And the Winner Is…………

There has been a dearth of engineering and math majors pouring forth from universities over the past generation, as evident by the number of news article championing various compact disc, books, movies, as the best of the decade. It was the start of the No Child Left Behind generation.

It still takes 365 days to celebrate an anniversary. And the anniversaries are not numerically counted until the second one. Ten years make up a decade, and from my count I thought we had one more year to go!

Newspapers all over the country this week have written of news stories, movies of, books of, compact discs of the decade.

Remembrance Day

On Remembrance Day, there is still a poignant remembering overseas of the cost to Europe. War had a way to bring home the present day cost of risk appetites.

Social mood. Political campaigns. Financial fate. Markets go up and they go down, even in the age of austerity, as in the age of conspicuous consumption. By understanding history, humanity has the power to change history. War, and the way we live our lives.

We live in a world that has perverted the concept of remembering people. The media had a cheap story to fill the airwaves now on each September 11th and November 11th. In Europe they still called it Remembrance Day, where the people remembered the war dead and not the military. I was in London on this day in 2000. “Flanders Field.” Armistice Day was not a promotion for the armed services or to be used by the National Guard to recruit the mostly local youth, a lot like those pro football players and their fans in town who “root for laundry,” as Jerry Seinfeld reminds his audience. The living athletes of combat. Cannon fodder. The human cannon fodder, used too often in the name of nationalism. The “National Guard” that had been perverted by public policy to become an invading army in Iraq, and maybe one day in Afghanistan? Today was supposed to be a day about the individual people lost to war, not about the uniform worn. At the end of the Great War, in 1919, because of the missing bodies to bury, the November 11th observance was introduced, with a two minute silence. Unbearable mourning continued long after a war was over. Today was supposed to be a day about peace. About real people gone.

Reusse & Company this morning. How does an interview of Major General Larry Shellito of the Minnesota National Guard relate to November 11th and Armistice Day? A day about peace!. Armistice Day was about turning swords into plowshares. November 11th in Europe was Memorial Day, not for the military industrial complex, as Dwight Eisenhower called it, but about individuals compelled to go to war in the name of government and nationalism who died in service. And the people who went, that the world would one day be a better place.

The“National Guard” that had been perverted by public policy to become an invading army in Iraq and in Afghanistan? How had it happened? The “National Guard” that had replaced the all volunteer army. And why? Since September 11, 2001, the U .S. has deployed troops in 33 countries, according to Major General Larry Shellito. Why? And about the expense of all this? Was the Department of Defense any different than that vote on health care. Which was not at all about health care but health care insurance, and paying for all of this. Without much discussion at all about the real issue of health care. How many MRI machines were needed in a community. Without a discussion of preventative medicine. Why did local kids need to be dispatched to 33 countries in the last 8 years? And where was the discussion on all of this? About the use of “The National Guard?”

No one asked why. Elections have been spun to be one long drone of an argument between two sides. The two sides that had long ago quit communicating, in a world that was unable to find much in the way of meaning. If you thought that television and radio were sounding boards on the issues of the day, then your moderators had become nothing more than game show hosts.

In a current world without conscription, in a world of voluntary service, somehow the message was getting across about the glamor of swords. And now a word from the sponsors.

I am not sure why Major General Larry Shellito of the Minnesota National Guard was invited on Armistice Day of all days to be a guest. On morning radio, on Reusse and Company. I did not listen long to the remainder of the show. I don’t think there was a discussion of what happened when you take the young and place their lives in peril, in places where they are seen as the enemy. In some of the 33 places. Thirty-three places. Invading armies? An invitation to the major general as a guest by the same guy who wrote today on his blog:

“Pro football players were merely mercenaries moving through a city for the purpose of collecting a large paycheck. There would be replaced by a different group of mercenaries in a few years, and the foolish fans would cheer for them for no reason other than the appearance of their jerseys.” So wrote Pat Reusse today.

In the civilian world, leadership has to be re-earned in each generation. By sons who followed fathers and grandfathers. In attempts to try to see the future through the past. My grandfather won a purple heart in World War I. He paid a price for his medal every day for the rest of his life. It was more than what combat had done to his hearing. The life expectancy of those Woodrow Wilsons was always so much shorter than the soldier.

“Be careful when you break horses that you don’t break their spirit too.”

If sons and daughters took the time to try to understand history, humanity had the power to change history. In Minnesota, people spent more time contemplating the NFL than they did the deployment since September 11, 2001 of U .S. troops in 33 countries. We thought more about the people there than we about the dollars it had also cost for them to be there. And not many folks were asking why. Or why this was done under the auspices of “The National Guard.”

