W. enters my wife’s schoolboard race

(Credit: AP/Courtesy of the author)

W. enters my wife’s schoolboard race
Our family gets a close-up look of how big money has taken over politics -- even at the local level
By David Sirota
Oct 21, 2011

Before it happens, it’s hard to know how you’ll feel when you see a slickly produced, oil-CEO-financed flier implicitly attacking your 11-month-old baby for not being old enough to attend school and explicitly criticizing your family for not being able to afford a home...

Six months ago, when my wife, Emily, decided to run for a school board seat here in Southeast Denver, I was (perhaps naively) expecting what we used to get from the most local of local races for such part-time, unpaid positions: lots of door knocking, a few yard signs, maybe a barbecue or two...

Emily knew it would be a tough race against her opponent, a deep-pocketed investment banker, but she felt confident she could run a solid campaign. She thought her experience as a social worker and community organizer in Denver gave her the tools to mount a good ground game, and she felt that her longtime policy work at the federal, state and local level was a good match for the school-board job. She also has deep roots in the community; her campaign has been endorsed by the district’s state representative and city councilors, by the city auditor, and by the key legislators who serve in the state’s senior education policymaking positions.

...Emily had thought a “big” contribution meant a few friends joining up to scrape together $500. But, in the last few weeks, news broke that oil CEOs and financial executives were cutting $10,000 and $25,000 checks to her opponent. We found out that notorious front groups like Stand for Children were funneling in tens of thousands of dollars of out-of-state financial industry cash, and we started hearing about serious threats of retribution from big-time professional politicians.

...In the process, this little grass-roots school-board race has become so inundated by big money and national political forces that none other than former President George W. Bush just made an education-themed appearance – one clearly designed to influence the education debate dominating the upcoming school board election.

At the local level, there are often no campaign contribution limits at all, so the rich are free to dump enormous sums of money into elections.

(Here in Denver, for instance, EdNewsColorado reports that “one quartet of donors gave a combined $92,000 each to the same three candidates, all of whom have been endorsed by the Colorado chapter of Democrats for Education Reform and by Stand for Children” — two front groups funded by the financial industry.)

[Maura Larkins comment: Regarding Democrats for Education Reform, I would like to say that it's nice that some Democrats are willing to stand up to the teachers union. Stand for Children, however, sounds like they are just knee-jerk corporate types.]

As NBC’s local affiliate 9 News noted in reporting on a coordinated Republican Party attempt to buy school board races all over the state, “Once thought to be ‘mom and pop,’ [school board] elections have now turned into coordinated, professional campaigns.”

...In one row, it contrasts my wife and her opponent based on the “number of children [each has] in Denver Public schools.” (My wife’s opponent: “3 daughters, 15 years and counting”; my wife: “0.”) And I can tell her that voters will realize that this particular comparison is grossly unfair, because it suggests that our son not being old enough to attend school is somehow a personal failing.

...I know that whether she wins or loses, the real damage has already been done.

When the same elites who fund federal elections start pouring unfathomable sums of money into our community’s school board races, it robs us of the last promise of democracy: the hope that while wealth and power dictate federal and state policy, every person can still have a small impact on his or her own local community.

...It’s easy to delude yourself into thinking that the only elections that matter are celebritized presidential and Senate contests, and that local elections for your school board or town council or county commission don’t count. Clearly, that’s not the case. The most powerful people of all sure think those local races do matter...

Marjorie Cohn says George Bush, Dick Cheney and their lawyers should be tried for crimes

Morning Report: The Anti-War Warrior

If local law professor Marjorie Cohn had her way, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would be on trial. And not just them.

Cohn wants to see some of the Bush Administration's attorneys face justice too. After all, she says, they helped the president to break the law.

It's a tough stand, and one that's helped her become one of the nation's leading leftist voices on war crimes and torture.

