The Race Is On

Since New Hampshire we’ve been hearing a lot about race in the democratic primaries. It really blew up when Hillary made her now famous statement: "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," she said, adding that "it took a president to get it done." A lot of people took offense to it including myself. When she made this statement and other statements concerning Barack Obama, she was trying to paint him as a fancy talker who couldn’t get things done while she was a doer who got things done. It seemed by her statement that Dr. King was a fancy talker who needed a doer like President Johnson to fulfill his dream. It downplays the part Dr. King and other citizens played to get Johnson to the point of signing the Civil Rights Act.

Of course when she started backtracking she attached Obama’s camp for making something out of it. Too take some of the heat off her she had some of her black supporters start attacking Obama, like Robert Johnson, founder of BET who attacked Obama by saying: the Clinton’s "have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood -- and I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book." Everyone took it to mean using drugs while Johnson said he was talking about Obama’s days as a community organizer. I’d take this attack more seriously if it didn’t come from the man who took off every community enriching show off of BET to show more videos and then sold it to Viacom who’ve made it a complete embarrassment, just like MTV. (Now I guess I’m showing my age).

Obama has called for a truce from both sides on these racial issues and the Clintons have agreed. Why did it start in the first place? One thing I’m certain of, Hillary and Bill aren’t racist and they do have a genuine concern for black people and our issues. Yet Hillary is not the type of person just to say some off the top of her head. Aside from attacking Obama, I think there were other factors at play. Eugene Robinson from the Washington Post thought so to giving several reasons why this is happening in his column. Now Richard Cohen also of the Washington Post wrote an opinion piece on Obama’s Farrakhan Test. So it appears the issue of race is really on.

Hope

One week ago, I was celebrating Barack Obama’s victory in Iowa and listening to the pundits gleefully burying Hillary Clinton. I’m no world weary expect on politics but it seemed too early. But listening to those so called experts for nearly five day straight and watching the poles I too began to believe we’d have it wrapped up before January was over. So on Tuesday in New Hampshire when Senator Clinton jumped off to an early lead I thought it was a quirk that would correct itself once the vote total got higher. Well as the night dragged on it became clearer that the pundits didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. The women of New Hampshire rallied behind their sister and gave her the victory. So instead of being on her death bed, she’s getting ready to run the marathon. All of us who support Senator Obama have to prepare ourselves for a long and hard run. Common sense would have told us that if we were listening to it instead of listening to the Chris Matthews of the world.

This is my first post since April. I told myself I stopped posting because I was busy at work and didn’t feel like doing it once I got home. It was more than that though. After becoming so excited after the Democrats regained the House and Senate, I thought we were getting ready to see significant changes in the country. I thought our troops would be withdrawing from Iraq by now and we would see some of the criminals in the Bush administration be brought to justice. Instead we got the surge and some of the criminals resigning from the administration, their punishment, probably getting big advances for future book deals and huge speaking fees. The Democratic leadership couldn’t bend over fast enough for Bush. Where I was excited at the beginning of 2007 thinking it was the beginning of the end for this administration, it was just the beginning of nothing.

I wasn’t too excited by the beginning of the political season, I figured I’d vote for Senator Clinton if she got the nomination, but I didn’t feel any real passion for it. She’d make a good President, but with the chaos Bush has created in his term, good wasn’t good enough to get this country back on track, we need great. That’s where Senator Obama comes in. He’s reignited a passion in politics I haven’t felt since I was a political science major in college. He speaks to the hopes and dreams I have for this country; the wish to turn the page. We are in the 21st century but Bush has dragged this country back to the dark ages. Obama can truly lead us into the 21st century and to a future I once thought we’d have. That’s important, no matter what Hillary and Bill think. So I’m back blogging because I feel excited and hopeful. So I’ll be checking in with more of my thoughts before the South Carolina primary.

The Dog Ate My Homework

The White House announced yesterday that they have lost thousands of email messages from a private account supplied by the Republican National Committee. The story from the Los Angeles Times said that Karl Rove and 50 other top officials used it. In fact Karl Rove used this system about 95% of the time to send his messages. It’s not hard to guess that Democrats from the house and senate aren’t pleased.

"This is a remarkable admission that raises serious legal and security issues," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the role of electoral politics in administration policymaking. "The White House has an obligation to disclose all the information it has."

The New York Times quotes Senator Patrick Leahy, (D-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee saying: “This sounds like the administration’s version of the dog ate my homework.” He also added: “I am deeply disturbed that just when this administration is finally subjected to meaningful oversight, it cannot produce the necessary information.”

The White House didn’t explain how these messages were lost. They did explain why Rove and other White House personnel were using a separate system to begin with. They were using the separate system so they wouldn’t violate the Hatch Act, which prohibits using government resources for partisan purposes. The Los Angeles Times points out this dual system creates another problem for the White House.