There was a cost to all of this. In a world of voluntary and involuntary thrift, with personal savings and public policy focused on taxing. In a world where voluntary service could fast become involuntary, as government officials induced borrowing rather than pay now these out of pocket expense. The single greatest risk as the equilibrium between asset classes remains a seismic shift in currency markets. What was this defense policy doing to the U.S. dollar? When a currency holds a nation together, and “the economy — perhaps society at large — assumes more, not less, risk as a function of the path of our attempted fix,” writes Todd Harrison. A Congressman from Tennessee cited Albert Einstein’s belief, in a joint hearing chaired by Senator Kent Konrad from North Dakota, that the greatest power on earth was not atomic energy but compound interest, in this case as a threat to the future of America.

Counting the cost. On Remembrance Day, there is a perversion to discuss the engines of financing as much as there is to discuss the success of recruitment as Major General Larry Shellito of the Minnesota National Guard was asked. In a nation that just no longer discussed war.

On Remembrance Day, there is still a poignant remembering overseas of the cost of war. It is seen in the streets of London. In America, Armistice Day was politicized, used as a photo opportunity by politicians hoping to remain an elected official for an entire career, and calling it Veterans’ Day. It was not longer remembered to commemorate the War To End All Wars. About the real people gone. Except in a Europe, which continues to manifest the loss of one generation, of its best and brightest. Watching the scenes this week at the Brandenburg Gate, and seeing the difference in the caliber of leaders 4 generations later, wondering if Europe had ever recovered from void of the War to End All War. Counting the cost.

It must have seemed really heroic to fight in The War To End All Wars.

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Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice

The summer of 2009. In Red Cloud Nebraska. This summer there was a bunch of students from New York University who were putting on a play. Paper Plane Theatre Company, a New York City based troupe of artists, presented a production of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice to Red Cloud. Who exactly were these guys?

Spending time and money on a production. Then came the critics. People like Frank Rich. Who exactly were these guys?

Critics. And art. And politics. In the summer of 2009.

Community organizers. Who exactly were these guys?

The summer of 2009. The health care reform debated. So was the debate about health care reform or reform how health care would be paid? These pro-choice Democrats who all agreed politics did not belong in the bedroom were now suggesting they belonged in the bed when a loved one was dying?

Those Tea Parties. Who exactly were these people that showed up at town hall meetings. The ones that the community organizer seemed to be promoting. There was a certain irony in all of this. Compared to the Boston Tea Party which was a lot more than a discussion. Compared to community organizers. So thiution?s was an overhaul or a revolution?

Budgets. Spending time and money on a production. Now having to pay attention to the money. Like in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Those art critics neverr paid much attention to the accounting of the cost of a production.

Some of the accounting involved no health care benefits for the illegals. If some kind of bloodless health care bill was going to get through Congress. Yet to me, there was a real sense of irony that these same Tea Party advocates do not question fighting a war, 2 wars, across the sea. There seemed little accounting to the purpose of it all. Taxed incomes to fight wars overseas, seemingly to export democratic values, yet not extending some basic ideals to people within borders on other life and death issues..

Health care according o the elected president in campaign 2008 was a basic human right. Yet so few humans ever had had this basic human right in human history. Anywhere.

The search for identity, when the leader, as an organizer, did not know what to do after he was organized. Community organizers to much beholden to others, without quite knowing his own self. In an era when the foundation of American ideals were shaken. By his predecessor.

Immigrants. Illegals. Critics and art. And politics. In the summer of 2009. When immigration, abortion, bailouts, and accounting departments all came together. In health care reform. With deadlines.

Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. With no intermission.

A whimsical retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus, Eurydice is the story of two lovers who strive to love each other as much as they love their ideas. Told from Eurydice’s point of view, this myth becomes real as it tracks the bittersweet passage from father to husband. From boardwalks to the Underworld, wedding receptions to houses made of string, high-rise apartments to the River of Forgetfulness, the profound humanity and sensory spectacle of Eurydice promises to carry us to new worlds. It is quite a show.

The critics seemed to have gone a bit soft, because one of the organizers was one of Nebraska’s own. A lot like Frank Rich in the summer of 2009. About promises to carry us to new worlds. Without a concern for the accounting department.

In the Wake of the Aquino Death

Cory Aquino died this week.

There had been a revolution in the Philippines after her husband who was the opposition leader had been killed.

