Forwarding, please hold

April 1, 2005 — For the left-of-center political strategists in America's ongoing culture war, Pope John Paul II could not have picked a better day to die (or, at least, fall deathly ill — the reports keep changing).

Before I go on, let me say I intend no disrespect to the Pontiff (seriously). But this isn't about him. This is about the American culture war whose most recent battle took place was in a hospice in Florida and (as always) on the television airwaves.

That the Pope's health failed on this, of all days, is a blow to Randall Terry and others who recently used poor Terry Schiavo to further their anti-American goals.

For weeks the these people—who seek destroy the American traditions of pluralism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and the very rule of law in the United States based solely on their personal religious beliefs—have received a media buzz that generated yet another polarizing issue in America's culture war.

The full political and cultural fallout from the Terry Schiavo situation will surely go on, and perhaps has barely begun, but let's face it: the minute Terry Schiavo died yesterday, the news media, particularly the cable news channels, were looking for a new story.

Boy did they get it. These mothers swept down on the Pope so fast that, as with Yasser Arafat, they prematurely reported his death.

Sure, the TV news will continue to report on issues brought forth by the Terry Schiavo story. Indeed the story of the Pope's death, or impending death (“... uh...well we assure you he is very very sick, according to the Vatican”), will be intertwined with that of Schiavo, since her death sparked a debate on life, and end-of-life issues of which the Pope had strong feelings.

But, Schiavo's death ended the suspense required for the drama of 21st-century television news. Our attention-deficit-disorder-driven media outlets ready to move on to the next big thing. The Pope came and saved them.

Goodbye Randal Terry.

April 1, 2005 — In other news, today's April Fool appears to be former AIG chairman and CEO, CEO Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg.

Greenberg resigned his positions in recent weeks, amid a probe by regulators over charges of fraud at AIG, the world's largest business insurance company.

The future governor of New York (I pray), State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, looks poised to indict the company, which joins the likes of Enron and Worldcom in a scandal involving accounting fraud. Last month, an internal audit showed the company had used improper accounting methods to falsely bolster its financial position as reported to the Securites Exchange Commission and, ultimately, its shareholders.

Now there are fun allegations that former chairman and CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, who resigned in March, may have lied to regulators and investigators, and stolen or destroyed documents.

Greenberg was one of the most powerful executives in the world, and had been CEO of AIG since 1967, succeeding Cornelius Vander Starr, who founded the company in Shanghai in 1919. He was a big donor to the Republican party (was a Bush Ranger) and had sway with politicians from Washington to Beijing.

"The dramatic end of Mr. Greenberg's 37-year reign as head of the world's largest business insurance company was extraordinary for the financial titan who ruled AIG as a personal fiefdom," wrote The Wall Street Journal this morning. "Indeed, as the events unfolded, Mr. Greenberg railed against what he viewed as a palace coup...He called and yelled at several directors, including longtime friends Frank Zarb, former chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers... for "turning" on him and leading a "boardroom revolt," the people say. Shortly after the probe began, he complained about the "McCarthy-istic" legal and regulatory atmosphere that he believed attacked him unfairly, the people say...For decades, the health-conscious chief roamed AIG's corporate headquarters and many of its offices around the world...In his executive suite filled with Chinese artifacts, Mr. Greenberg had his own elevator guarded by his own security detail, his own living room adjoining his office and private chandeliered dining room.

Basically, Hank Greenberg is Mr. Burns from "The Simpsons" (who, of course was fashioned after John D. Rockefeller). It figures that he has finally been unmasked as the crook he is. I worked for AIG for a few years and, you know, I never trusted that mofo. (You can learn why here and here, at your leisure.) A couple of times I encountered his personal security detail mentioned above, which guarded the entire 18th floor of the company headquarters at 70 Pine St. in lower Manhattan. That scene was right out of the pages of "Robocop" or "Brazil."

I'd laugh more at AIG's misfortune if I weren'ta shareholder. AIG stock is, in fact, the last security investment I still have (the dot com burst took care of my 401Ks). What sucks is, recently I dumped my General Motors stock, because the word was that GM was gonna tank. It did tank, but luckily after I cashed out directly, using the stock's transfer agent. I wanted to cash out my AIG stock also, but couldn't get it together. Now, in less than two weeks, it's fallen from $70-something a share to $50-something.

