My Idea of Man of the Year, 2011.

I know a guy who is a big fan of synchronicity, the simultaneous convergence of related events. There’s more than a little “tin-foil hat” to him, which is a way of saying I don’t agree that a streetlight flickering out as you drive by is a sure sign of approaching Armageddon. But … there is synchronicity/convergence I can believe it, and there has been some very intriguing, interrelated stuff going down in the past few days.

The key event centers around my idea of a modern hero, Federal Judge Jed Rakoff. Rakoff has been assigned the (latest) SEC case against CitiGroup for what by all appearances, smells, waddles and quacks is gross fraud, this time in (one of) their flagrant gaming schemes during the sub-prime crisis. In a nutshell, Rakoff has had enough of of the business-as-usual legal conclusion wherein plaintiffs the size of Citigroup “neither admit nor deny” the charges for which they are paying what to laymen seem like a gargantuan fines … $285 million in this case. Noting that $285 million is “pocket change” to something like Citigroup, (which no doubt calculates possible SEC fines into every large “play”), Rakoff is requiring the case to go to open court, so that both the public at large and potential civil litigants can understand what in the hell actually happened, and …. possibly … prevent it from happening again.

Like most of Wall Street, CitiGroup is a “recidivist” in these kinds of cases. You may remember Goldman Sachs paying out $550 million in a similar “neither admit nor deny” settlement.

Said the Judge yesterday, “In any case like this that touches on the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives, there is an overriding public interest in knowing the truth.”

Without question, the good judge and the entire surrounding federal court apparatus will be under intense behind-the-scenes pressure to move off this position and accept the standard “neither admit nor deny” scenario. For its part the SEC explains that, according to its rules, it has no other choice but to accept these muzzled settlements … but that it again is appealing to … Congress … to change its charter and allow it to respond more aggressively, and require more transparency.

Well, you can imagine who will be ramming a pipe wrench into the gearwork of that plea. To a certain faction of Congress Citigroup counts as a “job creator” and legislation that requires transparency from them, and leaves them far more vulnerable to civil suits, amounts to “class warfare”.

Here’s a collection of New York Times stories on Judge Rakoff.

Now, the synchronicity parts to this story for me include the following:

The Times story on the tax avoidance strategies of the Estee Lauder estate. In it we see — again — how thanks to heavily lobbied tax “advantages” the super-wealthy access loopholes of no value to other citizens … who don’t happen to have their hands on $100 million or more. The story lays out the blizzard of trusts, off-shore tax havens, based-in-Bermuda investment offices, etc. all designed to avoid transparency. The Lauder family’s rationale? Avoiding payment of tens of millions of dollars in taxes and driving their effective tax rate down to far less than, well, Warren Buffett’s secretary.

A la Judge Rakoff, dragging this kind of thing out into the light of day embarrasses both the Lauder estate and the IRS into applying some kind of corrective justice, and … adds fuel both to the essence of the OccupyWallStreet movement and the growing awareness among the middle-class of the flagrant redistribution of wealth (“class warfare”!) lobbied into the US tax system.

Next, there is the looming departure of Barney Frank, and the glee he took in Monday’s press conference laying into the forces — read “job creator” protecting Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats — working overtime to suck effective oversight and … transparency, out of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act. The fact that anyone, even someone with a national radio show, can plausibly argue that Barney Frank was the key to the meltdown of Wall Street’s sub-prime casino says a lot about how little transparency has been allowed to bleed out of the disaster, largely because of astonishing amounts of money from giant banks and hedge funds, etc.. into Congressional PACs.

Franks says that considering the full-obstruction mode of Congressional Republicans he’ll be better able to make changes outside of actual government. Which is another reason why Jed Rakoff is a hero.

Congress as it is, (and as it will remain, thanks to partisan gerrymandering), is incapable of offering anything remotely resembling a full explanation of any disaster to the public, much less one involving the source of their “mother’s milk” … corporate contributions.