In 1972, Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. No one knew how long it might last. Marcos effectively exiled and deported Benito Aquino, probably the most popular politician in the country. In 1983, following a kidney transplant, with access to the president curtailed by physical health issues, Imelda Marcos and Chief of Staff General Fabian Ver limited access to the president. Imelda Marcos was said to have flown to New York in May 1983 to convey that Benito Aquino would never again set foot on Philippine soil. There was total chaos as no one knew what was happening, and how the Filipinos might regain control of their country.

Benito Aquino swore to return and, in August 1983 he did, amidst the medical and political crisis. Aquino was assassinated on the tarmac of the airport as his plane landed, by one of the aircraft guards. The guard then committed suicide. Though it was widely believed that Imelda Marcos pursued the elimination of the opposition leader, the chief of staff Ver was tried for the assassination and received a not guilty verdict. The day of the verdict, Cory Aquino announced her candidacy for president, as the EDSA ‘People Power’ revolution removed the Marcos dictatorship and restored democracy in the Philippines in 1986.

The majority of the young people in the Philippines today immediately give an adjective of their Congress men and women. Corrupt is the adjective. Filipino history provides the basis for these feelings, for what occurred bother before Cory Aqunino’s election and history subsequent to her time in office.

The strength of a democracy is judged by the safety extended to journalists pursuing their stories. Th Philippines ranks next to Russia with pursuit of justice when either an opposition leader or a journalist is killed.

Those Domestic Situations

The New York Times reports today that the Bush administration in 2002 considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo, N.Y., suburb to arrest a group of terror suspects in what would have been a nearly unprecedented use of military power.

According to U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said that as U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pushed for the Wall Street bailout in September 2008, he brought up that that the crisis might even require a declaration of martial law, as a worst-case scenario.

The Associated Press notes that dispatching troops into the streets is virtually unheard of. “The Constitution and various laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.”

A 1994 U.S. Defense Department Directive (DODD 3025) allegedly allows military commanders to take emergency actions in domestic situations to save lives, prevent suffering or mitigate great property damage. The Clinton administration had set up the Joint Task Force-Civil Support in October 1999 as a “homeland defense command.”

In 2002 the Pentagon established the U.S. Northern Command, charged with carrying out military operations within the United States. Prior to this, under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the U.S. armed forces had been barred from domestic operations, except in specific, limited circumstances.

So that Associated Press note about “dispatching troops into the streets as virtually unheard of” is a historic note. It is a mistake to say the “constitution and various laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.”

Pentagon officials at one point to end 2008 were projecting some 20,000 active-duty U.S. troops to be stationed in the United States by 2011.

Those Arizona Diamondbacks

The wife of Senator John McCain did have some tangential relationship to news on the passing of Max Dunlap in prison. Cindy McCain was the daughter of a Budweiser distributor in Arizona who had, according to an investigation in 1976 following the death of reporter Don Bolles, acquired his business from mob connections. And if not for the mob connections of his in-laws family, the Henselys, John McCain would never have been the senator from Arizona. Professional journalists sent a contingent force to complete the investigation begun by Don Bolles.

In 1993, Max Dunlap was convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder for arranging the killing of Don Bolles. Bolles’ brother wrote the book What Color Is Your Parachute? Max Dunlap, 81, was serving a life sentence for the car-bomb in a parking lot of a Phoenix hotel of an Arizona Republic reporter Bolles who at the time had gone to meet a tipster as he was investigating land fraud and organized crime. A bomb made of dynamite planted under the car was detonated by remote control. There is a blockbuster movie in the story if anyone ever gets funding to put a production company together.

Newsday’s Bob Greene at the time made a pitch to the Investigative Reports and Editors board, that at the very least, the project to expose corruption “in a community in which an investigative reporter has been murdered,” would result in the Arizona community and other like communities in reflection on what had happened and hopefully would result in thinking “twice about killing reporters.” Thirty-eight journalists from 28 newspapers and television stations across the country descended on Arizona.

“For all of us – particularly newspapers with high investigative profiles – this is eminently self-serving. As individuals we are buying life insurance on our own reporters. If we accomplish only this, we have succeeded.”

Working under Greene, they set out not to find Bolles’ killer but to finish his work of exposing Arizona’s tangled underworld. This piece reflects the result of that investigation, that touched the family of Cindy McCain.

Prosecutors believed Bolles was targeted because of stories that he had written which upset a liquor wholesaler who was a mentor of Dunlap. Bolles’ car exploded as he backed out and he died 11 days later from those injuries. Max Dunlap was one of three men convicted in his killing. John Adamson, who police said put the bomb on the car, was released from prison in 1996 after serving a 20-year sentence. He died in 2002. James Robison, who was accused of setting off the bomb, was convicted of murder and conspiracy, but his conviction was overturned.

