Corrupt populist leftist economic theories. Just read this on the bus the other day. Fits nicely with the discussion.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles...10louisiana.htm

That history goes back to the early 1800s, when pirate Jean Lafitte attacked Spanish and French ships from his mini-kingdom deep in the bayou. To curry local favor, he distributed pilfered goods to the poor. Lafitte may have been among the most honorable of Louisiana's lovable rogues.

The most notorious was the "Kingfish," populist Democratic Gov. Huey Long, who lorded over the state from 1927 until his death in 1935. Long delivered on his campaign promises of free textbooks for children, paved roads, and new schools--almost all of it financed by taxes on the rich and on oil companies. But Long also created a secret police force and consolidated state employees under his control, typically taking a portion of their earnings as "contributions" to his war chest. At an LSU faculty dinner, Long bragged, "I steal money. But a lot of what I stole has spilled over in no-toll bridges, hospitals, and to build this university." After being elected to the U.S. Senate and ensuring the election of a stooge to succeed him in the governor's office, Long prepared for a presidential run against an incumbent, fellow Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, who called Long one of the most dangerous men in America. On Sept. 8, 1935, Carl Weiss, the son-in-law of a political opponent, shot Long to death in the state capitol.

" Elect the Crook. " But corruption did not die with him. In 1939, the "Louisiana Scandals" erupted when James Monroe Smith, appointed by Long as president of LSU, was charged with embezzling a half-million dollars. In the ensuing investigation, at least 20 state officials were indicted, and two committed suicide as the scandal enveloped Gov. Richard Leche, who received a 10-year federal prison sentence in a kickback scheme.

The legacy of free-spirited scoundrels was inherited by Gov. Edwin Edwards, a populist charmer who served four terms over the period of 1972 to 1996. The dapper womanizer beat two dozen corruption investigations and once said the only way he could lose a race was by being "found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy." Edwards produced campaign bumper stickers proclaiming, "Elect the Crook." Voters did. In 2000, the good times stopped rolling; Edwards received a 10-year federal prison sentence for extorting money from casino boat owners seeking licenses.

Under subsequent Govs. Mike Foster and Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, Louisiana has tried to clean up its act. But since 2004, two state judges have been convicted of accepting bribes. Federal officials are also investigating the administration of former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, whose associates are accused of skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars from city contracts. And, in August, the feds raided the homes of U.S. Rep. William Jefferson because of suspected illegal activity with African business interests.

Nevertheless, attitudes may be changing. "Louisiana politicians have thrived on bad-boy images and populist appeal," says Pearson Cross, an assistant professor of political science at the University of LouisianaLafayette. "But [voters] are realizing while corruption may be colorful, it's not helping Louisiana." And right now, Louisiana can use all the help it can get.

Total history of major corruption. Mostly lefty politicians skimming off the top. Standars socialist stuff.

So would the $8 billion missing in Iraq be due to "corrupt rightist economic theories"?

What is it that makes corruption either leftist or rightist?

Matters who stole it. You have any idea how much money disappeared during WWII?

Location.

The point is that graft is graft.

I should have known.

Duh, but that doesn't take into account that LA's problem isn't just graft.

Riiiiiiiiight! So 'major corruption' and politicians skimming off the top immediately, and magically, transforms everything into "standard socialist stuff".

This is ridiculous. I am not going to have this discussion again.

You might as well call it 'devil's work' to the same effect.

Y'all will call anything that you don't like 'leftist' and feel better about yourselves.

It's a bunch of grade A, Choice, bullshit.

Roman Emperors must have been operating with "leftist economic theories" (ubiquitous, it appears) during the time of 'bread and circuses'.

What a crock of shit.

A bunch of fuckin' commies, those Romans.

They're everywhere.

Those bastiges.

So that excuses the missing $8,000,000,000. (that's a lot of zeroes)

You have an excuse for everything Pubes do. It's outrageous.

"a bunch of grade A, Choice" - Nomarchy

Clipped your article on Huey et.al. AV.

Got such a quick response on Napoleon XIV that gave pause to ask if ya'll ever heard score the of Broadway play "Fiorello"? 'Politics And Poker' is a great tune but 'Little Tin Box' really kix ask.

No, it's not.

The point being that if money disappears during an adminstration it doesn't mean they "stole" it. I know you don't believe in fair trials or audits during a Republican adminstration, but sometimes money gets lost or stolen without it being Republicans.

I tthink I've addressed the cui bono fantasy.

If one tenth of the righties would show the same professional integrity . . ..

no kidding. Can't have personal responsibility or accountability. With Republicans anyway.

