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Who cares about the temper tantrums being thrown by the pampered media because they didn’t get to meet Tiger Woods? The real story is that while 50,000 people were at the White House asking the president to address climate change by cracking down on the fossil fuel industry, he was spending the weekend with a guy who is the epitome of Big Oil and much much more.
No wonder he was keeping the destination secret before this trip. Intended or not, it was a big F U to the people who had planned for months to travel to Washington to protest the critical cause of climate change. Worse, there has been no response whatsoever to the tens of thousands of protesters who came to his house on Sunday, nor to the many many more who were at coordinating marches in cities across the country and untold numbers of people who were there with them in spirit.
Well maybe there was another reason why the identity of Obama’s host was kept secret in the weeks leading up to the trip. The Tiger Woods golf date captured a lot of media attention, but the real story, in my opinion, is Jim Crane, the man who owned the Floridian country club and resort, who hosted the president for the long weekend, and who has a long, sordid history.
Jim Crane
James Robert “Jim” Crane is the owner of the Floridian Yacht and Golf Club, owner of the MLB baseball team, the Houston Astros, chairman and CEO of Crane Capital Group, director of Western Gas Holdings, former owner of Eagle USA Airfreight (air freight logistics business), Crane Worldwide Logistics, et al.
Crane took his profits from EGL and formed Crane Capital Group. He also became a director and shareholder (less than 1%) in Western Gas Holdings, LLC, the general partner in Western Gas Partners, LP, a mid-stream (mainly pipelines and natural gas gathering assets) energy company operating in the southeastern Rocky Mountain region and southern Mid-Continent area (Oklahoma and Texas) of the United States. Western Gas Holdings and Western Gas Partners are majority owned by Anadarko Petroleum Corporation. Crane is also the majority shareholder in Crane Worldwide Logistics LLC.,[5] director of Fort Dearborn Life Insurance Company (a subsidiary of Health Care Service Corporation),[5] and a director and executive officer in Champion Energy Holdings LLC..
A scratch golfer, Crane has been ranked as the nation’s top CEO golfer. In April 2010 he purchased The Floridian National Golf Club from H. Wayne Huizenga. The Floridian in Palm City, Florida recently completed major renovations and additions under the supervision of noted architect Tom Fazio.
[Emphasis added]
Link
Crane has a complicated web of connections with various corporations. Here is one diagram from corporationwiki that maps out some of them based on data from the Secretaries of State in Florida, California and Texas.
Oh brother, where do we start?
Oil, Gas, Pipelines
WASHINGTON — On the same weekend that 40,000 people gathered on the Mall in Washington to protest construction of the Keystone Pipeline — to its critics, a monument to carbon-based folly — President Obama was golfing in Florida with a pair of Texans who are key oil, gas and pipeline players.
HuffPo
The men at issue are Jim Crane and Milton Carroll though the HuffPo article mentions that other men from the oil and gas industry were in attendance. Crane and Carroll, both donors to Obama’s campaign, are directors of Western Gas Holdings, “the managing partner of Western Gas Partners, a midstream energy provider created by Anadarko Petroleum, one of the largest publicly traded oil and gas companies.”
Wikipedia describes Western Gas Partners as “(mainly pipelines and natural gas gathering assets) energy company”. You have to admit, that’s really rich — 50K people protesting a pipeline at the White House, many more doing the same in other cities, while the president is golfing with guys in the pipeline business.
Western Gas Partners’ main investment is in the booming field of natural gas exploration, transportation and manufacture in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Wyoming.
HuffPo
Anadarko
Western Gas Holdings and Western Gas Partners are majority owned by Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.
Link
I recognized the name Anadarko, for a few reasons. Most recently, they were involved in the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf. They had a “25 percent working interest in the Macondo Prospect” and the U.S. sued both BP and Anadarko as owners of the well. Another reason that I remembered them was because they are an American company with strong interests in oil and gas resources in Africa, and since our military is so interested in Africa these days, I’ve been interested in companies interested in African natural resources. But I also remembered a connection between Anadarko and George Bush. This was the company that was involved with the Harken Oil scandals, Enron-type deals to hide debt and overstate earnings. Bush was a director at Harken from 1986 (Harvard began investing 30 days after Bush became director), and 1993. Bush himself made the motion to approve the Harken Anadarko partnership.