Far better is a high-profile public trial, rich in discovery and cross-examination, with a high likelihood of additional, accelerated, aggressive civil suits to follow. Hell, spread it around and start a half-dozen of these things simultaneously, just to see how well Wall Street attorneys can coordinate their strategies for opacity.

So Judge Rakoff, here’s to you. Right now, you’re the man. But if I were you I’d be getting my big boy pants on, because forces mostly unseen by the public will be coming after you.

Oh, and this just in … from reporter David Phelps in this morning’s Star Tribune; “Minneapolis investment adviser Feltl & Co. was fined $50,000 Monday by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and ordered to return $142,000 to some of its advisory customers for failing to maintain adequate compliance and ethics codes at the firm.

The findings were contained in a cease-and-desist order in which Feltl agreed to take the appropriate steps to comply with SEC rules and the Investment Advisers Act. As part of the order, Feltl neither admitted nor denied the findings.”

All I Want for Christmas is Perfection. Is That So Much?

Much as I wanted to spend Thursday night at Walmart getting pepper-sprayed over a $2 waffle iron, I caught up on some reading instead. (So blame me for the lousy economy.) Two books and a magazine have been holding my interest, when I wasn’t preparing to prepare for the holiday shopping season. First is “The Better Angels of Our Nature” by Steven Pinker, a door-stopper (not “buster”) of a study of how dramatically violence has declined over the centuries, particularly in the past 150 years. Pinker is a Harvard professor of psychology and has made a couple of those “Top 100” lists of influential and serious thinkers. An added virtue is that he brings a novelistic/essayist’s touch to what could have been a dense and turgid run of statistics.

I’m only 200 pages into the 700 pages of his argument, (plus 120 pages of citations and footnotes), but his essential point is holding up quite well, despite, as he concedes from the get-go, rather nasty 20th century events like World Wars I and II, the Holocaust, Pol Pot, Rwanda, etc. He credits a variety of factors, including both inter-dependent economic activity, (its bad business to kill your customers) and Enlightenment thinking, trickling down, like trendy etiquette, from the “elites” to the “low-information” classes. And that’s state v. state violence, wars and such. Violence between people — murder, rape, torture, and garden variety sadism — has also fallen out of favor. The statistics on murders per 100,000 people from culture to culture is fascinating. Even the much sentimentalized native cultures like the blubber-eating Inuit had murder rates 50 times inner-city Detroit of 2011.

I may post more on this when I finish, but one takeaway for all our fringe conservative friends is that “hellhole, socialist” western Europe of … right now … along with a line of northern tier American states … may well be the safest cultures … ever … in terms of freedom from both state and personal violence.

The other book, which I just finished, is financial writer Michael Lewis’s “Boomerang”, essentially a collection of articles on post-2008 economic miseries. You may have read his piece on Iceland in “Vanity Fair”. It’s included here, along with the astonishing tale of Ireland, the gullibility of German bankers when it came to “trading” with American Wall Street sharpies and, my favorite, Greece.

With Europe teetering on the brink — hell, even the Germans are having a hard time selling their bonds — the tale of Greece comes with a constant series of reminders that the Cradle of Democracy’s financial chaos has less to do with overly lavish pensions and social benefits (to hear FoxNews’ politicians and intellectuals explain it) than the fact that almost no one actually paid taxes. You’ve no doubt read this in passing in some accounts. But Lewis, talking with Greek officials and tax investigators, lays out a far more compelling picture of system gamed to oblivion by everyone, from the top down. (To this then you add the Greeks’ supreme irritation with anyone, including the Germans, the only people with the cash to bail them out, telling them what to do. Greek exceptionalism!)

I loved the part where Goldman Sachs flies in and convinces the Greek government (before the last Greek government) to collateralize the only guaranteed flows of income they have — things like ferry and toll fees — which of course ends up with Our Guys pocketing a fat profit and the Greeks wishing they could have their drachmas back.

