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September 12, 2008

Campaign Realpolitik

The McCain campaign has lied about the Bridge to Nowhere, Obama's tax plan, and his vice presidential pick's record on earmarks, attacked the media for not treating Sarah Palin with sufficient deference, and run a series of highly disturbing ads against Barack Obama that leave little doubt they are designed to play on racial fears and stereotypes. "Morally unfit" to be president, one commentator lambasted McCain, who had previously vowed to run an honorable campaign, and been the victim of such vicious smears himself during his unsuccessful 2000 Republican primary run against George W. Bush. If there were a referee, perhaps he could be implored to cry foul and make it stop. But, having lived through 2000 and 2004, it's also not so surprising to observers that this is the kind of campaign that McCain has chosen to run at the top of the GOP ticket. He's determined to do whatever it takes to win, and his party has used such tactics, and successfully, in the past.

So what about seeing the political campaign world as it really is, and not how candidates say they would like it to be? So suggests washingtonpost.com's political writer Chris Cillizza in this chat today:

St. Louis: Since you're so "in the know," I was wondering if you've heard from Republicans -- off the record, of course -- that they're surprised by McCain's campaign. His traditionally Republican campaign is smart -- they win -- but it also seems so out of character for the old McCain we knew in 2000. What are Republican insiders thoughts on this change?

Chris Cillizza: Hmm, was that "in the know" comment a shot at me?

If so, well played. Onto the question....

Republicans have always -- or at least for as long as the Fix memory lasts -- adopted a realpolitik approach to political campaigns.

That is, they use tactics that work -- whether or not they are "fair". Republicans are, typically, far less concerned about the approval of newspaper editorial boards and the so called "eastern media elite" than their Democratic counterparts, a fact that allows them almost total freedom when it comes to how they conduct their campaigns.

Democrats, on the other hand, always promise to play as down and dirty as Republicans but when the rubber hits the road tend to back off somewhat.

The one Democratic politician in recent memory who didn't follow that blueprint was Bill Clinton; it's no accident he is the last Democrat to win elected office.

In the frame of campaign politics, "fair" doesn't really matter. Effective and persuasive do.

I don't condone this but state it merely as fact.

The jury remains out on how the Obama campaign will approach the final seven weeks of the campaign.

It's hard to argue with Cillizza. "In the frame of campaign politics, 'fair' doesn't really matter. Effective and persuasive do." There are virtues to running an honorable and mostly positive campaign that reflects the candidate's professed desire to usher in a new, less divisive era of politics to Washington (and perhaps additional political risks to Obama too in appearing too angry or negative). But with the stakes so high, there is more virtue perhaps in winning.

Pre-Palin, McCain Slammed Paltry Foreign Policy Cred of Mayors and Governors

This may be the best illustration of the cynicism of the Palin pick I've yet seen. In the primary, John McCain claimed Rudy Giuliani didn't have the foreign policy credentials to be president because he was "a mayor for a short period of time," and Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney didn't because each of them was "a governor for a short period of time."

If John McCain ever did interviews or press conferences, he might be asked about this apparent discrepancy.

By This Logic, Any East Coast Mayor Could Be John McCain's VP

If you've read any coverage of Sarah Palin's interview with ABC, you know that she is continuing to insist she has foreign policy credibility because you can "see" Russia from her state. Mike Tomasky takes the idea for a test run.

"Russia," as a political entity, isn't a bunch of rocks in Siberia. It's Moscow. We don't dispute that, right? Right.

So let's do a little experiment. How close is Juneau, Alaska's capital, to Moscow? It's 4,559.6 miles. Meanwhile, how close is, say, Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, to Moscow? It's 4,498.8 miles. (Distances calculated using this site.)

So there you have it. Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick is more geographically qualified to speak of matters Russian than Palin is. I wish someone would make this into a commercial. They'd never trot this argument out again.

Obama Goes on Offense: McCain Is "Out of Touch"

With his supporters increasingly grumbling about what feels like a campaign perpetually fighting back against John McCain's attacks, Barack Obama began an offensive assault today.

The Obama campaign is seizing on a statement by McCain Thursday night on CNN in which the Republican senator said, "It's easy for me to go to Washington and, frankly, be somewhat divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have."

In a conference call with reporters Friday morning, top Obama surrogates hammered McCain for the statement. Dick Durbin, senator from Illinois, said, "[McCain] wants to continue with George Bush have failed. If he would, you know, be in the real world of American families in New York, Illinois or Florida, he would understand that."

Rahm Emanuel, a representative from Illinois and part of the Democratic House leadership, added, "[McCain is] removed from the day-to-day challenges people have faced in their lives. And you see it manifest itself in the thing when he says, you know, I don't use a computer. I don't use e-mail. There's a whole economic revolution going on. And it fundamentally changed the economy, and fundamentally changed people's lives, and he is removed from it."

