe Joe Lieberman. The country has real problems and there is no way that a group of conservative Democrats and Republican Lites are going to solve them. Indeed a lot of these guys were instrumental in creating these problems and exacerbating them.
I assume you are referring to the supposed excess of Clinton people being appointed. Two things I would say: 1. If you want people experienced in governing and are a democrat, then where would you get
The case was over 2 decades ago.. I think that train has left the station.
Also, sometimes jury nullification is just that.
And, as freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Not everything is nefarious
I saw the results of “Impeachment off of the Table”…still happening. Wars in Pakistan, Afghaistan, Iraq and possibly Iran are on going or on the table. Habeous, FISA and the crapile shifted to taxpayres…$7.7 Billion. Food banks have twice the number of clients.
Help me out folks…where is the comfort zone? I am waiting for the carbon tax not holding my breath.
You could say Obama is consistent. I voted against rethugs. The appointments say business as usual.
Why do you support Holder? Is there no one who would prefer over him?
your appointees if not from the Clinton ranks, and 2. If you remember the Clinton years, they were actually not bad times for the country.
Sorry, that should read “is there no one YOU would prefer….”
That is in your face.
I guess I’m not sure what a raving neoliberal is in economic terms. From what I read Summers is a brilliant economist with very little people skills.
The whole economics team is, as selise sez, neoliberal. They are all Rubin mentees. They deregulated the financial markets which led directly to the mess under W. As someone else said, they should be in jail, not given keys to the kingdom. There are some kinds of “experience” one can live without.
You can look forward to more trade agreements that hurt developing countries in the interest of U.S. corps, more financial market deregulation (they’ll couch it in reregulation vocabulary, so it’ll fly), and more floods of poor illegal immigrants.
I want to make myself clear. I am not opposed to ALL of Obama’s picks. Far from it. Some, I don’t know enough about, some I actually approve of, but DOJ needs someone REALLY REALLY special.
Someone inspirational. Holder is not that guy, for me. If DOJ were still in good shape, I might not be getting my knickers in a twist over this.
See my 91.
And as for the great economy during Clinton, that’s a surface read. It’s the policies that were implemented then that did not show their full negative influences until afterwards.
there is another group of people from the clinton era that are being excluded from the decision making positions. and since they are the people who seem, uh, competent (or is that on the list of code words too?) i’m not impressed with the list so far – which seems overweighted with neoliberal ideologues who were instrumental in working with batshit crazy republicans like phil gramm to either deregulate or prevent regulation of our financial markets – and that is causing us so many problems right now. why would the people who, in the ’90s, warned us about this be the ones excluded? i don’t like any of the answers i can think of.
Leahy just gavelled in the senate & announced that it was in recess until 12/2. Glad to see they’re finally on top of the recess appointment thingy.
Blue Ameria a couple of flights upstairs with Howie and Tom Perriello
He is smart, knows Washington, and worked for Janet Reno.
If Obama is going to take Janet from us in AZ, I would have preferred she be the AG rather than Homeland Security (although she will do a great job there also).
democracynow did an exposed on Napolitano last week. Apparently she’s right hawkish on immigration, more so than many Rs. Militarized the whole border area, can’t remember the rest of the evidence.
Part of the Clinton years were good economically but they led to the dot com bubble and collapse. Worse they took off any regulatory restrains on derivatives, they promoted credit that was way to cheap feeding into the housing bubble, and they repealed Glass-Steagall which allowed an insurance company like AIG or a bank like Citigroup to gamble in ventures that put both these companies and the wider economy at risk.
What we need are people who got these things right, not the fuck ups who got them wrong.
neoliberal – pro-corporate “free” trade TRIPS agreements that killed thousands of people, preventing regulation of otc derivatives, enron loophole, repeal of glass-steagall. stuff like that.
does that help explain what i mean by neoliberal?
my dream appointment is michael greenberger to head the cftc
Boy, you sound like the Repugs blaming everything that is wrong with their world today on something that happened with FDR.