From CommonDreams in October, 2002:
Harvard Role in Harken Called Deeper
Group Says Partnership Kept Bush Firm AfloatWASHINGTON – Harvard University’s financial relationship with President Bush’s former oil company was deeper than previously understood, with the university’s management fund creating a separate ”off the books” partnership with Harken Energy Corp. that helped keep afloat the financially troubled company, according to a report to be released today.
HarvardWatch, a student-alumni group that monitors the school’s investments, plans to issue the report and say that it has analyzed documents showing that the Harvard fund, an independent entity that manages the university’s endowment, formed a partnership in 1990 with Bush’s oil firm called the Harken Anadarko Partnership. The partnership effectively removed $20 million of debt from Harken’s books, relieving the Texas company’s short-term financial problems.
About the same time, the Harvard fund invested about $30 million in Harken, which also helped keep the firm afloat. The partnership has not been mentioned in recent accounts of Bush’s financial dealings in the oil business.
William K. Black, a former federal banking regulator, said in a telephone interview that he has examined the Harken Anadarko Partnership and concluded the arrangement was a significant expansion of the Harvard fund’s involvement in the company beyond the $30 million investment.
”Harvard had a dramatically larger financial stake and a much more interesting financial stake” than was previously understood, Black said. ”It all serves as a partnership device to move money from Harvard to Harken. This is beyond nuts from an institutional investor’s standpoint.”
Anadarko’s international “interests”:
The Company’s international oil and natural-gas production and development operations are located primarily in Algeria, Ghana, and China. The Company also has exploration acreage in Ghana, Mozambique, Brazil, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, New Zealand, Indonesia, and other countries.
Link
Turns out that Anadarko likes fracking a lot too. What a politically tangled, oily and gassy web.
Anadarko did a press release today:
“With the outstanding momentum we established in 2012 and the opportunities our deep portfolio provides, we expect 2013 to be one of the best years in our company’s history,” Anadarko President and CEO Al Walker said. “Our 2013 capital investments will focus on projects that generate rates of return between 30 and more than 100 percent in the current commodity-price environment, while spending within cash flow. We expect to deliver sales-volumes growth of approximately five percent, with the year-over-year increase comprised almost entirely of higher-margin oil sales volumes. The projected increase in oil sales volumes will be largely driven by accelerated activity in our Wattenberg and Eagleford horizontal programs and the anticipated ramp up of oil volumes during the year at our El Merk facilities in Algeria.
“Accelerating value by advancing our high-margin deepwater and international oil and LNG (liquefied natural gas) mega projects remains a priority in 2013, and we expect to continue pursuing carry arrangements and opportunistic divestitures to further enhance the capital efficiency of our portfolio,” added Walker. “Following our highly successful 2012 exploration program where we nearly doubled our original targeted resources, we plan to be among the most active deepwater explorers in the world again in 2013. We expect to drill approximately 25 deepwater exploration and appraisal wells this year, including high-potential prospects in the Gulf of Mexico and three potentially play-opening international opportunities.”
Link
War Profiteering
Crane was the founder and CEO of Eagle Global Logistics (EGL) and was the CEO until 2007. The company is now known as CEVA Logistics, after a complicated set of mergers and acquisitions explained in this Material Handling Logistics publication. Crane lost a bidding war and control of EGL and formed Crane Worldwide Logistics but he did run the company when they were dinged for war profiteering during the Iraq war.
EGL settled charges with the Justice Department — war profiteering charges due to activities in earlier years. I believe the case is now sealed but much of the information is available here:
(PressZoom) – WASHINGTON – EGL, Inc., operating as Eagle Global Logistics, has paid the United States $300,000 to settle allegations that the company’s local agent in Kuwait overcharged the military for rental charges on shipping containers to Iraq for the period from January through June of 2006, the Justice Department announced today. The Houston-based company’s containers were for shipments of military cargo to Iraq under an EGL subcontract with KBR, the prime contractor for the U.S. Army’s LOGCAP III contract for logistical support of military operations overseas.
[...]
In August 2006, EGL paid the United States $4 million to settle potential civil claims under the False Claims Act based on the company’s alleged inflation of invoices for military cargo shipments to Iraq under the same subcontract with KBR.
Two employees of Crane’s company pled guilty to charges of war profiteering as part of a “global price-fixing conspiracy by freight forwarders.” One pled guilty to overcharging for military shipments to Dubai and the other, a managing director, pled guilty to “paying kickbacks to receive future business from KBR, a major contractor that was once a subsidiary of Halliburton.” Oh, Halliburton too! Well, to be fair, Hallliburton probably had their hands in everything that involved profiteering and bribery.