In this weekend's Q&A, Cohn talks about the nation's two "unlawful" wars, her work defending members of the military who seek to avoid service, and the value of international diplomacy:


Morning Report: The Anti-War Warrior
Voice of San Diego
by Randy Dotinga
September 26, 2009

Can someone be prosecuted for merely having a legal opinion?
They would be prosecuted for advising the president on how he can break the law and get away with it. There were lawyers who were prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity after World War II advising Hitler on how to deport people to secret camps "legally" and get away with it.

What do you think should happen to the lawyers in this case?
They should be investigated and prosecuted under U.S. statutes.

Should they go to prison?
If convicted, yes, they should go to prison...

Management style shared by Bush and Lowell Billings

Lowell Billings, Superintendent of Chula Vista Elementary School District, acknowledges that he is responsible for school district decisions, but admits that he knows nothing about them. He apparently subscribes to the same management style as George W. Bush: being the "decider" doesn't mean that you inform yourself and think deeply. Billings, like Bush, believes that his job is to "walk around and be a cheerleader talking about values and everything else [is] going to take care of itself."

Bush: Only time will tell about his legacy
Carolyn Lochhead
San Francisco Chronicle
January 4, 2009

...business ethicist James Hoopes, author of "Hail to the CEO, the Failure of George W. Bush and the Cult of Moral Leadership," sees the roots of Bush's leadership style in the Harvard management fad, still filling bookstore shelves, that promotes a notion of moral leadership and "values" over knowledge, execution and competence.

Bush resembles the late Enron CEO Ken Lay, who "was also a values-based leader, and didn't know what was going on at Enron," Hoopes said. "He thought he could run the company by just walking around being a leader and he didn't have to really manage." Bush likewise, making Sept. 11 a case of good versus evil, "is the biggest case study of a guy who thought his job was to walk around and be a cheerleader talking about values and everything else was going to take care of itself," he said.

Bush made no secret of relying on his gut, seeking divine guidance and asserting faith in his values. He did not read deeply or delve deeply into policies. "I feel so strongly about my principles and values," he said last May...

Will Bush pardon Karl Rove on his last day in office?

Alabama governor Don Siegelman: a Democrat who was too successful in a Republican state

Is Karl Rove worried about the Don Siegelman case? Will Bush pardon him today?

From the CBS 60 minutes story on the case:

“Rob said that they had gotten wind that Don was going to run again,” she says.

“And Rob Riley said what about that?” Pelley asks.

“They just couldn't have that happen,” Simpson says.

Asked how they were going to prevent that from happening, she says, “Well, they had to re-indict him, is what Rob said.”


Democratic Underground notes: A study by Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, of the Bush justice department: "the offices of the U.S. Attorneys across the nation investigate seven times as many Democratic officials as they investigate Republican officials, a number that exceeds even the racial profiling of African Americans in traffic stops."



UPDATE: The President wasn't in a pardoning mood in his last days. Story from USA Today:
• The Daily News (of New York) -- Cheney pushed Bush to pardon Libby: "In the waning days of the Bush administration, Vice President Dick Cheney launched a last-ditch campaign to persuade his boss to pardon Lewis (Scooter) Libby -- and was furious when President George W. Bush wouldn't budge. Sources close to Cheney told the Daily News the former vice president repeatedly pressed Bush to pardon Libby, arguing his ex-chief of staff and longtime alter ego deserved a full exoneration -- even though Bush had already kept Libby out of jail by commuting his 30-month prison sentence. ... Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the federal probe of who leaked covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press."

Reality-based decision making

Bush: Only time will tell about his legacy
Carolyn Lochhead,
San Francisco Chronicle Washington Bureau
January 4, 2009

...Babson College business ethicist James Hoopes, author of "Hail to the CEO, the Failure of George W. Bush and the Cult of Moral Leadership," sees the roots of Bush's leadership style in the Harvard management fad, still filling bookstore shelves, that promotes a notion of moral leadership and "values" over knowledge, execution and competence.

