A Greek bearing gifts

Laura Rozen today makes the sort of "irresponsible" conspiratorial suggestion usually relegated to lower-tier bloggers such as yours truly. Her subject is Thomas Kontogiannis, the "third man" in the Duke Cunningham bribery case. In certain ways, the Greek-born businessman is the most mysterious player in this sordid game. One can understand why Wade and Wilkes would bribe a prominent pol -- but what was in it for Tommy K?

Keep in mind that this man has run into serious legal troubles before. In the early 1990s, he supplied fraudulent visas to fellow countrymen. In a previous column, I "irresponsibly" suggested that he may have performed a similar service on behalf of the 9/11 hijackers. Not only does Kontogiannis maintain strong (and as-yet unexplained) ties to Saudi Arabia, he owns the building which houses an INS office local to the New Jersey Al Qaida cell. (It is fair to presume that an accomplice in that office helped him come up with false visas in the 1992 case.)

On a far less speculative note: Kontogiannis also was involved in a multi-million dollar scheme to rip off the Queens school district. Although he and his co-conspirators were found guilty, no-one had to do any jail time:

School District 29’s former superintendent, her husband, the landlord of the school board’s headquarters, his former lawyer and a computer consultant all pleaded guilty last week to taking part in a scheme filled with bribes, kickbacks and computer contract rigging totaling $6.3 million that left Southeast Queens school children with substandard computers.

All involved will have to pay back a total of $4.85 million of the money they pleaded guilty to pocketing.

The owner of the building that houses the school district offices will still collect rent.

None will serve time in jail.

This, in a country where some people do years for smoking pot or stealing a meal. The fullest account of this scam can be read in this .pdf document.

Here's what Rozen has to say -- and it's one of the juiciest paragraphs she has ever written:

A lot of these stories have a hint that Kontogiannis was perhaps not unfamiliar with organized crime. Not Sopranos style local waste management stuff, but more international. An old Greek Navy man, Kontogiannis knew boats, how to move and launder money, set up front companies, and seemed to have some transport and logistics companies. But here's the thing: when Kontogiannis was confronted with the law in the two cases we know about -- his 1994 guilty plea for visa fraud after he was arrested by the FBI with an official from the US embassy in Athens, and his 2002 guilty plea in the pretty large Queens school district bid rigging scheme, he escaped jail both times. His sentences always seemed pretty light. I am starting to get the sense of someone who may be protected. It occurred to me reading the above article and others as plausible that Kontogiannis might have been useful for a faction of the US government at one time or another. It's pure speculation, but you could imagine that his skills might come to be useful for some things. One theory -- could Kontogiannis have been used by some US government agency (let's say the CIA -- again, pure speculation), even while being simultaneously investigated by another (the FBI, etc.)? Might someone from that agency have intervened to protect Kontogiannis in his encounters with the law? Could it be that Kontogiannis, the old Greek Navy guy who knows his way around Eastern Europe, Greece, the Balkans, Ukraine and Georgia and their gray markets, who knows how to launder money and create front companies, who knows who to bribe, may have proved useful to the Pentagon or the CIA at certain points, that one of his companies was perhaps used for laundering or moving money or shipping or logistics or financial transfers? (Total speculation: Perhaps even that he might have been a contact of Wilkes' friend at the CIA, who did a long tour doing logistics and administrative tasks for the Agency in those regions?)

I have no problem with speculation as long as it comes with a clear label, which Rozen has supplied.

She goes on to quote a key section from the afore-cited report, which indicates that Kontogiannis' partner-in-crime, Celestine Miller, was poised to become the Secretary of Education if Dole won. I guess theft and corruption are necessary items in the resume of any Republican seeking appointment to a powerful office.

The original lie

Not too many folks paid attention to my post of two days ago, in which I discussed the new effort to blame Castro for the JFK assassination. This revised story will probably become "official" after Fidel dies. The winners write the history.

According to the recent German documentary which revived the Castro-did-it hypothesis, the Cubans gave Ozzie $6500 for the job. That odd figure didn't come out of nowhere. It first appeared in the 1964 Coleman-Slawson report, which detailed, for the benefit of the Warren Commission, Oswald's foreign activities. You can find a pdf of the relevant section here.

The mythical $6500 payday appears in a tale spun by one Gilberto Alvarado Ugarte. (If you load up the afore-linked file, scroll down past the first two-thirds.) Alvarado was a 23-year-old junior spook operating on behalf of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somosa, a man always willing to please American rightists. After the assassination, the young spy told the American embassy that he personally witnessed Oswald taking the sum of $6500 -- $5000 in payment and $1500 for expenses. The money came from Cuban officials as a pay-off for the assassination.

