Clarion Content

The Clarion Content broke the Durham ABC Board scandal a couple weeks back. The pace of the investigations appear to have picked up with coverage appearing in the Durham Herald Sun, the Triangle Business Journal, and on NBC-17. The Durham ABC Board is being investigated by the State Board and the public knows it. The Durham ABC Board has until October 28th to respond to state investigators.

In a classic case of slamming the barn door shut after the horses have dashed away, the Clarion Content's sources tell us the Durham ABC Board is holding meetings to hear employee complaints and grievances. Of course, the Durham ABC Board is not about to open those meetings to the public.

The Board is assuring Durham ABC employees that they have full protection under "state and federal" whistleblower laws. The Board's memo to employees about the opportunity to "speak freely" makes no mention of what those statutes might be.

Long time readers know the Clarion Content's feelings about how these things usually go for the whistleblower.

Stay tuned.

Labels: corruption, Durham, Ethically questionable, Politics

In this brief video, Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessing explains how we, the People, have lost control of our supposedly representative democracy. And what we might do about it...

As Lessing points out, if there is one thing the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street agree about, it is the pervasive and pernicious presence of systemic corruption.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, corruption, economics, Politics

It has become a disturbing trend, one more sign that our government is off the rails, the compulsion to obliterate evidence, to eradicate history, so it cannot be reexamined. When the Clarion Content's editorial board was growing up, this was derided as something "they" had to do in the Eastern Block, hide the files, destroy the records. Perhaps that was a false pretense, as the Church Committee showed, the rot had started somewhat earlier.¹

What is most disturbing in the modern age is the lack of apology or embarrassment shown by authority when it comes to wiping the slate clean. King George the II simply told reporters they could not report what they saw in Iraq. The New York City Police Department pressure washed and scrubbed clean all traces of the Occupy protesters they booted out of Zuccotti Park.

Whitewash the truth, delete the emails has become the socio-political norm in America. So, it should probably come as not surprise that the compound that housed former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, before he was executed, is being bulldozed to the ground. Of course, in keeping with the Man's standard methodology, security forces blocked journalists and photographers from getting close to the site as it was being leveled.

"Nothing to see here, folks. Move along."

It is a bitter irony of the Information Age that the malleability of history has become ever greater.


Notes
¹Somewhere in China around 1944-45, or perhaps it was in the jungles of Burma, or Laos, America switched sides in the confusion between nationalists/militarists/freedom fighters/communists/people power/oppression. It was a complicated equation and an easy one to get lost in, amongst the particulars. Joe McCarthy was able to ruin lives because wide swaths of otherwise good folks were not able to grasp the details. Then, in a bi-polar era, nefarious action was easy to justify, America simply portrayed itself (to its citizens, too) as the lesser of two evils. When the Soviet Union collapsed, that rationale disappeared with it.

Labels: cop stories, corruption, Ethically questionable, Politics

Clarion Content political cartoonist and resident New Bruinswick philosopher, Storey Clayton, walks us through the occupation, eviscerating the media myths behind it. Why have people occupied? What has changed? From whence did they come?

Storey dredges his personal memory to deposit us all, readers and editors alike, in a profoundly thoughtful place. What might Occupy mean? Where might Occupy go? This piece doesn't have all the answers, but it will surely leave you reexamining the questions.

It is long, but very, very worth it---Ed.

Read more of Storey Clayton's work here at the Blue Pyramid. Check out the insights of his famous cartoon Duck and Cover, here on the Clarion Content.


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I used to counsel “emotionally disturbed” kids in a group home, the Seneca Center. That was my occupation. We used this system generally known as “behavior modification” whereby we rewarded good behavior and punished (to a degree) bad behavior, usually by changing the meter on what kinds of activities someone could do. There were behavioral levels someone would start out on in the morning based on their behavior the previous day. They were color-coded, running red, yellow, green, and then purple and finally gold, which could only be earned after sequential days on purple. For example, you couldn’t watch TV on red. You couldn’t watch TV after dinner on yellow. On gold, you didn’t have to stand at each doorway announcing yourself and waiting to be permitted to cross a threshold, as long as you told the staff where you were going and responded if they asked you to stop.