An unnamed Obama campaign official told Politico that the campaign's message is simple: "Out of touch, out of touch, out of touch."

The campaign also released two new advertisements Friday morning, one of which hits McCain hard for being behind the times. In it, the narrator says, "Things have changed in the last 26 years. But McCain hasn’t. He admits he still doesn’t know how to use a computer, can’t send an email. Still doesn’t understand the economy. And favors two hundred billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class. After one President who was out of touch, we just can’t afford more of the same."

The Obama campaign is also releasing a decade's worth of Joe Biden's tax records in the hopes of pressuring a similar move from Sarah Palin.

While the Obama campaign has a number of messaging options available to it that may be more effective than the ones it has chosen in recent days — "same as Bush," for example — supporters will likely be happy that Obama is on the offensive at all. Obama seemingly spent the summer parrying attacks from the McCain campaign, mostly on the subject of his celebrity. The defensive posture has only become more entrenched since the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain's vice president.

But now that period may finally be over. The media loves a comeback story, which may mean that next week is dominated by "Obama regains his swagger" articles. If that's the case, Obama may blunt the recent polling swing toward McCain in time for the first debate later this month.

New McCain Ad: Racist or No?

The McCain campaign has a new 30-second spot out, hitting Obama and Biden for mistreating Sarah Palin. It's below. Near the end, Obama's face is shown with the words "HOW DISRESPECTFUL." "Disrespectful" is actually the title of the ad.

Some are questioning whether that's racist. Here's TPM's David Kurtz: "Doesn't it just drip with contempt? The sort of old-fashioned contempt that whites often held blacks in (and obviously still do)."

I'm not sure I agree. I think "how disrespectful" could be effective if paired with an image of a white politician, too, as long as that white politician's calling card was civility and positivity. Tarnishing such a reputation doesn't depend on the politician's color.

Anyway, it's not often when an ad is obviously racist or obviously sexist. Ads are almost always in a gray area, as this one is. Each viewer can decide how he or she feels.

September 11, 2008

Sarah Palin's Wasilla Emails: Did She Violate State Law?

Sarah Palin made her bones as a self-proclaimed Republican reformer in Alaska when she turned on a Republican Party state chairman who had had been accused of wrongdoing. In 2003, that GOP leader, Randy Ruedrich, was one of three members of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission; Palin chaired the commission and served as its ethics officer. After the news broke that Ruedrich had hosted a Republican fundraiser with several oil company executives and had sent out an email notice for a different Republican fundraising event, critics demanded he resign.

Leading the anti-Ruedrich pack was Palin. She threatened to quit the commission unless Ruedrich resolved his conflicts. "It was a very simple issue," she said at the time. "It was black and white." And after Ruedrich was forced out, Palin, acting at the behest of state investigators, examined his computer files and found emails and documents showing that Ruedrich had used his state office to conduct partisan work for the Republican Party. The records Palin unearthed became evidence in a state investigation that led to a settlement under which Ruedrich paid a $12,000 fine.

Thanks to this episode, Palin became known as a Republican willing to take on a fellow Republican who had abused his office and misused state resources. But what was not known at the time was that a year earlier, Palin had used official resources for her own partisan purposes. In doing so, Palin, now the governor of Alaska and the Republican vice presidential nominee, might have run afoul of state law and the municipal code of Wasilla.

According to emails obtained by Andrée McLeod, a self-described independent government watchdog in Alaska, and shared with Mother Jones, in 2002, when Palin was in her last year as mayor of Wasilla and running for lieutenant governor in a Republican primary, she used her official city email account for campaign purposes. In a June 11, 2002 email to Randy Ruedrich--sent from her sarah@ci.wasilla.ak.us account--Palin asked if the state Republican Party would disseminate notices for her fundraisers. "I have a heckuva' lot of notices I would love to be distributed to all the [state party] lists because I'm not networked into all the valuable distribution lists that other candidates may be networked into," she wrote. "Can you do that for me?"

In a July 2, 2002 email to Ruedrich--with the subject line reading "right to life endorsements"--Palin complained that Alaska Right to Life, the state's leading anti-abortion rights outfit, had not endorsed her in the lieutenant governor's race. "Randy," she wrote, "I was allowed to 'vent' via [a] letter to the RTL Board re: their decision to not co-endorse pro-life candidates in the Lt. Gov. race. Man, I am disappointed." And the day before the Republican primary, in an August 26, 2002 email to Eddie Grasser, a leader of the Alaska Outdoor Council, a lobby for hunters and firearms owners, Palin expressed her disappointment at not receiving the AOC endorsement. She pointed out that she was a "lifetime member of the NRA" and a "recipient of its "Defender of the 2nd Amendment Award." In the email--which promoted her campaign positions--she objected to the process used by the AOC in endorsing one of her opponents in the Republican primary contest: "The AOC stated the endorsement was based on candidates' answers to the AOC's 'extensive questionnaire'...but in reality there was no questionnaire sent to Lt. Gov. candidates." She asked if she could "use the AOC's email address book to remind our members of my positions." And she encouraged Grasser to visit her campaign website. This email--also sent via her official Wasilla city account--was addressed to over 300 people in addition to Grasser. (In the GOP primary, Palin placed second in a field of five.)