Unfortunately, the real Oswald appears to have been in New Orleans at the time this alleged transaction occurred. Under questioning, Alvardo admitted that he made up the whole story.

When asked why he concocted such a whopper, Alvarado said that his motive was to gain admittance to the United States and to join the fight against Castro. That explanation never made much sense. How could the creation of such a massive falsehood -- a lie which might have sparked a nuclear war -- possibly help a young Nicaraguan solve an immigration problem?

The real reason he volunteered this information should be obvious: Alvarado operated under the orders of the dictator Somosa. And who gave Somosa his orders...? Well, you can guess that part.

Now, I'm not the sort of person who likes to stay mired in the 1960s, so this blog will henceforward focus on current scandals. Even so, I can't help wondering: Why have our current disinformationists revived this ancient and long-discredited fib, as opposed to concocting an entirely new fib?

How do we change the numbers?

The latest Pew poll offers some encouraging news for Democrats: Bush's popularity remains stuck below the 40% level. But the news is quite dismal on three other fronts.

Corruption: Alas, the vast majority of the public believes that the bribery scandals amount to nothing unusual. How do we convince the citizenry that something novel and disturbing is taking place?

We must emphasize that the Abramoff and Cunningham affairs go beyond the sleazy tableau of lobbyists filling congressional pockets. The Republican party has morphed into the new Mafia, filling its coffers with loot from gambling and (very likely) drugs.

Wiretapping: Much of the public also believes that the wiretapping scandal is no scandal at all. People of this stripe probably fall into three categories:

1. Those who continue to think that the administration conducted these wiretaps legally.

2. Those who operate under the naive delusion that the administration illegally spied only on terrorists, not on political opponents.

3. Those hard core nutcases who want the Bushites to spy on opponents; they think that liberals are terrorists.

People in the first category are probably unreachable; if they haven't received word by this point, they never will. People in the third category (which, I fear, may be the largest) are also beyond dialogue. If we want any movement on those poll numbers, we will have to find a way to speak to those trusting souls who inhabit the second category.

Terror: Finally, the Republicans still command national respect on the issues of security and terrorism. If Karl Rove were a Democrat, he would advise the party's leaders to hit the opponent in his one area of strength. That is what we must do.

My own contribution is modest. I'm thinking of getting into the business of creating anti-W paraphernalia. How's this for a t-shirt slogan:

"IF BUSH WEREN'T PRESIDENT, OSAMA MIGHT HAVE GOTTEN AWAY"

Whaddya think? Too subtle? I'd love to hear your suggestions...

JFK: The new script

Think the JFK assassination is ancient history? Get ready. The past may soon become very present.

Even if you have no abiding interest in this matter -- even if you've consider it dull or annoying -- I hope you will read what follows. Although I refuse to turn this blog into a specialists-only discussion of older controversies, we must take preventative action against a forthcoming attempt to put history into re-write. As Xymphora notes in today's column, there are growing indications that the news media will soon "reveal" that Fidel Castro was behind the JFK hit.

Of course, genuine researchers discounted the "Castro did it" theory ages ago. Nothing ever really connected Oswald to Cuba; all of his personal ties went to the right, not to the left.

Those looking for ironclad proof that Lee Harvey Oswald actually worked for a faction of American intelligence should check out Jim DiEugenio's Destiny Betrayed. Nobody has ever refuted the evidence presented in that book concerning the "Fair Play for Cuba" pamphlets Oswald passed out. The CIA had directly purchased an entire printing of that particular publication; the transaction was made while Oswald was in the Soviet Union. The copies Oswald passed out came from the CIA's private stash.

(This is no mere allegation. DiEugenio buttresses his case with publication data culled from the materials in Oswald's possession, and with evidence supplied by the original publisher.)

That data point (along with roughly ten thousand others) disproves the Castro-did-it idea. Yet we now have indications that rightist forces hope to change the history books: Goodbye, "Lone Gunman" -- hello "Evil Commie Plot." This piece by Anthony Summers discusses a new German television documentary by one Wilfried Huismann, devoted to the "blame Fidel" thesis.

Of course, there have been documentaries and pseudo-documentaries aplenty, and they have espoused all sorts of theories. But I susepct that this cinematic excerise may presage the largest JFK-related propaganda barrage since the release of Posner's book.

Summers:

In Washington, meanwhile, a senior attorney who served on the official American investigation — the Warren Commission — reversed his position on the same subject.

