Lobbying Firm's Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street

An exclusive report from Up With Chris Hayes exposes a lobbying firm pitching to the American Banking Association that the Occupy movement is dangerous, which must be killed in order for the Bankers to be safe.

The piece concerns a proposal written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.  The proposal (linked below) is pretty damning evidence of how worried officialdom is about the Occupy movement, and some of the strategizing.  The proposal theorizes that the Obama campaign might attempt to join forces with the Occupy movement if Wall Street gets tarnished badly enough.  It also suggests some Republicans might do so as well if the tarnishing gets bad enough.  Never mind that all politicians are tainted with receiving huge sums from Wall Street.

The vision is that Occupy and Tea Party overlap in terms of being angered populist movements.  The radical left and radical right are both channeling frustration about the economy into political action.  Somehow in some weird parallel universe the two movements might join together to do something traumatic to Wall Street.  At least that's the story GLGC spins to the Bankers.

Their proposal outlines some actions:-  Polling in some key states (Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada, and New Mexico) which are both states that Obama won, and states facing key issues in front of the electorate right now.  For example, Nevada is described as "ground zero for the foreclosure crisis".

Next they'd do "opposition research" looking for the financial backers of the Occupy movement, presuming that there are deep pockets people like George Soros behind this.  The idea will be to show these backers have "the same cynical motivation as a political opponent" to undermine the Occupy movement credibility.  Maybe at this point they're showing a profound misunderstanding of what's going on?

Social media monitoring to anticipate future Occupy actions and messaging, as well as "identify extreme language and ideas that put its most ardent supporters at odds with mainstream Americans."

Coalition planning activities would demonstrate that the companies targeted by Occupy still have political strength and that making those companies into political targets will carry political risk.

The ultimate deliverable is identifying messages that will "move numbers" (polling numbers), combat Occupy messages, and "provide cover for political figures who defend the industry."

As Chris Hayes points out, two of the names on the proposal are former staffers of Speaker of the House John Boehner.  

They also had an Obama campaign spokesperson on, Anita Dunn, to discuss this.  One critique of the Obama campaign is that they've taken a huge pile of campaign contributions from Wall Street, so doesn't that tarnish the campaign?  Ms. Dunn replied, sidestepping the question, that the majority of their contributions are small ones from individuals.  Didn't really answer the question.  She also said that the tough financial reforms against Wall Street were won by the Obama Administration, demonstrating that Obama isn't in the pocket of Wall Street.

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Exclusive: Lobbying Firm's Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street (VIDEO)

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/CLGF-msnbc.pdf

Obama Campaign Responds to "Up" Exclusive on Lobbyist Plan to Take Down Occupy Wall Street

Crusading state-level Attorneys General seeking to take down corrupt financial industry - Maddow

This week a major focus on Rachel Maddow's show is the corrupt financial industry that nearly killed the U.S. economy.  The deed was enabled by corrupt business practices that were in turn enabled by relaxed regulatory regime.  Largely speaking, even though many companies in the financial industry died, bankrupted, merged, etc, the people who committed the practices are often still employed in the same financial industry, and the regulatory system around them has changed very little.

As Maddow recounts, earlier in this decade a crusading NY Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer, took down several corrupt NYC financial industry titans.  That was before he went on to a prostitute scandal and a stint as a CNN host.  In her coverage this week she focused on two Attorneys General, Eric Schneiderman from New York and Beau Biden from Delaware.   One take-away from this is that Change can happen when bright people pursue a course of correcting wrongs, and use their position of power to enable change in the world.

Of course there is positive change and negative change.  Someone in a position of power can create a corrupt system, or work to remove corruption.  It depends on how they apply the power their position gives them.

These people who are in public service - ideally their job is serving the better interests of all.  Consider the Attorney General job.  It's about seeing justice is served, lawbreakers are found and punished, the law is applied in a just manner, etc.

But history is replete with people who used positions of power to instead feather their own nests, or work with cronies to feather each others nests, or create a regime of dictatorial control, or .. etc .. on and on ..  There have been plenty of Attorneys General who used their positions of power to hide corruption, to stonewall investigations, etc.  Again, it's a matter of how each individual uses their time in the position of power.

During the interviews below, Maddow asked Beau Biden (son of Vice President Biden) why these investigations are happening at the state level rather than the federal level.  Interesting question, and he answered that while there is a lot of state-level investigation, that it seems the state level investigators are cooperating, there is also federal level investigations.