The magazine was the recent (maybe latest) issue of “New York”, with competing essays on “How the GOP Went Mad” by Republican apostate David Frum and “The Self-Loathing of Liberals: My Party’s Contempt for Power” by Jonathan Chait.

Frum’s piece is spot-on, depressing as all hell and, sadly, well understood by anyone paying attention. Chait’s angle is the one that I firmly believe is much more important as the clock turns to election year 2012. Yes, the Republicans are engaged in a bizarre exercise in mass delusion and tactical psychosis. But reasonable people can see that quite easily. (Look at the approval numbers for “Congress”). Not so with liberals’ perpetual psychological impairment, the one where perfection is forever and always the worst enemy of the good. That bizarre, chronic exercise in self-destruction gets far, far less attention.

Chait walks the reader through the numbing predictability of liberal “disappointment” with Democratic presidents in whom they, inexplicably, expected both perfection and instantaneous restoration of Enlightened democracy, following Republican malfeasance.

The specific issue is of course Barack Obama. A staple of every conversation I have with my clutch of over-educated, elitist friends is their “disappointment”, or “reservations” or out-right rejection of Obama, to the point of getting wistful about Jon Huntsman or some mythical “third party”, as though then, in that new/next singular hero we could have … single payer health care, a full-fledged green economy, financial stability, yadda yadda.

Chait regards this kind of thinking as a liberal variation on conservatives always-eery, serf-like acceptance of/obeisance to authoritarian leaders and mores. With liberals, total perfection, total fairness, total balance is the only acceptable level of presidential performance. Never mind the obvious fact that, you know, this is … politics … where perfection always goes to die, and that by definition the Democratic party is a mangy confederation of a 1000 different constituencies with at minimum 998 different ideas of perfection … so universally accepted perfection ain’t never going to happen.

In the end almost no true liberals will vote for any of the current Republicans. Huntsman may be the only one of that profoundly weird pack of dysfunctional personalities that even twitches the needle of intellectual credibility. But the liberal psychological impairment may be enough to seal defeat, again. The “self-loathing” that forever stirs up liberal malaise, the inability to ever regard any Democratic leader the way conservatives regard, say Ronald Reagan, is a serious energy-sapping impediment to the critical next, imperfect step. And by that I mean — reelection — which holds the (high) possibility of shifting the balance on the Supreme Court, setting health insurance reform in concrete and amending it as needed, continuing a cool, panic-free foreign policy performance, and offering … imperfect … resistance to Wall Street’s control of the global economy.

Not perfect, but a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

Contextual Contortion

Snip snip.

Context matters in communications. Obviously, quoting someone out of context, or only partially in context, changes the meaning and distorts the original meaning.

As self evident as this assertion seems, Willard Mitt Romney apparently sees nothing wrong with contextual contortion.

This week, Romney ran an ad showing President Obama saying “if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” Bam, clean blow, right?

The problem is, the President actually said, “Senator McCain’s campaign said, and I quote, ‘if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.’”

When pressed about the obvious flimflammery of the Romney editing, a Romney spokesperson refused to recant or apologize. Amazingly, Romney’s guy responded, ““He (President Obama) did say the words. That’s his voice.”

“That’s his voice.” Good grief, I hope the Romniac took a shower after that interview. This is the state of political communications in America today. Pathetic.

I hope my conservative friends can concede that Governor Romney went way over the line with his shameless broadcast butchery. After all, if that approach is good for the goose, it could also be good for the gander, as this satire from the liberal group ThinkProress shows:

Hey, he did say the words. That’s his voice.

– Loveland

Thanksgiving Chant: “We. Are. The 1%!”

I like Thanksgiving. It’s a day when I’m briefly thankful for what I have, instead of obsessing about what I lack.

One of my Happy Places on Thanksgiving is globalrichlist.com. I started a Thanksgiving tradition a few years back of annually visiting this site to remind myself of how I stack up against other humans on the planet, as opposed to other humans on the cul de sac.