In recent months, I've been editing a book on accounting fraud investigations, and so the whole question of corporate governance has been fresh in my mind, back from the dead after the whole Iraq-war interruption. With this in mind, I've decided to post an editorial I wrote on the subject, almost three years ago.

Jan 21, 2005 — I missed most of the inauguration ceremony today ‘cause I was too busy with freelance work. But, I did catch some buzz about the Jan. 19, “Black Tie and Boots” pre-inaugural ball. In true Texan style (and with Lyle Lovett entertaining?), the Bushies did the Texas two-step, though it appears W fell short of wearing the proper attire: tuxedo with cowboy boots, hat and bolo tie. Noticeably absent from news coverage of the event was any mention of the late-night “Diaper and Boots” afterparty. Below right, Bush daughter Jenna gives a sign-of-the-devil shout-out to Dick Cheney in a display of deference—wait, no, I'm wrong. She is actually presenting the traditional cowboy “hook’em horns” which, in this context, indicates she’ll be giving double blumpkins at the diaper party.

Nov. 24, 2004 — Today, outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that election irregularities in Ohio, Florida, and other U.S. states leave in doubt whether his boss, President Bush, truly won the electoral vote, as his campaign has claimed.

“We cannot accept this result as legitimate because it does notmeet international standards and because there has not been an investigation of the numerous and credible reports of fraud and abuse,” Powell said at a briefing at the State Department.

Oh...sorry, no. He was talking about the Ukranain presidential election.

Nov. 22, 2004 — Today I saw the following two headlines on the [Bridgeport] Connecticut Post international page: “U.S. will support Palestinian election” and “Iraq’s prime minister confident in Jan. 30 vote.”

Boy, as Bush said, it really looks like “freedom is on the march.”

But then, underneath those headlines, I saw a third— one that painted a clearer picture of today’s world: “Election fraud fires Ukranian anger.”

Ughh... So, tens of thousands of protesters claim that the Ukraine (a member country of the “Commonwealth of Independent States,” or former USSR) recent presidential runoff election was fraudulent. (If you didn’t guess already, the state-run Central Election Commission says the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko lost to Viktor Yanukovych, the incumbent, Moscow-favored, party’s candidate).

Maybe there was Florida election-2000 thing and old people just couldn’t figure out which “Viktor” to vote for, due to poor ballot design.

Regardless, it does appear that American-style democracy really is sweeping the globe.

“In the early 1970s, there were about 40 democracies in the world,” said George George Bush In a Nov. 6 speech marking the 25th anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy. “As the 20th century ended, there were around 120 democracies in the world— and I can assure you more are on the way.”

Now, this is theoretically true, even if among those 120 democracies, Bush is counts Russia. I f you haven’t been paying much attention recently, Russia has been reinvented as a non-Communist, totalitarian regime under President Vladimir Putin, the ex-KGB agent who, under the guise of fighting Russia’s own War on Terror (Chechnya), has declared that he will appoint the governors of Russia’s provinces, rather than let them be elected. Putin also started putting Russia’s powerful new robber barons behind bars. This is fine and dandy since they really are criminals (tax cheats at best, Slavic mafiosi at worst).

But anyway back to Bush’s “freedom on the march crap.” Indeed “democracy” has swept the earth in recent decades.

In the beginning of the basic human historical timeline, there were tribal chieftains. Then there were kings. Modern democracies emerged in the 18th century, and by the early 20th, the world split along two basic tracks: (1) totalitarian states (dictatorships and some monarchies), and (2) democratic regimes of varying forms (and of course, their imperial properties in Asia, Africa, and South America).

And then something remarkable happened—something Bush failed to mention.

Democracies discovered election fraud.

This fantastic development gives people who live in an oligarchy the illusion that they live in a democracy. In the U.S. we have a coalitional oligarchy composed of corporations and the Christian Elite (more commonly referred to as “the Christian Right,” I have chosen to call them the “Christian Elite” in answer to their nonsense term, the “Liberal Elite”—if Liberals were the elite, they would be in power, wouldn’t they?).