 

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This starts a little slow with analysis of Republican advertisements, the poor pitiful state of Democratic advertisements .. etc ..  The segue point is a Democratic ad that really hits hard on the mortgage crisis corruption.   Almost half of Arizona home-owners are "under water" with foreclosures "everywhere" but Romney's message to Arizona is that he wants the mortgage crisis to "hit bottom" and that home-owners are on their own.

In other words - the banks (e.g. the rich 1%) got bailed out, while we the 99% get foreclosed.

Would it work to brush the corruption under the rug and ignore it?  The business-friendly Republicans want to brush this aside, but does this mean they think "business-friendly" means "corruption-friendly"?

A lot of the base raw feelings driving the Occupy protests is this exact issue.  Rampant financial corruption and corrupt practices.  Who is going to step up to the plate to correct this?  A minute ago I suggested that people in positions of political power have a choice, to use their power for the good of all, or to use their power to protect corrupt practices keeping the game going.

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Later in the show they had Glenn Greenwald on to shill for his latest book, but this weaves into the same narrative.  This book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, "lays bare the mechanisms that have come to shield the elite from accountability" and "shows how the media, both political parties, and the courts have abetted a process that has produced torture, war crimes, domestic spying, and financial fraud".

The book has a chapter titled - Too Big To Jail - great meme.

Basically, he was there to talk about officially sanctioned corruption and the general pattern that the rich get away with things we little people would be in jail over.

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In this segment Maddow shows, with numbers charted on a graph, the effect of the system.  Note that Greenwald identified a tipping point 40 years ago when Richard Nixon got pardoned, and by being pardoned started this "Too Big To Jail" precedent that's been used to let others get off with little or no punishment for misdeeds.

Here the graph shows how, upon the election of Ronald Reagan, the economic well-being of the 99% and 1% began to diverge.  The Rich got Richer far faster than the rest of us, creating an enormous gap in financial well-being.  Reagan did a lot to remove the regulatory system that had kept the financial system in check, keeping corruption out of finance.  One thing that enabled was for the rich to get richer, and it enabled the rampant corruption.

Oh, and this more-or-less proves how bogus were the "Trickle Down Economics" of the Reagan era.  We see right here that there's no trickle-down.

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This is the segment where she talks about Elliot Spitzer in the period he was the crusading New York Attorney General, the role now held by Eric Schneiderman above.  The segment starts with a quote from the Chamber of Commerce complaining about Spitzers effectiveness.  From the Chamber of Commerce perspective we can imagine they saw Spitzer as a threat, but that just fits the meme where "business-friendly" really means "corruption-friendly" doesn't it?

Thanks to Spitzer, Wall Street was being "perp walked" for stuff they used to routinely get away with.

Sure, investments are not a sure thing and investors should certainly know this.  THe one thing investors deserve is honest advice.  Instead what they got was crap self serving advice that actively misled investors to investing in crap.

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Immediately after the prior segment, we have Beau Biden (VP Biden's son) on to talk about what Delaware is doing.  Where Delaware enters the picture is jurisdiction.  Where Delaware is the preferred state to register corporations, those corporations are subject to accountability by Delaware's judicial system.

Beau Biden as the Delaware Attorney General has just launched a lawsuit against the entire mortgage industry.

The allegation is that in the mid 90's the banks privatized regulation of mortgage notes, so that mortgages could be securitized so that they can be traded on the open market.  A result of the securitization was that it's now nigh-on-impossible to determine who actually owns a given house, because the mortgage originator securitizes the mortgage to sell the mortgage securities on the market.

 

The indebted are controlled by debt holders - the Banks are telling the U.S. what to do

