host

I just spotted this tonight...over on the "Where's the old Heated Debate?" thread:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...&postcount=120
Here are a couple of the reported examples of differences I see between democrats accepting donations from Norman Hsu, and republicans accepting donations from Jack Abramoff:


Most importantly...no political "quid pro quo" has been demonstrated...related to donations to democrats from Norman Hsu. No democrats have been found to know...or should have known...when accepting donations from Hsu...that he was widely reported to be of deficient character or motive, or that he had a histroy of expecting or promoting a political...or any favor in exchange for a donation....

I find no reporting that any democrat denied knowing or receiving money from Hsu...if they indeed did know him, or accepted money from him.

Less importantly, but still significant....democrats did not control both congress and the executive branch when they associated with and accepted money from Tsu. No Tsu associates were appointed to government positions by democrats.

Contrast all of the above with the Ambramoff situation. Abramoff's lobbying business consisted of charging huge fees to the wealthy garment business owners who controlled the US Territory...the Northern Mariannas pacific islands, for the purpose of drafting and/or preserving federal legislation that permitted the Northern Mariannas to run it's own immigration operation, and to keep hourly wages below US mainland minimums and "guest worker" rregulations worded so as to maximize both the profits of and the dominance of these workers lives...to a maximum advantage of the Islands' factory owners.

Abramoff did this by providing vacation junkets and contributions to influential legislators, and by entertaining key DOJ officials in his corporate professional sports "sky box" seats at metro DC area sports arenas and stadiums.... Abramoff succeeded in convincing the Bush admin. to:

After Jack Abramoff was indicted on federal charges....President Bush...despite the fact that Abramoff had been a "Bush Pioneer".... a top campaign donor for both Bush/Cheney 2000 and 2004....and despite the fact that Abramoff's former key assistant, Susan Ralston...had for four years, been a special advisor to both the president and to his right hand, Karl Rove, and during that time, she had an office just doors down from the president's oval office, Bush declared:


<center><img src="http://www.citizensforethics.org/filelibrary/JAGWB.jpg"></center>
...and from this post: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...9&postcount=21

Too bad it's "a time of war"....it makes all of it.....the outing of Plame, the hiring and naming of the key assistant to the most corrupt DC lobbyist in history, to be "special assistant to the POTUS", and his political advisor, Karl Rove, and placing her, for more than 5 years, just down the hall from the president's office: (While insisting that you don't even know the admitted felon):
Bush tells us an "enemy wants to attack us"....but no need for his key aids to use secure white house email....is there???
yup...it's "war time".....Bush tells us it's a long, long war....enemy lurking...blah, blah, blah....we have to be "right 100 percent of the time...", yet there is no "email security policy", or preservation policy, and....the president's "special assistant"...sitting just down the hall from his office...is engaging her former boss, the man she followed from one lobbying firm to the next....is continuing her contacts....boasting that they are insecure...with her soon to be convicted felon....former boss....who the president, "doesn't know", even getting a 50 percent raise from the "war president":

<h3>SO my question to Necrosis....and anyone else who lumps Hsu and Abramoff together...for the purpose of melding the two "situations"....can you see the differences? Hsu took advantage of no native Americans or of Pacific island "slave" laborers, or anyone else...apparently.... to obtain the money that he donated to democrats. He made no effort to inflitrate government agencies....indluding the oval office, itself, to extend his political influence or control. No democrat appears to have accepted money from him after one knew or should have known that Hsu's reputation was challenged, and no Democrat appears to have denied knowing/meeting him...least of all the democratic presidential candidates....</h3>

I suspect that many who predictably disagree with my political opinions, will not discern the clear differences in scope, ehtics, legality, and consequences to the fairness of government administration...between the crimes Abramoff committed in direct connection with the way he obtained the money he then donated to politicians, what he expected those politicians to officially do for him in exchange for those donations.....the failure of the politicians involved to react truthfully, timely, or in some cases...at all...to the seriousness of the damage that Abramoff caused to the reputations of the republican controlled congress and white house vs. what has been reported in the Hsu situation...in comparison to the reaction by democrats who accepted money from him.

Those associated with and in receipt of Abramoff money, almost exclusively republicans...seemed incapable, in too many instances.... of discerning right from wrong.....and that lack of discernment hurt the country.....just as it hurts the discourse on this forum..... I'm surprised that it has come to doing a thread topic on comparing Abramoff to Tsu...but I guess that I shouldn't be.....

loquitur

Host, is there any illegality by Democrats that you won't defend on grounds that the Republicans do worse? don't you see that this sort of argumentation is the reason people hate Congress generally, no matter which party is in charge? And that fundraising chicanery breeds cynicism everywhere, no matter who does it and no matter for what reason?