The team-produced series made its debut on March 13, 1977, amid continuing controversy. Among those publishing the series: Newsday, The Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star, The Boston Globe, The Indianapolis Star, and The Denver Post. The Arizona Daily Star in Tucson was the sole newspaper in Arizona to publish the series. Many others carried reports from the Associated Press that began on March 18, five days after the first stories started.

It was said that Arizonan would never be told the true background to any of this by the Arizona media, like the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette, which were started by a guy called Eugene Pullium, at the instigation of Kemper Marley.

James Danforth “Dan” Quayle (born February 4 1947) is an American politician and a former Senator from the state of Indiana. He was the forty-fourth Vice President of the United States under George H. W. Bush (1989–1993). Quayle was born in Indianapolis to Martha Corinne Pulliam and James C. Quayle. He has often been incorrectly referred to as James Danforth Quayle, III. In his memoirs, he points out that his birth name was simply James Danforth Quayle. The name Quayle originates from the Isle of Man. His maternal grandfather, Eugene C. Pulliam, was a wealthy and influential publishing magnate who founded Central Newspapers, Inc., owner of over a dozen major newspapers such as the Arizona Republic and The Indianapolis Star. James C. Quayle moved his family to Arizona in 1955 to run a branch of the family’s publishing empire. While the Quayle family was very wealthy, Dan Quayle was less so; his total net worth by the time of his election in 1988 was less than a million dollars.

McCain’s father-in-law got his start as the top henchman for Kemper Marley, who was for 40 years, until his death in 1990, the undisputed political boss of Arizona, acting as the behind-the-scenes power over both the Republican and Democratic parties. But Marley was more than a politician. He was the Meyer Lansky crime syndicate’s chief Arizona operative front man for the Bronfman family—key players in the Lansky syndicate.

After Prohibition, Lansky-Bronfman associates such as Marley got control of a substantial portion of liquor (and beer) distribution across the country. In fact, Marley’s longtime public relations man, Al Lizanitz, revealed it was the Bronfman family that set Marley up in the alcohol business. However, in 1948, 52 of Marley’s employees (including Jim Hensley, the manager of Marley’s company) were prosecuted for federal liquor violations. Hensley got a 6 month suspended sentence and his brother Eugene went to prison for a year.

The story in Arizona is that Hensley took the fall for Marley in 1948 and Marley paid back Hensley by setting him up in his own beer distribution business. Newsweek implied in an article that Hensley’s company was a “mom and pop” operation that became a big success, but the real story goes to the heart of the history of organized crime. It was the late Tom Renner, Newsday’s mob expert who spent most of his time undercover working “deep and dirty,” on the organized crime background.

Hensley’s sponsor, Marley, was also a major player in gambling, a protégé of Lansky lieutenant Gus Greenbaum who set up in 1941 a national wire for bookmakers. After Lansky ordered a hit on his own longtime partner, “Bugsy” Siegel, who was stealing money from the Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas—which was financed in part by loans from an Arizona bank chaired by Marley—Greenbaum turned day-to-day operations of the wire over to Marley while Greenbaum took Siegel’s place in tending to Lansky’s interests in Las Vegas.

In 1948 Greenbaum was murdered in a mob “hit” that set off a series of gang wars in Phoenix, but Marley survived and prospered as did his protégé, Jim Hensley, whose fortune through his daughter, Cindy, sponsored McCain’s rise to power.

Jim Hensley, McCain’s father-in-law also dabbled in dog racing and expanded his fortune by selling his track to an individual connected to the Buffalo-based Jacobs family, key Prohibition-era cogs in the Lansky network as distributors for Bronfman liquor. Expanding over the years, buying up racetracks and developing food and drink concessions at sports stadiums, Jacobs enterprises were described as “probably the biggest quasi-legitimate cover for organized crime’s money-laundering in the United States.”

In 1955, James Hensley acquired the Anheuser-Busch distributorship for Arizona.

June 2, 1976 – Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, one of the founding members of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., was called to meeting in a downtown Phoenix hotel by a source promising him information about land fraud involving organized crime. The source didn’t show up. Bolles left the hotel, got into his car parked outside and turned the key. A powerful bomb ripped through the car, leaving Bolles mortally injured. Bolles, 47, is gravely wounded when six sticks of dynamite are detonated beneath his compact car in the parking lot of the Hotel Clarendon, 401 W. Clarendon Ave. Bolles, who had been lured to the hotel by the promise of a news tip, whispers the name “Adamson” to his rescuers.