There were also behaviors which would warrant an immediate “level drop”. Contrary to my ex-brother-in-law’s assessment, this did not indicate that we would dump a kid off the stairs, but merely that they’d go from yellow to red or gold to purple if they swore or made a threat or tried to make a peer act out. And then violence meant “R&R”, a term I guess we were trying to reclaim for the bad, which would be resolution and restitution in this instance and prompt spending the rest of the day on red, usually after long periods of sitting time to calm down.

A lot of our job, other than navigating and assessing people through the process of earning their levels, was about keeping people motivated to meet their goals and make their level. After all, most of the kids had grown up in households where, de facto if not overtly, bad behavior was rewarded and good behavior was punished. If you were quiet and humble and polite and got your homework done, you’d get neglected. If you set the house on fire and kicked the family dog and yelled and screamed at the table, then you’d get some attention. And in the world of six year-olds whose parents are addicts, any attention is good attention, because it means you get fed or talked to or even physically contacted, even if it’s to be hit.

The hardest part of this engagement and motivation was finding ways to get people on red to believe that tomorrow would be a new day and they’d have some way of climbing out of their bad level. Often they’d be on red after spending significant portions of the day in R&R, which meant no points were being earned toward the next day’s level while they were in the quiet room (an Orwellian term if there ever was one) or restraint or sitting staring at a corner thinking about what they’d done. Usually this meant they’d spent the day not only being unstable and unhappy, but they knew that the next day was doomed to be another day on red – that it’d be 36 hours before they could watch TV or even think about going on the computer. And 36 hours is long enough for a well-adjusted adult human – for an anti-social adolescent, it’s an eternity.

One of the things my boss – an ex-drill-sergeant (literally) and college football player the size of a small house with the voice of an irate seal – was very good at was advising us what to do with these kids in these situations. He told us that the key to their motivation and improved behavior was engagement. Keeping them interested, distracted, putting their minds to something. In a word, keeping them occupied. The man was often a blunt instrument, but he had incredible insight into the mindsets of these kids, having worked in mental health facilities like ours and/or juvenile hall for the better part of two decades. And he implored us to, when times were stable, engage and stimulate the kids who were on red with the few activities always allotted to them – playing outside, playing board games, reading, talking with peers or staff. And there, over time, I learned a fundamental truth: that people act out when they’re bored. It’s something to do.

The human mind despises boredom. Probably more than pain, certainly more than sadness. The brain is too complex, too creative, too active, to tolerate monotony and absence of objects. It will create things to think about where none exist, it will foment processes and possibilities in a vacuum. The only antidote to this is another element of our strategy in engaging red-level kids: exhaustion. Playing outside was not only good because it kept someone occupied, focused, and not-bored, but it also meant they came in too tired to create a ruckus. Adolescents have restless unspent energy in the best of times – abuse/neglect victims triply so. A kid who comes in tired from his day will be disinclined to take offense at a peer’s comment or a staff direction to a time-out. One who has nothing but seething surging energy beneath the surface will be ready to rumble.

This difference of exhaustion is why so many people can put up with assembly-line jobs or grocery-checking or long commutes, but buckle under the universally feared torture of solitary confinement. The capitalist structure of our country went through a really glorious period of getting humans to willingly accept and even embrace monotonous boredom because the tedium of their jobs created the byproduct of wearing them down. So even if they were getting repetitive stress injuries from twisting the same widget the same way and almost falling asleep from the 3,275th time making the same commute, they would arrive at home too beat to complain about it, having only just enough energy to awaken the next day and do it again. Meanwhile, those confined to small dark boxes alone with little or no exercise were slowly driven insane in their prisons.

Something’s been happening in this country the last three years. People have lost their occupations. No matter how small and crappy and minimally engaging their jobs were, they were still jobs that carried the heavily taxing byproduct of exhaustion. They were still something that took enough mental and physical energy to negate the urge to rebel, to foment discontent, to hold out for something better. But one-by-one and in droves, they were turned out of the opportunity to spend their energy flailing in the capitalist mill and instead made to consider the walls and corners and televisions and want-ads of a solitary existence.