So let’s see, less than a year after the contested (oh let’s say it—stolen and illegal) U.S. presidcntial election of 2000, the NeoConservatives convinced Bush to install democracies across the world under force of the American bayonet.

The “new democracies” in Eastern Europe, they said, showed that FreedomTM and capitalism were snowballing, and the U.S. could just as easily turn nasty totalitarian regimes in Islamic countries into democratic, free-market utopias.

Looking great so far! But I think we need to coin a new phrase: “New Democracy.” New Democracy being... well basically, fraudulent democracies installed by the “former” imperialist Old Democracies. “Live free or die, muthas.”

The new face of American Diplomacy

Stamford, Conn., Nov. 17, 2004 — In the second debate between Bush and Kerry, held on October 8, a woman from the audience asked Bush the following:

“President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it. Thank you.”

After spewing out 225 words that avoided the question, Bush finally addressed what he said is his only mistake: “Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV.”

What I inferred from that was (1) Bush he blames anything that may go wrong on his advisors, and (2) those with opinions of policy that differed from his, were unwelcome.

When he was invited into the White House four years ago, Powell mistakenly thought Bush would respect him. Instead, Bush ignored almost all of Powell’s advice and sent him to the UN to spew nonsense about some dubious evidence on Iraqi WMD, in order to support the imminent American invasion of Iraq.

Rice , it is known, will basically do whatever George, or the Bush’s in general, tell her to do. I am reminded of something someone said to me when my sister and I drove down to Washington, D.C. in January 2001 to see Bush’s inaugural parade (and the high profile protests that accompanied it). A black woman we spoke to said the following about Condoleezza Rice (I paraphrase from memory). “Good for her for getting in there, but you KNOW hat one day when she’s walkin’ down the hall at the White House, that man (Bush) is gonna giver her a pat on the ass.” This woman meant this literally, and believed it. I had my strong doubts that that would take place, but I saw the metaphor immediately.

Now, after being the loyal lapdog for four years, Rice is getting her pat on the back, and her pat on the backside. Now there is no “moderate voice,” no sane voice, at the White House in the conversation about maintaining global stability.

Poor Colin. I had great respect for him until the 2003 UN nonsense.

I’m glad he is leaving, and I’m sure it was of his own volition (the rumor that he and Armitage would step down in January 2005 came as early as August 2003) but that “loyal soldier” crap went to far. He should have left in the middle of his term, like Christine Todd Whitman did (although even she didn’t call Bush on his bullshit). I think it may finally be time for me to get rid of my Colin Powell doll, which I found on sale in a toy store in a Syracuse, N.Y. shopping mall in 1992. Any takers?

(cartoon from BlackCommentator.com)

Nov. 16, 2004 — A group calling itself Amend For Arnold is lobbying and advertising to amend the Constitution to allow Arnold Schwarzenegger (and, ostensibly, any other naturalized American citizen) to run for president. Article 2 of the Constitution prohibits anyone born outside the United States from holding that office.

First of all, on the face of it, I don’t see why anyone who has been a citizen of 20 years or more in the U.S. should be barred from running for president. I think I’d prefer almost any foreigner to another Texan, for instance (unless maybe its Ann Richards).

What excites me is that this movement was predicted in the 1993 action film “Demolition Man,” starring Sylvester Stallone.

In the movie, which takes place in the mid 21st century, Stallone plays John Spartan, a cop brought out of suspended animation to bring down violent super criminal Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes). At one point in the movie, Stallone gets a shocking lesson on the history he has missed since he was frozen in 1996, by fellow cop Lt. Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock):

I remember at the time thinking what brilliant little prediction it was. After all, I grew up in the Reagan era, and Reagan of course was a movie star, then president of the Screen Actors Guild, then California governor, and finally president.

I was reminded of the “Demolition Man” reference to Schwarzenegger presidency a little over a year ago, when Arnold was running for governor in the California recall race. I was also struck by the memory of my best friend’s mom and I joking in 1985 — the year “Rambo” came out — that Sylvester Stallone was himself preparing for a future presidential candidacy by working the anti-communist sentiment and right-wing machine-gun machismo so prevalent at the time.

