Citizens United - DonkeyHotey flickr

This is a review of Jeff Connaughton’s book Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins by Matt Stoller. An in-depth review of a look inside Washington and to a large extent, a take down of  more than a few democratic Senators — most notably Joe Biden. By reading this review one would get the impression of it being the work of a disgruntled ex-employee, the author seems to think that it’s is deeper than that. I really cannot do this justice and I am sure Matt Stoller has left out some of the juicier parts.

Telling stories of how Wall Street runs the show and how professional politicians on both sides of the isle make damn sure this does not change. That what you see on CSPAN is an act performed by even the most idealized of the Democratic Party to look as life like liberal as they can. In the theatre this is known as Verisimilitude or the appearance of truth.

The book begins with Jeff’s entry into politics and ends with his complete disillusion with it. The corruption and debasement of our democratic process for primarily the personal gain of those involved.   How attempts at financial reform were thwarted by even the most liberal of senators.

This is a great part of the book, where Connaughton explains the wider circle of influence. “Professional Democrats are not just lobbyists. The term applies to almost all Democrats in the legal, policy, foreign policy, and even national security worlds, each one of whom is trying to climb the greasy pole of power.” These well-paid bureaucrats pass from a public position to a private position, hoping that Team Blue or Team Red wins so they can increase their monetary and political value. But the status quo is paramount, and anything threatening that brings the two teams together (as does, well, cash). This dynamic is well-covered by sociologist Janine Wedel’s Shadow Elite as a core element of corrupt economic organizations, this is a narrative documentation of it.

 . . . . .

[snip]

. . . . .

My favorite Senatorial reaction was from Dianne Feinstein. Dodd, knowing Brown-Kaufman was gaining strength but didn’t yet have enough votes to pass, called a snap vote. Connaughton wrote about the vote that “no one could confuse the issue, or so I thought. But, just before voting, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) – one of the most liberal members of the Senate — asked Durbin, the majority whip, “What’s this amendment?” According to Durbin, who later told Ted, he replied, “To break up the banks.” Giving the thumbs-down sign, Feinstein said bemusedly: “This is still America, isn’t it?”

The Blob incidentally refers to the Wall Street bankers and traders and lobbyists who call the shots.  Payoff will no doubt be thoroughly trashed and eviscerated by democratic loyalists who insist on looking at their party and politics in general through rose-colored glasses while taking heavy doses of Ecstasy. And as Matt Stoller says in his review here, Connaughton may even have a tough time getting employment selling used Yugos after laying down the gauntlet is this book.

However the insights given here are sure to create a stir assuming people decide to actually read the book. Denial can be a very powerful force and the truth very uncomfortable, regardless of where it comes from.

From FLICKER

While getting some tunes online tonight, I began listening to an old one I have not heard in a while and though some updating might be interesting.

With apologies to The Eagles.

Your Lyin’ Eyes…redux.

Lawyers just seem to find out early
How to open doors with just a smile
A Wall Street banker
And he won’t have to worry
He’ll dress up all the laws and go in style

Late at night a big old house gets lonely
I guess every form of refuge has its price
And it breaks his heart to think his time is
Only given to a man with a heart as cold as ice

So he tells him he must go out for the evening
To comfort an old voter who’s feelin’ down
But he knows where he’s goin’ as he’s leavin’
He is headed for the cheatin’ side of town

You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you’d realize
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin eyes

On the other side of town a lobbyist is waiting
with fiery eyes and dreams no one could steal
He drives on through the night anticipating
‘Cause he makes him feel the way he used to feel

He rushes to his desk
They plot together
He whispers that it’s only for awhile
He swears that soon she’ll be comin’ back forever
He pulls away and leaves him with a smile

You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you’d realize
There ain’t no way to hide you lyin’ eyes

He gets up and pours himself a strong one
And stares out at the stars up in the sky
Another night, it’s gonna be a long one
He draws the shade and hangs his head an sighs

He wonders how it ever got this crazy
He thinks about the dreams he had in school
Did he get tired or did he just get lazy?
He’s so far gone he feels just like a fool

My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things
You set it up so well, so carefully
Ain’t it funny how your new life didn’t change things
You’re still the same old fraud you used to be

You can’t hide your lyin eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you’d realize
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes
Congress, you can’t hide your lyin’ eyes

And the original tune.

Some may say this is water under the bridge or that we should be concentrating on the extreme right IE Tea Party attempts on disrupting and discrediting the movement. But to me this is the most disturbing part of the continued repression that has once again surfaced. Naomi Wolf gave a credible account – to this writer – of the involvement of the federal government in the continued crackdown on public descent.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, “we are going after these scruffy hippies”. Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women’s wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

Anyone who had been involved with the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement of the 1950s through the 1970s would find this not nearly as surprising as some others. Very like the tactics of COINTELPRO used by the FBI – who gets it’s marching orders from the Justice Department.