Over the next 10 days, doctors amputated both Bolles’ legs and an arm, but could not save him.

His shocked IRE colleagues reacted in a way unprecedented and never copied since. They descended on Arizona for a massive investigation. They set out to find not Bolles’ killer, but the sources of corruption so deep that a reporter could be killed in broad daylight in the middle of town. They were out to show organized crime leaders that killing a journalist would not stop reportage about them; it would increase it 100-fold.

The project was exceedingly controversial and remains so. The New York Times and The Washington Post, giants in the business, chose not to participate. Some journalists, including IRE members, disliked the idea of reporters on a crusade.

June 13, 1976 – Bolles dies. Phoenix Police arrest John Harvey Adamson, racing-dog owner and a former tow-truck operator.

June 16, 1976 – Max Dunlap, a Phoenix contractor, is questioned by Phoenix Police homicide detective Jon Sellers, the lead investigator. Police say Dunlap had been observed delivering cash to Adamson.

Jan. 15, 1977 – In an agreement with prosecutors, Adamson admits planting the remote-control bomb and pleads guilty to second-degree murder. He agrees to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for a 20-year, two-month prison sentence. Dunlap and James Robison, a Chandler plumber who allegedly helped Adamson by triggering the bomb, are arrested.

July 6, 1977 – Trial begins for Dunlap and Robison, who are charged with first-degree murder. During the trial, Dunlap’s attorney tries to cast suspicion on Phoenix attorney Neal Roberts, who had dealings with both Adamson and Dunlap, as the real mastermind in the murder plot.

Nov. 6, 1977 – A jury finds Dunlap and Robison guilty primarily on the strength of Adamson’s testimony. They also are found guilty of conspiring to kill then-Arizona Attorney General Bruce Babbitt and advertising man Al Lizanetz, because Babbitt had filed an antitrust lawsuit against the liquor industry in 1975. Adamson testifies that Dunlap wanted the three killed because each had angered Dunlap’s friend, millionaire rancher and liquor wholesaler Kemper Marley Sr., who never is charged in the case. Adamson testified he was hired to kill Bolles by Max Dunlap, a Phoenix contractor and close associate of Marley’s. Marley had extended a $1 million loan to Dunlap, which had not been repaid. Adamson said Dunlap hired him to kill Bolles because Marley was upset over Bolles’ stories.

Jan. 10, 1978 – Dunlap and Robison are sentenced to death.

Feb. 25, 1980 – The Arizona Supreme Court, saying defense lawyers should have been allowed to question Adamson more closely, overturns the convictions of Dunlap and Robison and orders a new trial.

June 2, 1980 – The murder charge against Dunlap is dismissed after Adamson balks at testifying against him again. Adamson had asked prosecutors to grant him certain concessions, but was denied.

June 6, 1980 – The Arizona Attorney General’s Office withdraws Adamson’s 1977 plea bargain and reinstates the original charge of first-degree murder.

June 13, 1980 – The murder charge against Robison is dismissed after Adamson refuses to testify.

Oct. 17, 1980 – In a trial held in Tucson, a jury finds Adamson guilty of first-degree murder.

Nov. 14, 1980 – Adamson is sentenced to death.

May 9, 1986 – The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturns Adamson’s death sentence, saying that he improperly was condemned to die after a trial judge had ruled that a prison term was appropriate.

Dec. 22, 1988 – Adamson’s death sentence having been reinstated, it is again overturned by the circuit court.

Nov. 27, 1989 – After a renewed investigation by the Attorney General’s Office, led by investigator George Weisz, James Robison, the Chandler plumber is recharged with the murder of Bolles.

June 25, 1990 – Kemper Marley, Sr., 83, dies of cancer in La Jolla, Calif. In 1976 Bolles had written a series of articles exposing organized crime’s involvement in land fraud. Three men were convicted of Bolles’s murder. The three men were connected with Kemper Marley, Sr., an Arizona liquor wholesaler who was reportedly angered by Bolles’s articles and thought they had cost him a seat on the Arizona Racing Commission. Marley was not charged in Bolles’s murder. Mr. Marley, one of Arizona’s wealthiest men, was the son of an early pioneer family cottonseed oil, produce, a liquor distributorship and cattle and sheep ranches. He also had holdings in Sonora, Mexico, and the Imperial Valley of California, and was a founder of the Farmers and Stockmen’s Bank in Phoenix. (Don Bolles. Bolles wrote extensively about Marley’s lucky past. And about how the Hensleys (Marley’s managers) bought Ruidso Downs racing track in New Mexico. He wrote about Eugene Hensley spending five years in federal prison for a skimming scam. And about the Hensleys selling their track to a buyer linked with Emprise Corp. And about Marley’s liquor ties with Emprise … one of Bolles’ final dispatches appeared as Marley was about to become a member of the Arizona Racing Commission – the agency that regulates racetracks, including those run at the time by Emprise … the story dispatched Marley’s appointment. Two months later, a car bomb killed Bolles.)

