Child stealing and smuggling rings in China, including a bust in the twins’ home town.

Shanghai Daily _ 上海日报 — En.. (PDF. 28 k – pdf’d version of story)

I have been listening to enough rants, hate and nonsense in the last year and a half to last me a lifetime or more, and I’ve been more than fed up with it all.  But I started realizing that this sort of crud is endemic; uninformed people who choke off their sources of information to a limited cell of rumors and scares will support all sorts of wild stuff out of ignorance and fear, and fail to take this sort of thing apart and think it all through.

Nutballs in American political life were there from the beginning – look at the nastiness during the Adams and Jefferson administration, under Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, and so on.  There’s been two big red scares (right after the first and second World Wars), and a lot of people fighting anything that smells like change.

They fought immigration from ‘those people’ – first non-English speaking Europeans, then non-Protestants, non-Europeans, and so on.  They fought changes in the laws to give anyone voting and citizenship rights…removing rules that kept Catholics, non-property owners and the like off the voting rolls.  Not to mention non-Christians.  And letting people who aren’t our kind into office?  Oh!

They fought taxation of any kind.  They fought any kind of consumer protection, including drug safety and food safety.  They fought public schools.  They fought paper money, banking, lending, interstate commerce, the internet and highways, and practically everything that they considered despicable progress.    They fought separation of church and state, because they desired their religion’s rules to trump everyone else’s.

They fought medicine and science and public health.  They fought innoculations, public water systems and sanitation laws. They fought educational reform; if the Bible and a switch were good enough for them, it was good enough for you.

They fought slavery in favor of indentured servitude (think serfs, and they were white and British) because they hated foreigners, and then fought against freedom for the black slaves that came over to America against their will, and they fought homesteaders.  And yes, there were fanatics like John Brown who fought against slavery but didn’t give much of a damn who died in the process, and bushwhackers like Quantrill and Jesse James who killed and laid waste in the opposite direction.

They fought freedom of expression and gun ownership by other people who didn’t fit their mind of real people.

They closed their eyes to intolerance, poverty, hate, misery, ignorance and want, out-scrooging every Scrooge.  They become stooges, in many cases, for much more moneyed and wanna-be-powerful interests.  And very often, those interests proceeded to screw the ignorant over just as much and thoroughly as anyone else, because the powerful who used them didn’t care who got worked over.  They fought reforms of banks and recoveries from panics and recessions and depressions because they felt that the government shouldn’t help anyone.

They become shills, endlessly repeating total nonsense.  They get sucked into buying tons of extra ammo and gold and survival equipment by scare merchants who advise them that the Boogie Man is right around the corner – or become dittohead drones to people who advise them to trust Nobody But Them aginst All Those Commies Out There.

Here’s a sampling of some; cut to avoid disturbing your stomach.  I remembered plenty of this from my own experience, and had to do a little research to give specifically connected links.

I have no problem with political debate.  I have every problem with organizing people to shut down political debate with threats and screaming.  And it deeply bothers me to see how many people don’t think before they act, vote or rant about whatever.

I know Marxists, and nobody in the Administration’s top is a Marxist, unless your definition has no connection to real life.   I see people rant at town halls about the evils of socialized medicine, and go home and thank God for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and never realize the problem with this.   I see people gripe about potholed roads and collapsing bridges and about how there should be no local taxes and never get the connection that no taxes = no public anything.

And I am tired of politicians who lie through their teeth for political power, regardless of the cost to all but their buds – whether it’s Richie Daley trying to tapdance about how the Olympics won’t cost Chicago anything, or the GOP leadership / politicians refusing to  care about anything but trying to destroy Obama  as a lesson to the rest of us and pandering to the most whacked out elements of their base.  That was the reason why I left the Republican party years ago; I believed in government’s role for the general good, and in things like honest government for the general good, and the GOP leadership stopped doing that.

When environmental protection comes down to ‘don’t worry, the rapture is coming’, I can’t support that.

Interesting article on how India’s endemic corruption problems are holding the country back, with this comment from the Prime Minister:

“The pervasive corruption in our country tarnishes our image [and it] discourages investors who expect fair treatment and transparent dealings with public authorities.”

Read it all.

The inspector general of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reports that five SEC exams and investigations of Bernie Madoff were incompetently done.   I can believe one screwup happened, but five?  Five is agency policy to not look too hard.

Both Markopolos and an SEC staff accountant testified that it was clear the Boston office’s assistant district administrator at the time “did not understand the information presented,’’ Inspector General David Kotz wrote in a blistering report. As a result, the Boston staff failed to investigate the complaint or, at first, to even refer it to the regional office in New York, according to the inspector general.

and:

“Moreover, we found that Madoff proactively informed potential investors that the SEC had examined his operations. When potential investors expressed hesitation about investing with Madoff, he cited the prior SEC examinations to establish credibility and allay suspicions or investor doubts that may have arisen while due diligence was being conducted.”