To facilitate the Astros purchase deal and calm tensions, Crane hired a PR man who has experience with crisis management, got a letter from a lawyer saying that he was not the target of the investigation, it was just a few bad apples, and he probably didn’t even know what was going on. EGL’s senior managment says they were fired and later pled guilty when prosecuted. EGL continued to do government work.
EGL had $82,500,000.00 in government contracts between 2001 and 2006.
Equal Opportunity Cases
As if all of that was not bad enough, here is the part that I find to be most shocking.
In 1997, complaints were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regarding Crane’s Eagle USA Airfreight and its position on hiring blacks and women of child-bearing age. The EEOC issued a scathing 104 page report (most EEOC reports are said to run 3-5 pages), found that to be true, and added that Crane’s company conducted a practice of paying “female and minority employees less than white men who do similar work; did not investigate employee complaints of sexual harassment; and destroyed evidence that the company was instructed to retain as part of the two-year EEOC investigation,” according to a Houston Chronicle article from 2000.
Forbes
The Missing Houston Chronicle article
The Houston Chronicle article link is no longer operative. Actually, the link is operative, but all the content in the article is gone baby gone. Now maybe this is a technical issue, since the article is from the year 2000. But in Jim Crane’s Wikipedia bio, there is a reference to this article, and the editor notes that the article was “Retrieved 2011-10-31″. So that article was apparently available until late 2011. But now all the content in the article has been deleted.
Luckily it was based on publicly available information and it was cited and linked in many different places, like here and here. There are also numerous other articles and news reports about this history of discrimination and the EEOC and court cases. If the article was disappeared, I’m not sure why.
Crane told his subordinates not to hire blacks because “once you hire blacks, you can never fire them.” On other occasions, Crane explained the reason he wanted to keep blacks out of the company was that his top managers are bigoted and they would mistreat the minorities, “giving them no choice but to sue Eagle.”
Witnesses also said Crane did not permit the company to advertise job openings because he did not want to create a paper trail of unhired qualified minorities.
To discourage blacks and women from applying, Eagle managers refused to let female and minority applicants enter its secured facilities to fill out job applications. Eagle disagreed with that assessment.
Crane also warned managers not to hire women of child-bearing age because their productivity would be low. And top company officers told employees that women aren’t suitable for management positions because male managers won’t work with a woman.
After reading that, it would not be surprising if we learned that the Chronicle content was scrubbed, though, as I mentioned before, it has been excerpted in many other places on the internet, so scrubbing it is not all that effective. This issue is worthy of a whole article of its own. Jesus. This sure looks like racism and sexism to me. If it somehow doesn’t reach that bar, those quotes are definitely examples of blatant discrimination and bigotry.
When the company’s own General Counsel, Judith Robertson, testified in 1997 and became a whistleblower, they sued her for violating attorney-client privileges, and since the current whistleblowing laws were not in place at the time, she settled with Eagle out of court. They then used this to try to end the EEOC case. EEOC denied the claim given the fact that they had testimony from dozens of other employees.
Ultimately, however, the original case was sealed until May 2000, when it was closed and a new case was opened for civil proceedings after the EEOC joined into a discrimination case as a plaintiff. (Eagle USA Airfreight, et al v. EEOC, “Civil Docket,” Case #4:98-cv-00316, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas; Eagle USA Airfreight, et al v. EEOC, “Civil Docket,” Case #4:2000-cv-01535, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas; Dube v. EGL, “Memorandum & Order,” Case #2:2000-cv-02461, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, July 5, 2000).
Forbes
Crane later sued the EEOC and disputed some of the claims, and the number of claims was reduced considerably. EEOC originally sought $20 million. They settled at $9.5 million and EEOC was later required to reduce that by $6 million because it was decided that most of the cases were not worthy of compensation.
Crane’s spokesman, Bill Miller, called the E.E.O.C. investigation “a shakedown”
NY Times
But in addition to this EEOC case, there were eleven more discrimination cases filed against Eagle.
NAACP Objections to Crane’s Ownership of MLB Team
When Crane was in negotiations for the purchase of the Houston Astros, all of these facts about his history of discrimination came out in many media reports. This was, and still is a well known fact, and it has been reported over a more than ten year period in the Houston area. Since Crane took control of the Astros in late 2011, this has been in the news as recently as one year ago.
It was enough of a problem for Crane’s company to reach a $9 million settlement with the EEOC. And now it’s something other Major League team owners will have to consider when they vote to approve or block Crane’s offer for the Astros.
