John Edwards' Campaign Tapes Directed by Rielle Hunter, Now on YouTube

Tonight is the last Saturday night before Halloween when it will be party time for many organizations in the Washington area. How convenient for partiers. They don't even have to change the date (almost) so the various and sundry assorted bureaucrats in Washington, many of whom do not even work for the government but for nonprofit organizations made up of large corporations, because corporations are people, too, like the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, otherwise known as Big Pharma, can celebrate Halloween at a more convenient time.

Big Pharma is made up of people, too, who like to do as little as possible, like most Washingtonians because doing as little as possible and bragging about all you've done for other people when all you've done is taken their money is by and large the major occupation of Washington. All people in Washington do is know other people. They know the wrong people who of course, live and work beyond the Beltway and take their money for knowing the right people, who work in the government.

If there is anything my years around here have taught me, it's that people in government are the last people I want to be working with or talking to these days. Of course, it was different in the old days. People in government in World War II, my mother told me, were quite different. She was one of them, of course, and if anyone says anything remotely resembling criticism of this fine person I will personally do worse than kick their butts, I will sue them and I will collect.

People in government were once dedicated, patriotic, hard-working, rational and kind. Now they are by and large not any of these things.

People in Congress always try to be kind but they are not kind to each other. That is the problem.
Do you log on to ACCESS HOLLYWOOD or tune into the program and really, really believe that whether Angie and Brad are back together again or whether Charlie Sheen is tearing up the town can change your life? Some do.

Well, Congress is not supposed to be like that, but it is. Whether Barack Obama decided to do a bust of terrorists RIGHT BEFORE an election when federal agents have been doing a sting watching them for some time or whether they busted these terrorists a week later is a purely political decision.
These guys weren't planning anything for the next three days. They were doing their thing. Federal agents were watching terrorists. Even when acts of terrorism have been perpetrated, if there were actual bombs found in actual places, the government often used to merely raise the terror threat level from one code color to ratchet it up, and in order to be most effective, they would keep the information from the public so that a more thorough investigation and more effective arrests could be made.

That does not mean that arrests are not being made or that plots are not being foiled and that bombs are not being defused. The release of information in the course of a police investigation is not a requirement. In fact, it is often a liability to release the information because sometimes premature release of information makes terrorists stop for a while and go into hiding and a more effective investigation can be accomplished by not tipping them off.

Here is how the same principles might operate in a local police investigation.

For example, if there is a group o drug dealers in an apartment building and the police send undercover agents to bust them, the actual bust does not have to be done when other people are at home and the actual warrant does not have to be served during the Superbowl game on a Sunday afternoon, but it is sometimes more effective to quietly do a bust and spirit the characters away, then perhaps sit in the same apartment, still posing undercover as friends of the drug dealer to discover and bust the bigger suppliers.
There are many bad and many good reasons to release information on government investigations to the public. For one thing, even in science, let alone political intelligence, one should not claim discoveries where they do not exist.

The "weapons of mass destruction" intelligence information of British Intelligence, for example, which may not have been either scientifically accurate nor reliable. British intelligence is to intelligence as British Petroleum is to petroleum mining, Americans are now finding out, and the British have been doing more harm, both intentional and unintentional since the War of 1812 as the sun has indeed been setting on their empire since 1776. So releasing that bit of info or allowing them to do unsound offshore drilling is about as wise as letting them anywhere near the White House during the War of 1812, the later bravery of Churchill notwithstanding.
Yes, the Brits have played a major part in our history, most of it consisting of being kicked out or marginalized and as much as I adore Shakespeare, Donne, and God knows, Wordsworth, one's leaders have nothing to do with one's culture and the Brits, as any Irishman will tell you, are not very trustworthy, and as my fellow Alexandrian, George Washington told the world, not very good leaders, thank you.
Well, he had a few more choice words about the Brits. George Washington was an American and the problem with Americans today is that they have forgotten who they are. They have been so manipulated by self-serving politicians like Bill Clinton into defining corporate globalism as an international religion that they do not know who they are anymore.

Getting back to information.

The President can choose to release or not release information at any time, no matter what stage of a criminal investigation may be in progress. There are bad reasons as I stated, such as entering a war with inaccurate evidence or intelligence reports from unfriendly foreign intelligence. Unfriendly in the sense that the United States and Great Britain are economic rivals and if Great Britain has been deprived of its largest colony and most of its vast empire, it needs its allies to commit troops, money and energy into fighting its own wars for its own purposes so that it can stimulate its overburdened, moribund economy while profiteering from lucrative U.S. government Defense contracts and NATO production agreements while freeing up its small economy into making nice leather goods and other such consumer products with snob appeal as the shirts sold through the brand name Thomas Pink at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.
As far as the Brits are concerned, we are still their ignorant, classless colony. The one that got away when a band of terrorists with rather large homes in Virginia decided to simply take up arms and start, oh yes, a rebellion.