Prosecutor asks NYT reporter to testify again
Tue Oct 11, 2005 9:27 PM ET14


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New York Times reporter Judith Miller was summoned for a second appearance on Wednesday before a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity after she found notes from a previously undisclosed conversation with a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

In a memo to New York Times staff on Tuesday, Executive Editor Bill Keller said Miller would return to the grand jury to "supplement" her initial testimony after handing over to federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald notes from her June 23, 2003, conversation with Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

That once-secret conversation could be critical to Fitzgerald's case. It could help establish that Libby and others in the White House were talking to reporters about Joseph Wilson, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's diplomat husband, and possibly Plame, in the weeks before Wilson publicly accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq.

President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, has been summoned to make another appearance -- his fourth -- before the grand jury later this week, and prosecutors have told him they can make no guarantees he won't be indicted.

After spending 85 days in jail, Miller testified before the grand jury for the first time on September 30 about her two previously disclosed conversations with Libby -- on July 8 and July 12, 2003.

"For a couple more days she (Miller) remains under a contempt-of-court order, and is not yet clear of legal jeopardy," Keller said.

It is unclear how Fitzgerald first learned about the June 23, 2003, conversation. Legal sources close to Miller said she discovered the notes after she testified.

According to a National Journal report, in two appearances before the federal grand jury, Libby did not disclose the June 23 conversation with Miller. Nor did Libby disclose the conversation when he was twice interviewed by FBI agents.

ROVE 'NEVER PART OF ANY SCHEME'-LAWYER

Fitzgerald is wrapping up his investigation into who leaked Plame's identity and whether any laws were violated.

Wilson asserts that administration officials outed his wife, damaging her ability to work undercover, to discredit him for criticizing Bush's Iraq policy in 2003 after Wilson made a CIA-funded trip to investigate whether Niger helped supply nuclear materials to Baghdad.

Fitzgerald has not indicated whether he intends to bring indictments, but lawyers close to the investigation said there were signs he may be moving in that direction and could bring charges as early as next week.

Fitzgerald could bring charges against officials for the crime of knowingly revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative, but lawyers say he is also weighing conspiracy perjury and obstruction of justice charges.

After initially denying any involvement in the leak, Rove's defenders now say he was never part of a White House campaign to discredit Wilson by leaking the identity of his wife.

"Karl has consistently and truthfully maintained that he was never part of any scheme to punish Joe Wilson by disclosing the identity of his wife," Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said.



Lawyers said Rove could use his fourth appearance before the grand jury to amend or recant earlier statements that may contradict the testimony of other witnesses, including Matt Cooper, the Time magazine reporter who told the grand jury that Rove was one of his sources.

By asking Miller to testify a second time, lawyers involved in the case said, Fitzgerald appeared to be trying to establish when the White House first learned about Wilson and his wife, and started talking to reporters.

Miller's June 23, 2003, conversation with Libby was two weeks before Wilson publicly criticized the administration's Iraq policy in a New York Times opinion piece on July 6, 2003, but after reports of his mission had begun to surface in the press.

Keller said The New York Times intends to publish a detailed account of Miller's role in the case "once her obligations to the grand jury are fulfilled." But Keller said Miller "is under legal advice not to discuss that until her testimony is completed."



http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle....umber=0&summit=

Fawell breaks down on the stand

Former aide gets emotional when questioned about fiancee



Wednesday, October 12, 2005

By MIKE ROBINSON

of The Associated Press
CHICAGO - George Ryan's one-time top aide was overcome by emotion during prosecution questioning about his fiancee and the former governor's racketeering and fraud trial had to be halted while the witness composed himself.

Scott Fawell, Ryan's former chief of staff and campaign manager, was in his fourth day on the witness stand when he was asked about visits his fiancee, Andrea Coutretsis, makes to the federal prison at Yankton, S.D., where he is serving a 6 1/2-year racketeering sentence.

"These visits from Miss Coutretsis - are these monitored visits, sir?" federal prosecutor Patrick M. Collins asked Fawell, who is the government's key witness.

Instead of answering, Fawell stared, gulped water, covered his face with his hand, stood up and turned his back to the courtroom. Marshals led him out so he could compose himself.

It was a sharp contrast from the 48-year-old Fawell's cocky, wisecracking manner in his first day on the stand when he not only answered questions but volunteered his opinion on politics and other topics until Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer told him to cut it out.

Ryan, 71, a Republican who was governor from 1999 to 2003, is charged in a 22-count indictment with racketeering conspiracy, mail fraud, tax fraud and lying to FBI agents.

Many of the allegations focus on the eight years he spent as secretary of state before becoming governor. Prosecutors say Ryan steered big-money leases and contracts to his longtime lobbyist friend, Larry Warner, and other insiders while getting free vacations and assorted gifts.

