Using client's money to buy influence in Congress

again, nothing we don't know but still very useful to hear it from the horse's mouth...

jack abramoff on cbs' 60 minutes...



from alternet...

Abramoff: When we would become friendly with an office and they were important to us, and the chief of staff was a competent person, I would say or my staff would say to him or her at some point, "You know, when you're done working on the Hill, we'd very much like you to consider coming to work for us." Now the moment I said that to them or any of our staff said that to 'em, that was it. We owned them. And what does that mean? Every request from our office, every request of our clients, everything that we want, they're gonna do. And not only that, they're gonna think of things we can't think of to do.

money and power... that's what we're up against...

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Obama v. Cheney on Guantanamo, Prosecutions, Torture

obama on 60 minutes last night...

Commenting on former Vice President Dick Cheney's recent assertion that the closure of Guantánamo will make America more vulnerable to attack, Obama said, "I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney. Not surprisingly. You know, I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our Constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the wrong lesson from history."

"The facts don't bear him out. I think he is, that attitude, that philosophy has done incredible damage to our image and position in the world. I mean, the fact of the matter is after all these years how many convictions actually came out of Guantanamo? How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment. Which means that there is constant effective recruitment of Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the world."

juan cole...

It is worth asking how many US soldiers died or were wounded at the hands of ordinary Sunni Arabs who would have been at their day jobs if they hadn't been enraged by the Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo torture. In short, how many US soldiers did Cheney personally murder?

cheney is an evil man and the sooner he no longer has access to a public forum, the better off the world will be...

also, as i sit typing this in kabul, afghanistan, there are three afghans here with me in the office... not a single one of them have any use for the u.s. policies that have attempted to turn the world against islam, have murdered their countrymen on a wholesale basis, and that are keeping many innocent fellow citizens imprisoned in bagram airbase a mere 60 kilometers from here... they are smart people and realize that, in general, the u.s. people should not be confused with their leaders, and that folks like me have as much distaste for the criminal undertakings perpetrated by our government as they do... unlike us, however, afghans know THEIR government is worthless...

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Pay no attention to 60 Minutes... Carl Ichan is NOT a capitalist hero...

Carl Icahn

yesterday on 60 minutes...

Intimidating, relentless and rich. That, in a nutshell, is Carl Icahn. His investment strategy is simple: find a company he thinks is poorly run and then start buying up shares of its stock. Then, start agitating until changes are made. Along the way, the companies he chooses generally start improving, improving his bottom line over and over.

there's nothing that makes me want to puke faster than watching our worthless news media lionize a super-rich, arrogant, sociopathic, greedy, capitalist son-of-a-bitch like carl icahn... that business about "the companies he chooses generally start improving" is pure horseshit... if they do, it's only incidental to his primary goal which is lining his own pockets... here's what he did to twa...

Under Icahn's direction, many of [TWA's] most profitable assets were sold to competitors, much to the detriment of TWA. Icahn also moved the company's headquarters from New York City to his hometown, Mt. Kisco, New York. Icahn was eventually ousted in 1993, though not before the airline was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1992. Icahn emerged unscathed. TWA moved its headquarters from Mt. Kisco to the former headquarters building of McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis soon after Icahn left.

When Carl Icahn left in 1993, he arranged to have TWA give Karabu Corp., an entity he controlled, the rights to buy TWA tickets at 45 percent off published fares through September 2003. This was named "The Karabu Deal". The ticket program agreement, which began on June 14, 1995, excluded tickets for travel which originated or terminated in [TWA's hub airport] St. Louis, Missouri. Tickets were subject to TWA's normal seat assignment and boarding pass rules and regulations, were non-assignable to any other carrier, and were non-endorsable. No commissions were paid to Karabu by TWA for tickets sold under the ticket program agreement.

By agreement dated August 14, 1995, Lowestfare.com LLC, a Karabu wholly owned operating subsidiary, was joined as a party to the ticket program agreement. Pursuant to the ticket program agreement, Lowestfare.com LLC could purchase an unlimited number of system tickets. System tickets are tickets for all applicable classes of service which were purchased by Karabu from TWA at a 45 percent discount from TWA's published fare. In addition to system tickets, Lowestfare.com LLC could also purchase domestic consolidator tickets, which are tickets issued at bulk fare rates and were limited to specified origin/destination city markets and did not permit the holder to modify or refund a purchased ticket. Karabu's purchase of domestic consolidator tickets was subject to a cap of $70 million per year based on the full retail price of the tickets.

Hence, on most TWA flights, Karabu could buy and then sell a sizable portion of the available seats, leaving TWA to pay for its operating cost with the revenue accrued through the sale of any remaining ticket sales. In other words, TWA was flying passengers who were not paying them, but someone else. This deal left the company powerless. If TWA wanted to increase revenue on busy routes by putting a large plane into service, Karabu could only claim more seats. It is estimated TWA was losing around $150 million a year in revenue with this deal.

In trying to ameliorate the Karabu deal, TWA went in and out of bankruptcy in 1995.

lovely, eh...?

in 1999, i had an opportunity to see first-hand what icahn had done to twa when i was the general manager of an airport operation for united airlines... twa had decided to fly into the airport where i was stationed and we won the contract to ground handle their one daily flight... i got to know a few twa people and heard their icahn horror stories... much more damning, however, was to see the condition of their airplanes...

since their aircraft stayed with us overnight, that meant we had to move it off the gate to a remote pad, bring it back in the morning, and clean the interior before loading the passengers up for the morning flight out... i remember riding in the cockpit one evening as the aircraft was being towed to the remote pad... it was raining and i noticed a small puddle of water had collected between the rubber seal and the reinforced glass of the window on the pilot's side of the cockpit... i also noticed that a few food service napkins had been stuffed in there previously to try to soak it up, and it was obvious that it had been a problem for some time... on top of that, the smell from the lavatories was horrible... airplane lavatories are supposed to be thoroughly scrubbed and disinfected once a month, in addition to being emptied, flushed and cleaned daily... twa was obviously skimping on even the most minor maintenance... very sad, really, and all thanks to carl icahn...

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Iranian nuclear weapons are today's Iraq WMD's

from think progress...

In her first interview since Bush administration officials outed her as a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson reveals to Minutes that she was involved in preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon. In the interview to be aired this Sunday, CBS reports that she was “involved in one highly classified mission to deliver fake nuclear weapons blueprints to Tehran.”

and anyone would be in the least bit surprised by this because...? the threat of iran obtaining or manufacturing a nuclear weapon is in precisely the same category as saddam's wmd... our country's movers and shakers are totally committed to a state of endless war, regardless of the country or the area of the world, as long as it provides the opportunity to keep the rivers of cash flowing into the "right" pockets (apologies for the bad pun), to extend their power and global hegemony, and to monopolize the world's resources... iranian nuclear weapons are today's convenient smokescreen, cleverly designed to distract from their real motivations, and to keep the peasantry quivering in our boots, at least when we're not buying lottery tickets and hoping to strike it rich... we are one pathetic bunch of citizens...

[UPDATE]

i would be guilty of a glaring omission if i didn't mention that valerie plame's role with iran was first reported by larisa alexandrovna at raw story on february 13, 2006... larisa has been on top of a number of things, often WAY before the rest of the so-called responsible and serious traditional media... click on over to larisa's weblog, at largely, and show her some love...

congrats, larisa...

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