Rebellion

The new year was about fear. And moving stories that grabbed the heart. Stories not necessarily ending in freedom.

There seemed to be a lot of rebellion going on in the new year. When the world itself makes us at time move. As the Mayan calendar which ruled the world of Chinese horoscopes over a 26,000 year astrology cycle (the Precession of the Equinoxes) had us all coming to an abrupt end by around Christmas 2012. Or in the belief of the Mayans, the Sumerians, Tibetans, and Egyptians, precisely on December 21, 2012.

Fear always had moved people who mostly never wanted to be changed, This year, fear was stealing people’s money and independence. Fear moved those in power. Revolutions were about movements. When those who lived in pain organized in movement. Over the price of food, or over currency, for people in parts of the world which needed oil to move.

When movement was no longer an elective, for people caught up in hunger and fear. And how it was fear moved a story. It was why people read –looking not so much to be changed but for some wisdom about the world. Perhaps about the coming new world, and how to outfox it, beginning on December 21, 2012.

When inequality threatens stability. The use of language used by the media in this decade to describe current events is interesting. Particularly over the increasing use of the term “Insurgents.” Counter-insurgency involved “action taken by the recognized government of a nation to quell a rebellion against a constituted authority.” Has anyone ever asked why the rebellion in the first place, against a constituted authority? And authority “constituted” by who?

The way brains are wired. When inequality threatens stability. Inflicting more than just pain….but homicide. When you waged organized homicide called war, and society accepted it. And when you controlled a school system that ingrained how brains were wired. And the numbers bear out that a lot of young people believed they were fighting in defense of the United States by waging war in Afghanistan. Counter-insurgency action taken by the recognized government of a nation….constituted by who? And if the rebellion in a foreign land was thought to be unjust, who had made the determination and why had the US government selected this particular land, of all the places, to fight over? When you had a neighbor like Pakistan, supposedly an American ally, who was aiding and abetting the rebellion.

When inequality threatens stability, and homicide was waged against you. As pro-democracy uprisings spread across the Middle East, Saudi Arabian princes were feeling increasingly isolated. And the Omaha World Herald was getting around to sending their own reporter to Afghanistan where it is difficult to impossible to make a distinction between an insurgent, a supporter of a non-combatant insurgent, and an entirely uninvolved members of the population. Apparently the publisher thought a story was going to be breaking out in Afghanistan. Soon.

And consequently because of that war, my country has been spending $193 million per day fighting in foreign lands, not really counting the cost, aiding and abetting in a counter-insurgency action taken by a recognized government, and these young people were willing to sacrifice their lives.

When you controlled a school system that ingrained how brains were wired on how to recognize legitimate governments, maybe someone was confused as to the geography –thinking Afghanistan was located next to Egypt or Tunisia. But counter-insurgency operations have often rested on a confused, relativistic distinctions. And in such a secular world, when a school system had ingrained how brains were wired on how to recognize legitimate governments, and maybe someone was confused as to the geography…or very concerned about their reporters’ safety as Islamists rebelled against a constituted authority in some kind of world-wide movement. So maybe exporting “democracy” to a parts of the world which had never had the experience, without checks and balances, without a respect for the dignity of a minority, was not such a good idea.

When you waged organized homicide called war, and the majority in a society accepted it. The way brains are wired, when inequality threatens stability. Never counting the true enduring stress syndromes, in the ecology of the soul, with all the post traumatic stress which came into people’s lives, people’s homes, after war, in representative democratic republics. In stories not necessarily ending in freedom

There seemed to be a lot of rebellion going on in the new year. In the age of globalization, when everybody on earth seemed to want to make some kind of contribution. Republicans exporting “democracy” to a parts of the world which had never had the experience, and now Democrats in the name of hope, if not change, because their brains are wired that way. Not counting the cost. Where inequality threatens stability. When the preeminence of the US dollar was no longer stable, and with its instability, we had now exported the problem elsewhere. To China, and those OPEC nations. All the rebellion resulting from the unrecognized monetary wars, to fund the counter-insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. When inequality threatens stability.

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Declarations of Bankruptcy

With the Wednesday anniversary of the $787-billion package of tax cuts and spending in the Recovery Act, in defense of the stimulus, President Obama said, “One year later, it is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second Depression is no longer a possibility.” Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington marked America’s legalized corruption by sniping at each other. Bankrupt after 8 years of the leadership of George Bush, Republican lawmakers stepped up their attacks on what was the Paulson-Bush stimulus plan, calling it wasteful and ineffective.

From an article by Simon Johnson in the Atlantic, America’s Legalized Corruption

“The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.”

From the transcript of Frontline on February 16, 2010:

“We didn’t truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,” says Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] — an obscure federal regulatory agency — who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country’s key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis.

“They were totally opposed to it,” Born says. “That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?”

They being the same people advising the current president. Then Assistant Treasury Secetary Lawrence Summers, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, as well as Alan Greespan heading up the Federal Reserve. And who did Timothy Geithner worked for through this all? As Henry Paulson got his start working in the Nixon White House; was it for Erhlichman or Haldeman? He learned under the best of hatchet men.

