Fox News: When Crap Passes for Chocolate Pudding

IN SMALL DOSES, WATCHING FOX NEWS can be almost as much fun as watching Jon Stewart’s Daily Report. What passes as “fair-and-balanced” news in the eyes of right-wingers is just as comical. There’s additional pleasure to be found in knowing that regular Fox viewers are never in on the joke. Instead, they’re part of the joke. Roger Ailes feeds them crap and they think it’s chocolate pudding.  

On Fox and Friends one morning last week, Gretchen Carlson was going after the Buffalo, New York, teachers’ union. 

What had Ms. Carlson fired up? The fact that union members’ health benefits included coverage for plastic surgery. Taxpayers, she fumed—and nobody fumes with more conviction than Gretchen Carlson—were stuck with $2.7 million in bills. 

Fox News hates unions, and Fox News wants viewers to hate unions. That much about News Corporation is clear. 

What’s harder to grasp, unless we consider the possibility that Fox is nothing more nor less than the mouthpiece for a Plutocrat Class, is why Carlson never seems to get fired up about the bad behavior of our nation’s corporate citizens. They are citizens aren’t they? Didn’t conservative justices on the U. S. Supreme Court decide corporations are people with free speech rights? Too bad we can’t jail some of these “people.”  

How about solitary confinement for JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse, after they agreed to pay $417 million “to settle federal civil charges of selling risky mortgage bonds to investors that the banks knew could fail ahead of the 2008 financial crisis.” Screwing investors out of $417 million? Or evil unions and $2.7 million in plastic surgery?  

Do the math. Which is the bigger story? 

If Fox wants to do “righteous indignation” why not this story from today’s New York Times, about an investigation involving “wiretaps, cooperators and informants—[techniques] once reserved for infiltrating the Mafia and narcotics rings.”  

Who are the crooks in this sleazy tale? Not greedy unions. Nope. Hedge fund managers. White collar types, up to the tops of their $500 imported Italian loafers in shitty dealing. In fact, in this case the brown footprints lead upward, through the ranks of SAC Capitol Advisors, and stop, for now, but only for now, at the door of billionaire Steven A. Cohen.  

(Remember, Fox viewers, we can’t raise his taxes!) 

It’s a long, winding trail. So here are the bread crumbs. April 2009:  an F.B.I. agent visits with Richard Choo-Beng Lee in Silicon Valley. The agent explains that the government has proof he has engaged in insider trading. Lee promptly confesses and agrees to cooperate. Eighteen months later the same agent stops Noah Freeman in the parking lot of a school and plays back a secretly recorded conversation of Freeman getting insider tips from a woman named Winifred Jiau. Freeman quickly agrees to help investigators and save his own neck. In the winter of 2011 F.B.I agents visit Mathew Martoma. Confronted with evidence of his own illegal activities, Martoma faints on the lawn in front of his 8,000-square-foot Florida mansion.  

(Don’t raise that man’s taxes!)  

When he recovers he calls his lawyer. 

The plot thickens, as they say. Mr. Lee has close ties to Raj Rajaratman, the since-convicted billionaire head of Galleon Group.  

(Oh, oh, oh, woodman spare that billionaire and don’t raise his taxes!)

Lee is heard in 2008, on a recorded conversation, receiving insider tips from Danielle Chiesi, who works for Galleon. Pressed by the F.B.I. he reveals a sub-culture of “expert-network firms” that are “cesspools of inside information.” These firms feed tips to the Big Boys on Wall Street, allowing them to buy stocks they know—and smaller investors do not—are going up and sell stocks they know are going down—same idea as above—to suckers.  

Meanwhile, Freeman, a Harvard graduate, is hired by SAC Capitol Advisors at a guaranteed salary of $2 million per year for two years.  

(Do not, we repeat, DO NOT raise his taxes by 3% to help keep the country from plunging over the fiscal cliff!)  

As noted, recorded calls pick him up, receiving insider information from Jiau. Freeman passes on the tip to a friend and colleague at SAC, Donald Longueuil, who uses it to earn SAC a quick $1.1 million.  

(That would get you plenty of plastic surgery.) 