Bush resembles the late Enron CEO Ken Lay, who "was also a values-based leader, and didn't know what was going on at Enron," Hoopes said. "He thought he could run the company by just walking around being a leader and he didn't have to really manage." Bush likewise, making Sept. 11 a case of good versus evil, "is the biggest case study of a guy who thought his job was to walk around and be a cheerleader talking about values and everything else was going to take care of itself," he said.

Bush made no secret of relying on his gut, seeking divine guidance and asserting faith in his values. He did not read deeply or delve deeply into policies. "I feel so strongly about my principles and values," he said last May...

Bush bet his presidency on the war...the plan for a swift victory and quick exit turned into a bungled and bloody occupation that has left roughly 4,800 U.S. troops dead, 33,000 Americans wounded, as well as thousands of contractors and tens of thousands of Iraqis dead. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have lasted longer than World War II and cost 50 percent more than Vietnam: $904 billion since 2001, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. That ultimately could rise above $2 trillion, including decades of care for wounded veterans, estimated as high as $65 billion alone. Bush economic chief Lawrence Lindsay was fired for saying publicly that the Iraq war could cost $200 billion.

Bush delegated the war to the Pentagon, and fired Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld only after Republicans lost control of Congress in 2006.

By many accounts, he allowed Cheney, viewed by many as the Rasputin of the administration, to manipulate the White House policymaking process in a way he once himself warned was dangerous. Bush came within a hair of having a mass resignation at the Justice Department - and losing re-election - after Cheney and others left him blindsided on an internal fight over domestic surveillance.







George Bush has known or should have known since August that Iran stopped work on nuclear weapons four years ago, yet he's continued to talk about WW III and the need to sanction Iran.

The White House has shown contempt for reality-based decision making. One staffer said, "We make our own reality."*

These people think just like our own Chula Vista Elementary School District board. Perhaps George Bush has been coached by superintendent Lowell Billings in the fine art of analytical thinking.

* National Public Radio
News Analysis: Further Iran Sanctions Won't Sell Easily After Report
by Daniel Schorr
Dec-05-2007, All Things Considered
"...sometime ago Senior White House official was quoted by the New York Times Magazine as [deriding] what he called the reality based community and saying that in the Bush administration...'We make our own reality.'"

Presidential Advance Manual--Let's just say we're both wrong

Nicole and Jeff Rank

The following is from a Slate.com August 20, 2007 article by Dahlia Lithwick regarding "tips for dealing with demonstrators from the Presidential Advance Manual."

"Late last week, the federal government settled a lawsuit with a pair of Texans who were arrested in 2004 for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts at a Fourth of July event in Charleston, W.Va. That's right, friends, $80,000 (of your taxpayer dollars) will be paid out to Jeff and Nicole Rank, whose suit against Gregory J. Jenkins—former deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Presidential Advance—has been dismissed.

"White House spokesman Blair Jones managed to turn lemons into lemonade with the statement last week that "the parties understand that this settlement is a compromise of disputed claims to avoid the expenses and risks of litigation and is not an admission of fault, liability, or wrongful conduct." This is, of course, vintage Bush, gloriously reminiscent of that Simpsons episode in which Homer arrives late to collect Bart in the pouring rain after soccer practice, then lectures: "I know you're mad at me right now, and I'm kinda mad, too. I mean, we could sit here and try to figure out who forgot to pick up who till the cows come home. But let's just say we're both wrong, and that'll be that."

"...Lest you believe that the Big Brother sheet represents the full extent of the speech suppression, however, the manual provides that, "As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event."

"The Advance Manual's finest moments come in its urgent, earnest drive to protect not just the television cameras but also the president himself from the ugliness of the dread "demonstrators." Certainly, "if it is determined that the media will not see or hear" demonstrators, event staff can ignore them. But event staff must involve themselves in "designating a protest area preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route." In other words, all this suppression of dissent isn't just to create a puppet show for the cameras. It's also about sock puppets for the president, who—if he could just be shielded from the mean T-shirts—might still believe his approval ratings soar into the mid-90s. The Ranks' peaceful protest at the West Virginia state capitol somehow became an act of "trespassing" only because the president was there.