June 28, 1990 – The U.S. Supreme Court leaves intact the 1988 appeals court ruling overturning Adamson’s death sentence.

Dec. 19, 1990 – Dunlap is recharged with Bolles’ murder. Dunlap and Robison also are charged with conspiring to obstruct a criminal investigation into the slaying. Adamson agrees to testify against the pair in return for the reinstatement of his 1977 plea bargain and 20-year, two-month prison sentence.

Jan. 11, 1993 – Dunlap and Robison are granted separate trials.

March 22, 1993 -An attorney for Dunlap, John Savoy, is sentenced to two years’ probation on perjury conviction for telling a grand jury he didn’t have any records dating from 1977 related to Dunlap. Prosecutors believed some of the records detailed secret cash payments from Dunlap to the girlfriend of James Robison, the Chandler plumber .

April 20, 1993 – Dunlap is found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiring to obstruct the investigation of the case, and is later sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for 25 years.

Dec. 17, 1993 – Robison is acquitted, despite admitting under cross-examination that he asked a fellow jail inmate to arrange for the murder of Adamson, the chief witness against him.

July 26, 1995: Robison, having pleaded guilty to soliciting an act of criminal violence for trying to have Adamson killed, is sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Aug. 12, 1996: Adamson is released from prison and goes into the federal Witness Protection Program, which he will voluntarily leave a few years later.

1998: Robison, 76, is released from prison.

Jan. 28, 1999: Phoenix attorney Neal Roberts dies in poverty at the age of 66 of coronary artery disease, cirrhosis and emphysema. His former secretary says Roberts told her he was involved in the Bolles murder at various levels, but investigators say his statements may have been influenced by his heavy drinking and taste for melodrama.

In a subsequent lawsuit against Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc.. an investigative group that was formed after Mr. Bolles’s killing, a jury in Phoenix awarded Kemper Marley, Sr., $15,000 for emotional distress resulting from a news article that was written about the slaying. The same jury found that the article, which linked Mr. Marley to figures in organized crime, had not libeled him and that his privacy had not been invaded.

Mr. Marley was never charged in the case. In 1989, State Attorney General Bob Corbin said new leads indicated that Mr. Marley had no connection to the killing.

http://www.ire.org/history/

Earthquake in Denver

                                             

I had this daydream that I woke up to a Beattles song. “I read the news today. Oh Boy…..Woke up. Got out of bed. Ran a comb across my head….”

Tracy Ringolsby was interviewed by Pat Reusse at 7 am from Tucson, where he was when the last edition of the Rocky Mountain News came out. He will be increasing the number of columns for Foxsports.com from one to two per week. He will bedoing a pre-game show for the Rockies broadcast for either 104 broadcasts or 140 (I forget what he said.) And he talked about Scripts Newspapers, which have no debt and only one newspaper losing money. No one there was surprised that ownerships did not tolerate operating a paper at a loss. The Rocky Mountain News was the oldest corporation in Colorado, at 150 years in April. He also said it was the most profitable newpaper operated in Denver. What most impressed him was the quality of his co-workers’ work product to the end, even though they have known for 3 months that the plug was going to be pulled.

Beginnings are not as easy to know as endings, wrote Bernie Lincicome.       

Though they have known for 3 months that the plug was going to be pulled, the writers kept going about their business. In the face of economic death. With the same quality that was there, day in and day out. 

Where was that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club LP?

Confidence Games

 

The CEO of Morgan Stanley was on the Charlie Rose Show talking once again, like so many these days, about the broken confidence in a financial institution:  when the answers of these people are so disingenuous.  Or just dishonest?  There was the usual language of the last 6 months.  Crisis in confidence.  Too big to fail. 

 

“The day’s Wall Street gains are more of a “reflex” than any conscious recovery effort, says Al Goldman of Wachovia Securities.  Goldman would also like to write President Obama’s to accentuate the positive in tonight’s address before Congress. “President Obama has been stressing the extreme negatives in the economy,” Goldman says, “but if you keep frightening the public, the recession is going to get worse, not better.”        