William Coleman, a former assistant counsel, had told me before Christmas of a mission that he carried out on the orders of the US Chief Justice, Earl Warren. He had flown to a secret location for a meeting with Señor Castro — a rare event indeed for an American official, even more so given the nature of the discussion. What Mr Coleman learnt, he said, satisfied him — and the Chief Justice when he reported back — that "Castro's regime had nothing to do with the President's murder".

Mr Coleman had spoken clearly, and in the presence of a third party. This week, however, I received a letter from him denying that the meeting with the Cuban leader had ever taken place. This is hard to explain, unless perhaps one notes that Mr Coleman — himself a former Cabinet member — is close to senior officials in the Bush Administration.

(My emphasis added.) Obviously, Coleman's false retraction came under orders. Nobody would bother to give such a directive unless a larger plan were afoot to make new use of an old scandal.

I've not yet seen the Huismann documentary. The real motive force behind the piece appears to be Gus Russo, who -- and I will happily testify to this in any court -- is a damned liar.

About fourteen years ago, Russo telephoned me out of the blue. He was scooping up information -- trying to find out who knew what -- concerning a possible witness to Oswald's activites in New Orleans. I didn't have the data, but I knew one or two people who had been researching that particular bit of business, and I gave Russo the contact information. (At the time, I did not know that this witness had made some quite startling claims to HSCA investigators; the HSCA material was then still classified.)

To ingratiate himself with me, Russo stated that he was working on a PBS documentary which would offer conclusive proof that Oswald went to the USSR under orders from the Office of Naval Intelligence. In fact, the documentary made no such claim; it was a "lone nut" job from beginning to end. Word later reached me that nobody connected with the thing had ever intended to claim that Oswald worked for ONI when he went to Russia.

Why did Russo deliberately make a false statement during that phone call? Obviously, he told me something he thought I wanted to hear in order to gain my trust. Later, it came out that Russo had strong links to high-level CIA hands, including former DCI Richard Helms.

If Wilfried Huismann trusts a Janus-faced slimeball like Gus Russo, fuck Huismann.

The sourcing for this documentary is, to say the least, open to question. The most damning claims come from an alleged "former agent" of Cuban intelligence named Oscar Marino.

Why should we consider Marino's testimony more reliable than the guff one hears from defectors? After all, Castro cannot last much longer, and anyone with any sense knows that Americans will soon run the show in Cuba once more. Marino has every motive to play nice with his future masters.

Summers' story reminded me of one of the more intriguing revelations to come out of Daniel Hopsicker's investigation of Wally Hilliard, the owner of the flight school attended by Mohammed Atta. Over the years, Hopsicker has presented much data indicating Hilliard's likely ties to one faction or another of American intelligence. (I am not calling him a "CIA agent." As Joseph Trento points out, and as I never tire of repeating, the most dangerous players in the clandestine world operate within networks outside the control of any single agency.)

Hopsicker:

While both of the terrorist pilots who crashed into the World Trade Center were students at Venice Florida's Huffman Aviation, the flight school's owner Wallace J. Hilliard, 72, of Naples, FL., was simultaneously pursuing his own diplomatic opening to Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

A photograph (left) recently made available to the MadCowMorningNews shows a smiling Hilliard strapping a Rolex with the must-have diamond beveled-face onto the presumably grateful wrist of one of Fidel Castro's top aides, Guillermo Garcia Frias, known in Cuba as "the Commandante of the Revolution."

For Hilliard, portrayed as a retired-to-Florida Midwestern insurance executive-turned-befuddled investor after the 9.11 attack, the new evidence confirms he had been doing considerably more "moving and shaking" than is customary for seniors in the Sunshine State.

Former employees confirmed Hilliard's curious Cuban venture.

The reason for this visit should be obvious. Once again, we must keep in mind the fact that Castro is far from young. The Soviet Union is gone; Cuban socialism is doomed. Smart Cubans are currying favor with the Americans who will soon re-assert their presence on the island, and smart American right-wingers are currying favor with those likely to hold power after Fidel leaves the scene.

If the Abramoff scandal proves one thing, it proves that GOP operatives have pursued a master plan to commandeer much of the world's gaming industry. A new Cuba means new casinos. A nice chunk of that action will surely go into Republican coffers.

In the meantime, there's also a nasty page of history which the Bush forces would love to rewrite.

So the question comes down to this: Did Oscar Marino get a Rolex as well?

Abramoff and vote fraud

Are the two major scandals of out time -- computerized vote theft and Abramovian wheeling-dealing -- linked? You bet! If you haven't read Brad Friedman's blockbuster investigation, do it now.

And finally then, it has recently been revealed that Diebold itself was also paying Abramoff's firm Greenberg Traurig directly for work in June of 2004 which has yet to be fully detailed or explained in any way.