All I remember is that the country was in pretty fair shape under Rubin economics. Or have you forgotten about the surplus, or maybe the value of your portfolio.
If you want to cast some blame around you might want to look at Greenspan or the Bushies.
I think you need to read a little more. Sounds like you have Janet mixed up with Arpaio.
There are millions of bureacrats to select from aside from the tired and often diabolical Balkan war lords. Fresh people with good records to to move up…why pass them over…good policy implementation is not synonomous with appointing people that are short on moral fiber which is how we got into this mess…a world wide reccession that almost $8 trillion
over the last year has not avoided.
I am a totally womens advocate. But the “Clinton Health Care” crap sucks. As does her foriegn policy…murdering large populations of brown people to protect “our’ interests in the muddle east.
You don’t get a pass…go back and see the debates on issue the last year on the Lake.
Greenspan deserves a lot of blame too.
Don’t know how FDR got into the conversation. Are you saying that Clinton economics team did not do NAFTA, did not repeal Glass-Steagall, or are you saying that those two (of many) actions had no responsibility in the immigration & financial mess that ensued?
Gosh, is there anything else on your list you would like to demonize poor ole Larry with?
Muchas I admire Janet Reno personaly–and I cannot tell how very much I do–her DOJ was nto exactly covered in glory. She could not seem to control Freeh at FBI, and I know him, he is not that hard to deal with, she let Jamie Gorelick go around writing memos that were not based on law, but only on Jamie’s own risk aversion, communication and menagement were a mess.
The Clinton admin had some succesful AU Attorney’s, but DOJ was not well managed from either a legal stand point or a managerial stand point.
Love Janet Reno the person and the even just the idea of her, but that DOJ was not a well run outfit. So, “worked for Janet Reno” is not a plus for me.
I agree he is a smart man and I agree he knows Washington. That describes tons of people who probably won’t be inspirational AGs either
Here’s the democracynow link. Let me know if it has errors in the reporting.
http://www.democracynow.org/20…..r_homeland
I suggested YOU do some more reading.
Welfare to was very hard on poor families. Transportation, child care and other challenges that were never addressed to make it work. That was a move to the right. Inner cities are a tradgedy in Obama’s own words in his first book. Wrong in so so many ways. Nafta was a killer. The rust belt off shored. I gaurantee you if the manufacturing sector is idnored the Rethugs are back in 2012.
lhp, fantastic post.
you explained it like you’d explain it to a four year old and you make a compelling argument. i look forward to reading glenzilla’s counter
Suggestions? Link?
IIRC Napolitano is your preferred choice for nominee.
Well folks, can’t say it hasn’t been fun this morning. I am normally accused of being a flaming liberal when I talk to most people, so it is nice to be cast as the conservative pragmatist who only believes in trying to get something accomplished instead of espousing a bunch of dreamy ideas.
Sorry, but I must go to see ‘Bama beat up on Auburn with my ‘Bama compatriots at the local watering hole (I guarantee I will be the most liberal one in that group!!).
Cheers, and have a good one!!
Holder will not ferret out the Bush career appointees in the Department of Justice. The department is so politicised even good people have a haed road. No we need a Fitz type with tough skin not a wheeler dealer.
Called ‘buy now pay later’…which is what Obama twisted arms for in congress recently…all for Wall street. Main street is going to take it in the rear.The retail chains are going south in large numbers. The consumer is tapped out their line of credit party on their homes is history. As Ian points out the Miriam Fractal Spiral…to quote Clinton “it’s the economy stupid.”
are you disagreeing that summers was centrally involved in the items i listed (in which case i will provide links), or do you think the items are not important? or something else?
i guess i don’t understand your objection to my comment @100. would you elaborate? thanks!
Rubin at Citibank si a wall street insider…made truckloads of easy money. How will he be unbiased? It the Oligarchy.
The Library of Congress. G)
When it’s too hot get out of the kitchen.