Is there a financial collapse of the U.S. and other Western powers underway? I don't know. I do know that collectively the U.S. and other countries have been running up quite a debt. Before someone blames it on Obama, in the U.S. most of the debt came during the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II years. The Bush II years were especially disastrous with running up a debt due to idiotic tax cuts for the rich and wealthy (under the failed Trickle Down Economics theory pushed by Reagan and which Bush I called voodoo economics) alongside running two off-the-books wars simultaneously alongside an unfunded prescription drug program. Obama inherited a mess created mutually by the Republicans and Democrats and everyone else in Washington who's been screwing up the system for years.
The result was this fake drama over "raising the debt ceiling" and with fake ideological stances over whether to have debt or not, etc.
The main thing to take from it is this fact: Over the weekend, even though the debt ceiling was raised, the S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating to AA from AAA and Moody's threatened to also do so if the U.S. Government did not make steeper cuts in spending.
In other words, the banks and debt system are calling the shots and telling the U.S. Government what to do. And that's because the Federal Government has been malfeasant for years, resulting in huge deficits explicitly because of stupid Republican policies.
A July 13 Assoc Press report (Moody's Warns It May Downgrade US Credit Rating) goes over warning sounds Moody's was making a month ago. Today a Bloomberg News notes that Moody's and Fitch kept U.S. credit rating the same but "also said that downgrades were possible if lawmakers fail to enact debt reduction measures and the economy weakens." The same report also quotes two S&P analysts saying that the extremely difficult negotiations leading up to the credit limit deal last week were the primary cause S&P lowered the credit rating. That extremely divided "discussion" was not consistent with an AAA rating. (U.S. Loses AAA Credit Rating as S&P Slams Debt Levels, Political Process)
"More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating," S&P said. The Bloomberg report also said "S&P put the U.S. government on notice on April 18 that it risked losing the AAA rating it had since 1941 unless lawmakers agreed on a plan by 2013 to reduce budget deficits and the national debt. It indicated last month that anything less than $4 trillion in cuts would jeopardize the rating."
In other words, both S&P and Moody's are dictating to the Federal Government what the Federal Government policies must be. The state of affairs came about because the Federal Government has been ridiculous for years over an extreme level of relying on debt to finance the government. Note: I'm not saying it's because the Federal Government is over-spending, but that the government is relying on debt.
The problem with debt is you're wasting money on the interest payments, and as we see here it means the debt holder has power over you to control what decisions you can make.
It's not just a U.S. crisis, it's a global economic financial crisis. In Europe several countries are having severe problems, Spain and Italy being the current worry spots. A NY Times report mentions the European Central Bank was demanding Spain and Italy to "restructure their economies and cut spending".
(S.&P. Downgrade Is Seen as Adding Urgency to Debt-Cutting Panel) The debt ceiling crisis was resolved by creation of a Congressional "supercommittee" whose job is to "to mute ideological disagreements and recommend a package of deficit-reduction measures". That committee is now seen as having been given extra oomph by an S&P report released last week. The committee is described as having three roles, including "to appease the markets" and restore the AAA credit rating. "Appease the markets" can only mean one thing, right? To do what the market says, in other words the bond holders are calling the shots.
For example: If Congress wants to satisfy the rating agencies — Moody’s and Fitch have so far kept their AAA ratings of government debt — it will need to lock in substantial deficit-reduction measures, without using the kind of budgetary gimmicks that sometimes appear to produce savings under accounting rules prescribed by Congress, several lawmakers said.
(London Sees Twin Perils Converging to Fuel Riot) Over the weekend there was rioting in England. It was a small "anti-police demonstration" over the shooting of an Afro-Caribbean man in an area (Tottenham) that's full of disadvantaged Afro-Caribbean's. It might be nothing other than a riot over police brutality, except for this "Frustration in this impoverished neighborhood, as in many others in Britain, has mounted as the government’s austerity budget has forced deep cuts in social services." The point being that England elected a Conservative recently, who enacted a series of deep budget cuts to straighten out the country's finances, and now the people are rioting.

Other random quotes and links

"Policymakers around the world are trying to come up with a strategy to shore up market worries over the global economy and the levels of debt in the U.S. and Europe."
"S&P said the agencies and banks all have debt that is exposed to economic volatility and a further downgrade of long-term U.S. debt. Their creditworthiness hinges on the U.S. government's ability to pay its own creditors."

Markets Drop As Investors React To Downgrade
S&P Downgrades Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Ratings
Global Finance Leaders Pledge Bold Action to Calm Markets

Hypocratic lying government officials, and why it matters (do we live in a Hypocracy or Democracy?)

Politicians lie, right? That statement is frequently used to sweep hypocrisy and lies under the rug. Why bother complaining because they all do it? Maybe the general consensus is that these lies don't matter and not worth the bother. To me it is important and galling some of the lies being perpetrated.

When the Congressman serving as the House Majority Leader suggests to a news reporter a course of action that's patently unconstitutional, is that important? When a politician calls for bombing a particular country, then two weeks later says we shouldn't be bombing that country, is that important? When a political party makes a lot of electoral hay calling for Constitutional rule, enacts rules of Congressional conduct requiring citations of Constitutional justification, and then does not follow their own newly enacted rule, is that important? When a Congressperson has a public facade of "Family Values" complaining about extramarital sexual affairs of others, but then gets caught redhanded in their own sexual pecadillo escapade and refuses to acknowledge it or resign or anything, is that important?

A couple definitions might bring this into focus:

Hypocracy (urban dictionary):

What Democracy turns into when all of the politicians in your country are liars.