Under Alaska state law, an officer of a municipality "may not use money held by the entity to influence the outcome of the election of a candidate to a state or municipal office." Asked whether this prohibition would cover a mayor using an official email account to promote and advance her own campaign, Holly Hill, the executive director of the Alaska Public Offices Commission, referred me to a decision issued by the commission this past July. The case involved a mayor of Unalaska named Shirley Marquardt. In 2007, she had sent an email to a city consultant and the city manager, noting who would be running against her for mayor. The commission ruled that this message had been more personal than political. But in its decision, the commission declared that the Alaska law prohibiting a municipal official from using public funds for partisan actions "covers a publicly-owned e-mail system."

The Wasilla municipal code also contains strict guidelines governing the use of electronic communications by city officials. Elected officials, according to the code, may not use the city's "electronic facilities" for "personal gain," to promote "political beliefs," or to "support or oppose any candidate for public office."

Palin is already involved in other email controversies. In response to an open records act request filed in June by McLeod, a registered Republican, Palin's gubernatorial office refused to release about 1100 emails received and sent earlier this year by Palin and her aides, citing what might be an iffy claim of executive privilege. McLeod has appealed that decision. And emails that were released to McLeod in July indicate that Palin, as governor, has used a private email account for her official duties.

As Palin and Republican presidential nominee John McCain sell themselves as a pair of reform-minded, no-business-as-usual agents of change, Palin has not yet answered questions about her email controversies. An email sent to Maria Comella, Palin's campaign spokesperson, requesting a comment for this story went unanswered.

UPDATE: In 2004, the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman published a story reporting that anonymous letters had been sent to the Alaska Public Offices Commission and several media outlets alleging that Palin had used her city e-mail account for campaign-related work, had held campaign-related meetings in her office, and had used her office telephone for calls regarding her campaign for lieutenant governor. The complaint cited the email she had sent to the Alaska Outdoor Council. Palin told the newspaper that this one particular email had been an isolated event. She blamed Randy Ruedrich supporters for launching an unfair attack on her; Ruedrich denied any knowledge of the letters. An APOC official stated at the time that the commission would not investigate the complaint because it was anonymous.

Exclusive: More on the Interior Department's Sex and Oil Scandal

Chances are you've heard about the bacchanal known as the Minerals Management Service. The arm of the Interior Department charged with collecting some $10 billion a year in royalties from oil and gas companies, it has been caught up in scandal after scandal, including this week's revelations that top employees were in bed (and not just figuratively) with the oil officials they were supposed to regulate. In between glacially slow-to-arrive FOIA requests, I've been looking into MMS and its weird party culture off and on for more than a year. Here's a few juicy details that you won't read in the Inspector General's report.

The IG tells us about two MMS oil marketers, Stacy Leyshon and Crystel Edler, who became known among oil executives as the "MMS Chicks." Between 2002 and 2006, each received more than $2,700 in gifts on more than 60 occasions from oil companies, including meals, booze, lodging, and golf outings. Leyshon, who slept with two oil company employees, operated a sex toys side business known as "Passion Parties" (think Tupperware parties, but with dildos) and bragged that it paid more than her day job at MMS. She told the IG that nobody in the oil industry had purchased sex products from her (though three subordinates at MMS had). However, that account is contradicted by former MMS Deputy Junius Walker, a high-ranking employee who worked in Leyshon's Denver office before retiring. "She's selling that stuff to oil and gas companies," he told me last year. "I mean, that's what she was doing. She was going around, going down to the oil and gas companies, putting on presentations. . .They were having a really, really good time."

The highest ranking official criticized in the IG reports was Lucy Querques Denett, the former associate director of the minerals revenue management department, who retired earlier this year. The reports found that Denett worked with two employees to steer a lucrative consulting contract to one of them after he retired, violating competitive procurement rules. The other employee later retired to work on the same contract.

Denett's eagerness to look out for her aides went further than this, several sources told me. Oil royalty auditor Bobby Maxwell, who gained national attention in 2006 for his $50 million False Claims Act case against the department and oil company Kerr-McGee, told me he had wanted to audit contracts signed between oil companies and the department's problem-plagued Royalty In Kind division, which collects $4 billion a year in oil and gas instead of cash royalties. But in 2002 the RIK department refused to hand over the contracts, Maxwell says, and Denett told him, "Leave it alone." He says she never explained why RIK couldn't be audited.