Loss of the e-mail files would create a potential legal problem for the Bush White House: compliance with the Presidential Records Act, which was passed in 1978 in response to the Watergate scandal that enveloped Richard M. Nixon's presidency. The law was designed to ensure that presidential papers were preserved for historical and investigative purposes.

Democrats believe that Rove and other officials were using the RNC email system to circumvent having record keeping requirements. Let’s say you wanted to fire some U.S. Attorneys but you don’t want a record of what you actually said or did. If it’s on the White House system it has to be given to the investigative committees, while if it’s on the RNC system, oops, what happened to those thousands of emails. If this administration weren’t so completely incompetent, you could be 100% sure they “lost” these emails on purpose. Well I’m just 99% sure they did. I’m sure Nixon is in hell applauding his political decedents.

Financial Aid Directors in California, New York and Texas Under Suspicion

When I was in college my greatest enemy wasn’t a rival frat, or Dean Wormer trying to get us thrown off campus. It was our Financial Aid office. Those guys always made me feel like a mook owing Tony Soprano money. Well maybe there is some gangster like activities going on at the old Financial Aid offices. Here’s an email the staff at the University of Texas received Thursday afternoon.

Lawrence W. Burt, associate vice president and director of student financial aid, has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the completion of an investigation into allegations of conflict of interest.

This action results from allegations made yesterday in a letter sent to me by the office of Andrew M. Cuomo, attorney general of the state of New York, that Mr. Burt received stock from Student Loan Xpress Inc., a company that is included on the university's preferred lender list.

It is important that the university ensure the integrity of its financial aid program and maintain unimpeachable practices on behalf of students and their families.

I have asked James R. Huffines, Chairman of the University of Texas System Board of Regents, and Mark G. Yudof, Chancellor of the University of Texas System, to authorize the Office of the General Counsel of the University of Texas System to conduct the investigation in collaboration with the university. The investigation will be led by Vice Chancellor and General Counsel Barry D. Burgdorf of the University of Texas System.


William Powers Jr.
President
The University of Texas at Austin

It seems that Mr. Burt isn’t the only one under investigation in this matter. David Charlow, executive director of financial aid at Columbia University and Catherine Thomas, associate dean and financial aid director at the University of Southern California are also on paid administrative leave due to this investigation. The Austin American-Statesman reports Mr. Burt saying he has done nothing wrong. He said he purchased the stock in 2001 for $1,000. He first listed Student Loan Xpress as a preferred lender for the 2002-03 school year ─ when he still owned the stock ─ because the company offered “a competitive product and good service, like every other lender on the list.” The New York Times reported he bought the stock at $1 a share and sold 1,500 shares at about $10 a share two years later and held 500 options on additional shares.

His story is similar to Mr. Charlow at Columbia, but not apparently as profitable. The New York Times reports Mr. Charlow sold 7,500 shares for about $10 each and held options on 2,500 more shares. Officials in the attorney general’s office said he had originally bought the shares for about $1 each. The officials said that Mr. Charlow sold additional shares ─ perhaps the result of exercising the 2,500 options ─ in 2005, and that he earned a total of more than $100,000 from all the sales. Student Loan Express was put on Columbia’s preferred lending list in 2005. Ms. Thomas hasn’t made a statement but the Los Angeles Times reports that she acquired 1,500 shares of stock in Student Loan Xpress; then-parent company, Education Lending Group.

This investigation isn’t only stopping at these three schools. The Austin American-Statesman wrote: In addition, Cuomo recently informed Education Finance Partners Inc., a San Francisco-based loan provider that is in the process of moving the bulk of its operations to Austin, that he intends to file a civil lawsuit against the company for a “revenue sharing” arrangement under which schools get a percentage of loans. He said as many as 60 schools have received payments, including Baylor University and Texas Christian University. Cuomo’s investigations haven’t escaped Washington’s notice. The New York Times reports that the Education Department is considering whether to regulate preferred lending list. They might also like to investigate one of their own officials Matteo Fontana. It’s reported he owned about $100,000 worth of stock in Education Lending Group. Mr. Fontana oversees all lenders and guarantee agencies that participate in the Federal Family Education Loan Program. Senator Edward M. Kennedy chairman of the committee on education along with his counterpart in the house Representative George Miller have requested information from lenders on their ties to universities.

The student loan business is an $85 billions dollar industry. The Los Angeles Times quotes Robert M. Shireman, president of the Institute for College Access & Success, a nonprofit advocacy group for disadvantaged students saying the highly lucrative and competitive financial aid business is rife with conflicts. “More and more student loan companies have found it in their interest to try to gain favor from financial aid offices at colleges and universities,” he said. “As much as we would like to believe that gifts and trips don not have an effect on the advice that financial aid offices provide to student, they, in fact, do have effects.”

This seems to be another problem in America’s financial institutions. With the problems with credit card debt, or the subprime crisis, this is another financial problem that is hurting the working and middle class. It seems a lot of this has roots in predatory policies, a problem I examined in my post “Giving Vultures a Bad Name”. It’s apparent the financial markets need to be cleaned up and regulated again before all these scandals and misdeeds drive this economy further down.