The F.B.I continues to follow leads in the investigation. Ms. Jiau is charged, convicted, and sent to prison. Longueuil, who served as best man at Freeman’s wedding, joins her behind bars.  Seven individuals at two more hedge funds are ensnared in an expanding federal net, as well as an SAC tech-stock analyst named Jon Horvath. Horvath admits to insider trading, agrees to cooperate, and points a finger at Michael S. Steinberg, a SAC manager, who is named in court filings as an “unindicted co-conspirator.” 

The case continues to build. Evidence is uncovered that Martoma was receiving insider info from Dr. Sidney Gilman, a neurologist involved in clinical trials of a new drug to fight Alzheimers, then under development by Elan and Wyeth, two pharmaceutical giants. The drug was failing, Dr. Gilman warned. SAC quickly sold out its huge holdings and then turned around and made negative bets on Elan and Wyeth stock to plunge. News of the failure broke and down the stock went and SAC was $276 million to the good, in terms of losses avoided and profits garnered.

(That would buy a hell of a lot of plastic surgery; but, still, don’t raise taxes on capital gains, whatever you do!)
 

THESE STORIES AREN’T DIFFICULT TO FIND. Maybe a producer for Fox and Friends could try Google.  

How about Hyundai and Kia inflating gas mileage figures to bilk customers? That meant a $100 million hit to unsuspecting consumers.  

How about UBS, the Swiss banking company, preparing to pay $450 million in fines to settle claims by British and U. S. regulators that they manipulated interest rates to the detriment of ordinary folks seeking home or auto loans?  

How about news this week that Bank of America (BoA) is facing potential penalties of $3 billion related to “brazen fraud” in the mortgage business? The company has already paid fines of $2.4 billion for fleecing investors. BoA’s legal troubles are far from over, having to do with ties formed with Countrywide Financial, a company at the epicenter of the 2008 home-mortgage crisis.  

Let’s hear it for former Countrywide CEO Angelo R. Mozilo who agreed to pay $67.5 million to settle civil fraud charges. Or David Sambol, second in command at Countrywide, who got off with a lighter fine:  only $5.5 million for crooked dealings. 

If you look at it realistically, which means doing something besides swallowing the Fox News line, you come to realize unions aren’t the problem. The boys and girls who keep Big Business in this country running smoothly are willing to do anything to pile up huge profits.  

If they can close down American factories and ship jobs to China, they’ll do it and be glad they did. If they can simultaneously break labor unions in the U. S. and hire illegal immigrants to drive down wages, they’ll do it and be glad. At times, the whole ugly picture can seem surreal, like Salvidor Dali explaining economics. 

One final example should suffice:  this time involving James F. McCann, minority stock holder of the New York Mets, and founder of 1-800-Flowers. According to documents in a recent federal lawsuit, McCann and other retailers were involved in a carefully designed scheme to rip off customers. The deal went like this, according to plaintiffs:  Callers dialed up the number and asked for a dozen roses for mom on Mother’s Day or their special girl on Valentine’s Day. They entered a credit card number, hit “purchase,” and were told they could apply for a rebate. Great! Or was it?  

According to the New York Times:

“If the customer clicked on the rebate option and failed to read the fine print, however, he or she wound up registering for a near-worthless club membership that would charge the credit card for months, sometimes years, before the expenses on the credit card statements were detected. Outfits like 1-800-Flowers.com received a cut of the operation, what regulators and others have called ‘bounties.’”

 
“A recent legal filing by lawyers in the case asserted that ‘1-800-Flowers was well aware that its customers were getting defrauded.’”  

So there you have it loyal Fox viewers. Next time you see Carlson having a bad day, fuming about greedy unions, send her some flowers. 

Whistleblower Gets $104 Million in I.R.S. Deal: Exposes False Patriots

"Hey, Sucker! Thanks for Still Paying Taxes!" That's probably not a campaign slogan our friends on the right want to see on bumper stickers any time soon. Still, it does kind of reflect their policy positions.

You'd think a blue collar guy like Joe the Plumber would get this. You'd think Sarah Palin might be saying, "I can see Mitt Romney's tax returns from here." But when one person cheats on his or her taxes, then the rest of us poor schmucks have to pay to make up the difference. Or run a deficit. Whatever.

The Tea Party certainly hates deficits; but they're blind, deaf and dumb when it comes to this issue.