Not so coincidentally, during the summer of 2003, while Arnold’s backdoor bid for the governorship was gearing up, cable TV seemed to be playing a lot of Arnold movies. I even remember seeing them start to appear before Arnold had even announced he would run (someone knew something, or could just feel it in the air perhaps). When “Demolition Man” came on, I taped it so I could fish out the above quote.

But there was a problem. They edited the quote out of the movie.

Now, I’m sure plenty of other stuff was “edited for content,” since channels often cut non-plot-essential elements of movies to make them fit a two-hour time slot.

Still, I started to have a mild concern that the scene would be permanently wiped from future copies of the movie. So, a few months ago, I made the first (and, as yet, only) acquisition for my DVD library.

I have been waiting for the state of the world to catch up with the dystopic sci-fi films of the 80s and early 90s. You know, the ones where corporations run everything, the economic divide between the haves and have-nots is every increasing, petroleum is running low, and the world is subsequently plagued by continuous terrorism and warfare?

Yep. Well, finally, one fun bit of trivia from “Demolition Man.” Future Minnesota governor Jessie Ventura played a generic evil thug guy in it. He, and future California Governor Schwarzenegger also shared the screen together in 1987. Twice, in fact, in “Predator,” and “The Running Man.”

Novermber 3, 5:30 p.m.— (I rant on a bit in this one) Things don’t look good for the Democrats, the United States, or the world. Regardless of real uncertainties, the American public is once again being swayed by GOP hubris, and essentially telling the world that Bush has won. The Kerry campaign can see the writing on the wall. As last time, any attempt to determine the “true outcome” of the election, whatever that means anymore, would be construed in the halls of Public Opinion as being.

“So do you think it was rigged or not?” Myra called to me from the bedroom this morning.
“I don’t know,” I say. And I don’t.

Now, I don’t necessarily mistrust all or even any of the voter tallies I now see on my television screen. But, sadly, I have no reason to trust any of them either. There was tremendous opportunity for voter fraud in this election, and likely we will never be certain of the true outcome.

It all came down to Ohio. At the time of this writing, Ohio reports 136,483 more counted for Bush than for Kerry. Now, that is a decent margin, assuming all those votes are valid. And, it would probably be a tall order to fraudulently create that many votes for one candidate in one state. But, with an estimated 150,000 uncounted provisional, and tens of thousands of uncounted military absentee ballots the margin could be much narrower.
That said, it is hard to put out of my mind the words of Walden O’Dell, CEO of Diebold, the company which made the electronic voting machines used in many of the state’s election districts. A powerful asset to the Bush campaign, O’Dell wrote in an August 2003 fund-raising letter that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the president.”

None of the electronic voting machines in Ohio provide a paper ballots. The state mandated that voting machines provide a paper ballot in time for the 2006 election. Many other electronic voting systems across the country also do not provide a paper ballot.

Granted, according to the counted votes, Bush won the national popular vote by a margin of about 3 million.
But, the electoral vote—the only thing that really counts in this country, as we learned in the 2000 election— is dependent on Ohio.

It is evident that in the future we will able to trust that the counted votes reflect the real intentions of all who voted only in elections determined by margins of 10 or even 20 percentage points.Trumbull, Conn., Novermber 3, 2004, 10:35 a.m.— Struggling for a distraction from what would become very bad news, this morning I took a break from the election coverage by turning to the History Channel, which was airing a program about John F. Kennedy’s presidential.

As I watch footage of the southern segregationists greeting the Freedom Riders’ buses with shouts, bats, homemade clubs, and chains, I am reminded of images of the 2000 election. When the results of that presidential election were still in question, crowds of screaming Republicans shouted down Democrats. The only difference is that instead of wielding clubs, they weilded Bush 2000 signs, American flags, and fashionable effigies of American flags.