The Real Clayton Bigsby

You all remember the Dave Chappelle sketch where Dave played “a blind white supremacist who is not aware that he is actually a black man.” Well sometimes life is a lot stranger than fiction. I was reading the Guardian when I came upon this story. In the 1930’s there was a growing pro-fascist movement in the United States. Lawrence Dennis was described as “America’s number one intellectual fascist”. What wasn’t a well known fact was that this fascist who had met with Mussolini and other fascist bigwigs was in fact a black man from Atlanta Georgia. His mother was clearly black, while it’s not known what color his father was. Dennis was light skinned enough to pass for white. Of course he wasn’t that light skinned and people often remarked about his nice tan. It just never occurred to them why he had such a nice tan. He never told his wife or children that he was black. What’s funny though that about the time he died in 1977, he let his hair grow out into an afro. Think about if Lawrence Dennis had been born in our era. He wouldn’t have had to pass as white. He could have been a commentator on Fox News, a favorite of the right wing speaking circuit and a member of the Bush White House. Are we sure he isn’t a member of it now. Someone needs to check that death certificate again.

His Fingerprints Are All Over It

The breaking stories about the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys continue. The person on the hot seat now is "hopefully", the soon to be former Attorney General of the United States Alberto R. Gonzales. Even though I think he’s in the middle of this scandal, in no way do I think he’s the mastermind of this plot. This is clearly the maneuverings of one Karl Rove, Assistant to the president, deputy chief of staff and a senior adviser. Not a bad title for a political thug. An article by Wayne Madison before the 2002 midterm elections illustrates the tactics and lengths Karl Rove would go through to win. Mr. Madison was even a little prophetic when he wrote: “In all seriousness, rewarding the GOP on November 5 will only increase the appetite of Rove to amass more and more power into the White House. The advent of a Democratic-controlled Senate and House might even begin to spell the end of the road for Segretti's star pupil.” Before the Democrats took control of the House and Senate, the firing of the eight U.S. Attorneys would have been something Rove and the White House would have completely gotten away with.

Why would Rove and the White House even bother to fire these U.S. attorneys? Sydney Blumenthal in his article in Salon wrote: “Rising to the White House as Bush's chief political strategist, Rove well understood the power of U.S. attorneys to damage Democrats and protect Republicans, and he paid close attention to their selection.” Rove wanted the U.S. attorneys to go after the Democrats. The method the Republicans favored was voter fraud. Blumenthal explains how the tactic was used.

In 2002, the first midterm elections of the Bush presidency, Republicans systematically raised charges of voter fraud involving Native Americans in the hotly contended U.S. Senate race in South Dakota. Though the accusations were never proved and the GOP failed to depose the Democratic senator, Tim Johnson, the campaign served as a template. By the election of 2004, Rove became a repository of charges of voter fraud across the country, from Philadelphia to Milwaukee to New Mexico, all in swing states. In the campaign, unproven voter fraud charges, always aimed at minority voters, became a leitmotif of Republican efforts.

Even if it wasn’t voter fraud, the Republicans wanted Democrats to be indicted, especially before an election so it could be used against them. That’s why Senator Pete Domenici and Representative Heather Wilson of New Mexico wanted David Iglesias fired, because he wouldn’t indict some Democrats before the 2006 election. Rove perfected this tactic in Texas, using it to help destroy the Democratic Party in Texas. Blumenthal writes: “From the earliest Republican campaigns that Rove ran in Texas, beginning in 1986, the FBI was involved in investigating every one of his candidates' Democratic opponents.”

Now we are beginning to see how this operation was handled. This wasn’t an isolated incident done just to punish a few U.S. attorneys who wouldn’t play ball. Using 9/11 as an excuse, this administration is always grasping for more power. The New York Times writes in its editorial: “Time and again, President Bush and his team have assured Americans that they needed new powers to prevent another attack by an implacable enemy. Time and again, Americans have discovered that these powers were not being used to make them safer, but in the service of Vice President Dick Cheney’s vision of a presidency so powerful that Congress and the courts are irrelevant, or Karl Rove’s fantasy of a permanent Republican majority.”

With a Democratic controlled House and Senate trying to practice oversight, something the Republicans didn't do the past six years, we might discover most of the dirty tricks this administration has used to try to create a unitary presidency ruled by one party. Whatever else is exposed, one thing we can be sure, Karl Rove’s fingerprints will be all over it.

No Where Man

If you were George Bush, would you come back to America after your “successful” trip to South America? With the fire he’s under with the firing of the US Attorney’s, with the problems at Walter Reed and let’s not forget Iraq, why would he want to come back.

Aside from his love of America of course, maybe he has to come back because no other country would take him. We know he can’t hide out south of the border, and aside from Israel, what other country would want him. I think this is a good time for Bush to start really working on the Mars man mission he proposed back in 2004. The way the scandals keep exploding around Bush, Mars might be the only place he’ll be able to live without fear of prosecution.