It’s an eye opener. For instance, globalrichlist.com will tell an American who earns $50,000 per year that he is in the top 0.98% richest people in the world.

In other words, if we were thinking globally, some of us should realize: “We. Are. The 1%.” “We. Are. The 1%.”

Occupy that thought for a while.

Newt du jour.

We can agree that the current Republican presidential campaign descended into farce so long ago it’s nearly impossible to even pretend there’s anything serious going on there. Other than, like a heart attack, one of these book-touring, lecture fee-goosing cartoons could get elected President of the United States.

But having only barely grasped the concept of Mitt Romney as the Tea Party standard bearer, we now have to consider, if only for maybe another 48 hours, the prospect of … Newt Gingrich.

The resurgence of a guy who on paper at least would seem to represent everything the hyper-aggressive modern conservative movement despises about Washington, other than his name is not Barack Obama, is … well, flabbergasting. Gingrich is the embodiment of the Washington insider. A wall-to-wall political creature, the guy has had his snout in the taxpayer/lobbyist trough for nearly 40 years. He is the face of crony capitalism. A guy who will and has accepted steady lines of extra cash in exchange for abusing his influence with elected officials. And, despite a non-stop bombardment of “big ideas” he has consistently failed to deliver even the effective obstruction of “liberal malfeasance” he grandstands against … whenever he is back in an election cycle.

Like so much of his competition, Gingrich has been a strange bird his entire life. The sort of bird that invariably looks ludicrous under the intensely close inspection of a national campaign.

And his personal “values” bona fides? Good lord. Forget, if you can the divorcing the hospitalized, cancer-stricken wife, the schtupping the mistress on the office desk, (waaaaay TMI, I know). What does the GOP base have to say about a guy with a comfortable government salary (and lavish public pension) blowing off child support … to the wife who put him through college? If you answered, “Nothing”, you’d be right.

If I read the trend lines correctly, Gingrich’s latest incident of explosive bullshit, where he claimed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac paid him $300,000 for “historian” services back before The Big Meltdown, (and where he claims he was sagely, prophetically foretelling imminent collapse) already has him looking stupid, with a couple lassoes around his ankles ready to drop him back into the saw dust. By all reports none of his “explanations” are even remotely true, other than he took money — perhaps as much as $2 million — to hype Fannie and Freddie to his former colleagues in Capitol Hill.

Pop quiz: ID the source of this quote.

“I know he says they paid him as a historian to give a historic lesson, but I’m unaware of any history professor being paid that much money to give someone a history lesson. This is exactly what I’m talking about: people who came to Washington, who had public service, and they cash in on it. They use their public service and access to make money, and unfortunately Newt Gingrich is one of those who’s done it. I don’t know if he’ll survive this, to be honest with you. This is a very big thing. He is doing, he’s engaged in the exact kind of corruption that America disdains. The very things that anger the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement and everybody who is not in a movement and watches Washington and says why are these guys getting all this money, why do they go become so rich, why do they have these advantages? Unfortunately Newt seems to play right into it.” *

The explanation for Gingrich’s resurgence isn’t all that complicated. Like Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain and Rick Perry before him, (and Donald Trump before them), what is propelling Newt up in the estimation of the GOP base is his facility for Talk RadioSpeak. Newt sounds indignant, and certain, and heroic and unassailable and committed to a much higher truth than mere mortals, and all Democrats. The indignant, fearful and uncertain have a persistent, palpable, gnawing hunger for that kind of personality. A guru. A father/mother figure equal parts professor, seer and minister.