It had taken 40 years of the media making us all world experts, and this expertise along with the lobbyists had bankrupted American government. It was why I felt uncomfortable having my retirement accounts with Fidelity, with Merrill Lynch, with Morgan Stanley. They all had hijacked the government of the United States, through the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

One year later, President Obama was sounding a lot like George Bush, announcing victory in Iraq. Or Henry Paulson and Ben Ben Bernanke, with their similar pronouncements all along, when the Bush Administration on July 13, 2008 rescued Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Bear Stearns. When that second Depression “was no longer a possibility.”

The Congressional Oversight Panel, chaired by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, warned on the same anniversary date that it remains “deeply concerned” that commercial loan losses could jeopardize the stability of many banks, particularly the nation’s mid-size and smaller banks. Highlighting yet one more hurdle for this country’s fragile economy, a wave of commercial real estate loan failures could threaten over the next few years America’s already-weakened financial system. The Congressional Oversight Panel was formed as part of oversight for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

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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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48 Hours

Hush money.

The Telegraph had the news of David Letterman’s revelation that he had sexual relationships with female employees of his show. Letterman said after his monologue last night on the air that he had received a demand by an alleged extortionist, according to CBS an employee of “48 Hours,” to either pay $2 million or risk his relationships being made public.

Letterman’s own production company according to the Los Angeles Times, does have a sexual harassment policy in place which does not prohibit sexual relationships between managers and employees, said a spokesman for Worldwide Pants.

After making a living off as a comic over Monica Lewinsky and Eliot Spitzer jokes, Letterman put the spin that the real story was about extortion, and the “threat” to him over his “creepy behavior.” According to Nick Allen of the The Telegraph.co.uk, during the CBS “Late Show with David Letterman,” Letterman revealed earlier that day he appeared before a grand jury about an alleged extortion attempt connected to his sexual liasons with women who worked for him which would clearly involve issues of sexual harassment in his admitted “creepy stuff…relationships.”

The Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, with a perceived timing orchestrated by Worldwide Pants, held a press conference within 14 hours to announce the specifics, revealing charges brought against CBS News producer Robert “Joe” Halderman.

Worldwide Pants. Caught without their pants on. “We have a written policy in our employee manual that covers harassment. It is circulated to every employee every year. Dave is not in violation of our policy and no one has ever raised a complaint against him.” So said the statement. Letterman’s own production company. Letterman did not believe in sexual harassment? He was an agnostic when it came to sexual harassment? What about the people who did not get the promotions that his staffers got in the Worldwide Pants world?

Thursday CBS said the “48 Hours” employee charged with attempted grand larceny was suspended from his job. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau in a press conference revealed the charges against CBS News producer Robert “Joe”Halderman. Mr. Halderman has not gotten the same public forum to address the world that Letterman was given about his alleged wrong doing. There also was no word on how CBS was dealing with the issues of sexual harassment, if corporate policy was violated. What a time for those human resource staffers. Apparently CBS feels extortion from an entertainment star was a worse offense than sexual harassment of female staffers, or the collateral damage of sexual harassment.

Fox News New York has reported that according to a search warrant, Robert “Joe” Halderman’s girlfriend Stephanie Birkitt was one of the women that Letterman slept with. According to Fox News New York, Ms. Birkitt is Letterman’s former assistant. Fox News New York has reported that the search warrant states the package Halderman sent Letterman contained copies of parts of Stephanie Birkitt’s diary and correspondence.

Entertainment Tonight showed later featured appearances of Stephanie Birkitt over the years on “Late Show with David Letterman” from venues like the Winter Olympics.

Letterman was quoted on his show as saying: “I was worried for myself. I was worried for my family. I felt menaced by this. And I had to tell them all of the creepy things that I had done.

According to Nick Allen of the The Telegraph.co.uk, “The creepy stuff was that I have had sex with women who work for me on this show.”

Letterman described how three weeks ago he had got in his car early in the morning, found a letter within a package saying: “I know that you do some terrible, terrible things and that I can prove you do some terrible things.” The package contained the proof, Letterman said. He called his lawyer to set up a meeting with the alleged extortionist, with two subsequent meetings, the last one resulting in the delivery of the fake check. Robert “Joe” Halderman allegedly had threatened to write a screenplay and a book about him unless Halderman was given money.

According to Nick Allen, Letterman admitted on Late Night Show Thursday night to having “had sex with women who work with me on this show. My response to that is yes, I have. Would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Yes, it would. Especially for the women.”

According to Nick Allen of the The Telegraph.co.uk, after telling all to his audience Letterman lightened the mood. “I know what you’re saying. I’ll be darned – Dave had sex.”

So it was about hush money? The bizarre experience? The audience had scattered laughter throughout the confession.

Yeah. On with the show.

“It’s been a very bizarre experience. I felt like I needed to protect these people. I need to protect my family. I need to protect myself. Hope to protect my job.”

The bizarre experience! For the audience. An inappropriate place to make the revelation, by a host with an inappropriate sensibility about himself. A repeat offender. Someone who had to be making overtures. But on with the show. Before we gave it all too much thought. One-liners.