-Marketwatch  

 

These financial wizards created this mess in the first place.  So their life and their lifestyle were threatened and Al Goldman wanted it back.  Any media outlet should have been embarrassed to run his quote.  These financial wizards did what bin Laden and his disciples only dreamed of doing.  There was a revolution in the financial system last September.  Either Al cannot  figure it out or he wants his old world back. 

 

And no one was talking about putting the financial wizards in jail, only limiting their compensation.  The CEOs of the Morgan Stanley should have been fired.  These guys have betrayed the public trust.  So if you actually report the truth, if you keep frightening the public, the recession is going to get worse. 

 

Crisis in confidence occurred when people quit believing in you.  Or maybe when you quit believing in yourself.  Maybe because such great doubt came from the lack of beliefs.  Maybe because there had never been any there, there.  When you sold credit-backed derivatives that actually had no foundation in the evolving system of the last 15 years.

 

The concepts:

 

Too big to fail…To young to die…A new form of immortality.  Over valued.  Overvaluation was part of this too big.  My home was over value in 2007.  And in 2006.  It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.  But the neighborhood was over valued.  Who did not recognize it?  Who analyzed a reason for refinancing an over valued home?  

 

“Wachovia is committed to being the best, most trusted and admired financial services company. We carefully consider the impact of our business activities on shareholders, customers, communities, employees, and the environment. We leverage our social, economic, and human assets to deliver business results in a way that supports fair business practices and sustainability.” 

 

Wachovia that had to be acquired by Wells Fargo.  Wachovia Securities and Al Goldman work under the umbrella of Wachovia.  “Wells Fargo and Wachovia are joining forces.  You’ll continue to receive the superb service you’ve always enjoyed, and you will gain the strength and stability of one of America‘s strongest companies.”   

 

According to their website, Wachovia is now “TWICE AS STRONG.”  Well Fargo, actually an admirable bank through these times, is not bragging the same way.  And Al Goldman wants to writes speeches.  For the president of the United States. 

 

It was the health insurance approach to banking.  The healthy ones are paying.  So that the sick ones can recover.  Yet there was no premium paid.  There was no underwriting.  There was no health maintenance going on.  Investment banks living on the edge.  Like that bank Wachovia.  

 

This CEO at Morgan Stanley was over 60.  He had to recognize all of this.  It was another thing if you were 32-years old, had been raised in all of this, and actually believed what people had always told you in your life.  No wonder there was a crisis in confidence. 

 

In 3^rd world nations, the emphasis is not on material possession but on survival.  On spirituality.  And on family.  From Asia to Latin America.

 

Then there was A-Rod.  Too big.  Because of steroids.  Maybe a lot like those 5 investment banks that no longer are investment banks.  He was about 32-years old.  He surely did not believe the press clippings in 2003.  The lack of confidence, the underlying sense that you were not worthy of all this?   The $260 million contract?  And a sense that you might lose all of this. 

 

The news this year seemed to be about liars and cheats.  There were 2 new columnists at the local paper.  A good columnist sets off to get a story but without a good clue what he/she will write about.  The story comes to you.  A good columnist just goes to a place in search of a story. 

 

“You will be my witness.” 

 

 

In the Shadows

 

Fairness.  You expected it in the courts.  With judges.  I expected it with the daily newspapers.

Today it as reported on the Workday Minnesota website that last September when the Twin Cities labor community rallied outside a Wayzata’s office for Wayzata Investment Partners, the Minneapolis Star Tribune did not cover that story.  The rally concerned the attempt of Wayzata Investment Partners, the private equity investment firm, to impose dramatic concessions in workers’ wages and benefits on Cascade Pacific Pulp, a longtime union paper mill in Halsey, Oregon. The rally was in the wake of the Republican National Convention and was an attempt to get visiting protesters in town to support steelworkers from Oregon.  It was not a local story but the “anarchist” website, self-described, had directed their supporters to stick around for an extra day or two to attend the rally.

 

David Brauer of MinnPost has since reported in the last month that Wayzata Investment Partners was the largest creditor of Avista Capital Partners as revealed in documents filed in the bankruptcy procedure of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  Avista Capital Partners had purchased the Star Tribune in December 2006. 

 

It might be fair to conclude that the Minneapolis Star Tribune will not be fairly covering the story of their own bankruptcy. 