A payment stub [PDF] and pre-check-register [PDF] revealing a $12,500 payment for the month, made from Diebold to Greenberg Traurig was discovered in a dumpster at Diebold's McKinney, TX facility in July of that year by electronic voting watchdog group BlackBoxVoting.org.

Perhaps that payment was part of the $275,000 we mentioned previously, as reportedly paid to Diebold.

There's much, much more; the Bob Ney connection is absolutely damning.

One of the ironies of this scandal is that Indian tribes were forced to fork over a chunk of their gambling profits to Godfather Jack. Evidence suggests that some of that dough may have funded vote-rigging -- while other evidence suggests that in the American southwest, Indians were the primary victims of vicious Republican election tactics.

I'd love to know what the folks in those tribes think about that particular situation...

Also on the vote fraud front: A "free market" think tank called the Pacific Research Insitute has issued a statement calling paper trails a "policy blunder":

The new law "may force California to relive the mistakes of America's punch-card voting past," the group said, and will make voting "increasingly difficult and negate the original virtues of e-voting: speed, cost-savings and efficiency.''

"We're moving in the wrong direction," said Sonia Arrison, director of technology studies for the institute. "The whole point of e-voting is to move away from paper."

The "mistakes" of our "punch card past"? How can those "mistakes" possibly be worse than the nightmare of an unverified vote? In election after election after election, the Republicans magically do better than the polling would indicate. We're not kids. We know what's going on.

The whole "think tank" system has turned into a racket. If you have a college degree and you're too lazy to get a real job -- and you don't mind prostituting your brainpower -- send your resume to a think tank. They just may offer you a cozy gig as an in-house propagandist.

More evidence that Bush wears a wire

Bob Fertik says a new video offers a persuasive case. Check it out.

The asshole left

A reader asked me to expand upon some slighting remarks which a previous post directed toward the Pacifica network. I responded in the comments section. Perhaps, just to churn up some debate, those ideas deserve airing here in the main body of this blog.

Arguably, those insults should not have been lobbed at the Pacifica network, which has broadcast a lot of good stuff over the years. (Amy Goodman comes to mind.) My main quarrel is really with a mind-set, with a weltanschauung, with a certain type of progressive I just cannot stomach. Alexander Cockburn, Michael Alpert and Marc Cooper are a few names prominent within this crowd. Christopher Hitchens used to be among their number. I always hated him. Thank God he switched -- or, if you prefer, showed his true colors.

This creepy cadre formed a "progressive mafia" in the 1980s and early '90s. Every time someone rallied the troops against Reagan/Bush perfidy, they would chime in: "The Dems are just as bad!" These are the guys who attacked the Clinton health care plan from the left. Are you happy with the results? These are the guys who assailed Clinton almost as mercilessly as the Republicans did, thus helping to pave the way for the 1994 GOP congressional takeover and the impeachment fiasco. Are you happy with the results?

These are the guys who keep telling us that it is better to back a sure-to-lose candidate than to back someone they define as impure. These are the guys who created the Nader vote. The asshole vote. The vote that gave us W.

These left-wing mafiosi pretty much ran all the organs of counter-cultural thought during the Reagan and Bush I eras. And what was their legacy? Let's judge their actions on a practical basis. Did the country shift to the right or to the left during that time? Did left-wing thought prosper during those years, or did it dwindle?

I say that Cockburn, Cooper and co. have resumes comparable to that of the Captain of the Exxon Valdez.

And I'm glad that we've found new voices. Give me a Randi Rhodes over a Marc Cooper any day of the effing week.

Republicans have a new tool to silence critics

W just signed a bill which -- in one of those little-noticed provisions unrelated to the main thrust of the law -- makes it illegal for any anonymous or pseudonymous writer to use the internet to "annoy" someone.

That's the wording: Annoy.

Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

Superficially, this is a measure against cyber-stalking. But the law appears to be extremely broad -- after all, any form of criticism, even well-founded criticism, can be labelled an annoyance. Ann Coulter, for example, may want to test the boundaries of this law by taking to court anyone who makes another "Mann Coulter" crack.

The signing of this law gives conservative forces an excuse to pressure ISPs into divulging the identities of anonymous bloggers, commentators, and usenet posters. Until now, ISPs protected the privacy of clients who had merely hurt the feelings of someone else.

Hurt feelings are now a serious legal matter.

Scandalous notes

I have time now only to note briefly various devlopments in the merging Abramoff/Delay/Cunningham/Wilkes scandals. Some or most of this material may already be familiar to you...

Cunningham wore a wire in the days before he pled out. I'm not the only one who think's he's going to take Duncan Hunter down with him.