That year Denett also began hobbling her auditors in other ways. Since 1996, they'd operated by pouring over oil and gas leases looking for irregularities. Federal law allows MMS to demand that an oil company correct all of its production figures if an auditor finds evidence of royalty underpayments "based on repeated, systemic reporting errors for a significant number of leases." These demand letters to industry are known as orders for restructured accounting. Maxwell's office would typically send out two of the orders each month, often resulting in the collection of millions in unpaid royalties, but in 2002 Denett stopped signing off on them. Dennis Roller, audit manager for the North Dakota state auditors office, told me he faced the same problem, and asked Denett why she'd stopped approving them. He says she told him, "'Well, I have a hard time defining 'significant' and 'systemic.'" The change meant that auditors now had to pore over every lease individually, even when they'd identified a recurring error--an impossible feat with the department's limited resources, Maxwell says. He estimates the change has caused MMS to lose "tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars over the years."

Denett and Leyshon could not be reached for comment today and the MMS did not return a call.

This stuff just scratches the surface of the MMS free-for-all. So far the grand prize for depravity goes to former RIK manager Gregory Smith, who pitched the oil companies he regulated to do business with his outside consulting firm, slept with two subordinates, and bought cocaine from another RIK employee while on the job (DOJ, where are you?). Of course, last time I checked, there was also an ongoing GAO investigation, four False Claims Act cases pending against MMS in Oklahoma City, and a DOJ investigation of a Virginia-based MMS employee who allegedly traveled to Atlanta to have sex with someone he'd met in a teen online chat room who he thought was a 13-year-old girl.

"Unfortunately, as the Inspector General pointed out, the conduct of a few has cast a shadow on an entire agency," Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said in a statement today. That's certainly true, but given how long this mess has been brewing, eliminating the bad apples has got to start at the top.

Front-page photo from flickr user Orin Optiglot used under a Creative Commons license.

Mathematical Model Predicts Obama Win by Ten Points

Emory political science professor Alan Abramowitz seems to have a mathematical election model that works. Abramowitz's system has correctly predicted the popular vote winner within two percentage points for every presidential election since 1988. This year, it's predicting an Obama win: 54.3 percent, versus McCain's 45.7 percent.

The model isn't perfect, of course, but it does factor in a wide range of variables such as GDP, a party's time in office, and recent polls. "While factors outside of the model, such as rising partisan polarization and resistance to an African American candidate by some white voters may result in a somewhat smaller popular vote margin for the Democratic nominee," Abramowitz writes, "the combination of an unpopular Republican incumbent in the White House, a weak economy, and a second-term election make a Democratic victory in November all but certain."

If you're skeptical of models, check out the Iowa Electronic Market's trading index for the presidential election. For decades, it's been a much better predictor of presidential wins than Gallup polls. As of today, the market's predicting a 54 percent win for the Democrats, versus 45 percent for the Republicans. it could be a coincidence that those numbers are so close to Abramowitz's, or it could be that investors are reacting to his model's predictions. A third option: it could be that Obama actually is going to win by ten points.

Sex, Drugs, and Offshore Drilling

It looks like the folks at the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service have finally gone too far.

For years, the MMS has been assisting private energy companies in carrying out a massive rip-off of the American public through sweetheart deals for extracting oil, natural gas, and minerals from public domain lands. In the most recent issue of Mother Jones, I described the corrupt system that allows companies like Shell and Chevron to suck up these publicly owned resources at bargain prices, and proposed the abolition of the MMS as one of the ideas for “How to Fix a Post-Bush Nation.”

But except for the work of watchdog groups like the Project on Government Oversight, and of the Interior Department’s own tough-minded Inspector General, a former Massachusetts cop named Earl Delvaney, this travesty has received relatively little attention--until now. Apparently, even in a country where no one is surprised to find government officials figuratively in bed with the oil industry, we are still shocked to learn that they have been literally in bed with them.

On Wednesday, Delvaney’s office released the latest in a series of investigations focusing on the MMS’s Royalty in Kind (RIK) program. House Natural Resources Committee Chair Nick Rahall (D-WV) described the report as reading “like a script from a television miniseries--and one that cannot air during family viewing time.” It documents what investigators called a “culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” at the MMS, and what the Associated Press described as a “fraternity house atmosphere.”

According to the AP, "The alleged transgressions involve 13 former and current Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contract, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with--and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from--oil company employees."

The report stated: "During the course of our investigation, we learned that some RIK employees frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives." Two of the program's employees were nicknamed "the 'MMS Chicks'" by energy traders.

While corruption at the MMS has been documented in many earlier reports, it’s sex that sells newspapers—and, so it seems, Congressional investigations. After keeping the issue on the back burner for some time, Henry Waxman (D-CA) announced today that his House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform would hold hearings on the Mineral Management Service next week.