When no party/President that wins the election manages to keep its/his own ideology, and instead, keeps changing it every time it/he feels like it, that's no democracy. That's hypocracy.

A democracy governed by hypocrites.

The British government advocates moral standards to which it does not conform. Britain's political system is therefore a hypocracy.

Hypocrisy (dictionary.com)

1. a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.
2. a pretense of having some desirable or publicly approved attitude.
3. an act or instance of hypocrisy.

What these definitions are saying is a disconnect between stated ideology and actual action.

The writings of Christianity include a principle: By their fruits ye shall know them

This comes from traditional agriculture. How do you decide whether to grow one plant or another? It's whether the plant is useful for food production, or, whether the fruit of the tree is edible, nutritious and tasty, or whether it's poisonous or repugnant. You can only tell this from the fruit.

What is the "fruit" of hypocritical politicians?

What's engendered by the atmosphere indicated by the synonyms of 'hypocrisy'? (affectation, bad faith, bigotry, cant, casuistry, deceit, deception, dishonesty, display, dissembling, dissimulation, double-dealing, duplicity, false profession, falsity, fraud, glibness, imposture, insincerity, irreverence, lie, lip service, mockery, pharisaicalness, pharisaism, phoniness, pietism, quackery, sanctimoniousness, sanctimony, speciousness, unctuousness - from http://thesaurus.com/browse/hypocrisy)

It's Outrageous That Rove Is Walking Free

This last week Karl Rove blew off a Congressional subpoena which required him to testify before Congress. Uh.. in what country of Laws are we living in? Isn't ignoring a subpoena grounds for arrest, contempt citations, jail time, etc?

A decision on whether to pursue contempt charges now goes to the full Judiciary Committee and ultimately to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. House Republicans called Thursday's proceedings a political stunt and said if Democrats truly wanted information they would take Rove up on an offer he made to discuss the matter informally. The House already has voted to hold two of President Bush's confidants in contempt for failing to cooperate with its inquiry into whether the administration fired nine federal prosecutors in 2006 for political reasons.

Rove's lawyer asserted that Rove was "immune" from the subpoena the committee had issued, arguing that the committee could not compel him to testify due to "executive privilege."... "A refusal to appear in violation of the subpoena could subject Mr. Rove to contempt proceedings, including statutory contempt under federal law and proceedings under the inherent contempt authority of the House of Representatives," Conyers and Sanchez wrote. "We are unaware of any proper legal basis for Mr. Rove's refusal to even appear today as required by the subpoena," Sanchez said Thursday morning when Rove failed to show up. "The courts have made clear that no one -- not even the president -- is immune from compulsory process. That is what the Supreme Court rules in U.S. v. Nixon and Clinton v. Jones."

Lawmakers subpoenaed Rove in May in an effort to force him to talk about whether he played a role in prosecutors' decisions to pursue cases against Democrats, such as former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, or in firing federal prosecutors considered disloyal to the Bush administration.

Article Reference: 

It's Outrageous That Rove Is Walking Free

Please wait, your request is processed... Rove Ignores Subpoena, Refuses To Testify

Rove ignores committee's subpoena, refuses to testify

Karl Rove, The White House And The Rule Of Law

Rove ignores subpoena, refuses to testify on Hill

Rove Contempt Vote Not To Come Until Later This Month

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18uNKqHVY08

Rove skips congressional inquiry

No excuse for Rove to ignore congress

Rep. Sanchez: Karl Rove Should Go To Jail

extvideo: 

Congressman Foley, Child Pornography and official hypocracy

GOP Accused Of Covering Up Rep. Foley Scandal It was recently revealed that former Congressman Mark Foley (Republican of Florida) has been engaging in sexually explicit messaging with former pages. These Pages are generally high school juniors, hence around 16 years old, who come to Washington to serve as assistants to politicians. Since these messages have been revealed he has resigned, and reportadly entered into some kind of treatment program, hence he is now a former Congressman.

Especially amusing (shocking really) is that Foley was co-chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children and that Earlier this year President Bush signed legislation that Foley introduced to bolster penalties against sex offenders and increase efforts to target Internet predators as reported by Democracy Now (at the link above). That makes this another one of those strange twists of politics. He, as a Congressman, was active in legislation that would have penalized people like himself.

Who knew what when? is a blog entry based at the Houston Chronicle going over some of the conflicting claims. As was reported on Democracy Now, and in this blog entry, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert initially said the House/Republican Leadership had not known about this stories. But the truth is that Rep. Tom Reynolds had told Hastert about the complaints. Which leads one to believe the House/Republican Leadership is trying to cover this up.