Arianna Huffington has an interesting squib on this morass. She directs our attention to the under-recognised connection between Abramoff and the Marianas islands. The matter, she says, is "developing." One of those devlopments may involve the Chinese women kept as slaves on those islands. Some of them were forced into prostitution...

Bob Fertik suggests that various Indian tribes should bring a RICO suit against Godfather Jack and his cronies. I don't see why not.

More protection: This weekend, I spoke about the possibility -- likelihood -- that Godfather Jack pulled the strings of Florida prosecutors regarding the Boulis business. This blog should have mentioned previously that Jack's pack had similar influence over John Cornyn, now a Texas senator, previously the Attorney General of Texas. As firedoglake puts it:

John Cornyn was the Texas Attorney General at the time Abramoff was taking money from the Cochetta Indians -- funneling it to Ralph Reed who then aimed his flock o' fundie freaks like a missile launcher to give cover to Cornyn as he did exactly what Abramoff wanted him to do -- shut down the competition.

Did Cornyn do this at Abramoff's and Reed's bidding? According to emails from Reed he did:

"On November 12, 2001, Reed sent Abramoff an e-mail stating, "get me details so I can alert cornyn and let him know what we are doing to help him" [sic]. Similarly, on November 13, 2001, Reed wrote "I strongly suggest we start doing patch-throughs to perry and cornyn [sic]. We're getting killed on the phone." Also, on January 7, 2002, Reed sent Abramoff an e-mail stating "I think we should budget for an ataboy for cornyn" [sic]."

This sorry business points up an under-recognised aspect of the current scandals. We are relying on various state and federal prosecutors to clean up this mess. But many prosecutors were part of the problem to begin with.

Can we expect justice? How much justice?

S&L scandal, part two: The FDIC wanted $300 million from a Texas wheeler-dealer named Charles Hurwitz, who had profited from the $1.6 billion collapse of the Union Savings Association of Texas. Tom Delay and two of his minions, Representatives John Doolittle and Richard Pombo, came to Hurwitz' defense; they made sure the FDIC went away.

Speaking of the S&L scandal: Remember how Republican pundits (and some inane "progressives) tried to paint that affair as a bipartisan monstrosity? True, a couple of Democrats -- including Alan Cranston, who otherwise had served California very well -- did become trapped in the mire. But their participation was tangential compared to that of the Republicans. Those who doubt the point should read the works of Steve Pizzo and Pete Brewton; you may also want to check out the background of Neil Bush, brother to the current president.

Well, the Republican spinsters are at it again: They're trying to portray the Abramoff affair as bipartisan, when it isn't. It just isn't. As Howard Dean recently told Wolf Blitzer on CNN, not a single Democrat took Abramoff's money.

Despite that fact of history, I predict that the "asshole" wing of the progressive sector -- let's call it the Pacifica wing -- will continue to repeat this "bipartisan" canard. They parroted GOP talking points during the S&L scandal, and they will surely do so again. (Why does Pacifica bother to ask listeners for donations? Why don't they just have Alexander Strategy Group cut them a check?)

The gambling connection keeps cropping up: Alexander Strategy group -- the nexus point for the Wilkes, Delay, and Abramoff scandals -- was also tied in with MGM casinos:

The firm has already been dropped by one client, MGM Mirage, the casino and resort giant, which retained it in 2004, paying about $350,000 to help block a maneuver by an Indian tribe in Michigan.

At the end of last year, MGM ended the relationship. Alan Feldman, a spokesman for MGM, said that the project had ended and that the firm's services were no longer needed, but Feldman acknowledged that the scrutiny surrounding Alexander Strategy was a concern. "It would be dishonest to say that it didn't come up in discussions," he said.

The vile Wall Street Journal editorial page insists that congressional Republicans (those who don't end up in the pokey) should get serious about enacting a reform package. The writers even -- get this! -- try to insinuate that the Democrats have stood in the way of reform.

Laughable? Yes. But the WSJ's toxic spew does point up a very real problem: Democrats have not yet offered a comprehensive reform platform. If the Republicans get there first, they may well be able to take control of a corruption scandal which should destroy the Greedy Old Pig party.

The WSJ piece does put one interesting factoid on the public record:

The Copley News Service reported that "Wilkes made no bones about where his money was coming from. His jet-black Hummer bore a license plate reading MIPR ME--a reference to Military Interdepartmental Purchase Requests," the means by which his firm got paid.

Coinky-dink?

Judy over at Newshounds ("We watch Fox so you don't have to") noticed an odd coincidence:

The U.S. economy has tons of strong companies looking for investors, so when stock analysts on two different Fox financial shows recommended buying the same three stocks during shows on Saturday (January 7, 2006), I was more than a little suspicious.