Every time one of these completely implausible, comically damaged personalities surges to the front of a Republican poll I’m reminded again of the description of our target audience given to Sarah Janecek and me by Clear Channel Radio’s national programming consultant, Gabe Hobbes, as we launched our (very) short-lived careers at KTLK in 2006. “The average talk show listener, the person we’re going for, is an early forty-something guy who doesn’t follow the news all that closely, doesn’t know all that much about what’s going on, but doesn’t want to be left out of the conversation at work and at home. He wants something to say that sounds like he’s informed. That’s your job.”

“Sounding like you’re informed”, and adding a couple touches of anger and moral indignation is what leading the GOP pack is mainly about.

And, as with commercial radio, it could work.

* Convicted GOP super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, currently on his contrition tour.

Jon Huntsman and the Evolution of the “Moderate” Label

GOP Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman has signed several bills restricting abortion, and he supports a right to life amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He supports building a fence on the Mexican border. He supports the death penalty. He governed Utah when it was named the most favorable state for business. He not only supports school vouchers, he actually signed a school voucher bill into law. He opposes an assault weapon ban. He wants to slash the authority of the EPA and NLRB. He opposes the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandate. He wants to eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit to dramatically increase taxes on the poor. At the same time, he proposes drastically cutting tax rates on the wealthiest Americans and corporations.

Moderate?

If you polled Americans and asked them how they would describe the political philosophy of a candidate holding those positions, they surely would say that candidate is very conservative. After all, Huntsman’s positions are at least as conservative as McCain, Bush 2, Dole, Bush 1, Reagan, Ford, Nixon, and Goldwater.

But despite Governor Huntsman’s strongly conservative record, the rigorous 90-second Google analysis I conducted today reveals that Huntsman is more likely to be described on the Internet and in the news as “moderate Jon Huntsman” than “conservative Jon Huntsman,” by an overwhelming 8-to-1 margin.

I understand that Huntsman is usually labeled a moderate because he is the most moderate person in the 2012 GOP presidential field, a radically conservative line-up. But still, it’s remarkable to see how far news reporters, bloggers and the general public have shifted their definition of “moderate” to the right as the Republicans Party has moved rapidly to the far right.

– Loveland

When In Doubt, Cry “Liberal Bias!”

In today’s news, Michelle Bachmann is protesting that she is not getting equal limelight in the GOP Presidential nomination debates, and that this injustice is driven by liberal reporters. Her campaign manager:

“We need to show the liberal media elite that we won’t stand for this outrageous manipulation.”

We have to remember where Representative Bachmann is coming from. For the last few years, this junior member of the House has owned the news airwaves. She may have enjoyed more blanket news coverage than any other member of Congress, with the possible exception of congressional leadership. Bachmann has become accustomed to saying outrageous things and becoming the center of attention for days on end. Heady stuff. But now after she says outrageous things at debates, indifferent reporters quickly move to “what say you, Mitt, Rick and Herman?” Getting blown off by fickle reporters is a new sensation for her.

Happier times.

Bachmann’s claim is partially correct. She is not getting equal debate billing with the frontrunners. We didn’t need an email from CBS News to tell us that. As always, candidates showing stronger support in polls are getting the most attention from reporters.

Dirty Job Dayton

So far in his tenure, Governor Mark Dayton has scarely met a controversial issue that he has not embraced. Think about the hallmarks of his tenure so far:

• He is attempting to sell the extremely unpopular taxpayer subsidies for professional sports owners, in the middle of a difficult economy.

• He has tenaciously advocated for an income tax increase on the state’s most powerful individuals.

• He has cut billions of dollars in safety net programs that are near and dear to him and his political base.

• He crossed the environmentalists on environmental permit streamlining and the teacher’s union on alternative teacher licensure, and these are both very powerful constituencies in his own party.

• He has taken on Native American gaming interests, perhaps the most financially powerful interest group that supports his party, by supporting a variety of ideas for expanding gambling.

• He has very aggressively championed the implementation of the much vilified Obamacare.

Nobody could ever accuse this guy of only choosing issues that are politically easy. Dayton’s tenure so far reminds me of a marathon showing of the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs, where the host engages in a variety of revolting vocations that very few of us are willing to enter.