“You have issues at times,” said McLane. “He said that was a learning experience for him and he has certainly moved well past that and has never had another problem.”
If the deal does go through, the NAACP is asking for someone to keep watch.
“We are deeply concerned that someone, that has a broad reach throughout the community and across the country regarding employment … has such a dismal record in the area of discrimination. As such this is someone that should be monitored very closely in the area of employment discrimination as it relates to minorities and woman,” the group said in a statement.”
ABC News
Crane later met with NAACP to give them assurances about fair hiring practices.
Who will Obama side with?
On Alternet, Medea Benjamin writes:
But Crane is also mucked up with the very “Big Oil” the activists were railing against. His extensive business deals include a partnership in Western Gas Holdings, a company engaged in gathering, processing, compressing and transporting natural gas and crude oil for Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, one of the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas exploration and production companies.
[...]
So while President Obama was relaxing with one of the nation’s elite who makes millions from destroying the planet, activists—most of whom voted for Obama—were circling the empty White House with their pleas to stand up to the fossil fuel industry.
[...]
There are the moments in history when leaders are remembered for the decisions they make. This is a moment of truth for both President Obama and for the future of the planet. [...] Will he side with the indigenous women, clear air, clear water, cultural heritage and ecosystems or will he side with wealthy oil men?
For all of the reasons laid out above it’s hard to imagine why Obama would publicly associate himself with this guy, and how it cannot be taken as a big F U to the environmental movement.
Updates
350.org has posted a reference to the Huffington Post article about this subject and now has an action page.
Go on over and use their action page to contact the president.
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42 Comments
Thanks for reading.
So while the media was obsessing over the lack of access for the photo op with the pres and Tiger, the real story is the pres golfing with a discriminatory, war profiteering, billionaire oil man. No to mention this was on the same day that the largest march for the environment was taking place. I wonder how many of those marchers voted for Obama? What an insult.
“Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.”
Well, that’s how it looks to me, themomcat. But it worked. The media reported about Tiger Woods, not Jim Crane. Huffington Post and a few others picked up on the “oil guys” story but I haven’t seen anyone else pick up on the EEOC cases (there were a couple thousand) or the Justice Dept. getting his company for war profiteering. And I’ve only scratched the surface. We don’t really know what his interests are when it comes to future oil and gas.
obama has been flacking his, “all of the above” energy policy for a while. the policy would be better named, “leave no major energy sector donor behind.” the policy is to continue supporting fossil fuel exploitation (including fracking, offshore and arctic drilling) while making some investment in alternative energy sources.
obama has no taste for offending big energy; the only thing that we are likely to get out of him is a carbon cap and trade scam that enriches his buddies on wall street and passes the costs onto the little guy.
350.org & Bill McKibben react
Tell Obama: Reject Keystone XL & Stop Golfing With Big Oil!
True enough. A “market based solution” seems like the best he might do.
But teaming up with a guy with thousands of discrimination claims against him is still baffling.
Thanks for digging up all this additional info on Jim Crane. Is Obama’s due diligence team incompetent, or did Obama know that Crane is a bigot and just not care? Either way, the fact that Crane is an oil man makes it a definite F U to all of the people protesting on Sunday.
I find 350.org and McKibben’s reactions to this news just as tepid as their staged arrests last Wednesday. Back in 2012, the Sierra Club promised they’d be furious if Obama allowed the pipeline to go through. (Lots more info about that in wendydavis’ diary and comments here for anyone who may not have already seen it.) More calls and letters to the man who couldn’t be bothered to be home when 50,000 people showed up at his house seems like huge waste of time. He has made it abundantly clear where his loyalties lie. 350 and McKibben are acting like junior high school girls pining after the quarterback who refuses to give them the time of day.
More calls and letters does seem tepid. Kicking up a fuss might push this out into the media, which the admin. hates, and might do some good. Protesting when Congress and the pres. is actually around and making the news is what they are most afraid of, I think. It’s hard to know. I tend to think they must have privately gotten a chuckle out of the whole thing, except the discrimination part. That part is truly baffling.
Obama decided to let it all hang out with the Boys in Florida. One’s a sex addict and the other is a racist oilman and Obama doesn’t care that we know this. He did leave the family home to view the demos and he is so arrogant that he doesn’t think his own daughters and wife might be offended by the company he keeps.
350.org and many other Enviro NGOs are the new Useful Idiots for our age, all they accomplish is to draw people away from the harsh reality that the battle to halt the pipeline is where it is being built not in DC.