During Brenda Buttner's "Bulls and Bears," analysts suggested buying Verizon, J.P. Morgan Chase and Pfizer. In "Cavuto on Business" immediately following, investors recommended the same three stocks.

Googling the names of those companies with the head of News Corp., Rupert Murdoch, shows connections between all three companies and Murdoch.

Now, this might indeed be coincidence. Murdoch has many tentacles. Still, let's keep an eye on these Fox business pundits -- a pattern may reveal itself.

Protection rackets

As you surely know, "Godfather" Jack Abramoff (G.O.P. moneyman and funder of Israeli sniper schools) teamed up with Ralph Reed (a professional pseudo-Christian) to run a protection racket involving Indian tribes.

Any tribe that made a sufficient pay-off to Abramoff -- i.e., to the Republican party -- was allowed to operate a casino. If the Indians didn't fork over the dough (for Abramoff's alleged "lobbying" services), Reed would send word out to his hordes of Jesusmaniac zombies: "We are shocked -- SHOCKED to discover that gambling is taking place on Indian lands! Let us bring the wrath of God down upon the heathens!"

The Republicans, it seems, had a scheme to grab a huge chunk of all the world's casino action, including Indian gaming, internet gambling and casino boats operating outside U.S. territorial waters. That's one of two reasons why Godfather Jack and his gang insisted on grabbing the extremely lucrative casino boats operating out of South Florida.

(The other reason, of course, is drugs. Those boats come and go without oversight -- and if you're a grown-up, you know damn well what that means.)

Trouble was, the boats belonged to a fellow named Gus Boulis, who had previously made a tidy pile with his Miami Subs chain of sandwich shops. Boulis was also something of a thug -- one who wouldn't play ball with the GOP big boys. Godfather Jack and his partner Adam Kidan forced a sale -- see below -- and then welched on the payments they had promised. When Boulis complained, he was gunned down.

Daniel Hopsicker, in a fine new piece on the Abramoff scandal, puts the matter nicely:

Writing a quarter million dollars worth of checks (for no discernible purpose) to Mafia hit men who are later charged with the murder of the check-writer’s biggest enemy in the whole damn world is just another in a long line of "freak coincidences" in South Florida, a place where things have always been a little...different.

You probably already knew most or all of what I just wrote. However, far too few people are talking about the reason why local prosecutors refused to go after Abramoff and his casino boat partner Adam Kidan.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the State Attorney in Broward County is Michael Satz. Local wags refer to him as Michael Sitz, because he sits on cases -- particularly cases involving political corruption.

In the late 1990s, however, the normally lethargic lawman managed to rouse himself for an all out "Sitzkrieg." With uncharacteristic gusto, he went after...Gus Boulis.

The operators of the SunCruz ships and the New SeaEscape were charged individually with both unlawful sports bookmaking and casino gambling. The operators of the Monte Carlo were charged with unlawful casino gambling, while the operators of the Palm Beach Princess were charged with unlawful bookmaking.

The investigation was conducted jointly by the attorney general's office, Broward County State Attorney Michael Satz...

Several other county prosecutors were also involved.

You will recall that Gus Boulis was such an awful, awful man that even Representative Bob Ney of Ohio spoke out against him. Some may find it odd that a sandwich-seller in Florida should so perturb a politician from Ohio. Odd, too, that he should go out of his way to put flattering comments about Adam Kidan into the Congressional Record.

Of course, Ney was taking pay-offs from Godfather Jack.

My point is this: Boulis didn't sell his boats just because Bob Ney insulted him. Pressure from Florida prosecutors did the trick. They accused Boulis of various misdeeds, such as not making correct payouts to his customers.

Those were important crimes. Murder, it seems, is not.

Yes, the murder investigation is now a state matter; Sitz can't sit on this one all by himself. But even at the state level, we're talking about the same fellows who went after Boulis.

Who watches the watchmen? Abramoff may be singing now, but does anyone want to hear him sing about...oh, say, Michael Satz?

The killing of Gus Boulis will probably go down in history as one of those crimes -- everyone knows what really happened, even though the guys who ordered the hit will probably never be charged with murder. Don't expect to see headlines about Republican thugs who use gunfire to control the gaming and drug trades. If such headlines ever do appear, even the Jesusmaniac zombies might get a clue as to what their beloved G.O.P. has really been up to these past couple of decades.

There are all sorts of protection rackets. The most important one: Protecting the public from ever hearing the truth.