“But there is a big difference,” you say. Ah yes, the Southern segregationists in the 1960s were, by and large, members of the Democratic party. Yes, but it was the Civil Rights struggle that transformed the Democratic party, and the politics of the South. The confrontations between the Southern crackers and an alliance of African Americans and their white, liberal sympathizers created an atmosphere of such violent anarchy that JFK — who had heretofor been wary of marginalizing his Southern Democratic base — responded first by sending Federal troops, and then by publicly calling upon Congress to draft civil rights legislation.

The idea that freedom in the United States should apply to all its people created two major reactions by conservative Americans:

1. They shot JFK’s ass and, over the next five years, assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. and other key figures of the Civil Rights movement.
   
2. They all became Republicans. The Dixiecrats, or conservative Southern Democrats abanoned the party that “betrayed them” and embraced the GOP as the new face of hate.

The American social politics of the nineteenth century — of the Abolitionists verses slaveowners — are still being played out, one hundred and forty years later. It is still the same basic social conflict: an enlightened, largely urban population that believes in freedom for all, verses a so-called “Christian,” largely rural, cracker population that seeks to restrict the freedom of others…in the name of “Freedom.” While the latter group usually claims to be followers of Christ, and to have God on its side (you know, like Osama Bin Laden does?).

So, you see, it’s the same folks really. Perhaps its about time we Northerners swarm back down their and burn their cities down all over again. I was in Brooklyn on 9/11. The twin towers were a mere mile from my house, and when they fell my friends and I had to flee our neighborhood as debris rained down un us, and microscopic fibers of asbestos and other toxins filled our lungs, even with our windows closed. Almost 3000 New Yorkers died that day, and they died for the sins of the rural crackers that put nuts like Bush in power.

I don’t want to see that happen again.

Al Qaida, if you must attack us again, please let it be in Texas or some other cracker state.

IT’S THE IMAGE STUPID

Shifting to a different topic, in many ways, it does not really surprise me that the Democrats lost again.
For, there is a very simple reason GOP candidates have had continued, largely unbridled success over its Democratic counterparts. Over the past 30 years, the Republican party, and its unofficial agents (media pundits I need not name here) have figured out that truth and rigtheousness doesn’t really in modern American political battles.

Naive liberals, and most of the Democratic party, still hold onto the notion that speaking truth to power is somehow connected to winning elections.

Republicans, on the other hand, understand how to speak power to truth. They understand that truth is irrelevant, that truth is what you make it, that truth in the media age simply equals the broadest popular perception of reality

POPULAR PERCEPTION = TRUTH

Those who shout their talking points louder own the truth. Most Democrats still don’t understand that for over 50 years, American public opinion has been driven more by X than by issues, by image rather than by ideals. If you exude enough confidence, the people will believe whatever you tell them. (A nod to Foucault I suppose.) Fox News prematurely declared Bush the winner in 2000, and convinced a large number of Americans that Democratic challenges in Florida were tantamount to their being sore losers. Today, Andrew Card held a press conference, saying “we are convinced that President Bush has won re-election with at least 286 Electoral College votes...In Ohio, President Bush has a lead of at least 140,000 votes. The secretary of state’s office has informed us that this margin is statistically insurmountable, even after the provisional ballots are considered.”

Well, if Andy Card and the Republican secretary of state of Ohio say it, that’s good enough for us. No point in scrutinizing possibilities of voter fraud (though only yesterday it was the GOP crying foul in Ohio, leading the fight to investigate possible fraud).

Card also said, “President Bush’s decisive margin of victory makes this the first presidential election since 1988 in which the winner received a majority of the popular vote.”

All of Card’s words will become truth, regardless of what really happened.

May 20, 2004 — The other day I was watching FOX News (which should be the beginning of many jokes, I know) and I see Rupert Murdoch being interviewed by…Oliver North. The segment was for North’s War Stories, and the line of questioning pertained to media coverage of the Iraq War.

I couldn’t and still can’t completely wrap my head around this. Here you have North, a liar (before Congress!), convicted felon (until George H.W. Bush pardoned him) and — I would say— traitor (for having deliberately subverted the U.S. Constitution to conduct a secret war). At any rate, as a crimimal and a perjurer, North does not exude the credentials of an ideal journalist (i.e. objective, truth-seeking, unbiased, etc.).