This was a man who was a former chairman of NASDAQ, and his family and he were on all sorts of securities industry oversight and control boards, including the industry’s internal compliance office.   He got away with his actions because there was a lot of loose money floating around, he was a fantastic con artist, and because of his numerous connections.  The Chinese call this guanxi, 关系 – the old-boy-network.

As in ‘we can’t being him to justice; he’s one of the connected people. Laws and taxes are for the little people.’

FOIA releases of a ton of emails to and from Governor Sanford of South Carolina’s office from various TV news types (most prominently MEET THE PRESS) offering all sorts of ‘we’ll act like we’re questioning you but we’ll make sure that you get all the softballs you want, and protect you from the nasties out there‘ prostitution-masquerading-as-journalism.    In short, they’re a bunch of insider suckups, which doesn’t surprise me but definitely disgusts me.

Two prominent Cook County politicians who are black will be running in the next election for President of the Cook County Board; this article discusses how that could split the black vote in the election and let Candidate #3 in the door, a reverse of what happened when Washington beat Byrne and Daley for the Mayor’s seat in 1983.

I remember that election and the aftermath very well, as I was marrying the daughter of a prominent Chicago city official a month after the election (we’re long since divorced), and the fuss that was all around at that time.   Since then, I’ve learned a lot about Chicago area politics, and I imagine this will be a true battle of the dinosaurs.

John Ensign has decided that he’s not resigning his seat, he’s running for re-election and he’s expecting the voters to forget it as soon after Britney Spears is killed in a love-suicide pact with Lindsey Lohan and CNN spends a week of coverage on the aftermath as possible.    Well, whatever keeps his dad’s and the RNSC’s pockets empty as they try to defend the seat in the next election is fine with me and another example on shining levels of morality.

…being played against Chinese state-controlled firms vis-a-vis foreign mining and iron mill outfits.    The Chinese have a response; their own Gulag, where the rule of law is variable and limited at best.

Which is the essential problem in dealing with China, business-wise.  The whole 关系 guanxi / baksheesh ’special connections’ situation is all-important, and the rules are massively secondary, unless you step on someone’s toe, in which case, the rules can and will be interpreted as the person in power requires.

Like nobody had ever heard of Russians using hookers to lure Western diplomats into compromising positions.    Sheesh.

The more I hear about the whole Senator Ensign story, the more I think that sex aside, the man should resign his office because he’s a crook and an idiot.    Getting your bazillionaire parents to pay off your mistress and her family?  Inviting the mistress’s family into your house after their house was ransacked by burglers, and proceeding to ‘comfort’ the wife all over your own house that weekend?  The mind reels with every new item.   Speaking of items, you too can buy your John Ensign for President boxer shorts at this location!

And finally, a high and horny Ohio couple are parked and busy in the front seat, and the cops find them in the act – with her two little kids in the back seat of the car.   Bleah….

No, I’m talking about Robert McNamara, one of my particular historical nemeses, considering the number of important things that he messed up, destroyed or ruined. Not to mention the uncountable dead.

I have my own suspicions, but the Californians who have opinions who regularly read my journal can read this posting in the Mahablog (which I regularly read) and see if they agree about the breakdown of the political process in the Golden State.

Here also is a quick breakdown of who is paid in IOUs and who is paid in cash.

More about Daley’s efforts to sell off city parking meters and other property, and how his idea of ‘quick money now so I can keep services going now and the heck with the future’ isn’t working so well.

Also, there’s the damage that the Olympic bid will do to the parks system, and Daley’s pledge to the Olympic committee to cover cost overages that totally counters what he told the citizens of Chicago.

While retrieving THE FIXER from one of my off-air VHS tapes, I ran across the real-life story that the movie/novel was based on - see the story of the Beilis Trial in late Tsarist Russia in Wikipedia.  Wow.

NYT story about an FAA inspector who blew the whistle on a new airplane’s safety problems, and was silenced by the FAA and the airline by removing him from his job. Remember that airplane that crashed near Buffalo this winter? Yep, that airline and that airplane was the one in question.

Mr. Monteleon said his supervisors were too “cozy” with Colgan, and eager to help it keep its schedule; the airline had a contract with Continental Airlines to begin flights in theDash 8 plane — flying as Continental Express — in a little over a month after it acquired its first plane of that type.

In one memo retained by Mr. Monteleon, his manager indicates that he was reassigned because of his “conduct during a work-related duty” and because “the matter also required management to immediately respond to the operator’s scheduling needs.” The operator was Colgan.

Chicago Reader:

As for defending the deal, it’s pretty clear that the mayor’s central argument is that $1 billion in the bank today is worth more than anything 75 years down the road.

and also here:

In a damning 45-page report issued this afternoon, city inspector general David Hoffman said the Daley administration’s “hasty” consummation of the parking meter privatization deal–as well as the absence of deliberation in the City Council–cost taxpayers at least $1 billion.