Conspiracy theories

You may experience an eerie sensation while watching Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

In a key scene, we hear actual recorded telephone conversations in which Enronians gleefully discuss the rigging of the California energy crisis. These incriminating recordings allow us to ear-witness the sort of dialogue that conspiracy theorists can usually only posit. There it is: Everything we feared, a postulated evil transfigured into diamond-hard fact.

The first audiences to witness the Zapruder film ("back...and to the left...back...and to the left") must have felt the same goosebumps as they saw physical evidence of conspiracy, deniable only by those who possessed formidable powers of rationalization.

In 2001, the nation's pundits castigated anyone who suggested that California's misery was manipulated. Each and every one of these pundits made a clever reference to aluminum chapeaus. It was as though they worked from a template:

Reference to "conspiracy theories"? Check. Reference to "tin foil hats"? Required. Reference to Elvis-spotters? Recommended, but not mandatory. Reference to the Protocols of Zion hoax? Optional.

We've grown up a lot since 2001. Back then, even the more open-minded leftists would have dismissed many claims which we now know to be true: Massive, warrantless spying on Americans...a war based on faked intelligence cobbled together by old P2 hands...widespread bribery and influence peddling...a legion of pseudo-journalists doing the bidding of their rightist masters...

...and, of course, electronic vote-rigging.

Arizona's Secretary of State Jan Brewer, up for re-election, has had to explain her love for Diebold machinery to an increasingly angry citizery:

Brewer, responding to media questions, called the noisy protestors "anarchists" and said they were off base.

"I don't think there is a problem with the Diebold equipment," she said. Brewer said a committee investigated the bids and the machines passed on the guidelines.

"I think that there are a lot of conspiracy theorists out there that are trying to blow this completely, totally out of proportion," she said.

"Anarchists"? The last time a pol gained much ground by using that label was 1915. Today, the phrase seems rather antique.

And using "conspiracy theorists' as a term of political opprobrium won't fly any longer. Not after Enron. Not after our worst fears about the California energy crisis proved true.

And certainly not after numerous news stories revealed that Diebold and other e-vote firms have a history of offering cozy sinecures to key decision-makers like Brewer.

Now that we all know that the government spies illegally, that wars are manipulated, that politicans take pay-offs, that contractors steal massive amounts of public funds, that the IRS keeps tabs on who votes for which party, that elections are fixed -- the question is not "Are conspiracies real?" but "Which conspiracies are real?"

That's the point where I start to get worried. The rightists can, in time, turn these days of sordid revelations to their advantage.

My mind keeps reeling back to the mid-1990s, when the conservative media -- in contrast to today's practices -- did little else but traffic in conspiracy theories. At that time,of course, we had the fake Whitewater scandal, along with a host of similarly bogus claims made against Clinton officials. More than that: A suspiciously high number of "former" military and law enforcement personnel made the lecture hall circuit and chatted up late-night radio hosts. These Seeders of Doubt promulgated an ultra-paranoid worldview as they spoke about Roswell, underground bases, the Illuminati, mind control, Waco, assassinations, CIA drug smuggling, media manipulation, and much more.

Fear became chic. The X Files was on the air and in the air.

I followed the "fear chic" phenomenon at the time, and soon became paranoid about the paranoids. Legitimate research intertwined with phantasmagorical speculation. Reality didn't matter: The goal was to engender an inchoate hatred of "the Gummint," which translated into hatred of Bill Clinton, which translated into GOP votes.

That's why the right-wing conspiracists of that period even dared to commandeer topics normally associated with the left, such as the assassinations of the 1960s or the CIA's many misdeeds. The conspiracy-mongers became pushers -- they serviced a large clientele of fear-junkies who, as long as they got their rush, didn't care about exactly what went through the needle.

A decade has passed. The pseudo-scandals of the Clinton years have given way to the genuine scandals of the Bush era. And most right-wing propagandists have segued from a pro-conspiracy to an anti-conspiracy worldview.

Might they not switch back? I suspect that will revert to their mid-'90s ways in the run-up to the 2006 elections. Their message to the young: "Yes, all politicians are corrupt. The situation is hopeless. The corruption crosses party lines. You might as well stay home on election day."

And if, miracle of miracles, the Democrats gain one or both houses by year's end -- well, you know what the countermeasures will be.

More parapolitical poetry

Yesterday, I quoted a snatch of Peter Dale Scott's "Balld of Drugs and 9/11." A reader named bboldt2 responded with an offering of his own, a riff on Shelley. I like it so much I feel obligated to publish it here:

Ozymandias’ Foot
With apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelly

Here lies a trunkess
Near legless foot
Cold as stone in the Iraqi sand.

I think of its owner.
I see him
Carefully tending it
Pruning the nails
Scrubbing between the toes in the shower
Generously powdering it and its twin
Before dressing to meet the day
Remembering how he stubbed its big toe one joyous wedding night.