A story today in the New York Times tells us that Bradley C. Birkenfeld, a former employee of UBS bank, is a very lucky man. Oh, sure, if you want to quibble, Birkenfeld had to do two years in the federal can as a result of his involvement in an elaborate tax-evading scheme. Now he's a free man, though, and his co-operation with the Internal Revenue Service has netted him a reward of $104 million as a whistleblower.

The case against Birkenfeld, and more importantly against UBS, a Swiss banking giant known for unbreechable secrecy, has important implications on several levels. First, we know cheating was organized and rampant. Birkenfeld's insider understanding of how the scheme worked led to a settlement between the federal government and his former employee. And, presto, just like that, UBS agreed to pay a fine of $780 billion and release the records of 4,500 American clients.

Call these bankers and clients, and the lawyers and accountants who aided them what you want. We, of the liberal persuasion might call them "crooks."

Secondly, this isn't about liberals vs. Tea Party types. It's not a left-wing plot to destroy capitalism, root and branch. This is about the Big Guy using his power, both legal and financial, to avoid paying as much as the Little Guy every April 15th.

It's not Joe the Plumber who sets up a secret Swiss bank account. Joe may be a dolt; but he doesn't have the resources to pull this off; and maybe he's patriotic enough at his core not to want to do it, even if he could. It's not your kindergarten teacher, either. She's footing her tax bill fairly every year (even though the folks at Fox News want to howl and befuddle the masses and warn ominously about her munificent pay). Ask your barber, next time you go for a trim, if he has a secret stash in a bank in Zurich. He's more likely to gape and ask where Zurich is than answer in the affirmative. Take the guy who owns the local bar, the guy who doesn't like President Obama, the guy who wears a t-shirt that reads: "You didn't build that!" followed by the words, "You can kiss my ass" and a picture of the Democratic donkey.

Ask him if he'd be mad if he knew he was paying taxes on his income from the sale of beer and pretzels while a bunch of fat cats who work on Wall Street evade taxes entirely and then jimmy their books to manipulate home mortgage and car loan interest rates. Oh, and remind him about the federal bailout that proved necessary after the Big Guys crashed the economy in 2008. Maybe, offer to buy him a liberal, "Hey Sucker!" t-shirt, instead.

You know, think about expanding his wardrobe a little.

Well, how did this case play out in the end? UBS paid the whopping fine. The IRS audited the 4,500 cheaters. News of these audits spread and 14,000 other cheaters got nervous and applied to a tax amnesty program. And in the end the cheaters, the Big Guys who could hire cheating accountants and lawyers, had to cough up a total of $5,000,000,000. Ouch, scumbags! That's some serious money, Tea Party folks. You can plug a couple of holes in the federal budget with that (sounds of right-wing angels singing). Or you can do what Mitt Romney thinks we should do. Spend a little of that cash to send a few American troops to Syria, which both he and his Neocon advisers want to do.

In the final analysis, this isn't a matter of right vs. left. At a time when poor and middle class young men and women are increasingly joining the military because they need jobs or want to qualify for G. I. Bill benefits and go to college later, this is a story about fairness. If we're asking one American to go off and get shot at in Afghanistan then surely we can ask the other American to stop hiding his wealth in a secret bank account in Switzerland.

It's not exactly the classic definition of patriotism to say, "Yes, I'm hiding my money in the Cayman Islands."

If Mitt and his boys have forgotten the last line in the Declaration of Independence, they might want to check it out. It reads: "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

A U. S. Marine at a checkpoint in Afghanistan.
Our troops are still there; and it's still
dangerous business.

Buy One Senator, Get One Free

IF YOU'RE LIBERALLY-INCLINED and don't usually read the Wall Street Journal, you probably didn't see the editorial, Money and the 'Appearance of Corruption', which ran June 14.

If you're a liberal--or even a living, breathing, thinking American--you might be worried about the toxic effect of the odious 2010 U. S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. You might be concerned about the torrents of money now unleashed and flooding our political system, tens of millions offered up to politicians by individuals like Sheldon Adelson or the Koch brothers, Charles and David. You might fear that tens of millions, donated by giant corporations, will inevitably warp the democratic system.

You might be concerned, as an earlier U. S. Supreme Court decision put it, about the "appearance of corruption." 