Warner, 67, is on trial as Ryan's co-defendant. Both men have denied wrongdoing.

The case stems from the federal government's seven-year Operation Safe Road, which began by focusing on bribes paid for drivers licenses and expanded into a full scale investigation of political corruption in the Ryan era. Seventy-nine individuals have been charged, 73 convicted.

After returning to the stand Tuesday, Fawell wrapped up his direct testimony and immediately came under cross examination from Ryan's chief defense counsel, Dan K. Webb.

"During the years when you and George Ryan worked together in the secretary of state's office were you ever aware of anyone giving him any money to do anything?" Webb asked.

"No," Fawell said firmly.

Under questioning by Webb, Fawell also said he believes a number of witnesses who testified against him at his 2003 trial lied to curry favor with prosecutors in hopes that they wouldn't be sent to prison.

"It happened and you know it happened," Webb said, raising the eyebrows of prosecutors.

Fawell said that when he later agreed to testify against Ryan as a prosecution witness, he told prosecutors who had lied at his trial and hoped they would do something about it.

But nothing seemed to happen, Fawell said.

Once the jury was out of the room, Assistant U.S. Attorney Zachary T. Fardon was on his feet, complaining to Pallmeyer that Webb deliberately "crossed the line."

He accused Webb of deliberately "editorializing" several times.

"The jury was listening and it has to be corrected," Fardon said. He urged Pallmeyer to give jurors a strongly worded instruction saying there was no evidence of perjury at Fawell's trial.

Webb said he was dismayed "that I'm getting all this whining at this point."

"I'll stand by what I did," Webb said. He said that Fawell "gave them the details and they didn't do anything about it." Webb said he had a right to question the witness about it.

Besides serving his racketeering sentence, Fawell is awaiting sentencing on charges stemming from what he admits was bid-rigging at the Chicago Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority.

Coutretsis is also awaiting sentencing on federal charges and Fawell is testifying under a deal that would both keep her out of prison and cut six months off his time behind bars.

It was on visits to the South Dakota prison that Coutretsis persuaded Fawell to stop defying the government and cooperate with prosecutors so that she would not have to serve time in prison away from her children.

http://www.pjstar.com/stories/101205/REG_B7QL4PE2.035.shtml

[center]bullshit[/center]

Revolting Conservatives or is it the Conservatives are Revolting?


On K Street Conservatism


Conservatives are not supposed to be cuddly. They are supposed to be competent, and to understand the scarcity of everything.



By George F. Will
Newsweek

Oct. 17, 2005 issue - For a few conservatives, the accumulation of discontents may have begun building toward today's critical mass in December 2001 with the No Child Left Behind law, which intruded the federal government deeply into the state and local responsibility of education, grades K through 12. That intrusion has been accompanied by a 51 percent increase in the budget of the Education Department that conservatives once aspired to abolish.

The accumulation accelerated in December 2003, when the Republican House leadership held open for three hours the vote on adding a prescription-drug benefit to Medicare. The time was needed to browbeat enough conservatives to pass the largest expansion of the welfare state since LBJ—an entitlement with an unfunded liability larger than that of Social Security. The president's only believable veto threat in nearly five years was made to deter an attempt to cut spending by trimming the drug entitlement.


Agriculture subsidies increased 40 percent while farm income was doubling. Conservatives concerned about promiscuous uses of government were appalled when congressional Republicans waded into the Terri Schiavo tragedy. Then came the conjunction of the transportation bill and Katrina. The transportation bill's cost, honestly calculated, exceeded the threshold that the president had said would trigger his first veto. (He is the first president in 176 years to serve a full term without vetoing anything. His father cast 44 vetoes. Ronald Reagan's eight-year total was 78.) In 1987 Reagan vetoed a transportation bill because it contained 152 earmarks—pork—costing $1.4 billion. The bill President Bush signed contained 6,371, costing $24 billion. The total cost of the bill—$286 billion—is more, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than the combined costs of the Marshall Plan and the interstate highway system.


With Katrina, "nation building"—a phrase as sensible as "orchid building," and an undertaking expressive of extravagant confidence in government—has come home. It is one thing to invoke, as Reagan frequently did for national inspiration, the Puritans' image of building a "shining city upon a hill." It is another thing to adopt the policy of rebuilding a tarnished city—it was badly tarnished even before the inundation—that sits below sea level.

Could Katrina's costs be paid by budget cuts, perhaps starting with $24 billion of transportation earmarks? No, said the then House Majority Leader Tom DeLay—"The Hammer"—because Republicans have cut all inessential spending. With that, critical mass became explosive.