This foot was loved as was its owner.
Now useless as an old tire
It lies
Embarrassed and naked in the raging street
Until the battle ceases.
Perhaps in a day or two
It and its dog-chewed, remnant Tibia
Bare as a shattered exclamation point
Will be lovingly returned
To the house where it once stood.

Traveler, contemplate all that remains of this once proud man.
Look upon what a miraculous machine was suddenly undone.
Wonder on the sad truth that we are all just
Such a one as this
Left hanging by a tread to be cut so sharply
So casually
So meaninglessly
By bomb and missile
Grenade and shell
Discarded, boundless and bare
Trash in the Iraqi sand.

How can we be so violently defooted
So senselessly disassembled?

I would like to have this foot for my very own.
I would place it
In all its glorious, ruinous, decomposing splendor
In a monstrance lined with satin
Red as the blood that deserted its veins.
My own two feet would gladly do the service of bearing
This holy relic
Up the steps of the Capitol in Washington.
Reverently removing the covering of this unique trophy
I would loudly proclaim to the assembled joint session:
“This is the foot of Qzymandias.
Gaze upon your work and despair.”

Nice.

Alas, my own muse operates on a much less rarified level:

A Diebold electronic trick
Beset us with Bush and a Dick
Removing the creep
Will raise up the veep.
Should we trade a putz for a prick?

For the few of you left: I'm back...

Although I quite enjoyed my working vacation, the blogosphere calls. While I'm still not up to speed on All Thing Abramoff -- and have yet to conduct the Wilkes-related interview promised before Christmas -- one unusual "net discovery" came to my attention. I'd like to share it with you.

Professor Peter Dale Scott, former Canadian diplomat and author of Cocaine Politics, may be the world's only writer of elegant parapolitical prose and poetry. He recently composed a Ballad of Drugs and 9/11 which deserves your attention.

The bit that floored me had little to do with drugs, the WTC tragedy, or any underhanded covert dealings. Scott offers an illustration of everything that has gone wrong since this nation chucked the New Deal paradigm for conservative ideology:

...and pushing America and Russia
still further down the path
of increasing superwealth
and declining average income

(my starting salary in ’61
could buy a third of a good Berkeley house
whereas a starting salary today
would pay for perhaps a twentieth)

increasing income disparities
the sign our state is declining
the homeless we no longer support
and have grown used to not thinking about

as we step across them
towards our ATMs
what Sallust and Arnold discerned
in Rome and Victorian London

privatim opulentia
publice egestas
until the republic is suborned
by these forces we cannot see

for which the intellectual price
is a shrinkage of our culture
towards the trivialities
of narcotic games and bottom-feeding poets.

Scott loves footnotes so much that he even works them into the margins of his verse, where we learn that his starting salary in 1961 was $7250.

I've long considered making the experiment of studying old classified ads to see what sort of living a semi-skilled worker (receptionist, file clerk, whatever) could expect back when I was a boy in the 1960s. What percentage of income went to keeping a roof overhead? The figure used to be 25%. In today's Los Angeles, many now pay 70% or more.

Years after Scott started his Berkeley gig, my widowed mother had -- if memory serves -- an annual income of less than $4000. She managed to raise two boys with some measure of dignity. Luxuries were rare, but we knew no true privation.

God only knows how women in that situation manage to survive nowadays.

If the New Deal paradigm (strong unions, a sturdy social safety net, very progressive tax rates and so forth) was so mistaken, then why did people live better back then? If the Reagan/Bush paradigm (few unions, few taxes for the wealthy, few regulations on corporations, etc.) is so superior, then why do our lives annually worsen? How many years must this experiment continue before we pronounce it a failure?

Yet the conservative ideologists keep insisting that their way works. Or will work one of these days. Their exercise in faith reminds me of a health nut I once heard about: She insisted that she could cure strep throat without antibiotics. She was sick for two years. At the end of that time, she pronounced her "treatment" a success.

Call it the triumph of ideology over experience.

I'm not much of a poetry fan. The last long poem to arouse my enthusiasm was The City of Dreadful Night, which is the Gothiest Thing Ever. Don't try to read that one in the middle of the day; it will seem silly. Read it aloud at 2 a.m. after you've made your way through a bottle of Port. Under the proper circumstances, City can be chilling stuff.

But not nearly as chilling as Scott's work.

Heads up...

I should be coming back to annoy you people again very soon. Being loaded up with work during the holidays kind of puts one in an isolation chamber. I now have quite a lot of catch-up reading to do. Has Bush been impeached yet...?