I guess the administration must think the media is so lazy/whipped that they wouldn’t question his choice of golfing partners. You’d think that the Texas or Florida media might at least have mentioned it, since it obviously was a big story.
Once again, citizen journalists like yourself find the truth that the MSM and the oligarchs would rather keep hidden.
I meant to put a link in my earlier comment to the diary I mentioned; it’s here.
And thank you again for the diary. Highly rec’d.
So, it took until comment #9 to get the old ’350.org is Obama’s bootlicker’ canard. Except that the post accurately cites a 350 action alert from today urging people to call the White House and to let me them know that Obama’s golfing with the oil boys while the citizens’ rally was ignored isn’t going down too well with those citizens. This pushback doesn’t exactly fit the ‘Useful Idiot’ meme, but I’m sure the meme will continue anyway…
By the way, those who think the Sunday rally in DC was for Obama apologists might be interested in reading some of the facebook posts from RAMPS, the Coal Export Action folks, and others who attended the rally. They seem to be energized to fight whoever it takes to turn the tide against the fossil fuel fuel industry. I see very few Useful Idiots there.
Obama ignores 50,000 of his constituents protesting Keystone XL pipeline in DC and more across the country. Instead, he goes golfing with a man owns a company that builds pipelines: Jim Crane. Nice.
He not only ignores his constituents, he insults them too.
It would be interesting to know the reactions of some of the other groups who were at the rally, both to the rally itself, and to this further update on how Obama spent the day. I’m sure there were a variety of people and groups with different ideas about activism and how to approach this issue. Can you provide further insight?
joanneleon, thanks for doing this research and sharing. Recommended.
astounding.
I am amazed by this.
I have a lot of respect for the people who attend these demos but little for the Big NGOs that sponsor them. I’ve never heard of the Coal Export Action group but I see they got a hundred people to demonstrate in Montana so there not a Big NGO.
While coal and coal exports are part of the problem the Tarsands Pipeline is what we are discussing.
If the tide is turned it will happen on the Plains Edge not in DC.
From my perspective, the criticism of 350.org and the Sierra Club does not necessarily extend to each individual member. The leadership co-opted Obama’s logo, making the rally appear to be pro-Obama, and tried to control the overall message so that it did not become too critical of Obama. Surely they knew where Obama was and who he was with while they were protesting. Had they taken issue with Obama on Sunday, when they were on CSPAN and had at least some of the media’s attention, it might have come across as a little more sincere.
Lesser evilists *are* useful idiots–and nothing more. If the shoe fits…
Oh, and great citizen journalism here, recommended. Professional journalists are as corrupt as politicians. If you take what they write seriously you become just another useful idiot.
Apparently, ‘Obama’ in Swahili means ‘wanker’.
I see the Obots over on Daily Kult are beginning to attempt to clean up the mess over on Isle 1%
Democrats. Aren’t they adorable?
McKibben has been granted his high visibility (and “influence”) within the liberal environmental movement because what he is proposing will never be achieved. He represents a “progressive” vanguard voice of the “carbon fundamentalists”; that the global issue of climate change is simply a technical one: we just need to get down to 350 ppm and then everything will be golden (as well as creating a new investment market in carbon trading for Wall Street).
The problem is that global warming is not a technical problem; it is a systemic problem. The capitalist economic system requires continuous growth of markets and profits, which means continuous growth of resource extraction and worker exploitation – all accelerated by various forms of coercion and, not least, by war.
The quest for ever greater profits means externalizing costs: to the environment via pollution and environmental degradation; to ever greater downward pressure on working people’s standard of living and health. Global climate disruption is caused by the innate exigencies of capital accumulation. McKibben de-links global warming from global capitalism, and therefore de-links concern for the environment from social and economic justice. Environmental justice must be seen as part and parcel of economic justice, but that’s too radical for McKibben.
The traditional role of the Democratic Party, (at least before the rise of the DLC) has been to blunt the effect of grass-roots social movements, has been replaced (either wittingly or unwittingly) by “progressive” organizations like 350.org. We must challenge the narrative of the “technical fix” with a sustained critique of the capitalist system itself.
I’m distantly related to Jim Crane through my maternal grandfather, so I’ve had my eye on him for a while, particularly the Anadarko connection. First I read that Obama was partying with Crane while 350.org got burned, though.
My how tolerant of tyranny we’ve become.
Americans are awfully good sports aren’t they? Getting royally f*cked every day,year after year, tyranny after tyranny, atrocity after atrocity, and taking it all with a shrug and a smile and being oh so tolerant, awfully sporting of us overall.