Anyone who studies international law knows that revolution is in they eye of the beholder and if Americans think the Fourth of July marks a revolution, the Crown, as the Brits are fond of calling its government, holds Americans to be a band of terrorists. To the various and sundry assorted snobs in their ruling class, also referred to as The Establishment, the rest of the world other than they are merely so much White Trash, wogs, blacks, and Irishmen. The French are another matter, and I must say when it comes to everything but Judaeo-Christian morality the French are clearly the Brits’ superiors and the Brits know it because most of them are indeed French rather than Anglo-Saxon.

We are now getting into the realm of various European tribesmen, fierce warriors, not unlike the Hmong Tribesmen during the Vietnam War, who were responsible for sacking Rome and putting an end to the Roman Empire after cracks began to appear on the Appian Way.
Yes, there are bad reasons for releasing information or unwise reasons or immoral reasons, like starting a war for fun and political or corporate profit.

If that happened the perpetrators were the Brits, and by that I mean old James Bond and British Intelligence.
They succeeded in manipulating our government into entering a war based on faulty or perhaps manufactured intelligence. And releasing that evidence was based on a bad reason because the evidence was baseless and most likely inadequately vetted by incompetent intelligence officers.

If attending Oxbridge is a basic qualification for entering British Intelligence, then the natural result of such an elitist vetting process is the image of Kim Philby more than ten years after he successfully fled the West, shown as a venerated Hero of the Soviet Union on a commemorative stamp, wearing oversized glasses and a plaid jacket looking very much like the late George Burns minus a cigar.

Philby was indeed recruited at Cambridge along with Burgess and MacLean, his two gay classmates, by the KGB.

Now, getting back to reasons for the release of intelligence information to the public.

The timing of such information is purely a political decision and the reason for any political decision is to benefit the political party in power, not the opposition.

What politicians do is run for office to gain political power for good reasons, like defeating a less than competent incumbent or an incumbent's political party, then try to retain the power of public office obtained and transferred from the electorate, for bad ones. If an officeholder is ineffective and weak, that officeholder tries to use every trick in the book to survive the polls, and that means manipulating public information for all it's worth.

It means feeding the voters what intelligence officers call "disinformation," also synonymous with "lies" and manufactured intelligence, which is also synonymous with "lies" through government public public affairs officials among whom truth is a flexible term with many gradations of meaning, the obverse of what the concept of "snow" means to Alaskan Eskimos in their language where there are so many terms for it that no one really knows what to call the kind one is looking at not, unlike the various political parties in France.
What I am getting back to is that the process of determining what is public or not public information and what is or what is not truth has been subsumed to the activity of creating and marketing designer truth manufactured by aggressive competing marketing departments of competing brands who are highly paid to look for ways to sell the brand name, Big D or Big R, and what kind of political fashions these marketers can manipulate to stay in power. The object is to label and market Label Obama, as one White House PR person termed it, I think it was Michele Obama's PR person, who called her efforts, "building the Obama brand" as if the First Lady were a Mars bar or a soft drink or worse, a type of cattle whose large butt has been affixed by a branding iron with the word "Obama."

The release of public information in America today is the same as the release of public information carefully orchestrated and designed to sell a movie. There are trailers, there are posters, items in gossip columns, links on youtube, a website, fan magazines, and ACCESS Hollywood.

When Diana McLellan wrote that Washington was Hollywood with ugly people she was right. Hollywood was marketed to the world by Louis B. Mayer and now Washington is marketing Hollywood back to us in such ugly forms as former Vice Presidential hopeful John Edwards' campaign videos on You Tube. Whether you think Obama’s speech on terror and his discoveries is a docudrama or a documentary is your own political decision, not the government‘s.