"It's disturbing enough to learn from the Advance Manual that the White House has adopted an official policy of shouting down or covering up dissenting viewpoints with large sheets in order to deceive Americans at home into believing the president is universally adored. But that this official policy also exists to protect the tender sensitivities of the president himself is beyond belief..."

http://www.slate.com/id/2172500/?GT1=10346

Even Bush's speechwriter had ghost writers

This is the man who took credit for the "axis of evil" phrase.

I found this article in the Washington Post.

Bush's Muse Stands Accused
Speeches Weren't His, Colleague Says
By Peter Baker
August 11, 2007


He has been hailed as the best White House speechwriter since Kennedy's Theodore Sorensen, the muse behind President Bush's most famous phrases, the moral conscience of the West Wing. But now Michael J. Gerson is accused by a former colleague of taking credit for words he did not write.

According to Matthew Scully, who worked with him for five years, Gerson is not the bard of Bushworld but rather a "self-publicizing" glory hog guilty of "foolish vanity," "sheer pettiness" and "credit hounding." In Scully's account, Gerson did not come up with the language that made him famous. "Few lines of note were written by Mike," Scully says, "and none at all that come to mind from the post-9/11 addresses -- not even 'axis of evil.' "

Scully's blistering portrait of one of the president's most prominent former advisers in the new issue of the Atlantic touched off an intense pushback by the White House yesterday as top Bush aides jumped to defend Gerson as the victim of a jealous associate. But the internecine feuding may signal something broader than pride of authorship. Scully's 10-page indictment represents the sort of classic Washington tell-all once rare in an administration known for discipline and loyalty...

[And here's where the "Axis of Evil" came from:]

...Scully recounts the story of the "axis of evil" phrase, which Bush used in his 2002 State of the Union to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Scully notes that colleague David Frum originally came up with "axis of hatred," as reported before. Scully says he suggested changing it to "evil." He does not cite any examples of Gerson explicitly claiming the phrase as his own, pointing instead to news accounts attributing it to him that have gone uncorrected...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081002403.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Why Ronald Reagan didn't pardon Oliver North, Robert MacFarlane, & John Poindexter

Scooter Libby

In light of the President Bush II pardon of Scooter Libby, the number two man in VP Dick Cheney's office, for perjury, the following article about Ronald Reagan's refusal to pardon Oliver North and his co-conspirataors is interesting. Bush suffers in comparison to Reagan.

Walter Pincus wrote in the Washington Post on July 16, 2007:

"In his diary entry for Dec. 6, 1988, President Ronald Reagan wrote, "I lean very much toward a pardon" for Robert "Bud" McFarlane, his former national security adviser who had pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor counts for misleading Congress about the Iran-contra affair.

""He awaits sentence. . . . I don't think he deliberately lied," Reagan recorded, adding that McFarlane's wife had written him "on her own asking for a pardon for Bud."

"The issue had come up that morning, according to the diary, when Reagan's White House counsel, A.B. Culvahouse, began a 10 a.m. meeting talking about pardons -- not only for McFarlane but also for Oliver North and John Poindexter, the two main actors in the arms-for-hostages dealings.

"The matter reemerged on Dec. 22, less than a month before Reagan would leave office. The president wrote that he had sent Culvahouse "letters from Ollie North's lawyers asking me to pardon Ollie." Next, he wrote that at 10:30 a.m. on the same day, Attorney General Richard Thornburgh "came in with a well reasoned argument against pardons for North & Poindexter," who at that point were awaiting trial.



"On Jan. 10, 1989, Reagan noted, "The matter of a pardon for North is now being looked at as -- the judge should drop the charges." Part of Reagan's interest in the North trial is reflected in the next day's entry: "[T]he Justice Dept. will file a motion today to quash the subpoenas for Geo. [Secretary of State George P.Shultz] & me in the North case."