Some have turned to creativity. Some have expanded their minds to accept the lack of occupation as a gift and driven themselves to occupy themselves instead. Most have not. Most people turned out of work by downsizing or offshoring or consolidation or automation have turned forlornly and blankly into an abyss of disinterested blandness. They wake each day not even sure what to do without someone telling them. They wander aimlessly through a directionless day, storebought distractions no longer working for them in light of the fact that they are only sufficiently entertaining or engaging for an exhausted person, but not someone with all their faculties at disposal. No longer exhausted, they become restless, agitated, rumbling with a soul-deep longing for something to do, be, create.

This, my friends, is the fundamental root of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It is the quest for occupation. And despite my framing the question in the context of a job where I tried to modify violent kids’ behavior toward the more productive, I am very much in agreement with the principles and methodology of this budding revolution. The powers that seek to maintain order, stability, and the status quo in America have overlooked some fundamental tenets of how to stave off rebellion by controlling the masses. They have forgotten that bread must join circuses in sufficiently distracting the people, insisting instead on a system which puts bread at a premium as a mechanical rabbit to hold in front of the racers. They have allowed the attitude of those at the top to become perniciously elitist, rubbing superiority and greed in the face of all society. But most fundamentally, they have forgotten that people must have something to do or they will find something to do themselves. That people accept the terms of their social contract when they are too occupied or too tired to read the fine print, when people have nothing else to do but read the fine print because they are so bored, they will realize what they are forfeiting and rail against it.

What is most exciting and inspiring about the Occupy movement is that it does not overtly seek political solutions. Naysayers and corporate threshers want the occupiers to write their Congresspeople and go to the polls, knowing that anyone accessed in such a way has been bought and paid for to the point of complete imperviousness. Even those not explicitly on the payroll of corporate America are believers in the fundamental tenets of a system that rewards greed and punishes altruism, a way of aligning society to maximize the consolidation and stratification of wealth and power. It is blindingly obvious why this is so, as any student of history (from age eight on) could tell you: those in power like being there and will rig the game so they can stay there. And capitalism is one very effectively rigged game.

I myself have struggled mightily with the advent of the Occupy movement, feeling pulled almost inexorably to the front lines of its tent encampments and yet not even setting foot there, as yet, in the wake of my overwhelmed exhaustion at my full-time job. For me, unlike most, it is not the gun-to-my-head need for the pay of a job or even the expected pressure of finding fulfillment in one’s occupation, but rather the true motivation of actually loving my work and wanting to devote sufficient time to it that it brings me to the brink of capitulation and illness. I hung out with Ariel and discovered yesterday that I may be her only friend whose problems wouldn’t be largely or entirely solved by money. Which itself is no small factor in the Occupy movement, that reality. For me, I work because I want to and I love to, but it has thus far kept me off the sidewalks and streets of a rising tide that could sweep the whole world.

It is hard to feel twin obligations that are mutually exclusive and equally compelling. Even at Glide, I think I might have begged out of work to go join the protests, though there I may have felt the pull of alleviating the suffering that was driving so many to this brink. But I also must self-examine and recognize that each marginal person could be part of a tipping point in creating more change in this country than anyone born prior to this year could have imagined was possible. When I first saw the most recent Zeitgeist movie, I chuckled at the slightly naive vision of hordes of people gathering around Wall Street to give their money back in rejection of the system that printed it. Now it’s underway. And it feels wrong to not only not be a part of it, but to not be a spearhead.

And yet it feels like a hedge is in order too. It is unclear the direction or power the movement will have, whether it can be co-opted by money and politics and all the American powers that have resisted internal change before. And throwing away the best job I’ll ever have, one I created from scratch, and all my obligations to people I feel a deep personal bond with, for what could be a week and a jail term depending on how things bounce, seems crazy.

But it only seems crazy because I am occupied. Were I not, it would be the most obvious thing in the world.

I will continue to wrestle and struggle with the question, continue to dance on the razor’s edge of conundrum. I can’t really see myself abandoning everything to go live in the encampments, at least not yet, so the Rutgers debaters reading this should let out their breath. But there’s a big part of me that feels I should anyway. And I know it’s not zero-sum – I know I can go try to participate without sacrificing it all. And I will. More than anything, though, we need to develop a way that people who are occupied can still Occupy. We need a day where everyone who still wants or has to go to work can show their solidarity and support. Sometimes revolutions can’t all involve defection from the military, because they need people in the military to be quietly sympathetic so they can make sure that institution changes with the rest of society. This revolution needs occupied people too in order to make all the changes necessary.