The revelations of rumpy-pumpy may finally inspire a real shake-up at the service, which is not only long overdue, but especially important at a moment when both Republicans and Democrats support expanded offshore drilling. Offshore oil and gas leases are managed by the MMS, which has a predictably dismal record of serving the public interest in this area: According to the Government Accountability Office, deepwater leases the MMS negotiated in the Gulf of Mexico already stand to cost U.S. taxpayers as much as $53 billion—and to pad the profits of the companies our civil servants like to party with by the same amount. It all gives a whole new meaning to getting screwed by the oil industry.

Sarah Palin on Russia

ABC has released excerpts of Charle Gibson's interview with Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Among the parts released so far, the Alaskan governor's views on experience, God, and US policy to Russia. Here is an excerpt of her comments on Moscow and how to deal with recent Russian-Georgian hostilities. Among her recommendations: that Ukraine "definitely" and Georgia too be given NATO membership -- with the commitment that the US as a NATO member would be required to defend them from any future incursion by Russia, and that the US consider measures such as economic sanctions against Russia to punish it for invading Georgia.

PALIN: We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We've learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.

We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it's in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.

Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his vice presidential pick Joseph Biden, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, have also expressed support for the extension of a NATO "Membership Action Plan" to Georgia. But Obama's comments back in August on the issue also noted that he aspired to have a more cooperative relationship with Russia:

Going forward, the United States and Europe must support the people of Georgia. Beyond immediate humanitarian assistance, we must provide economic assistance, and help rebuild what has been destroyed. I have consistently called for deepening relations between Georgia and transatlantic institutions, including a Membership Action Plan for NATO, and we must continue to press for that deeper relationship.

The relationship between Russia and the West is long and complicated. There have been many turning points, for good and ill. This is another turning point.

Let me be clear: we seek a future of cooperative engagement with the Russian government, and friendship with the Russian people. We want Russia to play its rightful role as a great nation - but with that role comes the responsibility to act as a force for progress in this new century, not regression to the conflicts of the past. That is why the United States and the international community must speak out strongly against this aggression, and for peace and security.

While some of Palin's stated policy proscriptions -- extending NATO membership to former Soviet states - don't appear wholly different from the Democratic ticket's, one notes Palin's tendency to the black and white view of the world and hardline antagonisms with which we have become quite familiar during the Bush/Cheney presidency. While Obama's lean to acknowledging the reality: that we live in a more complex world comprised of "long and complicated" relationships with countries like Russia from which we want different things, including cooperation on matters such as preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And as we've learned, talking tough may make Dick Cheney feel good, but it's hard to see what it's done for the people of Georgia; and there are consequences too to style differences and rhetorical antagonisms -- remember Freedom Fries and "Old Europe?" -- which come at a real cost to American interests when trying to get other countries to contribute more troops to Afghanistan (or Iraq), to cooperation in pressuring Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

Norm Coleman's $1 Million Mistake?

Republican Senator Norm Coleman may pay a big price for a small violation of federal elections law.

Coleman, who is locked in a reelection battle with comedian and author Al Franken, is running a television ad in Minnesota that fails to meet the requirements of what is known as the "stand by your ad" law. The provision says any political ad aired within two months of election day that mentions the name of an opponent must close with a four-second image of the candidate running the ad, along with his or her name and a statement that he or she approved and paid for the ad.

In 2006, then-Senator Rick Santorum got in hot water in Pennsylvania for violating this provision. Santorum put his image at the beginning of the ad and the written statement of approval and sponsorship at the end. This slip-up threatened to disqualify Santorum from receiving the heavily discounted advertising rate — known as the "lowest unit charge" or "lowest unit rate" — commonly offered to political candidates.

Now Coleman faces similar trouble.

The 30-second ad, which touts Coleman's credentials and criticizes Franken for having governed "nothing," closes with an image of Norm Coleman that is only 2 to 3 seconds long. As first reported by mnpublius.com, the Franken campaign's lawyers have sent a letter to television networks airing the Coleman ad that informs the networks of the violation: "Coleman and his campaign have forfeited their entitlement to the lowest unit charge for the duration of the campaign. Now and until Election Day, your station should charge Coleman and his campaign committee the same rate for broadcast time that it charges non-political advertisers for comparable use."

The discounted rate reserved for politicians is commonly 30-40 percent lower than what a TV network charges regular advertisers, with the discount getting larger as the election nears. A Democratic media consultant with experience in Minnesota says that Coleman, who reported $5.6 million cash on hand at the last filing deadline but likely saw a boost due to the GOP convention being held in his state, can be expected to spend $4 to $5 million on television advertising for the rest of the campaign. Without the discount, Coleman will have to either dish out around $6 million for the same amount of air time or he will have to run fewer ads than he originally planned.

The consultant said that the image of Coleman, which he estimated was shown for 2.9 seconds, involves "a 1.1 second error that could cost him $1.1 million."

Enforcement of small provisions of federal elections law is often tricky, because the Federal Elections Commission and Federal Communications Commission frequently move slowly. When they did act in the Santorum situation, they declined to force the TV stations involved to raise prices. Ultimately, says the media consultant, enforcement of the law may come down to the legal staff at the stations themselves.