For anyone cheering for the paper to survive, this news does call the question how Avista can declare one business bankrupt yet continue to operate businesses that operate oil rigs and manufacture wound care products.  In the world of investments, it no longer was the doctrine of survival of the fittest and the hunger that goes with the quest, but simply one of money for money’s sake, when the end justifies the means.  

 

Most of the news today was about the ground hog seeing its shadow, without mention what was lurking in the shadows. 

 

Fairness.  I expected it with the daily newspapers.  

The Real War on Terror

 

The cost of freedom:  American presidents like to invoke patriotism in their speeches, reminding us of the lives that were spent to preserve the freedoms evoked in the United States Constitution.  September 2001 was nothing, compared to what transpired in the world in January 1919.     

 

It is unnerving to live in an age when a president and a Congress can pass The Patriot Act, quickly trading away freedom at a price of homeland security.  The passage of the act does not say much for the generations who have grown up on the age of television.  And there was little, if any, protest. 

 

Few Americans seem to know of the days of real terror that existed in Germany at the close of the War to end all Wars.  This was a time of real terror.  There had been a revolution in Russia.  The family of a monarch was killed.  The Kaiser was deposed in Germany.  And from November 1918 through August 1919, Germans lived through the German Revolution, a politically-driven civil conflict before the establishment of the Weimar Republic.  It was during this period that a new constitution was drawn up, with Article 48.  I wonder how different Article 48 was from the Patriot Act.  Students of history recall that it was Article 48 that Adolph Hitler used in 1933 to establish his dictatorship, ending the Weimar Republic and ushering in the Third Reich.

 

Few Americans seem to know that it was Germany that allowed Vladimir Lenin to take a sealed train in the midst of World War I through Germany, Sweden, and Finland to reach St. Petersburg, with hopes of his affects on anti-war movement in Russia. The Russian Provisional government had carried on in the war following the toppling of Czar Nicholas II on March 15, 1917.  The February Revolution was followed by the October Revolution led by Lenin, as the Bolsheviks seized power as the German had hoped, demanding an immediate end to the war.

 

In the days of terror that existed in Germany at the close of the War to end all Wars, civil unrest was the reason that Article 48 was incorporated into the constitution. 

 

On November 9, 1918, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the center of Berlin, in a movement which had started in the final days of October 1918 when 47 sailors dispatched needlessly to be sacrificed in battle in the last moment of the war without authorization mutinied, while the new democratic government was seeking peace.  The mutiny of 47 affected sailors led to a general revolution supported by sailors and workers which was to sweep aside a hope to save Kaiser Wilhelm’s monarchy.  Then in January 1919, hundreds of thousands of people again poured into central Berlin as a revolutionary wave developed.  On January 4, 1919 Emil Eichhorn, the chief constable of Berlin was dismissed by the government when he refused to act against demonstrating workers in the Christmas Crisis after sailors insising on only their pay, had occupied the Imperial Chancellery, cut the phone lines, put the Council of People’s Representatives under house arrest and captured Otto Wels.  Reacting to  Emil Eichhorn’s dismissal, revolutionary stewards and the chairs of the Communist Party called for a demonstration to take place on the following day. This demonstration turned into an assembly of huge masses.  On January 5, 1919 hundreds of thousands of people poured into Berlin, many of them armed.  Further armed revolts occurred all over Germany in the first months of 1919.  The violence was violently suppressed.  Vladimir Lenin’s counterparts in Germany, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, were put to death. 

 

In Italy, Mussolini obtained from the legislature his dictatorial powers for one year, which was legal under the Italian constitution of the time.  In a political and social economy, he passed legislation that favored the wealthy industrial and agrarian classes (privatisations, liberalisations of rent laws and dismantlement of the unions).  His domestic goal was the eventual establishment of a totalitarian state with himself as supreme leader. 

 

Under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the U.S. armed forces had been barred from domestic operations, except in specific, limited circumstances.  The Clinton administration set up the Joint Task Force-Civil Support in October 1999 as a “homeland defense command.”  In 2002 the Pentagon established the U.S. Northern Command, charged with carrying out military operations within the United States. 

 

Perhaps September 11^th should serve as a wake up call to Americans about the meaning of freedom, as written into the Constitution of the United States.  Mindful of the lives that were lost to preserve these freedoms, what exactly had happened to change the concept that  U.S. armed forces should be barred from domestic operations.  Why are Pentagon officials projecting some 20,000 active-duty U.S. troops be stationed in the United States by 2011?  Why now?  Why 20,000?  Who set this number?  Was there any debate?  And is a foundation now laid that this can become a police state one day like Germany or Italy in the 1930s?