If those on top of this precipitous pyramid know what’s good for them, they will create new incentives and occupations. They will come up with some way to motivate the masses and make use of their time and brains. But it can’t be through capitalism, at least the way it’s been manifest in society so far. The market is editing out jobs, ensuring they never return. We need a new system to occupy our minds. Until then, we must occupy the streets.

Labels: corruption, economics, Guest columns, Politics, public protest

Transformed

In a case out of the stuff of nightmare, five New Orleans cops were convicted in the killing of unarmed civilians in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One of the most amazing parts of the story is that the shooting spree, that left two unarmed victims dead and four others wounded (one of whom ultimate lost her arm), took place six days after city flooded. Six days! What does that say about the conditions in the area and the authorities? Law and order were clearly on the run, the cops were told that they were responding to a radio call of officers down and under fire at the Danziger Bridge.

Another detail that tells one just how far off of the civic rails things were at that moment in Louisiana, the 5-0 was rolling to the call in a Budget Rental truck. Literally. One of the officers was riding in the back of the box truck carrying his personal AK-47.¹ They jumped from the truck firing. According to reports, a family walking in search of food and supplies, the Bartholomews, ended up on the bridge that September day heading to a supermarket on the other side of the Industrial Canal that bifurcates the 9th Ward. The hail of New Orleans Police Department bullets killed seventeen year-old family friend James Brissette and wounded four other family members.²

Moments later, the cops open fire on two brothers, Lance and Ronald Madison, according to a Justice Department summary, one officer shot the mentally disabled Ronald Madison in the back as he ran away, another cop stomped and kicked him as he was lying on the ground before he died.

This is the small "c" conservative's nightmare, the state, who has its constituent citizens massively outgunned with its governmental arsenal, incidentally, paid for with tax dollars, turns its guns on the people in a climate of fear. This is the case for repealing the Patriot Act and eliminating the Department of Homeland Security. Guns in the hands of the state, while scary, is likely inevitable in a globalized society. Impunity to open fire on the citizenry, the presumption of guilt, is what must be fought at all costs.

In this federal courtroom, the officers ultimately lost when their fellow cops started to go state's evidence on them. As is so often the case, it was the cover-up that got them. Initially, it was not at all clear that the policemen were going to pay for this heinous incident. State of Louisiana murder and attempted murder charges were thrown out against the cops when the Criminal District Court ruled that the state had misused grand jury testimony. In a racially charged case and city, they were greeted by a cheering throng of supporters when they beat the rap.

The Clarion Content does not have enough information to make a definitive stand on one side or the other of this case on the basis of the facts. In a federal court, in front of juror of their peers these men were found guilty. We can only say that we are heartened that justice did not automatically pardon the powerful and armed against the dispossessed and unarmed. The presumption so often goes the other way.

¹Brady Bill anyone?

²After an initial cover-up, in later testimony it was revealed that the officers kept firing at the unarmed family as they cowered behind a bridge abutment. "The police just kept shooting and I just kept feeling myself being hit," testified Susan Bartholomew who lost her right arm.

Labels: cop stories, corruption, public protest

Read Duck and Cover

at the Blue Pyramid.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, constitutional issues, corruption, Duck and Cover, economics, humor, Politics

More than 200,000 Citi credit card customers had their accounts hacked earlier this month. The thieves got their names, account numbers, e-mail addresses and transaction histories. The fascinating part of the story is the criminal element came in through what was an essentially an unlocked front door, the main customer service website.

This site is publicly open and available to all of Citi's customers. The hackers exploited a flaw in the number strings of the site's urls. When the site redirects its customers internally, it uses their credit card number as part of the website's id. The credit card thieves were able to exploit this vulnerability, writing code that inserted potential credit card numbers into these long url strings, over and over, until they hit actual account numbers. When they did, the customer's private credit card data was all theirs.

The only good news? Citi reports that the attackers were unable obtain expiration dates or the three-digit security code on the back of the cards, making the stolen data more difficult to use.