So, of course, FOX hired him.

Anyway, so there North is, interviewing the owner of Fox News’s parent company, News Corporation ("News") ON a Fox News program ABOUT HOW television news channels, including FOX, are covering the war (or, “ covered the war”as they stated, referring to the initial invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003). Murdoch and North discussing media bias in the coverage was a new spin on spin; spin cubed, or perhaps even to the 4th or 5th power.

Holy calypso! About a half hour after I penned this, I got a call from [NAME WITHHELD] of the law firm of [NAME WITHHELD], which represents News.

Okay, at this point I should mention that...I used to work for News and FOX (okay I know!), first as a paralegal at firm retained by News (which was absorbed by the firm that just called me), and later, as an intellectual property consultant in the company’s legal department. Now, during this time, I was attending graduate school to study business journalism. It was...really difficult, to say the least, to know so much about the inner workings of a corporation (especially one I loathed) and, at the same time, be unable to write about it due to the confines of client-attorney privilege. I just have to try forget all the sexy stories I know, but cannot tell, even though now I have no connection to News.

As if it isn’t weird enough that I worked for Rupert Murdoch, by ABSOLUTE coincidence, the very same month I began working in-house at News, as a consultant, the VP who brought me in became an adjunct professor at my college, and taught Legal and Ethical Issues for Journalists. Now, lest you be concerned that I was taught journalistic ethics by someone who represents the New York Post in court, I want to go on record here and say that was a fantastic teacher, and did not pull any punches when discussing examples of legal or ethical issues that involved News properties. She is also a liberal, and a Democrat. I guess you could say her only flaw is working for Rupert Murdoch.

Anyway, as I said, the lawyer for News wanted my advice on a matter I had worked on.  Apparently, after I left the firm, this particular matter fell through theh cracks. Now it had come back to haunt them, and the last record on file was an unanswered query letter I had sent out.  Boy, if only I could tell you the details! Some of it is a matter of public record, but legal ethics prohibit me from revealing it nonetheless. 

UPDATE, September 2004. I just learned that Alternet (a project of the nonprofit Independent Media Institute) has petitioned the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cancel FOX News’s trademark registration for “Fair and Balanced”because the words are (1) descriptive of general news content, and therefore not worthy of being awarded exclusive use by any one news organization, and (2) that the words misrepresent FOX News coverage, which a majority of observers believe is anything but fair or balanced. If you want to donate money to the cause, click here. Donations of $30 or more will get you a free DVD of the documentary, “Outfoxed.”

Ahh intellectual property disputes. FOX. “Fair and Balanced.” This brings me back. If only I could tell you the behind-the-scene-stories I know about when Bill O’Reilly filed his lawsuit against Al Franken for using “fair and balanced” in his book title, Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Sadly, I can’t. When the case was filed, I no longer had any connection to News. But, I can’t tell the fun stuff, because I have to protect friends and colleagues who still work there.

Suffice it to say, however, and this is public record. the lawyers working for FOX really botched that suit. The complaint they filed against Franken was so flawed that the judge quickly dismissed it. “There are hard cases and there are easy cases, said District Judge Denny Chin. “This is an easy case, for in my view the case is wholly without merit, both factually and legally.” (Click here to read the whole court transcript — its pretty sweeet.) Also, word has it (read Franken’s book — by sheer coincidence, I bought mine with a Barnes and Noble gift certificate given to me by an intellectual property lawyer at News) that what made O’Reilly really go ballistic, was the fact that his picture appeared on the cover of Franken’s book (and next to the words “liar...lies” no less), and that it was not a very flattering image.

If that was really what got O’Reilly’s goat, I posit this: Had FOX not claimed trademark infringement, but instead filed a lawsuit based on “rights of publicity” (i.e. that Franken was using O’Reilly’s image to promote his book and profit), the company might well have successfully convinced a court to order the removal of O’Reilly’s dumb face. That is a much stronger argument than the dumb trademark infringement one they filed. You know where I learned about rights of publicity issues? Yep, my professor and former boss from News Corp.