One other thing: if you think Democrats are immune to quid pro quo corruption, I have a nice bridge to sell you.

I'm not defending Republicans here, but the partisan slant of this post is just way over the top, Host. I see no philosophical or moral principle here other than "democrats good, republicans bad - and if we can't have that, then democrats bad, republicans worse."

Can't we aspire to something better in this country?

ubertuber

You know, loquitur's question actually brings up something I've noticed around here.

I don't think there are actually too many pro-Bush TFPers anymore, which is a big change.

It seems like the major political philosophy divide these days is between those who think the Dems are just "Junior Republicans" and those who think that their differences are enough.

__________________
Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

Ustwo

This might be true but its not a change in thought but a change in membership posting. Most of my brethren quit due to a level of discourse which was non-conductive to rational thought. We said our goodbyes in PM's quite a while ago.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

host

The post...and it's premise.....the one that influenced me to do this thread was "over the top".....and....since you're a member of the bar....presumably influenced by the facts, much more than by the heart.... I think that your criticism of me...in this set of circumstances is uncalled for.

I'm still hoping that you are able to discern right from wrong....but I'm less certain of it since reading your post, above.

I think you are telling me that your under reaction to a huge, coordinated wave of official corruption....and the attempt to deny, it cover it up, and then to wave it off as "business as usual"....by the people who committed the crimes....acrual crimes of conspiracy....not simply by association....and pretended to lead our government....both before and after....is on a par with what the press has reported has happened in the case of Hsu and democrats.

My reaction to what Abramoff has done...the lives he helped to ruin in the Mariannas....and the politicians who helped him accomplish it....if it was the only instance, was grave enough....but when you assemble all the parts of the scandals which he is at the center of.....and that is still to be done....my reaction is a whisper....compared to the scope of the damage and the reaction of indifference....by the people in government criminally involved, and more importantly....by the reaction of folks like you....which seem to me to be dismissive.

"Abramoff" is a massive fissure that puts character, morals, ethics, and the commitment to serve....of those who campaigned on a platform that they were superior to their opponents in all of those areas....on display.

You won't even look....and to say that I am somehow extreme....or flawed...or a divider....to document and react to "Abramoff"...on a political forum....given what has been reported...and his own admissions of guilt....is to deny what he has done.

I know....you don't see it....and that is the main point of this thread....too many people don't see it....see too little of it....or want to meld it with something like....Norman Tsu's political donations and his efforts to closely associate with democrats...... You do that to attempt to take the stink off or the Abramoff scandals...to disassociate from them......

roachboy

nonsense, ustwo.
first you act as though conservatives have some monopoly on "rational thought"--which i assume means nothing beyond "statements i agree with"----second, folk who posted from a conservative position disappeared en masse after the november elections.

now you might think that this represented a reaction to "a level of discourse which was non-conductive to rational thought" but it looked a whole lot more like the tfp-right simply couldnt cope with your political movement being undermined--that is of the end of that conservative shangri-la that lasted from september 2001 through november 2006, during which conservative ideological statements and the "logic" of mainstream press coverage merged into a seamless continuum.

that's as good as it could get from the far right--the "war on terror' manufactured a degree of collective panic such that even the empty, incoherent memes particular to conservativeland seemed to function.

all the worse was the simple fact that your boy george w bush and his merry administration is entirely responsible for the undermining of the legitimacy of the politics for which he stands, outsourced and unaccountable, with liberty and capital accumulation for all the righteous and middleclass and fuck the rest, fuck them all.

all of which made it seem to me anyway that contemporary conservatism is most coherent as an oppositional movement, one which advances statements and implies programs without having to actually deliver on any of them--so that the consequences of the ideology remain implicit--and so long as they are implicit, folk who are inclined to think along those lines can pretend there would be no consequences--mostly because they are imagining the programs that they might like to see.
so for example, the rumsfeldian "just in time" war is entirely contained within conservative arguments about "privatization"---but privatizing infrastructure and military functions is a debacle each time it is tried. better to avoid the material consequences of actually implementing the crackpot notion of privatization by not actually holding power.
that way "arguments" about privatization come down to an aesthetic matter--whether a particular statement corresponds to the projections you deploy when you imagine what "privatization" means.
and i think that many conservatives are most comfortable arguing from aesthetics or "principle"--when a reality that will no conform to simplistic forumlae that are predicated mostly on making the petit bourgeois feel more secure in its fantasyworld, when that reality diverges too far from questions of aesthetics or "principle" you find a suddent diminuition in participation in political debate--and in this particular micro-cosm, the disappearance of the tfp-right.