Read more here in the New York Times.

Labels: corruption, technology

Something to consider

The New York Times ran an interesting article this weekend in the wake of the Congressman Anthony Weiner racy pictures scandal. (Weiner has been outed for sending naughty snaps via the interwebs.) The article observed that a casual look around the political landscape would say that female politicians have been embroiled in far fewer sexual scandals than their male counterparts.

We know, we know, the plural of anecdote is not data. But how about a study? The NY Times speculates, "Women have different reasons for running, are more reluctant to do so and, because there are so few of them in politics, are acutely aware of the scrutiny they draw -- all of which seems to lead to differences in the way they handle their jobs once elected."

Here at the Clarion Content we read it as another good sign for the millennium of women.

Labels: corruption, Politics, thought

The world market emphasizes the delights and upsides of being able to sell anything and everything from anywhere. This range is supposed to virtuous in and of itself. The presumption is that more choice is always better. Despite recent studies debunking that idea, it has proved a hard meme to dislodge.

While as our friends over at the MEP Report are fond of reminding us, the plural of anecdote is not data, sometimes the solid illustrative anecdote can serve as a beacon to shine a light on the reams of transactions taking place below the surface knowledge of the Empire's paperpushers.

To wit, the story of a seventeen year-old Chinese kid who decided to sell one of his kidneys over the internet to finance the purchase of new electronics gear; a laptop and iPad 2 amongst the haul. The Clarion Content has long hooted about the flourishing grey market for organs in China. The teen thought he had gotten away with it, having handled the transaction on his own without his parents knowledge. But his mother, not surprisingly, noticed the new computer equipment and then found her son's deep red scar. The BBC and a local Chinese TV report indicate the authorities are concerned.

Labels: corruption, economics

Special to the Clarion Content...

Open letter to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill fans, alumni, students, faculty, administrators, and staff:

When I moved to North Carolina in 1997, transplanted as it were, with a girlfriend attending UNC Law School, I found out rapidly that as an avid sports fan, it was necessary to choose sides. [Or at least be able to make a good case why you hadn't.]

I grew up in New Jersey. I went to college at Indiana University. Naturally, I chose Duke. Duke is the state university of New Jersey of the South. Coach K was weaned under legendary Indiana Coach Bob Knight.

My UNC friends said, fine, or more accurately, "Whatever!!"

They reminded me, don't forget us. We're special. We're different. We do things the Carolina Way. I respected Carolina, but I didn't really know what they meant. When I arrived in the area the Dean Smith era was ending, I didn't appreciate the concept.

Since I have been here, I have seen the highs and the lows athletically for University of North Carolina as an institution. In football, from the depths of the Carl Torbush era to the heights of Mack Brown's run. In basketball, from the depths of the Guthridge-Doherty transition to the heights of two national championships. Carolina is always in the running for what used to be known as the Sears Cup, which is awarded annually to the university with the most success overall in collegiate athletics. All this warranted respect. And I respected Carolina.

Yet, I never truly understood what was meant by the Carolina Way. I knew the connotation of the Carolina Way was deeper than winning. Sometimes to see things clearly it takes a crisis.

This year, during the heart of a football scandal that enveloped the school, I finally started to get it. The recent counter-example of how a similar football scandal was handled at The Ohio State University this year hammered the point home. The Carolina way meant appreciating the fundamental Nixonian and Judeo-Christian lesson. It is the cover-up, not the crime.

All of us, as humans, are fallible. It is not whether or not we will fail, it what we do after the failure. President Nixon was disgraced and forced to resign his office in shame, not so much for the crime, as for repeatedly lying to the American nation about it. The Judeo-Christian culture and American society are very forgiving of our politicians, athletes, celebrities and frankly, each other. It is a bedrock of who we are. But forthrightness, honesty, a willingness to admit wrongdoing is the key.

Last season, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was embroiled in a football scandal and media maelstrom near as sketchy sounding as the one that has enveloped Ohio State. It was agents, assistant coaches and loose money in Chapel Hill, tattoo, cars and cash for uniforms and access at Ohio State.

U-G-L-Y.

In both cases.

But how did these two universities proceed to handle these crises?