Ha, ha, don't fret. No way. Don't be ridiculous, thinking Americans! Remember what mom used to say:  "Money can't buy happiness--or politicians."

That's the position taken by Paul Sherman in an editorial defense of the U. S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United case. While many observers might tell you this was the Supreme Court's worst decision in a decade (actually the worst decision of the staunchly conservative, five-vote, John Roberts-led wing), Sherman, an attorney at the aptly named "Institute of Justice," a conservative group which litigates campaign-finance cases across the nation, begs to disagree. He begins by noting that the State of Montana is challenging the ruling based on laws passed at the turn of the 20th century and designed to deal with a rash of cases of political corruption. (What! Money can't buy politicians!! You people in Montana, in 1916, you must have been fooled by the lamestream media into thinking it could!)

Sherman called Montana's position untenable and in the deepest recesses of a conservative soul prayed that the U. S. Supreme Court would "double down on Citizens United and reject, once and for all, the flawed justification underlying much of America's failed experiment with campaign-finance law--the so-called appearance of corruption standard."

That standard, set in 1976, in Buckley v. Valeo, held that Congress and the states could pass laws to address "corruption and the appearance of corruption." Sherman called that decision misguided and dangerous:

The "corruption" half of that ruling is uncontroversial--few seriously dispute the validity of laws proscribing conduct like offering or accepting bribes. But the power to regulate the "appearance of corruption" has proven dangerously open-ended, leading inexorably to greater government control of political speech.

Sherman offered no examples of this chilling government control; and given the skill with which both the Tea Party on the right and Occupy Wall Street on the left have stirred political discussion in recent times (and rightfully so), his worries seemed clearly misplaced. Sherman took note of the original justification for the appearance-of-corruption standard (that "a deregulated system of campaign finance would lead to public cynicism and distrust of our democratic process") but then made it clear he was having no part of such lame judicial reasoning.

In fact, the opposite was true.

Sherman is an advocate of untrammeled freedoms. This nauseating sense we might get when we hear that huge corporations and insanely rich individuals can now pour tens of millions into political campaigns, effectively drowning out the opinions of others...why, don't be silly. There's no need to fear any appearance-of-corruption: 

That argument ignores that a healthy distrust of government is vital to ensuring that government stays within its constitutionally limited role. Campaign-finance proponents want to grant government the power to restrict political activity for the purposes of managing its own PR. The result of doing so is that government still has the same amount of power to abuse, but fewer people will notice or be concerned. That is a great way to promote big government but a lousy way to promote trustworthy government.

Yeah. Trustworthy government! That's the ticket! And thank god for guardians of our precious freedoms, stalwarts like Paul Sherman. Thank god for the unbiased positions of the Wall Street Journal when it comes to Big Business influence in government. Thank god, Sherman has reminded us that our campaign-finance laws, under Buckley v. Valeo, have created a mess that another WSJ editorial described as a "half-dead monster."

Sherman notes--one editorialist for the conservative paper agreeing with another--that the awful monster "keeps shambling forward, wreaking havoc on the First Amendment." You read that, and you almost want to shout, "Save us, save us, big corporations and insanely rich individuals!"

"Dump huge piles of money on the monster and kill it!"

*****

THE EDITORS OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, now reduced to servants of Rupert Murdoch and his vast corporate empire, and writers like Mr. Sherman, would have you imagine that this is a clarion call in the name of liberty!

In fact, Sherman's piece is a pile of steaming horse manure, dressed up in conservative logic in a vain attempt to make road apples, as we used to call them, look like fresh-baked apple pie.

Really, what do we have to look forward to if the decision in Citizens United stands, or worse ends up extended? Even Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who leads all individual contributors in this election cycle, with $35 million donated (we must stop Mitt Romney, he's unfit! not conservative enough! vote for Newt; no, wait, Newt can't win; we must elect Mitt Romney! he's actually a great American and I have the money to prove it!) has said he doesn't necessarily agree with the Supreme Court decision but as long as it's legal he's going to spend as much as $100 million to defeat President Obama.

So where does it all end?

