More on Judi Bari from this post last month: http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/11/01/50000-reward-for-information-leading-to-arrest-of-who-bombed-judy-bari/

Absolutely.

The Regents’ interest rate swaps were attached to LIBOR, which means they were fixed bets. UC has standing to sue, as other counterparties to LIBOR-based swaps have, but the Regents have neither litigated the contracts *nor even attempted to re-negotiate them.* As the report by the UC grad students points out, this could be due to the direct relationships some of the Regents and members of UC top management have to Wall Street firms, including B of A, which is one of the banks being investigated for the LIBOR scandal. (B of A stands to make tens of millions on one of the swaps the Regents approved.)

Thank you for that.

Repudiation of what, exactly? I didn’t argue that Obama is a progressive at heart. I argued that *there are those who believe that he is, and that if he caves on this issue they need to be disabused of that impression once and for all.*

I don’t know, because there are intelligent people who happen to have different opinions than you do?

You seem to presume that I believe it’s an open question. I don’t. But I acknowledge that there are people who think differently than I do.

Being attacked on this issue is a new experience. I usually find myself arguing with Obama supporters the point that everyone here seems to agree with, which is that the president is exactly what his record suggests, which is a neoliberal. Now I’m finding myself attacked by this community for being an Obama apologist, for essentially acknowledging that his supporters have a different view of reality.

Actually that’s the fairest representation of the point of the post I’ve seen yet in these comments. Though I’m not even arguing that it’s an open question. My point is that those who belong to the first category need to stop making excuses if Obama concedes on the fiscal slope issue. If he does not cave, then he’ll have to repeat that pattern for a time to come for any kind of convincing case to be made that the second term is a departure from the first.

Not really sure why that’s such a controversial argument, nor why it’s evoking such hostility.

“Delusional” how — or are you just drive-by commenting?

You’re right, and that’s not my audience. I don’t imagine Obama administration staffers read Firedoglake. My concern is more with those stalwart Obama supporters who I happen to disagree with but who are nonetheless intelligent and thoughtful people. Writing them off as idiots or zombies instead of engaging them on the facts and publicly testing their assumptions against reality is politically counterproductive, in my opinion. You don’t organize dissent by telling people they’re stupid sheep with opinions not worth hearing.

or that I prefer analysis to rhetoric.

I don’t disagree. As I wrote, if he does stick to his guns and prevail on the Bush tax cuts, we’ll have to wait and see if the pattern persists through the first hundred days before drawing the conclusion that he’s a closet progressive after all. The fiscal slope deal won’t be enough on its own.

That said, this post is me trying to give the President the benefit of the doubt for the time being, and spelling out what I think is a reasonable test for whether to judge the unfolding second term as a departure from the first, or more of the same.

If you’re talking about Jonathan Paul, he was subpoenaed in 1992. The attack you’re talking about took place in 2008. There were no time machines involved in the grand jury. Before you start throwing around names you might want to apply some basic reasoning skills.

As far as the Feldheim firebombing goes, that grand jury is described in the third paragraph. Please tell me what’s dishonest or inaccurate in that accounting. The US Attorney made four indictments (none of them for direct participation in either arson); they were all thrown out. The idea that animal rights activists perpetrated the crimes remains a theory of law enforcement and the university, not a legally proven fact, as currently nobody has been arrested. Now apparently there’s a grand jury to further the investigation; knowing little about its details, I’ve drawn no conclusions about it other than mentioning that it reportedly exists.

So explain yourself, please.

If we’re lucky, the AETA will be thrown out in court. It’s undergoing a constitutional challenge presently. I’m not holding my breath, and it will take years in any case, but at least there’s a chance.

The teachers (and the rest of labor) would have been campaigning full throttle for Prop 30 (an effort that certainly would have included a great deal of door knocking), but for the fact that Charles Munger Jr. and the Koch Brothers put Prop 32 on the ballot — a life-or-death issue for the labor movement as well as for all of the progressive issues unions champion. Should Prop 32 go down, which is likely, it still may achieve its secondary — and perhaps primary — goal of capsizing Prop 30 by dividing labor’s energy and focus. The Mungers are making a serious bid at becoming the family most responsible for destroying California’s future.

Sorry if I didn’t make that clear enough: The Northwest Grand Jury resisters are part a completely different case than the one discussed here. I mention them because they’re another recent, high profile example of the government using the grand jury process as a coercive tool to divide activists and turn them into informants on one another.

@Wendy — I just noticed that myself (the struck out text at IndyBay). I’m not sure what the back story is. @Carol — yes, the ethical questions raised by the use of grand juries against activists and the pressures to inform are complicated. I’ll have a post this week delving into some of those issues, featuring the perspective of someone who has been through it.

By the way, the post is updated with a bit more detail and with the further complicating fact (that I was unaware of until now) that the second bombing targeted a scientist who may not even have been involved in animal research, making the alleged connection to animal rights activists even more tenuous and precarious.

Thank you for reading (and sharing) it.

The FBI excels in coincidences.