That is exactly what I have been saying all along. I have issues with Holder on some things, but my biggest gripe is just that he is the wrong person for the job. Irrespective of his ideologies, I just don’t think he has the bureaucratic and people skills, team building and inspirational nature, that is so direly needed. This is all why I was so adamant about Janet Napolitano for the job; she has that stuff in spades. The historical evidence is that Holder is in the negative column on these traits. And I want the big business coddlers the fuck out of the DOJ; we have to excise that if we want that modality to help the country out of the financial crisis.
That piece you are referring to is an ignorant, ill informed piece of crap. I have lived here most all of my life, know the issues and players quite well, and that article was pitiful. Janet worked with Arpaio only enough to get elected (and yes it was necessary) the first run for governor. AS US Atty and ever since the first governor election, she has been a thorn in his side. In fact, she was the one of set up the Phil Gordon trip to DC and civil rights complaint against Arpaio.
Gross errors, sloppy reporting, just crap.
Part II of this is a couple of flights upstairs
can you give some links to contradict the democracy now! report? examples of the gross errors would be very helpful. thanks!
I don’t need no stinking links. I live here and know for myself what is going on; I am right in the middle of these very issues and people involved.
bmaz – but i don’t live there… and besides, if the report is easy to refute, i’m going to email dn! about it and they’re going to want some evidence. do you want to see the report retracted?
I thought Democracy Now was supposed to be this excellent source of all reporting?
So why does bmaz have to do the work to refute their reports?
Without doing anything but follow back and forth and his comments at emptywheel and here, it seems that there should have been plenty of info available to Democracy Now unless their only purpose was to trash Napolitano. Which would then put them on the same level as all the other news agencies that get mocked here all the time.
usually democracy now! is very, very good – by far the best i’ve found bar none. but no one is perfect and i try to always be a little skeptical.
in any event, i haven’t read that democracy now! report yet, and i haven’t followed the issue at EW. so i don’t know where the contradiction(s) is(are).
bmaz claimed there were gross errors – i asked what they were and if he would give me some links. certainly he doesn’t have to do that if he doesn’t want to. but if he does i will read them and if i’m convinced will contact democracy now! and ask them to rebut or retract.
Well, it may also be that bmaz doesn’t have links as he has information not available online but from personal knowledge.
I could spend a day and take this shit apart at the seams; I just have no interest in doing so. From what I see and know here; it is, for the most part, BS. Most all of the stuff Napolitano is being accused of was actually done by Arpaio and the state legislature; most of her involvement has been actually trying to reel it in.
Janet did suck up to Arpaio to get elected Governor. That is a low point. She knew it then, she knows it now. Not a good feather in her cap. But the whole Maricopa County jail deal is Arpaio she doesn’t have anything to do with that, and is one of the few who has pounded him over it while she was the US Atty here. Napolitano actually has fought the hell out of Arpaio, but mostly behind the scenes. She has let Phil Gordon be the front man lately because she was stumping for Obama and didn’t want to taint Obama with the clusterfuck here. Lame? Yeah maybe a little, but that’s politics. She was helping and advising Phil Gordon every step of the way in trying to get civil rights abuse actions taken by the DOJ against Arpaio..
I had a chance to discuss the Holder nomination, briefly, with Senator Feingold a week ago. My impression, Russ is predisposed to approve, but wants to ask all the hard questions first. (Mine, whether Holder will follow through on Obama’s pledge before the Oregon primary to order an end federal raids on State-legal medical marijuana.
Suggest you send this to the Senator’s office.
sure, of course. but that’s not what bmaz said – he said it was gross errors and sloppy reporting. hard to see how it could be sloppy reporting if the info wasn’t publicly available. but even so, it’s up to bmaz if he wants to elaborate or not.
like i said, democracy now! is the best news source i’ve found, so i thought it might be useful to give them evidence refuting their report. it’s not like they are the M$M – they actually care about getting it right.
i guess bmaz doesn’t want to do that. i think that’s too bad, but it’s certainly his choice to make.
and if Feingold brings it up?
ben – thanks for all you do.