The bodies and the money just keep piling up, the insanity just keeps growing, the futility and the mendacity have tipped the richter scale, yet, here we all are, sucking it all up, taking it in the posterior and sappily shrugging it all off as if it were all normal.
We can take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. I wonder if we will ever, ever get tired of it, get to a point where we’ve simply had enough and say so, or if we’ll just vanish into the fog of apathy and oblivion with a sigh and a whimper, like abused wives, tolerating it until we just give up in exhaustion and frustration. Or has this already occurred?
Maybe the bottom line is whether or not we all seek the same depth of changes in our society. There is no doubt that whether under the control of Democrats or the Republicans, the number one beneficiary of political decisions, be they foreign policy or domestic, will be large industries/the extremely wealthy – that is, the general protection of the status quo, and the continuation of a capital-before-people mentality, the right of the US to impose its will on sovereign nations for the benefit of its corporations.
If people are comfortable with this reality, if a slightly higher minimum wage and a slightly friendlier attitude toward minorities or some minor (and generally unenforced) efforts toward reducing environmental damage, if changes on that level are good enough, then I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. But if people are seeking significant change, if they want to see the current military occupations end, the power of the military-industrial complex diminish or disappear, and the rights of working people protected, health care for everyone, fair elections based on platforms rather than personalities, or other changes of that magnitude, then an honest analysis of the Dems’ desire/ability to make those changes must be undertaken. And by all analyses I don’t see these changes coming through them, ever.
I wish it was a matter of pressuring them, writing letters, lobbying their offices, supporting certain candidates. But it has been shown time and time again that these measures don’t work. And this is the question I still don’t seem to have a clear answer for – what evidence is there (in this time of high-paid and high-powered corporate lobbyists, manipulated elections, pro-corporate media, etc) that the citizens of this country have any real influence over the politicians in Washington, or even that elections actually represent the will of the American people? If placating legislation here and there is good enough for you probably quickly forget that when it comes to the big national issues – war, health care, oil dependency, environment, there is little more than rhetoric and half-measures. It’s the whole thing about doing the same things over and over and expecting different results….The main arguments I have seen for continuing to focus on the Dems as a force for real change are based on faith, not fact.
As an aside, I have been doing a fair amount of reading about social uprisings,revolts, and revolutions lately. There is one thing I know for sure – people successfully demanding social change is NOT some impossible dream. It has happened throughout history, all over the globe. It is common, it is necessary, and, as far as I am concerned IT IS TIME.
That isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. As a friend of mine pointed out, Obama is a master of symbolism and it was no coincidence that he left D.C. the weekend of a big environmental protest to play some golf with oilmen.
That’s a pretty decent perspective you are offering on 350.org, and Sierra Club, and its one I share.
What’s more disturbing Obama’s actions or the pathetic reactions by the do-nothing liberal “action” groups?
Anyone who is surprised by any criminal confluence attached to Obama is at this point inexcusably naive. Hell I knew all about this charlatan in 2006 and I don’t have a crystal ball. People didn’t listen. Just follow the money.
And watch how many of these idiots like McKibben, Moore, Solomon and countless other liberal gatekeepers will get on the bandwagon of whoever the Dems throw in the cesspool come 2016.
Will you citizen?
Oh – GREAT diary,
Thank you joanneleon for your extensively researched article. Hope to follow more of your work here in the future. Oh look, Michelle has a new official portrait with her new doo. Oh Scott Pelley/CBS, doo tell us more…
Thank you joanneleon … a worthy effort that reflects well on you
… this stuff needs to be seen and said … recommended
Whatever unreels from now until early 2017 on part of POTUS Barack Obama and Obama WH one should be prepared to see serial repeats of what joanneleon so ably has revealed above.
Barack Obama plainly is a very skilled politician who has easily played enough USians twice now to accumulate enough political good support and above all enough votes by count to gain control of the WH. Twice.
What took / has taken place after winning the 2008 WH election and plainly is now taking place after 2012 WH election becomes a serial disconnection from what Barack Obama says or suggests while campaigning to be POTUS and what Obama does as POTUS. It is safe to suggest Barack Obama employs suspended disbelief and misidirection in ways that truly reveal the calibre of Obama as politician. To still be surprized by or with this being so with Barack Obama as politician in Feb. 2013 is now way too late to matter much anymore.