But maybe he’s on to something. After all, today we learned in the Star Tribune’s poll that Dirty Job Dayton’s approval rating is a respectable 52%, much higher than midwest GOP Governors in Wisconsin (37% approve) and Ohio (36% approve). Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty had a 42% approval rating in his last year of office.

How does Dayton do it? He is not considered particularly glib or politically skilled. He has almost no electoral mandate. He certainly hasn’t been able to ride an economic boom to popularity.

Messaging And The Marriage Ban

One year year from yesterday, Minnesota voters will decide whether to amend the Minnesota Constitution to ban thousands of current and future Minnesotans from getting married. If 29 other states are predictive, the odds are the marriage ban will be successful in the land of “Minnesota Nice” as well.

I attended a house party yesterday to raise money and hackles to defeat the amendment. It was at the home of friends who are better spouses and parents than I could ever hope to be. Trust me, self-appointed Family Defenders, my friends are your greatest allies in your mission to strengthen the institution of family, not your enemies. Family Defenders should be begging people like my friends to join the club.

Anyway, a communications pro for a group opposing the marriage ban spoke at the event about how to talk to our friends, family and neighbors about the issue. Based on message research from the Troglodyte 29, she advised not to lead the conversation by arguing about equalizing the financial benefits of marriage. According to the research, the idea that people in a committed relationship should receive equal health and pension benefits regardless of the gender of their partner has not been sufficiently compelling to the heterosexual masses who take such benefits for granted.

So rather than going all HR on your friends, they recommend an American values argument. Equality. Fairness. Justice. Civil rights. The notion that all Americans who love each other should have the freedom to marry.

That seems like it should be an easy argument to sell. After all, I know my patriotic friends have perfect recall of the “under God” part of the Pledge of Allegiance. Given that, there’s a fighting chance they also might remember there are six subsequent words that speak to this issue. “…with liberty and justice for all.” “All,” which the dictionary says means “every,” “all kinds,” “all sorts.”

I feel silly stating the obvious here, but banning any Americans from marrying isn’t exactly consistent with our collective “liberty and justice for all” American value. Sometime in the not too near future, Americans are going to look back on these marriage ban amendments and be embarassed that something like this could happen in America, just as contemporary Americans are embarassed when they look back on Jim Crow laws.

With the polls showing Americans steadily moving toward support of gay marriage, and younger people especially supportive, it is only a matter of time before these embarassingly un-American marriage ban amendments start failing at the ballot box. How cool would it be if the tipping point was in Minnesota in 2012?

– Loveland

Reporters Discover Herman Cain

News flash: Sex sells.

Candidate proposes to ban public service based on religion. The news media yawns.

Candidate proposes to electrocute Mexicans. The news media mutters.

Candidate proposes to raise taxes on 84% of the least wealthy Americans during difficult economic times. The news media mumbles.

Candidate is accused of sexual harassment. The news media ROARS!

I wonder about the proportionality here. The first three issues are very substantive. The latest issue may be, but we don’t really know yet. As far as reporters currently know, Herman Cain’s sexual harassment settlement a dozen years ago could have been about anything from a serious abuse of power to a misunderstanding. We just don’t have enough evidence at this stage.

But the harassment issue is getting much more coverage than the other substantive stumbles primarily because there are, well you know, privates involved, potentially

Yes, the issue is also being hyped because Cain is now showing better in the horse race than he was a few months ago. It is also being hyped because the political neophyte is handling the questioning like a political neophyte. However, it should be noted that Cain was a front runner during the release of 9-9-9 tax increase analyses. And if you go back to look at Cain’s responses on the Muslim and electric fence stories, he bungled those responses just as badly as yesterday’s responses.

No, the primary reason this issue is wall-to-wall on the news is pretty clear. It is because it is about s-e-x. And in America, s-e-x means r-a-t-i-n-g-s.

– Loveland