"On Jan. 16, Reagan recorded that he had "a 20 min. session on things hanging fire -- like pardons for several people." The only name Reagan mentioned was that of Michael K. Deaver, his former deputy chief of staff who had been convicted of not telling the truth to a congressional committee. Reagan noted that a Deaver relative had called a Justice Department official "about a pardon for Mike," but "Mike has passed the word he wouldn't accept a pardon."

"On Reagan's last full day in office, Jan. 19, he wrote that Thornburgh came "to see me about pardons." Reagan went on: "He doesn't believe I should pardon . . . North, Poindexter or McFarlane. I'm afraid he's right."

"In his autobiography, "An American Life," Reagan disclosed that "despite appeals from their supporters and despite my own sympathies," he had decided against pardoning the three. "I still felt the law had to be allowed to take its course," he wrote. It was Reagan's successor, George H.W. Bush, who would pardon McFarlane on Dec. 24, 1992. North's and Poindexter's convictions had been previously reversed.

"Now, after President George W. Bush has commuted the sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, it would be interesting to know what roles Bush's attorney general and White House counsel played in the decision...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/15/AR2007071501164.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

George Bush's heart goes out to those who outed Valerie Plame

In 2003, someone at the White House decided it was necessary to out a covert CIA agent because her diplomat husband was going around saying that there was no support for Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein was trying to build a nuclear bomb.

In 2007, the Washington Post quotes Bush as saying, "'It's been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House."

According to papers released by special prosecutor Fitzgerald, Valerie Plame was indeed a covert agent at the time she was outed. (See www.thebluestate.com/ 2007/05/its_final_valer.html)

Dan Froomkin writes in washingtonpost.com about secrecy and misinformation at the White House.

"President Bush made several unsupported assertions about the war in Iraq during his press conference yesterday, but when it comes to sheer audacity, nothing came close to his response when asked how he felt about two of his top advisers leaking Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent to reporters.

"Jennifer Loven gets it right in her Associated Press story: "President Bush always said he would wait to talk about the CIA leak case until after the investigation into his administration's role. On Thursday, he skipped over that step and pronounced the matter old news hardly worth discussing.

"'It's run its course,' he said. 'Now we're going to move on.'

"Despite a long history of denouncing leaks, Bush declined to express any disappointment in the people who worked for him and who were involved in disclosing the name of a CIA operative. Asked about that . . . the president gave a dodgy answer.

"'It's been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House,' he said.

"He didn't even acknowledge the undisputed fact that someone working for him was the source, saying only that 'perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person.'"

"In fact, Bush clearly seemed to be pointing his finger not at the two senior White House aides who leaked Plame's identity to reporters -- senior political adviser Karl Rove and former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- but at former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage..."

(More at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/07/13/BL2007071301045.html?referrer=email&referrer=email)
Article published Friday, July 13, 2007.

Getting a President to Apologize for Misleading the American Public

No, I'm not talking about George Bush. I don't think the current president has enough self-awareness or empathy to apologize to the American people.

But Richard Nixon did. Not at first, of course. In 1976 disgraced ex-President Nixon was interviewed for 20 hours by British journalist David Frost.

Frost relied on James Reston, Jr., a former soldier who abhorred Nixon's Vietnam War policy. In 1977 Reston wrote a book about the experience of working with Frost on this project, but for some reason, publishers decided that 2007 was the year to publish it. 30 years ago many of us baby boomers thought Nixon was as bad as a president could get. Now we know better.

Matthew Dallek of the Associated Press writes that Nixon was "vindictive and bewildered, angered and bemused...angst-ridden..." "Frost tossed his clipboard onto the coffee table and asked whether Nixon was ready to...acknowledge that the power of the presidency had been abused and apologize to the American people for having dragged them through two years of agony."