as for ubertuber's point above: for what it's worth, i dont see this as a philosophical question. it's immanent. the democrats are in a no=win situation in congress--they are taking a great sustained pounding at their own hands it seems by advancing claims that their position in congress simply does not allow them to implement without cross-over support from moderate republicans, such as they are--so they are ineivtably arguing from the right. everyone--the press, the democrats, the republicans--wants to locate/define an anti-war "movement" or "sentiment" or "population" and put it somewhere--and by doing that to quarantine it---so everyone jockeys for position by floating definitions of this anti-war phenomenon--but it seems futile, in that opposition to the war in iraq is so widespread that it crosses out of conventional ways of distinguishing one group for another--leaving only a few stalwarts on the militarist right trying to figure out some way of defending what by any rational measure is a debacle, a "nightmare without end" in the words of the last of the man generals who have retired and then gone public saying that this iraq thing is fucked up.

the democrats are forced to the right-center positionally. they think they can benefit from tapping into opposition to the farce that is bushworld. but they cant find this opposition, and even if they could, their tactical position is at cross purposes with even looking for an opposition. if they are doing it anyway, and trying to position themselves with reference to an opposition, then they are hoisting themselves up a long mast all by themselves, where they will dangle, upside down and in the wind, next election. only a fuckup like george w bush carries enough negative weight to prevent damage. and that guy isnt running. (thank whomever might be out there watching over the cosmos for that much, even though i am sure she's too busy to bother much with american domestic politics)

the republicans want to identify the democrats with this opposition too, as a way of positioning them to the left of where they really are in order to scare the moderates--many of whom are disgusted by bushworld--into towing the party line anyway, at least on election day.

the press mostly wants to be able to act as though it has control over information, so wants to locate this population for its own reasons. given the amorphousness of the term "opposition" and the fact that tv remains as it is (for example) the groups with the shortest, pithiest memes get air time, and so it seems that the republicans are still defining the democrats for them, because they pretend to know where this "opposition" to bushworld is, and in rightwing land, this is "the left"--you know, the fifth column and all that shit.

as for the op, i dont have much of anything to say about it.
not at this point anyway.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

loquitur

Host, there was lots of corruption under Clinton, too. In fact, at the advanced age of 48, I can't think of a single presidency in my adult lifetime that didn't have a scandal of some sort. I can think of plenty of reasons for that, but it afflicted both parties. I understand you're a partisan democrat, but you're also an intelligent person, and if you can't see that power creates opportunities for corruption no matter who is in power, well, maybe you have a blind spot.

Ubertuber, I"m not pro-Bush or pro- any particular politician. I have certain standards of decency that I want to see upheld. I don't need a savior or a superman/woman - all I want is a decent honest person. Even if I disagree on this issue or that, I'm happy to have that decency and honesty. I live in NYC, and the last politician I felt that way about was Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Since then I have found every single person whose name was on the ballot to be either indecent or dishonest, or both, or incompentent (which is a form of indecency, putting yourself forward for a job you're not capable of performing). I'm really tired of having to hold my nose every time I vote.

ubertuber

loquitur, you've just expressed my own feelings more clearly than I usually can.

For what it's worth, I hadn't actually pegged you in any party, other than skeptic.

Ustwo: that's sort of an interesting thought. At the very least, it's both. I can think of people who have changed their views, and you claim that it's because rational thought has left the building. Interestingly, it seems like that mostly happened after the "thumping" last November. I wonder what that means?

__________________
Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam

loquitur

heh........ you might be surprised about my default attitudes. Thing is, though, I recognize what my initial reactions usually are and I work very hard to question them and test them, over and over again. It's not easy, but I think it's essential to being honest. Trusting your own instincts on political matters is very dangerous, because political attitudes tend to cluster in certain ways (e.g., one's views on unions will usually predict one's views on abortion), and it's highly unlikely that any one cluster will be right every time. So it's important to keep testing, reading, questioning. That's why I find partisan claptrap very distressing. Both parties are inhabited by human beings, and human beings are flawed. They're flawed individually and they're flawed in groups.

The great thing about this country is that we can withstand the flaws and do just fine. Separation of powers is a gift from the framers that I'm grateful for every day.

Rekna

Isn't the difference between the two that Abramoff was a criminal because of what he was doing in politics and Hsu was a criminal who happened to be in politics? Maybe i'm ill informed but was anything that Hsu did politically illegal?

host

Interesting...roachboy....that the biggest failing....if I read you correctly..is that the conservatives consolidated enough political power to put the nuts and bolts of their agenda into actual practice....in the real world....with it's warts and wrinkles on display....instead of having it rise to a loftier...but untried, theoretical stature...as in, "be careful what you wish for...because you just might get it".