Idea for a Pilot for a New TV Series: "Desperate Democrats"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102804044.html?hpid=topnews

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Democrats increasingly going negative in midterm campaign ads

Network News X Profile View More Activity Campaign 2010: The Races TOOLBOX Resize Print E-mail Yahoo! Buzz Reprints COMMENT 177 Comments  |  View All »  POST A COMMENT You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register  Why Do I Have to Log In Again? Log In Again? CLOSE We've made some updates to washingtonpost.com's Groups, MyPost and comment pages. We need you to verify your MyPost ID by logging in before you can post to the new pages. We apologize for the inconvenience.  Discussion Policy Your browser's settings may be preventing you from commenting on and viewing comments about this item. See instructions for fixing the problem. Discussion Policy CLOSE Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

By T.W. Farnam

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 28, 2010; 5:40 PM

It's not the "Party of Hope" right now - many embattled Democrats have gone negative.

This Story

• Democrats increasingly going negative in midterm campaign ads
• Increasing negativity

Rep. Harry E. Mitchell's (Ariz.) ads say his opponent is "a predatory real estate speculator" who is "hurting us, helping himself." Rep. Ron Klein's (Fla.) say his challenger has "a consistent lack of personal responsibility" and "the wrong values for South Florida." Democrat Dick Blumenthal, running for Senate in Connecticut, charges his opponent "puts profits before people" and sought to avoid health inspections for her employees. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (Nev.) say his opponent is "reckless, radical and extreme."

Many Democratic candidates, faced with running on accomplishments that haven't been embraced by voters, are using a tested, if unsavory, tactic: attacking their opponents' character, according to data provided by a new study. The strategy of these Democrats is to turn the election from a referendum on their record into a choice - one where the other side is "too extreme," a label that has become a common refrain in TV ads across the country.

An analysis of advertising by the Wesleyan Media Project shows that Democratic candidates are running a higher percentage of negative ads and they are more likely to go after their opponents' personal characteristics instead of their policy positions.

"Republicans are substantively more policy-focused," said Michael Franz, a professor at Bowdoin College who worked on the study. "The policy environment really isn't favorable to Democrats. Trying to run on that record just isn't going to play that well."
Data collected by the project show that 29 percent of Democratic House and Senate candidates' ads are negative, up from 13 percent in 2008. By comparison, Republicans' share of attack ads has dropped from 28 percent to 21 percent. Further, 35 percent of the negative ads run by Democrats are focused exclusively on policy. By contrast, Republicans were focused exclusively on policy 57 percent of the time.
The data show that Republican candidates have been able to run more positive ads because they've received help from parties and outside groups that are attacking on their behalf. Once outside spending by parties and interest groups are factored in to the candidate spending, both liberals and conservatives are running the same share of negative ads. Ads on the left are still more focused on personal characteristics over policy, however.

"The Democrats have essentially become a message-less party," said Ken Spain, communications director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the GOP's House-race arm. "They can't run on their record of job creation or fiscal responsibility, so instead they have resorted to character assassination."

Democrats say their ads focus on personal characteristics because Republican candidates this year are especially flawed. Many of them, including many Senate nominees like Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada, were able to win primaries against more conventional politicians with the help of backing from the tea party.
"The public needs to know of these fatally flawed candidates' disturbing history of dangerous rhetoric and extremist views," Ryan Rudominer, a spokesman for Democrats' House-race committee, said. "It's hardly surprising Republicans wouldn't want the facts to come out."

In rural Tennessee, Rep. Lincoln Davis, a Democrat hoping to hold on to his highly conservative district this fall, is running an ad that quotes documents from his opponent's divorce case 10 years ago.

"Court documents reveal Scott DesJarlais has a history of attacks: violent and threatening behavior toward his first wife, firing an unloaded gun outside her bedroom door, putting the gun in his own mouth for three hours," the ad intones in a stern, echoing voice over music fit for a sci-fi movie. "It's documented. It's disturbing."
Anyone just viewing that ad would never know that the allegations came from his ex-wife, who was trying to get control of the couple's house when she made the charges. Or that a judge granted DesJarlais his guns and joint custody of the couple's son.
A DesJarlais campaign spokesman said the ad's charges have "no merit." Davis's campaign says the ad on the divorce records was "in bounds" and pointed to more episodes from DesJarlais's past, including a police report following an encounter between the estranged couple.
"The Republicans have recruited some candidates who have just been disastrous in their personal life," said John Rowley, a media consultant to the Davis campaign. "It's almost like daytime television."
The DesJarlais campaign says the ad hasn't worked anyway. "The Democrats and Lincoln Davis attempted to throw a Hail Mary with this ad, but it has fallen woefully short," said Brent Leatherwood, DesJarlais's campaign manager. "Americans are disgusted with the negative personal attacks Democrats are using and these efforts are backfiring here in Tennessee."

Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway (D) has used details of a college prank in an ad against Paul, an optometrist and son of libertarian Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.).

"Why did Rand Paul once tie a woman up, tell her to bow down before a false idol and say his god was 'Aqua Buddha'?" the ad says while showing an unflattering picture of the Republican. "Why are there so many questions about Rand Paul?"

The Paul campaign said in a statement, "When a candidate becomes desperate enough to question his opponent's religious beliefs, they denigrate the entire process and ultimately do a major disservice to voters. It's really disappointing to everyone in Kentucky that the moment Jack Conway realized he couldn't win on the issues he decided to engage in outrageous character assassination and smear tactics."
The ad got national attention for its aggressiveness, but it may not have helped Conway much. In a recent poll by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, 56 percent of voters who saw the ad said they think it was inappropriate, including 41 percent of Democrats. Only 7 percent of independents thought it was appropriate.

To be sure, Republicans have also had their share of hard-hitting negative ads. The Senate matchup in Illinois between Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R) and state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (D) has been one of the most negative on both sides.

"At his father's bank, Alexi Giannoulias made tens of millions in risky loans to convicted mobsters," a Kirk ad says. "Trust him with your money?"
The Giannoulias campaign has made hay about Kirk's false statements on his military record. "What's worse than the lies Congressman Mark Kirk said about himself?" an ad asks. "The truth about what Kirk's done - to us."

Is there any truth to the rumor that Chris Zimmerman is going to throw a party for her at the Artisphere in Rosslyn?

Jen Walker in Alexandria, Virginia, is an awesome agent with McEnearney. She is hard working and a good neighbor. She looks out for her clients and she cares. If you call her cell phone to report a downed power line on a house she has listed, she might be out there even faster than the Fire Department to look out for her client.
One of the advantages of living in Alexandria where Jen Walker sells houses is that the residential real estate tax rate has not gone up by 9.6 percent in a recessionary year when older people and people retired from the military and government service are not experiencing a cost of living increase but Treasurers of the local government like in Arlington have raised the tax rate by almost 10 percent in a deflationary time as the Treasurer raised the tax rate in Arlington County.
Everyone knows that Arlington County has such a wonderful government, though. Just north of Alexandria, the Arlington Government is closing the Aurora Hills library.
Closing libraries is one of the awesome things they do in Arlington County with your tax money. Do you like to read? Reading is bad for your health. Like obesity, reading kills. Look at Socrates. Why he could read and the Greek government asked him to drink a cup of hemlock for reading and expressing his opinions.
While the Arlington County government is not asking people to drink hemlock for breakfast on November 2, they are asking you to vote for Chris Zimmerman. for the Arllington County Board.
Chris Zimmerman is totally awesome. He is so very awesome. Ever ride Metro at rush hour to Takoma Station? Wow, the experience is totally awesome. I mean you will experience something out of this world. In 2008 in fact on June 23, 10 people were riding the red line just outside of Takoma Station and now they are out of this world. What a stimulus to the funeral home industry!
Please don't forget all the wonders of Arlington County and all the great things we get because we live here. I mean they are absolutely awesome. And now they are going to spend all this wonderful money they get from taxes on a trolley line on Columbia Pike! Don't you think that is totally awesome? You bet it is. Yes!!!!! A trolley line will not only take up so much money that even Frank O'Leary and Chris Zimmerman would not be able to count it all, they will have to hire even more people in the county government to help Ingrid Morroy count it all. Yes!!!!!!!! I mean wow. If you are a bean counter, you are going to be in pig heaven I tell you.
Bean counters unite. While KPMG may not be hiring you can taken your MBA in Finance and work in Arlington County. Don’t become a hedge fund operator, even if the Democrats are not going to tax your income that much, if you want a job in this recessionary time, join the Arlington County government because they are rolling in it. Our tax money, that is.
I mean having Chris Zimmerman for a boss would be so totally awesome. He is practically a rock star, if you know what I mean. A rock star. Mick Jagger has nothing on Chris Zimmerman. The Zimmer Man even built a rock concert ballroom that is going to be just like the old Fillmore East in San Francisco in 1968. A 3,000' square ball room where people can smoke marijuana, take Ecstasy and generally provide lots of work for the DEA and other federal agencies that prosecute the sale of such drugs. Lots of comp time for our dads who work in federal agencies. Wow. I mean wow.
Totally and completely awesome.
Dads who work at the Justice Department and the DEA are going to arrest so many drug dealers their government applications for promotions are going to look like the fall lineup of Miami Vice in the 1980s. How totally retro that is going to be. They can bring back the old white suit like Don Johnson used to wear and get soooo Retro.
Style and fashion will be invigorated and people will buy, buy, buy. They will buy, buy, buy marijuana, cocaine, and even heroin, in addition to Ecstasy. You don't even have to pay some dude $110,000 a year to run this 3,000' square ballroom at the Artishphere, the federal agents will run it for you. I mean they don't make $110,000 a year running a ballroom, do they? Your tax dollars will become very cost-effective because federal agents proving federal assistance in policing all those drugs that will be bought and sold in that ballroom are going to be making much less money than that executive director of that Artisphere.http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=18910&post=157448&uid=66598893640#!/group.php?gid=66598893640