Too bad so many USians were so taken up attacking and defeating Mitt Romney during the 2012 WH last election laps instead of putting the fear of God and common pissed off man into Barack Obama,making him truly feel some electorate fear and then just as a vivid example pull Barack Obama down anyway and deny him the WH after Jan.2013. This was the needed political message to send and action to act on. Too bad this did not take place. What joanneleon reveals/spotlights above shows why.
This UniParty stuff is real folks — either get it or suffer and perish as UniParty games US national election cycle(s) and USians with silly R vs. D junk and worthless team color gimmicks and trinkets. This is not news anymore. This is history since 1980 if one accepts the premise Ronald Reagan was a front man for G.H.W.Bush (MIC)(Wall St.)(Fascist Corporatism)(CIA)(1%) who then ran the WH from behind the curtains for eight years while RaygunRonny did Presidential Cameos and then as actual POTUS for another four years. Eight years later after the mediocre W.J.Clinton WH years G.W.Bush was installed as POTUS via a palace coup. Eight years later along came Barack Obama who plainly post Jan.20,2009 had no intention of going after G.W.Bush for the Iraq Debacle or the 2007-2008 Wall St. FIRE looting sprees multiple collapse epidemics/episodes. What part did USians not get in all this?
While the UniParty Rs are plainly not relevant as a national political party it is the UniParty Ds who need the Rs to play the two party game as it has been played since 1980. This is what makes the Ds the real culprits in so much of this UniParty poor governance / misrule as the Ds need the Rs so Ds look good or not as bad or to sell the Ds LO2E BS.
Forget the Rs — they are political maniacs — it is these duplicitous Ds that need to be cut loose as they serially failed to crush the Rs despite 2006 and 2008 elections. Exile Pelosi/Clinton/Obama Ds.
Don’t blame Jim Crane. Jim Crane knows what he is doing and knows what he is paying for and buying. Do nail Barack Obama for being a crass and duplicitous D or DINO and ReaganAdmirer. Jim Crane isn’t POTUS. Barack Obama is.
Everything Barack Obama does / does not do as POTUS sends a message. Everything.
O and D zealots at this point have disqualified themselves politically and really should just stop with the D zealotry. Reset. Reset again as needed.
>>> Free Bradley Manning. Jail Barack Obama
What are the chances of this being stated up top in the Support Bradley Manning Box Ad on FDL Front Page? Whats wrong with stating this? Describes who has been doing the evil to Bradley Manning directly or indirectly does it not?—that would be Barack Obama.
What part of this is still not clear here in early 2013?
>>> Free Bradley Manning. Jail Barack Obama.
Sooner. Better.
Joanneleon, Great job. Leaves one to just shake their head and say, WTF? Exposing those unsightly “warts,” while connecting the dots. Its is ugly.
“This UniParty stuff is real folks” Yes it is. It is called an “Asselephant.” A hybrid mutated political party, beholding to the monied interests called corporations. Jefferson feared it and Madison called it. Corporations gaining monopolies in commerce and trade would threaten the welfare of the republic, to protect their business models profit and self interest at the peoples expense.
“James Madison, Corporations, and the National Security State
Prepared remarks by Scott Horton, Liberty and Power Lecture, University of Alabama Law School, Tuscaloosa, AL, April 14, 2011″
http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/madisoncorporationsnss2.pdf
That is a really good way of putting it.
It took me a really long time to come to some of the realizations that you cite in your comment. I think I see some progress toward that in various arenas, so that’s something.
I’ve come to agree with your conclusions about the D party (to some extent) and a significant part of the grassroots left. Gatekeepers, opiate for the masses. They jump out in front of the march and lead it down a dead end street.
As far as activism goes, it’s a conundrum. We need to organize. Yet we need to pressure from the outside and not rely on “veal penned” organizations. We need parties to win elections in the current system. But major parties always become corrupted.
The internet might hold the answers to that conundrum. If it does though, for how long will we be able to organize using this tool before it’s declared to be too dangerous to national security or something?
When I read things like this at the White House site, I wonder:
I agree that some phone calls and letters are not going to cause profound or lasting change.
But what else can I do tonight? I can do something. I can refuse to sit here and watch this happening, remaining silent. When I added 350.org’s action page, I did not think it was the grand solution to everything. But it was something that people can easily do and do right now. I think that most of us here know that doesn’t absolve us from further action though I understand and agree with your concerns that it might subconsciously make us feel as though our job is done, or something like that.