...and loquitur, two great posts from you.....and I can't disagree with you that all politicians seem to be corrupt....to some degree.

That said.... I understand why some believe me to be "blindly partisan"....you are what you post. I try to determine the "flavor", depth, and consequences of the corruption that is exhibited by indivdual politicians, and by the major parties, through the prism of my "issues".....

Is the corruption coordinated, and what is it easing in terms of what is being attempted or accomplished?

Viewed with my issues.... government response to larger budget deficit and trend toward further wealth concentration, privacy rights (includes woman's right to determine what happens in her uterus, 4th amendment protections against warrantless search and seizure..)...equal set of laws, accountability, and enforcement, regardless of wealth or connections....vigorous environmental protection and rapid competent disaster response, open, responsive (to populist concerns..) and accountable government....government and courts committed to protecting the least of us...(those disadvantaged by their lack of economic resources, race, gender, age, infirmity, or unpopular religion or ideology....) Either all of the consideration and resources that Scooter Libby received after his indictment on criminal charges....for every Joe six pack charged with a crime....or no special consideration for Libby or any J6P.....

....my "issues" may seem unreasonable, but our government and elected officials once performed much better than today, in working to preserve/enhance all of them....

My example of a republican congressional representative who I could support:
(From my post on the Ustwo thread, "I Trust The Rich"):

loquitur, as far as your example of a democrat who you could support....

Your "pick" Daniel P. Moynihan, received a positive obituary write up when he died in 2003....and his major sins....his part in the US blocking the UN from responding to the massacre of possibly 200,000 in East Timor in 1975, and his support for Israel beyond what was in the best interest of the US...were not even mentioned in the obit.....

http://www.counterpunch.org/mickey03272003.html (The Real Moynihan) and....
...while my pick for the democrat who I most admire....his background and accomplishments highlighted in this thread:

<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=117353">Is America's Response to Death of NOLA & Pat Robertsonized Fed Gov,another Huey Long?</a>

....was described as follows in his 1935 NY Times obituary:

.....if the criteria is who accomplished more, during their political career, to improve the lives of more people....and I think that is the "deal breaker" for fairly evaluating anyone who we've elected.....

....I think that the NY Times got it wrong, in the way they described the accomplisments of both Huey P. Long, and Daniel P. Moynihan.

We live in political landscape where many revere the memory of a US president who said:
.....if you agree with that, and you've read my posted political priorities... what would be the basis for a political discussion?

loquitur

Host, I think you misunderstood what I said about Moynihan. I didn't say he was a Democrat I can support, in fact I didn't mention which party he was because to me it didn't matter. I said he was the last time I voted for someone who I felt was both decent and honest, whether or not I agreed with him on every issue (and no, I didn't claim he was perfect - he was human, he couldn't be). I certainly have voted for plenty of Democrats and have voted likewise for plenty of Republicans. My point is that my criteria are not partisan, they're more a set of principles and character traits. That's why Eliot Spitzer is disappointing me terribly right now - I voted for him because he said during the campaign that NY state government is a sinkhole of corruption and dysfunction and that he would fix it. He was right and I was optimistic that he could do what he set about to do - and then when he got into office he promptly did the same old log-rolling that his distinctly unimpressive predecessor, George Pataki, did, and then compounded it by deciding that the way to fix the culture in Albany was to do a political smear against the Senate Majority leader, who is a Republican (and whom I don't care for, but his political sins are the same ones as the Speaker of the Assembly, who is a Democrat). So Spitzer turns out to be the same old story of someone who talks a good game and then does the opposite. See what my issue is?

Huey Long is your idea of a good politician? Host, I find that terrifying. Really. Have you been to Louisiana? It's still suffering from a hangover from the Kingfisher, so far as I can tell, even all these years later. I used to think NY had the worst state govt in the country, but I was wrong - Louisiana does. The degree of corruption down there is frightening. Huey Long was a demagogue.

If you look at the really great presidents, they combined backbone and flexibility, and the judgment to know which of the two to use in which context. To take just two: Jefferson, who was a revolutionary suspicious of all government power (especially federal power), sent troops overseas to defeat the Barbary Pirates and engineered the Louisiana Purchase. Lincoln was a corporate lawyer and defender of private property who liberated more human beings from slavery than any other person in history.

I understand you think the main criterion for evaluating an elected government official is whether he helped people. That's fine, but you still have to define what it means to help people, and to supply the definition in the context of the job the person was elected to do. I think if you speak to most people of either party they'll say they want politicians to make the country a better place to live, for all its citizens - but that is a standard devoid of content. The question is which tools will be used to achieve that, and what criteria should be used to measure it.