The University of North Carolina preemptively suspended twelve football players for the opening game and arguably the biggest game of its regular season against top-tier program LSU. The suspensions included several players who were ultimately cleared by the investigation.

The Ohio State University petitioned the NCAA to allow five players who have been shown to be in the middle of the dirty dealings that the coach knew about at the time to participate in the Sugar Bowl.

The University of North Carolina extended and expanded its review as fully and completely as possible.

The Ohio State University limited the scope of its investigation and prematurely attempted to clear their coach.

The University of North Carolina thoroughly interrogated their football coach, Butch Davis, and ultimately elected to go forward with him.

The Ohio State University initially suspended their football coach, Jim Tressel, two games, a wrist-slap, then a further half-measure, making the suspension five games, before ultimately facing it had to fire him.

The University of North Carolina's Athletic Director Dick Baddour pushed the investigation in an attempt to find and expunge any and all dirt. Compare; Baddour, "it is likely that the review would extend beyond the start of the season...as an institution, we must learn from these mistakes and work with the NCAA and others who love the game of football to repair the environment in which they occurred."

The Ohio State University's Athletic Director Gene Smith gushed over his coach and attempted to quash the investigation. Compare; Smith, "Wherever we end up at the end of the day, Jim Tressel is our football coach. All the speculation about him being terminated is pure speculation. This case, in my view, does not warrant it...He is our coach and we trust him implicitly."

What about the university's respective leadership?

The University of North Carolina's Chancellor Holden Thorpe, in the beginning,

"We will find out what happened. We will do everything we can to keep it from happening again. And we will not let these mistakes define our university and what we stand for."

and in the end,

"We pledged that we would go where the facts took us, that we would find out how this happened, and that we would do everything we could to figure out how to keep it from happening again. In crises like this, it is tempting to come up with a quick fix, but it is almost always better to endure the speculation while the facts are gathered...we have found no information that Coach Davis was involved in any of the problems that surfaced...All along, my chief concern has been protecting the University’s academic integrity..."

The Ohio State University's President Gordon Gee made clear where he stood in the hierarchy when asked in March about firing Tressel, "No, are you kidding? Let me just be very clear: I'm just hopeful the coach doesn't dismiss me."

UNC fans, alumni, students and administrators, hold your heads high. The Carolina way really is different, even if it took the Ohio State University for this Duke fan to see it. You should be proud of your distinction. The right way is not synonymous with the easy way. We all do wrong, the measure is in what do we do after we do wrong. The University of North Carolina did not shy from its mistakes and missteps. It plunged in and met the challenge head-on, in the process doing much to secure its deserved reputation as a place of honor.

Keep up the good work. Much respect.

Aaron Mandel
Durham, NC

Labels: college football, corruption, Pop Culture, sports, thought

Not so much for Chris Christie, the Governor of New Jersey; Governor Christie prefers do as I say, not as I do.

The governor, who has been slashing school budgets and social services in New Jersey, while wringing his hands about the state's budget crisis, apparently is ready to spare no expense when it comes to his personal indulgence.

The incident in question? Wednesday, Governor Christie decided to use a state police helicopter to attend his son's baseball game against St. Joseph Regional High School in Montvale, Bergen County, NJ. Surely the governor must have traveling from official business and wanted to see his family? What kind of scrooge would begrudge a person that?

Nope.

Governor Christie's last engagement on his official schedule before his son's baseball game was a private meeting Tuesday night at the governor's mansion with a group of Iowa donors who are trying to pursuade him to run for president.

Shady, Mr. Governor, shady.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, corruption, Politics

Wait a minute! There were insiders who made billions off of gaming the system before the financial house of cards collapsed?

Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for Manhattan, is fighting systemic corruption.

The New York Times reports hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, who's Galleon Group hedge fund managed more than $7 billion in assets, was found guilty on yesterday of fourteen counts of fraud and conspiracy by a federal jury in Manhattan. Evidence showed that Mr. Rajaratnam allegedly used a corrupt network of tipsters to personally make over $63 million from insider trading trading in stocks. Apparently, that was merely the tip of the iceberg.