When you ask for examples of when this type of activity has made a difference, I think there are many, but one that I can think of off the top of my head is SOPA. Aaron Swartz and others organized a huge push back on SOPA, and it worked. Do I think it was a permanent fix? No, of course not. We’re seeing CISPA popping up again right now. But it did stop Congress from a slam dunk passing of that bill a year ago.
I have this debate with people pretty often because in the posts that I write, sometimes I suggest contacting whomever and pushing back. I know my rep doesn’t really listen to me. But damned if I am going to let him do these things without hearing from me and getting some flack for it. I want the president and our other representatives to know that there are a lot of people who don’t want what they are creating/voting for and who know what’s going on. I do the same for things I support. I still believe in contacting the representatives who are my voice in a supposedly representative government.
Thanks.
The What He Says : What He Does disconnect is really astounding.
For me, the Washington bubble is just that, it commandeers, or attempts so, the entire planet. Humanity resides below. How shall we survive?
2009: As Obama Golfs with UBS CEO Days After Firm Avoids Criminal Prosecution, UBS Whistleblower Given 40-Month Jail Term
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/27/as_obama_golfs_with_ubs_exec
UBS, over the previous decade, had been recruiting and helping Americans secretly cheat on their income taxes.
Depleting the US Treasury during a “time of war” is certainly aiding and abetting the enemy – so Obama goes golfing with these traitors.
But, how else are we going to get excellent laws like ACA written if we don’t let the robber barons write them or at least tell us what to put in them? /s
We’re all terrorists now.
Really great post!
politicians could not get away with being corrupt without a complicit press. boycott media companies and their advertisers if you can- they are the soft underbelly of corporate control. if boycotting a paper causes their coverage to improve this will force politians to improve
You can’t kill vampires with sterling comments or silver emails. You can’t make changes by circling empty buildings. Where is the wrath of the people that brought us unions and leaders like FDR?
I’m sympathetic with this question, up to a point.
I’m sympathetic with the notion, which I hope is implied in your question, of what can easily be done. Not only is there nothing wrong in trying to figure out a theory of change that is easiest to implement, but given the trifling enthusiasm for politics by most of the public, “easy to implement” may be a rigid requirement; not optional.
As for doing something “tonight”, there you start to lose me. Yes, you never know what might go viral, have positive, unanticipated results, etc. However, like any idea, the usefulness of “easy” starts to break down when you push it too far.
There was a famous psychic, named Ingo Swann (who died very recently) who pointed out that there’s no schools for teaching how to take or grow power. (I think he meant power, in general, which would have included political power, but not been limited to such.)
People have been conditioned not only to be powerless, but to not even try to figure out how to acquire power, sufficient to force systemic reforms. The closest that I’ve noticed to this is lefties talking about what I take to be ‘traditional’ analytical perspectives of Marxists. You don’t see these ideas discussed too much even in left-leaning, gatekeeper type media, like the Nation magazine (much less MSM). I do see such ideas talked about in some blogs, like openleft and MyFDL.
I’ve never studied Marxism, so don’t want to say too much about how useful it can and should be. I have imbibed a bit, I suppose, by listening to class based analysis by Michael Parenti, e.g., and the paradigm of “class war” seems incredibly valuable.
Incredibly valuable, but insufficient. Why don’t these better-analytically-prepared Marxists (or people simply knowledgeable about Marxism) look for what to me are obvious strategies for taking power away from corrupted elements controlling the Democratic and Republican
mafiasparties? You know, stuff like this? And why are these folks unable, or unwilling, to hire a political game theorist with a track record, to try and get an objective projection regarding optimal voting strategies?I often despair that people are just too dumb to adopt a workable strategy, but it’s also true that, as Ingo Swann pointed out, schools for empowerment do not exist. Indeed, the lack of analysis and methodology for acquiring collective (political) power is so complete that I believe that 95%+ of the population would free-associate the word “empowerment” with the word “personal”.
Probably the CIA teaches courses on acquiring political power, but they are part of the system, and part of their institutional mission is to preclude empowerment by the hoi polloi (if Jesse Ventura’s experience with the CIA, when he was a governor, is any guide; and I don’t see why it wouldn’t be). I’m not counting on the CIA to teach the American people, who collectively pay their salaries, how to free themselves.
You make some excellent points and show how conserned people are stuck in a continuous loop that leads nowhere. Writing letters, signing petitions and attending demos that are completely ignored is more than a dead end, it drains activism away from the actions that might have some affect.
The people who are on the front lines of the Tarsands Blockade need help and support desperately. They are being ignored by the Big NGOs for the most part and need real Grassroots support.