“Because the deal was presented to the City Council with very limited information and because the Council scheduled its vote a very short time later, there was no meaningful public review of the decision to lease the parking-meter system,” the report says. “What is standard in the PPP [public-private partnership] ‘best practices’ model–informed deliberation, transparency, and full analysis of the public interest considerations–was not present here.

“In addition, the driving force behind the decision to lease the parking meters was the City’s short-term budgetary need. While we do not question the seriousness of the City’s budget problem that was presented in Fall 2008 because of the recession, the hasty, ‘crisis’ nature of the decision-making process meant that the short-term budget problems and the large upfront payment the City was receiving overshadowed all other legitimate, long-term, public-interest issues.”

Iraqi PM to Obama: If you release those unreleased photos from Abu Ghraib, my electorate will go up in blue flame and demand that the US get out yesterday.

” I know you tell us what to do, but you’re supposed to warn us when you tell us to do something that is going to get us into trouble with our constituents and the law!”

…from Think Progress.   Give it a look for a summary of why it’s major bad news, if you didn’t know that already…unless you think you’re Jack Bauer or something.

As Jesse Ventura said on The View:

“If waterboarding is OK, why don’t we let our police do it to suspects so they can learn what they know?” he asked. “If waterboarding is OK, why didn’t we waterboard [Timothy] McVeigh and Nichols, the Oklahoma City bombers, to find out if there were more people involved? … We only seem to waterboard Muslims… Have we waterboarded anyone else? Name me someone else who has been waterboarded.”

And no, I don’t care if half the Democratic leadership knew something about the bad stuff pulled off by Bush; they should have had the guts to stand up at the time and say - NO - but they apparently didn’t.  Them being gutless wonders is not a reason to excuse anyone else from prosecution.  The more in the dock or politically dealt with and squished on this, no problem.

My focus is on justice, the law, and good government.  Torture and other arbitrary government crap has caused an awful pile of hurt to most all of us in some form from the past; just ask a Japanese-American whose family was in internment camps during WW2, or blacks who had to deal with government-backed racism in the South (or North, and I’m talking the Bull Connor sort of thing), or those of us out there who have family who were destroyed in the Holocaust or disappeared in the Gulags behind the Iron Curtain.

From the Chicago Reader:  Part 1 and Part 2, along with the Easy Version,more concerns, and legal action from aldermen trying to kill the deal.

Over a year later, on December 2, 2008, Mayor Daley held a press conference to announce that after a rigorously monitored bidding process (as opposed to handing the deal to a company that employs his nephew) he was going to lease the meters to Morgan Stanley for–surprise!–about $1 billion.

It turns out to be a winning move for Mayor Daley. He gets the money–nearly 1.16 billion–up front. He’s pretty much free to spend it any way he wants. For all we know he may just want to put it in a big pile and burn it. Or spend it on the Olympics, which amounts to the same thing.

And it’s a great deal for Morgan Stanley, which quadrupled parking rates and can look forward to hauling in buckets and buckets of cash for the next 75 years.

As for the suckers who call Chicago home: sorry chumps, you lose–again. That parking rate hike Sneed alluded to was supposed to bring in about $55 million to the “cash-strapped city.” Instead, we’re only getting at most $20 million a year in interest from the portion of the $1.15 billion Mayor Daley has socked away. So that means we’re facing a $35 million a year hole in the budget where parking meter revenue used to be, which our mayor can either make up by raising fees or taxes or by cutting services, like, oh, fixing potholes.

Meanwhile, the city has informed alderman Scott Waguespack that the meters are worth considerably more than $1 billion–probably closer to $5 billion.

So Mayor Daley sells the meters for less than they’re worth and will have to raise fees or taxes to compensate for the revenue that’s going to Morgan Stanley instead of into public coffers. You pay more in parking meter fees and you get less in service. Is this a great deal or what?

Daniel Larison, the thinking man’s conservative pundit:

So, ironically, some of the defenders of the torture regime are making the best argument for the prosecution of past administration officials by their own invocations of past government illegalities. They are unwittingly reminding us that crimes unpunished today can easily become tomorrow’s conventionally accepted “correct” decisions. Every usurpation or instance of lawbreaking that is not challenged and reversed creates a precedent for the next round of usurpation and lawbreaking, and the fact that there is a non-trivial number of people in America who think that the illegal acts of Lincoln, FDR, Truman or others should have some mitigating effect on how we treat illegal acts under a more recent administration is one of the best reasons why crimes committed during the last administration must be investigated and lawbreakers must be prosecuted. Had many past administrations been scrutinized and their crimes investigated and punished, it is less likely that we would have to cope with an executive branch that acts as if it is above the law and which seems to be able to to break the law with impunity. If we fail to hold past administration officials accountable, we not only make a joke out of the rule of law, but we ensure that no legal or institutional constraints will prevent a future administration from committing similar wrongdoing in a time of crisis.