Even if lawyers at local TV stations are not eager to irritate a sitting senator from their home state, the error promises to cost Coleman time and energy in a campaign in which he can afford little.

Palin's Supporters and Zombie Feminism

The excellent Rebecca Traister, who writes about gender politics for Salon, is totally on-point about what Sarah Palin means for women and for feminism. Here's a sampling:

The pro-woman rhetoric surrounding Sarah Palin's nomination is a grotesque bastardization of everything feminism has stood for, and in my mind, more than any of the intergenerational pro- or anti-Hillary crap that people wrung their hands over during the primaries, Palin's candidacy and the faux-feminism in which it has been wrapped are the first development that I fear will actually imperil feminism. Because if adopted as a narrative by this nation and its women, it could not only subvert but erase the meaning of what real progress for women means, what real gender bias consists of, what real discrimination looks like.

Check out the whole thing.

A Minor Obama Advantage: Three Places At Once

It looks like Palin will be by McCain's side throughout the campaign season. Here's First Read:

The McCain campaign is "very seriously considering" having McCain and Palin campaign together more often than not in the next two months, a senior campaign aide said...

The aide said the two have developed a strong chemistry together and will likely utilize it through joint rallies. He likened it to the chemistry Bill Clinton and Al Gore had in 1992, suggesting it was instinctive.

Of course, this has everything to do with the fact that McCain's solo attempts at campaign rallies aren't going well, and Sarah Palin has essentially become the draw on the GOP ticket. It's an advantage for the Democratic ticket. The fact that Cindy McCain is usually by her husband's side means that, for the GOP, the presidential candidate, the vice-presidential candidate, and the presidential candidate's wife are all in one place on any given day. On the Dem side, those three figures are all fully capable of campaigning unaccompanied.

Another Sarah Palin Email Controversy?

Is Alaska Governor Sarah Palin taking I.T. tips from Dick Cheney and Karl Rove?

As Mother Jones first reported, her office, responding to an open records act request, refused to release about 1100 emails involving Palin and her aides, citing what seems to be an iffy claim of executive privilege. And now another email issue has emerged: Palin's use of a private email account for her official duties.

Emails obtained by Andrée McLeod, the independent government watchdog in Alaska who filed that opens records request, indicate that Palin, who is running along side John McCain to replace Cheney, has used a gov.sarah@yahoo.com account--rather than an Alaska state email account--for official business. As McLeod, a registered Republican, points out, this raises at least two potential problems. One is security. Is Palin conducting state business outside of secured Alaska state servers? Another is transparency. Can her emails on this private account be properly maintained and archived? Can they be reviewed in response to, say, an open records act request?

To date, nether Palin nor her spokespeople have had anything to say about the withheld emails or her use of a private email address for state business.

McCain Wants To Spend 1/3rd of a Trillion Dollars on Nuclear Plants

From Bloomberg

John McCain's plan to revive the U.S. nuclear power industry with 45 new reactors may cost $315 billion, with taxpayers bearing much of the financial risk.

...Taxpayers are on the hook only if borrowers default. A 2003 Congressional Budget Office report said the default rate on nuclear construction debts might be as high as 50 percent, in part because of the projects' high costs.

So much for Mr. I-Watch-Out-for-the-Taxpayers. Read the rest here.

September 10, 2008

20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress, Freshly Revealed

CREW's list of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress is out for 2008, and constituents of Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL), Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY), Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-IL), Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) should be very pleased. Their congressional representatives are new additions to the list!

Here is the 2008 list; here are the previous three years'.

It's Not Just Palin Who Is Hiding From the Press

From Fox News, of all places:

For a candidate who once railed against "stale soundbites, staged rallies and over-managed messages," John McCain seems to have turned over a new leaf.

Today marks the four-week anniversary since McCain held his last press conference (8/13 in Birmingham, MI) and three weeks since his last public town hall meeting (8/20 in Las Cruces, NM).

McCain's new campaign strategy: staged rallies with thousands of supporters.

Obama held a press conference yesterday.

McCain's Fannie and Freddie Connections

John McCain railed against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the campaign trail today, saying that the CEOs that led the lenders to ruin "deserve nothing" and should have to pay back their severance packages. In an Wall Street Journal op-ed co-bylined by his vice presidential pick, Sarah Palin, McCain suggested bold reforms for Fannie and Freddie that would "terminate future lobbying, which was one of the primary contributors to this great debacle."

If that's the case, McCain should look first to his campaign staffers as the cause of that debacle. One of them was Fannie Mae's head of lobbying, and spread tens of millions of dollars around Washington in the form of lobbying contracts. A number of McCain staffers were on the receiving end of those contracts, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars each from the lenders to rep their interests. And McCain's campaign manager served as president of a lobbying association that fought to protect Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae from the sort of regulation that McCain is now proposing.