The indictments of DeLay—although certainly political in terms of the prosecutor's motive and probably unjust as a matter of law—are, considered solely in terms of their consequences, helpful to conservatives. DeLay, who neither knows nor cares any more about limited government than a camel knows or cares about calculus, probably will never return to the House leadership, and might even be voted out of the House in 13 months.

When hammered, people can become as flattened as veal scaloppine, or can become angry. Conservatives' anger forced Speaker Dennis Hastert to abandon his highhanded attempt to name California Rep. David Dreier as DeLay's chosen placeholder. Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt, who was named instead, will not relish turning into a pumpkin if DeLay returns. Besides, 50 Republican members can force leadership elections—what a concept—and are apt to do so in January. Furthermore, in 2004 DeLay won with an underwhelming 55 percent, running nine points behind President Bush in his district.

DeLay is exhibit A for the proposition that many Republicans have gone native in Washington. Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, leader of the more than 100 conservative members of the Republican Study Committee, charges that some Republicans think "big government is good government if it's our government." DeLay's troubles, and his party's, may multiply with coming revelations about the seamy career of uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He is emblematic of DeLay's faux conservatism—K Street conservatism. That is Republican power in the service of lobbyists who, in their K Street habitat, are in the service of rent seekers—interests eager to bend public power for their private advantage.

Since 2000 the number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled, from 16,342 to 34,785. They have not been attracted to the seat of government, like flies to honey, for the purpose of limiting government.

Conservatives are not supposed to be cuddly, or even particularly nice. They are, however, supposed to be competent. And to know that scarcity—of money, virtue, wisdom, competence, everything—forces choices. Furthermore, they are supposed to have an unsentimental commitment to meritocracy and excellence. The fact that none of those responsible for the postwar planning, or lack thereof, in Iraq have been sacked suggests—no, shouts—that in Washington today there is no serious penalty for serious failure. Hence the multiplication of failures.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9629463/site/n...isplaymode/1098

As a liberal I'm kind of enjoying the show. One big republican slugfest. We don't have to do anything, they are eating their own.

Such fun.

too bad its fake.

[center]
SO WHO GOT PUNISHED?[/CENTER]


Death Toll
Katrina 1033
War 1964

Death Toll
Military killed 10s of thousands
Muslims killing Muslims thousands and thousands
Tsunami 285,000
Iran Earthquake 30,000
Pakistan Earthquake 30,000
Saudi Arabia Earthquake thousands
Afghanistan Earthquake thousands

If we're talking about "punishments"... do you know what happens to the "New Babylon"?

well theres another thing that repuslickans and terrorists have in common.

The doctrine of "intelligent retribution"?

That's revolting. Do you actually believe that God is deliberately crushing six year old Iranian children in their schools?

No, Judy! It's a cartoon. I'm making fun of the cartoon. Do you remember the charge that Allah caused Katrina because America is so wicked?

Don't kill the messenger. " I report, you decide"

oh yes indeed!

My way of countering ridiculousness is by being even more ridiculous.

YES!

Yeah and only the repuslickans in the US are saying the exact same thing. Two peas in a pod.

GW (George Will) lashing out?

There's a classic.

I just wonder why it doesnt post links to the reich wing hate rag where it gets its cartoons.

Nobody posts cartoon links 'cause you can see them on the edit screen, and there's no question of plagiarism

Tonight on Hardball they were discussing the CIA leak investigation and one of the lawyers said they thought the case might be made for espionage. It would be an easier case to prove than outing a CIA agent and knowing she was undercover. With espionage the transmission of classified material to reporters would be easy to prove.

Rove, Libby and perhaps others could be indicted on these charges. Whoever was in the cabal of thugs who set out to bring down Joe Wilson and then tried to cover it up.

Interesting theory.

Whatever sticks. Bottom line: every contact Plame ever had has been compromised. If someone in a sensitive place, say Iran were on the verge of cooperating with the US they would look at the outing of Plame and the resulting security nightmare for her previous contacts and figure they may as well not bother. I mean if our politicians would expose one of our own for revenge then what could they expect?

Black's Law Dictionary (1990) defines espionage as: "...gathering, transmitting, or losing...information related to the national defense."

A CIA agents identity is related to the national defense.

It's considered treason.

"Politics drove someone in the White House to do a treacherous, potentially criminal thing: a senior administration official leaked the identity of a covert CIA operative. They endangered the agent's life and compromised our national security in a time of war.

Here's what former president George H.W. Bush said about that kind of crime: "Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors." That's from a speech on April 26, 1999. "

http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/07/dean_on_the_lea.php

You know the world's turned upside down when lefties are against treason.

Color me skeptical.

color you stupid

He fired Rove. What will shrub do?

Color you red.

Stupid is giving him unearned credit..



Poly want a treat?

Poly want a страдающи?

When the lefties make personal attacks you're no longer a noob.