According to attorney Brian Glick in his book War at Home, the FBI used four main methods during COINTELPRO:

1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.
2. Psychological Warfare From the Outside: The FBI and police used a myriad of other “dirty tricks” to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.
3. Harassment Through the Legal System: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, “investigative” interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.^[20]
4. Illegal Force and Violence: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations.^[20][21][22] The object was to frighten, or eliminate, dissidents and disrupt their movements.

The FBI specifically developed tactics intended to heighten tension and hostility between various factions in the black militancy movement, for example between the Black Panthers, the US Organization and the Blackstone Rangers. This resulted in numerous deaths, among which were the US Organization assassinations of San Diego Black Panther Party members John Huggins, Bunchy Carter and Sylvester Bell.^[20]

The FBI also conspired with the police departments of many U.S. cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago) to encourage repeated raids on Black Panther homes—often with little or no evidence of violations of federal, state, or local laws—which resulted directly in the police killing of many members of the Black Panther Party, most notably the assassination of Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.^{[20][21][22][23]}

Would it really be all that surprising to find out that DHS – along with the FBI – would uses some of the exact same tactics on OWS ? I think not. But Josh Holland seems to.

The difference between local officials talking to each other — or federal law enforcement agencies advising them on what they see as “best practices” for evicting local occupations — and some unseen hand directing, incentivizing or coercing municipalities to do so when they would not otherwise be so inclined is not a minor one. It’s not a matter of semantics or a distinction without difference. As I wrote recently, “if federal authorities were ordering cities to crack down on their local occupations in a concerted effort to wipe out a movement that has spread like wildfire across the country, that would indeed be a huge, and hugely troubling story. In the United States, policing protests is a local matter, and law enforcement agencies must remain accountable for their actions to local officials. Local government’s autonomy in this regard is an important principle.”

The problem here is that Holland is a known lackey and brown shirt for the democratic establishment and very, very deluded in his view of this countries political motives and ties to the money in Wall Street and other places.  Naomi has now given further evidence – as if more were needed – to her claims of heavy federal involvement in the repression that is being seen.

My evidence for federal coordination with local police exceeds the Wonkette citation, which was not, in fact, the basis of my confidence in writing about this coordination in the crackdown. I relied, rather, on many other sources of evidence. Among them, I was relying on what NYPD told me itself. I am certain that NYPD coordinates with federal authorities in OWS-related arrests because an NYPD official informed me that they did so through the bars of my cell, as part of his formal warning to me before my release, apparently to deter me from activities that might result in my rearrest. As I reported in the Guardian on 19 October 2011, part of the seventh precinct sergeant’s caution to me about what could happen to me if I was arrested again, if I “rejoined [my] friends the protesters”, was a threat based on his assertion of federal coordination with the arrests. He told me that in a second arrest, I would be photographed and fingerprinted, and the data fed into a federal database, to follow me forever. My partner, Avram Ludwig, confirmed that he was given the same warning about his data being fed into a federal database in the event of a future arrest.

Holland is more dangerously wrong in insisting on his conclusion of merely local police response – without reporting on what DHS is doing right now in response to the FOIA requests by many organisations about its possible involvement in the OWS crackdown. Holland should be aware that DHS, as of this writing, is not denying all involvement in response to the FOIA requests. Rather, the agency is on record as taking a legal position that appears to reflect some possible participation, at least at staff levels below the senior one: as Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the DC Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, wrote to me yesterday:

“We have filed FOIA demands with multiple federal agencies seeking public release of information related to coordination of the Occupy Crackdown. It is not credible for the federal agencies to suggest that they have no involvement in (and are somehow not paying attention to) law enforcement response to the Occupy movement both on a tactical and political level.

“Our constitutional rights litigation on behalf of demonstrators over the years has uncovered time and again federal agency involvement in what were initially claimed to be local police actions.”

And as any child of the 1960s knows, local police work very heavily with and to shield from view, the federal governments roll in any police actions.   But this should be old news to any who have studied the strike breaking tactics used in the 1920s, 30s and 40s as well as the civil rights and anti-war activists. Now the union and white middle class are learning what African Americans have known for a very long time.  That they have few friends in Washington whose orders come directly from Wall Street and Corporate America.

Is it any wonder that there as been relatively little been said from the White House or Congress on OWS ?

That the Democrats in particular have been resolutely silent  about the largest demonstrations in years ?