In McCain's op-ed in the Journal, he and Palin wrote:

For years, Congress failed to act and it is deeply troubling that what we are seeing is an exercise in crisis management rather than sound planning, and at great cost to taxpayers.

We promise the American people that our administration will be different. We have long records of standing up to special interests…

But McCain's own campaign staffers are those special interests, a fact that casts doubt on both McCain's hiring judgment and his ability to pursue tough reforms of Fannie and Freddie.

Aquiles Suarez, listed as an economic adviser to the McCain campaign in a July 2007 McCain press release, was formerly the director of government and industry relations for Fannie Mae. The Senate Lobbying Database says Suarez oversaw the lending giant's $47,510,000 lobbying campaign from 2003 to 2006.

And other current McCain campaign staffers were the lobbyists receiving shares of that money. According to the Senate Lobbying Database, the lobbying firm of Charlie Black, one of McCain's top aides, made at least $820,000 working for Freddie Mac from 1999 to 2004. The McCain campaign's vice-chair Wayne Berman and its congressional liaison John Green made $1.14 million working on behalf of Fannie Mae for lobbying firm Ogilvy Government Relations. Green made an additional $180,000 from Freddie Mac. Arther B. Culvahouse Jr., the VP vetter who helped John McCain select Sarah Palin, earned $80,000 from Fannie Mae in 2003 and 2004, while working for lobbying and law firm O'Melveny & Myers LLP. In addition, Politico reports that at least 20 McCain fundraisers have lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, pocketing at least $12.3 million over the last nine years.

For years McCain campaign manager Rick Davis was head of the Homeownership Alliance, a lobbying association that included Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, real estate agents, homebuilders, and non-profits. According to Politico, the organization opposed congressional attempts at regulation of Fannie and Freddie, along the lines of what John McCain is currently proposing. In his capacity of president of the group, Davis went on record in 2003 and insisted that no further reform of the lenders was necessary, in contradiction to his current boss's sentiments. "[Fannie and Freddie] are subject to an innovative and stringent risk-based capital stress test," Davis wrote. "The toughest in the financial services industry."

At a campaign rally Wednesday morning in Fairfax, Virginia, John McCain said that the heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ought to give back the millions of dollars they've earned. What about the lobbyists who helped Fannie and Freddie game the system? Maybe McCain can ask them — at the next campaign strategy meeting.

Photo by flickr user soggydan used under a Creative Commons license.

Palin Says McCain Doesn't "Run with the Washington Herd." Is It Jogging?

At a campaign rally this morning in Fairfax, Virginia, Sarah Palin declared of John McCain, "He doesn't run with the Washington herd."

That's sure not true, given that his campaign is managed (or stage-managed) by the old bulls of the Washington lobbying herd. And within what seemed seconds of Palin making this false statement, the Obama campaign sent me (and other reporters) a list of McCain's top aides who are former DC lobbyists:

* Rick Davis, campaign manager, has lobbied for Airborne Express and DHL on their controversial merger deal, as well as telecom companies Bell South/SBC and Verizon.

* Charlie Black, senior advisor, lobbied for more than 100 clients, including Yukos Oil and Freddie Mac.

*Randy Scheunemann's lobbying clients have included BP Amoco and the NRA.

* Nancy Pfotenhauer, senior policy advisor, is a former Koch Industries lobbyist.

* Frank Donatelli, the McCain campaign's director at the RNC, has had 70 clients including PHARMA, Pfizer and Exxon Mobil.

*John Green, congressional liaison, has lobbied for at least 150 clients, including insurance industry trade groups, predatory lender Ameriquest, Chevron Texaco, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac

* Wayne Berman, campaign vice-chair, finance co-chair, and advisor has also lobbied for almost 100 clients, including Ameriquest, Fannie Mae, the National Rifle Association and American Health Insurance Plans.

If that's not a herd, it's at least a flock. Or a gaggle.

But as Kevin Drum notes, Republican strategist John Feehey told The Washington Post that "bigger truths" outweigh "little facts" in this presidential campaign. And that seems to be true even if the bigger truths are untrue. No doubt then, Palin will continue to use as a talking point the claim that McCain eschews the Washington herd, even as members of that herd hand Palin her speech lines.

This Is How They Win

I just want to add a note to the blog post below, which points out that Republicans demonstrate a phony respect for the middle class during election season while, at all other times, supporting legislation works that works against the middle class's interest.

This is how they win elections. The Republican Party has, for years, pushed policies that support the very few. That's why they try to frame elections as questions of patriotism, of who respects and identifies with heartland Americans, of who called who a "pig." Because if elections were about whether voters got the most benefit from Democrats or Republican being in power, Democrats would win every time.