Rajaratnam and his firm paid out roughly $300 million in trading commissions annually to brokerage firms. As one of the prosecutors noted, "Cheating became part of his business model." Rajaratnam was taped saying, among many other incriminating statements, "I heard yesterday from somebody who’s on the board of Goldman Sachs that they are going to lose $2 per share," in advance of the bank’s earnings announcement.

Unfortunately, the uber-wealthy Rajaratnam's lawyers will appeal the verdict and will likely keep him out of jail long enough to flee the country. He will probably be sipping cocktails and proffering advice at Davos next year.

Labels: corruption, economics, Politics

During the 2008 campaign, this guy vowed to "close the revolving door" and "clean up both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue" with "the most sweeping ethics reform in history." He must have just meant that as a rhetorical flourish, rather than an active policy making effort.

Need one more instance, one more reminder of just how fixed the game is Washington, D.C.?

One of the FCC (Federal Communication Commission) members, who mere weeks ago voted to approved the controversial merger of the Comcast cable monopoly and NBC television network, is leaving the FCC to become a senior vice president for the merged firm.

Can you say conflict of interest? Can you say bribery? Can you say, boy, the political environment sure has changed under President Obama?

Allegedly, yes, yes, no.

The media watchdog organization, Free Press, called the move, "just the latest, though perhaps most blatant, example of a so-called public servant cashing in at a company she is supposed to be regulating."

Labels: 2012 presidential election, corruption, Politics

Regular readers of the Clarion Content know how bitter we are about the Obama Presidency. Perhaps our hopes were too high. His administration has underlined and put an exclamation point on the premise that there is no significant difference between Republicans and Democrats. Obama was the first major party candidate that the Clarion Content endorsed and oh, how we regret it.

He is cut from the same cloth as Slick Willie and King George the II.

CIA assassinations up under the Obama regime.

Guantanamo still open.

Non-combatants being tried in military courts without the protection of the Constitution.

Signing statements still being used to sidestep the Constitution.

Dictators being backed against freedom fighters wherever it is deemed politically expedient.

Oh, and that rhetoric about helping the little guy, who has been buffeted by King George the II's wars of choice and blase, "Let them eat cake" attitude? Sorry that's out the window.

Tax cuts for the rich extended.

Massive tax breaks for the biggest corporation continue.

And is independent, Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders points out...

Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.

Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.

Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.

Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.

Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.

Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits, but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.

ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.

Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.

Duck and Cover is on-point as usual. It is awfully hard to feel optimistic. There are no saviors over the American horizon, rather a passel of psychotic Nero's are vying for Obama's throne and scepter.

While bearing in mind, the first moment of violence co-opts the Revolution, it is time for radically new approaches.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, corruption, Politics

America switched sides in the battles between autocrats and revolutionaries somewhere in Southeast Asia between 1944 and 1953.

Today in Egypt, there is no nuance that can deny America is supporting the dictator in contravention to the will of the people. Just as we did with Musharraf, just as we are doing with Karzai. Real Americans should loathe this fundamental compromise of who we are.

Labels: corruption, Middle East, Politics

Mubarak and Condi yuk it up...

Remember the heady days in the middle of the reign of King George II, when a moment of calm, a lull, an eye in the maelstrom of Iraq's civil war, allowed the mad king to dream of democratic contagion. It was argued for a moment that like so many of Kissinger's dominoes the dictatorships of the Middle East were going to morph into peaceful bucolic multi-party democracies. There was the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, that; that is going well. There was also the full-court press on Egyptian President Hosni Murbarak who made just enough of the right noises to pass the muster of Condi Rice. A sad sack herself, she will go down in history as a world-class dupe.

Sadly, the Obama Administration represents continuity within the American Empire rather than fundamental change, as things stand, Veep Joe Biden is now playing the Condi role. Unfortunately, the fire brigades brought in during the mad reign of King George the II, as they did in so many other places, threw fuel, rather than water, on the fire. Egypt has gone from smoldering to smoking. Faux moves toward democracy gave Murbarak what he thought was cover to attempt to squash and imprison leading voices of dissent and plurality. There were no real changes or democratic accommodations. Mubarak, and more importantly the people of Egypt, fully expect his son to succeed him under the status quo ante. America has ignored, to its detriment, any moderates within the powerful Muslim Brotherhood.