House speaker asks Gonzales to probe lurid Foley case gives a lot of interesting details. Hastert has written a letter to Attorney General Gonzalez asking for a very thorough investigation that can include members of Congress. However the article quotes an FBI spokesperson saying they'll have to review whether they can conduct an investigation. One should remember that Congresspeople are immune to prosecution over various sorts of crimes, for some reason, and for that matter there is an issue of separation of powers between the branches of government so how can the Administrative branch of government hold an investigation against people in the Legislative branch?

The article contains quotes from several, Democrats primarily, decrying the obvious cover-up. Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, also called for an investigation of his party's leadership. "If they knew or should have known the extent of this problem, they should not serve in leadership," Shays said Sunday.

Rep. Foley was up for re-election and heavily favored to win. It would have been his seventh term. One possible theory is the Republican Leadership covered this up so they could retain the Republican seat .. e.g. let the news come out after the election so they know the seat is in Republican hands. As it is he has resigned, the Republicans in Florida are scrambling to find a replacement candidate. But a replacement candidate would have to be a write-in (presumably) and the history of write-in candidacies is very poor. So it looks like the Democratic challenger in this race has gotten a windfall.

How long did this coverup go on? The article says Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio Boehner learned about allegations against Foley from Rep. Rodney Alexander, a Louisiana Republican, in the spring. So, um, that's about six months.

FBI to Examine Foley's E-Mails Covers more details. Along the lines of pondering just how long this cover-up has been going on, this article states most of the emails had been sent in 2003 and that an email sent in 2005 resulted in "a quiet warning to Foley to leave pages alone" and "the speaker did not dispute his colleague, and Hastert's office acknowledged that some aides knew last year that Foley had been ordered to cease contact with the youth". Hurm, since they knew something was up for over a year what's going on?

Especially troubling is it appears the normal procedure is to refer such cases to a three-member panel, but in this case they left it to the Chair of that panel to confront Foley directly.

The article quotes a former House page said that at a 2003 page reunion, he saw sexually suggestive e-mails Foley had sent to another former page who said at the time "If this gets out, it will destroy him". But, why would that person not publicize those emails? Why wait?

Especially creepy is this:

Foley was known as an exceedingly friendly House member to young pages, most of whom are 16- and 17-year-old high school juniors who come to Washington for an intensive, year-long civics lesson. Unlike most House members, he memorized their names and talked politics with them during lulls in late-night sessions. Foley was the only House member to attend the Class of 2002's graduation, according to McDonald, and he wore a tuxedo.

Elsewhere it's stated that Foley was unmarried. So, isn't this the stereotypical naughty man who preys on young boys for sex? Wouldn't such a person go out of their way to do things like memorize their names and show up at a graduation ceremony?

The GOP's State Of Denial starts off by saying that Foley's sexual preferences were an open secret.

The New York Times and every major newspaper in Florida had been writing articles on the congressman's agonizingly inept attempts to remain closeted for years. Indeed, it was the embarrassing manner in which he had attempted to cloak his sexuality that prevented Foley from securing his party's nomination for the U.S. Senate in 2004 and again this year.

But, if his sexual preferences were an open secret, was the open secret inclusive of his fondness for young men?

Foley interest in pages seen in speeches Details excerpts from some of his speeches that illuminates his special interest in the Pages.

Analysis: What did GOP know about Foley?: Is an analysis of the effects of this revelation, including a rundown of the congress races that are probably affected. Factoid: Democrats need to gain 15 House seats and six in the Senate for control after a dozen years of Republican rule.

These are:

• Mark Foley versus challenger Tim Mahoney: Obviously this is a seat that's very likely to be lost to the Democratic Party. The Republicans have chosen a replacement candidate, state Rep. Joe Negron.
• Rep. Tom Reynolds versus challenger against Jack Davis: He played a role in the cover-up and he is up for re-election this year. The race has been "close" for months, so obviously this issue could easily tip the race.
• Rep. Deborah Pryce: Is said to be "facing questions" and is part of the House Leadership.
• Hastert, Boehner and others in leadership but not in close races, the ramifications could spread beyond November and into House leadership elections should Republicans hold the House

And a bit of history:

Three decades ago, Republican Richard M. Nixon was dogged by the question of what did the president know about the break-in of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate and when did he know it.

In November 1974, Democrats capitalized on the scandal, seizing scores of congressional seats as the Watergate class swept to office.