Dep't of Debunking: Democrats and Disrespect for the Working Class

Clive Crook over at the Atlantic is making a familiar point: Democrats don't win heartland votes because, despite advocating policies that would help middle-class voters in the middle of the country, they fundamentally do not respect the people in this demographic.

Every time a conservative makes this argument, there are two mandatory responses. First, Republicans kowtow to this demographic every four years only to win elections. When in office, they push policies that beat the daylights out of the middle class: tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations, anti-labor measures, free trade agreements, etc. And they oppose ideas that would benefit the middle class: expanded health care, more affordable higher education, green jobs programs, etc.

Using the middle class to gain power and then governing at the behest of the rich and powerful. Does that sound like respect to you?

And second, Crook's argument, like all others in this vein, are based almost entirely on anecdotal evidence. Writes Crook:

Obviously I am moving in the wrong circles, but the metropolitan liberal, in my experience, regards overt religious identity as vulgar, and evangelical Christianity as an infallible marker of mental retardation. Flag-waving patriotism is seen as a joke and an embarrassment.

Oh yeah? Well, the liberals I happen to know either share or respect an overt sense of religious identity and love this country in a glee-filled, flag-waving sort of way.

See how easy that was?

Somebody Explain Feminism to Rick Santorum

It's about advancing the rights of all women, not the career of a single one. Especially not the career of one who would set all the others back.

Clearly, Ricky has never heard of the vagina litmus test.

The Hack Gap Revisited: "Lipstick on a Pig" Edition

When I saw the video clip of Meghan McCain saying, "No one knows what war is like other than my family" I knew that she meant to say "No one knows what war is like BETTER than my family." So I didn't write about it on our blog.

Then I saw that conservatives are actually acting outraged over this "lipstick on a pig" nonsense. And it smacked me in the face: the hack gap had struck again.

The hack gap is the difference between political observers and writers on the left and on the right. Those on the left (most, anyway) give the benefit of the doubt. They have a sense of shame. They are willing to consider the validity of something before running with it. And they don't try to disguise obviously phony outrage as genuine outrage.

As this "lipstick" thing illustrates (as well as any example you can find with five seconds of searching), the right doesn't operate the same way. And that's one of the reasons why it wins.

And let me add that I'm aware I occasionally complain in this space that the left doesn't play tough enough. And I'm aware that by not writing about the Meghan McCain clip, I would appear to be committing the sin for which I criticize others. But I'd like to believe you can get tough without being disingenuous. And besides, our readers would revolt if I treated an obvious verbal slip by a candidate's child as indicative of something more serious. The fact that Limbaugh's audience eats that sort of thing up doesn't necessarily mean ours does.

The takeaway? The left has two problems: a lack of hacks and a lack of a market for hacks.

Update: Mike Huckabee refuses to be a hack.

September 9, 2008

Appeal Filed in the Case of Sarah Palin's Secret Emails

Days ago, Mother Jones reported that Governor Sarah Palin's office withheld about 1100 emails in response to an open records act request filed in June and claimed that these emails to and from Palin aides and the governor herself covered confidential and official policy deliberations between Palin and her staffers. But the list (PDF) of the undisclosed emails indicates that many had subject lines suggesting they were not about policy matters. (A series of emails referred to one of Palin's political foes, another set to a well-known Alaskan journalist.) And many of the emails were CC'ed to Todd Palin, the governor's husband, who holds no official position in her administration. On Tuesday, Andrée McLeod, the independent watchdog who filed the original request, submitted an appeal (PDF), asking Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, to review the decision to keep these emails secret. Here is the statement McLeod issued afterward:

September 9, 2008, Anchorage, Alaska—Andrée McLeod, a registered Republican and well-known citizen watchdog filed an administrative appeal in which Ms. McLeod requested Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to review the decision to withhold or redact over 1,100 public records in violation of the Alaska Public Records Act. The records document the day-to-day operation of the Governor's Office and members of her administration during Sarah Palin's tenure as governor.

"The people of Alaska have a right to know the inner workings of their government. They have a right to know how the individuals they elect to public office are discharging the public trust," McLeod said. "The decision to hide documents to which state law allows citizens to have access suggests that Governor Palin's promise to have a transparent administration is bogus."

"Equally troubling," said Donald Mitchell, the Anchorage attorney who is representing Ms. McLeod, "is the fact that the records that have been provided to Ms. McLeod document that for the past two years Governor Palin has allowed her husband, Todd Palin, to compromise governmental decision-making by inserting himself whenever he chooses to do so into the day-to-day operations of the Office of the Governor.”

Documents received in response to a public records request by McLeod contained logs of undisclosed emails and thousands of e-mails assigned to Palin administration appointees Frank Bailey and Ivy Frye. The logs and redacted e-mails are the basis of this administrative appeal.

“Keeping government communications secret is not being a ‘champion of transparent government’ and fails to meet Governor Palin's promises that she established and ran on,” McLeod says. “What is Sarah Palin hiding?”

Will Palin get to this revie