Today a full-fledged uprising grips Egypt. Stock market worldwide are tumbling in response. Gold and crude oil prices are soaring.

What a wonderful world.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, corruption, economics, Middle East, Politics, public protest, war

Brilliant quote from Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, says it all about the utter mess our society has become. We have turned it inside-out and lost all track of our values. Money trumps all other values.

"What are the differences between Mark Zuckerberg and me? I give private information on corporations to you for free, and I’m a villain. Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he’s Man of the Year." – Julian Assange

Who dictates to the masses who the "Man of the Year" is? Why a company worth in excess of $100 billion dollars...Funny how that works.

Labels: corruption, political quips-n-quotes, Politics, thought

The faces have changed, but the game remains the same

Despite what the defenders of the Obama administration want to tell you, dear readers, the chilling post 9.11 security climate is still in effect. It is more than that Homeland Security is checking nutsacks at airport terminals this holiday season. Our quarrel is not only with the balance between safety and privacy, but with the attitude and atmosphere of the state. The mentality of the state's security apparatus has not noticeably changed under the ostensibly liberal Obama.

What the Clarion Content's small "c" conservative editorial board believes this reflects is that President Obama and his policy team do not come at the world from a less regulation where ever possible framework. Obviously. From their point of view, more is more. This means that, although the current administration does not believe in the invading one's privacy for the same draconian reasons as Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo, their p.c. based paternalism yields essentially the same result. Guantanamo is still open. Black prison sites are still likely maintained. Alliances with strong men across Central Asia, irrespective of national and individual citizen's sovereignty, continue. The state makes unwarranted, and frequently undisclosed, compromises of individual American citizen's civil liberties.

Ultimately there is a government mindset, led by the security apparatus, that believes proper enforcement and public safety trump individual rights and the protect and serve mantra of policing. We ran across another story today that underlined this message recently.

A fifty year-old airline pilot has come under fire from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, after posting a behind the scenes tour of security flaws at San Francisco International Airport on YouTube. The pilot, who taped the clips with his cell phone, has been flying for the airlines for more than a decade. He alerted Sacramento's KXTV when he posted the videos saying he wanted the information to be made public.

According ABC7 in San Francisco, the video posting resulted in federal air marshals and sheriff's deputies showing up, menacingly unannounced at the pilot's house. This appearance that the pilot, a deputized federal air marshal, also recorded, was made to personally and aggressively confiscate his federally issued handgun. Rather than handle this paperwork detail administratively in an office environment, security descended on the pilot in his own home, to make a show of force and displeasure.

His attorney, Don Werno, says he believes the TSA was sending a message that "you've angered us by telling the truth and by showing America that there are major security problems despite the fact that we've spent billions of dollars allegedly to improve airline safety."

Once again, enforcement attacks the whistleblower. Obviously, this sort of individual incident is far below the Presidential radar, unless it involves Henry Louis Gates Jr. or another member of the elite with access.

Change? Only who is sitting at the table has changed, the game remains the same.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, constitutional issues, cop stories, corruption, media, Politics

Once again, President Obama continues and extends the polices of King George II. This is not the change we were hoping for here at the Clarion Content when we endorsed Obama. What say those of you who mocked voting for Ralph Nader in 2000 now?

Labels: 2008 presidential election, 2012 presidential election, corruption, economics, Politics

In Nigeria, earlier this week, authorities detained ten Nigerian and expatriate Halliburton staff for questioning after raiding its Lagos office. The Houston based engineering firm KBR, a former Halliburton subsidiary, pleaded guilty last year to charges in U.S. court that it paid $180 million in bribes between 1994 and 2004 to Nigerian officials to secure $6 billion in contracts for the Bonny Island liquefied natural gas project in the Niger Delta.

No way!

The rich were illegally getting richer under the reign of King George the II?!?

Say it isn't so...

KBR and Halliburton reached a $579 million settlement with the United States, but Nigeria, France and Switzerland are conducting their own investigations. Albert "Jack" Stanley, the former KBR chief executive officer who worked under the Dick Cheney when he headed Halliburton, pleaded guilty in 2008 to charges stemming from a scheme to bribe Nigerian officials for work on the Bonny Island plant.

Labels: Africa, corruption, economics, Politics