It might be a while before the president is going to be booking an appearance again.

Maybe Bill Clinton will show up next week to offer some support. Or guest Host Elliot Spitzer? What a time for those staffers trying to line up guests for next week.

The age of television. Performance enhancement egos and salaries. When the era of Rocky the Squirrel of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota was replaced by the era of Vigara sponsorship.

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/

Another Minsky Moment

According to Elizabeth Moyer in Forbes in November 2008, fighting the financial crisis has put the U.S. on the hook for some $5 trillion, one report says. According to a report by the inspector general for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, government’s maximum exposure to financial institutions since 2007 could total nearly $24 trillion. The watchdog overseeing the federal government financial bailout, Neil Barofsky, examined the 50 programs set up by the Federal Reserve as well as by the Bush and Obama administrations, and sent his report to Congress. Barofsky was to give testimony today to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

By the end of October 2008, more than half of the U.S. banks were pretend banks. A failure by the government to support the U.S. financial system could lead to “a depression,” Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat told reporters in September 2008. “To do nothing is to risk the kind of economic downturn this country hasn’t seen in 60 years.” Now, we were all going to have pretend dollars in those pretend banks. Like Citibank and all the other that needed rescue.

Those pretend banks? Providing a broad glimpse at how TARP recipients used federal capital, the report shows 43% of the banks used the money to meet capital or reserve requirements set by regulators. “Absent an infusion of capital [the bank] was unable to continue to meet the needs of its retail and commercial customer base,” one institution wrote.

What was the scale of the problem?

World GDP $47 trillion

World stock valuation $121 trillion

Bond market $85 trillion

Credit derivatives $473 trillion

Bloomberg had reported the total bailout and loan guarantees, the stimulus, totaled $9.7 trillion. As a result of big banks in too many businesses, this republic is threatened. This was not just a sub-prime crisis when people cannot buy homes and cars from a banking system. And the rest of us cannot sell. Where half of the banks are on the brink.

In a world with street smarts, you learned eventually that the “gang” problem had come to a neighborhood near you. Now you learned that the
same thing happened in the world of pretend banks.

With the system of government, why did we let financial institutions concoct a fix to the problem that in their greed they created? It was a worldwide bailout which would take 30 years or more to resolve and end up costing more than $350 trillion in the credit derivatives written, from what I had read.

No one would escape the world of “pretend” banks, where 43% of the banks used the money to meet capital or reserve requirements because there was no money there.

This was the latest version of gang warfare afflicting modern society.

What did you want to own in all of this? China’s reaction to this question, with currency, would determine the next chapter of American history.

Visual Web Search

Mark to Market Accounting

Monetary policy. And frozen food.

Each American household seemed to have an ability to freeze time. With cameras and camcorders. And in a sense there has been a loss of spontaneity, a loss of freshness.

Each American household seemed to have an ability to freeze food. There was an affect of frozen food on people.

Freezed time. In a sense freezed time was what newspapers did each day. It was explaining what was in a piece of art.

Banks. In a sense banks helped freeze money and surplus income. Saved surplus, not “invested” in companies. But money set aside without any appreciation that one day a power outage would come. Frozen assets. But food in the freezer goes bad at times of power outages. And maybe too much had been stored there in the first place. Stored out of fear of the day of famine? Stored out of convenience? Stored as a way to manipulate destiny, but with a bit of humility discarded.

Control. Monetary policy. Mine, the government’s, was about control. Human control had replaced natural law with a loss of humility as a result?

This power outage was worldwide. The commercial real estate crisis was here. General Growth Properties, the Chicago-based company, which is owner of regional malls all over the country, amassed $27 billion in debt by buying malls and shopping centers.

I was fearful of the duration of this power outage. And how far reaching. And I was fearful of people without power trying to wrestle with life to resolve their problems.

The news from overseas was that almost all British banks had no liquidity. The people of Latvia, already without power, saw little chance of rescue soon.

The commercial real estate crisis was here which, along with deflation over the next 6 months, will determine the extent of spoilage. Those earnings reports from Citibank, Wells Fargo, this week had been missing a large amount of transparency.

And in China. The head of the China Banking Regulatory Commission issued a statement published on its website Thursday that banks need to guard against making risky loans and instead focus more on sustainable lending practices. Banks must be “on high alert for the accumulation of hidden risks as loans surge,” Liu Mingkang said. According to published reports today, in remarks made at the Boao Forum for Asia, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called for more surveillance of countries that issue major reserve currencies. That would be the United States. This statement comes on the heels of discussion at the G20 meeting of a new world currency. There is growing distrust of America and the politics involved in our currency. Last month in an essay published on the central bank’s web site, the head of the People’s Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, proposed the creation a new international reserve currency. Seeking to expand currency swap agreements that are seen as a step toward eventually making the yuan more of a global reserve asset, Wen said, “We should give full play to bilateral currency swap agreements and will study expanding currency swaps in scale and to more countries.”

It was monetary policy and the currency reserve that allowed imports from around the world to be sold so cheaply in the United States. And I was fearful of people without power trying to wrestle with life to resolve their problems.

Monetary policy. And frozen food.