Consider a story in today's New York Times, about Swiss bank UBS and its efforts to curtail activities by Robert Wolf, one its own top New York executives, a leading fund-raiser for Mr. Obama? Why does a Swiss banking institution care about a U. S. presidential election? It might have to do with the fact the federal government forced UBS in 2009 to pay a $780 million fine and divulge the names of 4,450 super-rich Americans  who were hiding tens of billions in secret accounts to avoid paying income taxes. You know. The kind of Big Business heroes you can trust to donate unlimited sums of money to politicians. Probably loyal readers of the Wall Street Journal and staunch conservatives who love America more than liberals do, who just don't want to give America any money to meet its needs--stupid stuff, like national defense, health care for seniors and disabled children, roads, bridges, you know, stuff like that.

In fact, conservatives seem to believe they're the only ones with a healthy distrust of government. But every liberal who can remember back to Watergate, to cite but one example, has his or her own healthy distrust of government.

It's just that liberals have an even healthier distrust of government when they think it's going to be taken over, lock, stock and barrel, and run entirely by Big Business interests.

Sherman doesn't dare touch that topic with an editorial ten-foot pole. But most Americans see the obvious danger. If one individual or one corporation can donate unlimited sums, how do we stop them from buying up politicians wholesale? Washington, D. C. is already swarming with lobbyists, like teenage girls at a Justin Bieber concert. It's not like Big Business can't already make its voice heard.

What happens next, if the wishes of the editors of the Wall Street Journal come true? Do big drug companies start pouring tens of millions into campaigns for the U. S. House of Representatives? Does Pfizer adopt a dozen Republican lawmakers, maybe a Democrat or two, and avoid unpleasant situations like the one the company faced in 2009:  coughing up $2.3 billion to settle civil and criminal complaints for the illegal marketing of Bextra, a pain-killing drug? Do these bought-and-paid-for legislators push for more of a "pro-business" stance at the Food and Drug Administration? Maybe they vote to curtail federal protections for whistle-blowers, too, since whistle-blowers at Pfizer exposed the company to begin.

Or maybe a few bought-and-paid-for members of the U. S. Senate lean on the FDA to go easy in its investigations of the harmful side effects of all-metal hip joint replacements, now failing at alarming rates, often shedding steel flakes into surrounding tissue. You know:  a lot of conservative politicians already believe tort reform, making it harder to sue for medical malpractice, is the real key to "health care reform."

And, aw, shucks, so what if grandma's hip replacement is causing her excruciating pain!

If the Supreme Court stands by or expands its Citizens United decision the possibilities are endless. (Mr. Sherman might even turn to a few news items in the Wall Street Journal if he'd like to see examples!) What! You say ING Bank has been fined $619 million for laundering money for Cuba and Iran, in violation of U. S. sanctions? Time for ING to buy, no, donate to the campaigns, of two or four or six U. S. senators and put them to work fighting Dodd-Frank regulations. Huh? You say Big Sugar, as the Journal itself labels corporate agri-business interests, want to protect billions in farm subsidies? Let them donate $5 million to the reelection campaign of three members of the House of Representatives for Louisiana and get the right kind of men and women into office, you know, fans of sugar. Watch Wal-Mart spread around $50 million to politicians in all kinds of local races in ten different states; because what do we know first and foremost about Wal-Mart? That all Wal-Mart executives care about in the end is expanding freedom! And all Wal-Mart asks is that the politicians they purchase help pass laws to make it harder to organize unions. The politicians get elected and if Wal-Mart likes their work, refinanced, and re-elected. Wal-Mart clerks still earn $11 per hour and still sometimes qualify for food stamps.

And see what happens now when UBS forks over $10 million during the 2012 presidential race. Watch Mitt Romney take a stand against increased federal regulatory power! Watch Mitt opine that President Obama doesn't understand how to run a business! Watch Wall Street bankers, in their enthusiasm for the First Amendment, dump hundreds of millions into Republican coffers! Watch the banking industry prove, as it did in 2008, that only businessmen and businesswomen know how to run a business! Watch the politicians sit idly by; squint a little, and if you look at it just right, it makes a UBS donation seem like a wise investment.

Especially if they can avoid a few hefty fines next time around.

You might say, "This has the appearance of corruption to me." But you would be stupid and probably a socialist and the editors at the Wall Street Journal would insist you were secretly a foe of all human freedom, anti-American at heart, as well, and say that you hated god and your mom and that apple pie, too.

TRUST PAUL SHERMAN on this one. After all, he's a lawyer.

Money can't buy happiness or politicians.