Schnader Harrison, Outstanding Civil Rights Attorneys in Washington, DC Claims Important Civil Rights Victory for Arlington Civil Rights Activist Chris Zimmerman

http://www.schnader.com/news/xprNewsDetail.aspx?xpST=NewsDetail&news=899

Schnader Achieves Important Victory for the County of Arlington, Va. in a Dispute over a Proposed Highway Project 05/20/2010 John B. Britton and Neil T. Proto prevailed in the first round of arguments related to a lawsuit filed on behalf of Arlington County, Virginia (the County) against the state and federal governments regarding a proposed High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes project proposed for the I-395/I-95 corridor in northern Virginia. On April 15, 2010 the United States District Court for the District of Columbia rejected in part the motion to dismiss brought by the state defendants and upheld the right of the Arlington County Board to move forward with all of its claims intact. The lawsuit – filed on August 19, 2009 against the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT), the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), and their representatives – alleges that, in allowing the HOT lanes project to move forward, defendants violated the Constitutional rights of minority residents, particularly in the County, due to the project’s disparate environmental and public health impacts. The defendants also failed to conduct comprehensive environmental and public health analyses and public review as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), instead relying on an improperly issued “Categorical Exclusion” classification. Although the project’s likely impacts warrant a full environmental and public health review, the defendants improperly segmented the project and used traffic and air quality modeling that was deficient and inconsistent with standard practices to reach the unsupportable conclusion that the project would not significantly impact the human environment. Further, the County believes that VDOT exaggerated the benefits of the project and underestimated the adverse impacts of the project, both regionally and in Arlington particularly. Beyond traffic, environmental and public health impacts, concerns have been raised about degraded emergency response capacity, local and regional air quality impacts, enforcement, pedestrian/bicycle conflicts, and local funding needs to mitigate the impacts on local streets and maintain the current level of transit service. With respect to the discrimination claims -- violations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Virginia Constitution – the County asserts that the proposed HOT lanes and their interchanges would have a disproportionately disparate impact on minority and low-income communities adjacent to the proposed route and disproportionately benefit exurban and white single-occupancy-vehicle drivers. If constructed as proposed, the project will worsen air quality in the region, particularly along the project corridor and in those areas where congestion and traffic queues will increase, primarily in Arlington at the I-395 interchanges and surrounding local roadways and intersections. Combining the anti-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act and NEPA’s environmental and socio-economic analysis requirements to support the claim of intentional discriminatory behavior by the government agencies and their representatives is an innovative and unusual legal strategy. Yet, it accurately represents the full spectrum of damages that has already and could possibly result if the HOT lanes project were to move forward under the Categorical Exclusion classification. The County of Arlington seeks to have the Categorical Exclusion classification withdrawn and the initiation of a proper and comprehensive analysis and public review as required by law. The District Court’s April 15 order is a significant step forward in ensuring the proper review and analysis of the proposed project’s environmental, public health and community impacts will be completed. Additionally, the Court denied VDOT’s motion to dismiss the former Secretary, Pierce Homer, from the case; with respect to the civil rights and constitutional claims, the former secretary remains in the case in his personal capacity. The Court also allowed the County lawsuit to continue with respect to the other environmental claims against the agencies and the current heads of the agencies in their official capacities.

Our Team John Britton Neil Proto Services Litigation Services Environmental Government and Regulatory Affairs Waste Management Offices Washington, DC Contacts John Britton

GlaxoSmithKline Agrees to Pay $750 Settlement as the Cost of Doing Business

 

Sent: Tue, Oct 26, 2010 12:05 pm
Subject: News Alert: GlaxoSmithKline Agrees to Pay $750 Million in Settlement

Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Tue, October 26, 2010 -- 3:04 PM ET
-----

GlaxoSmithKline Agrees to Pay $750 Million to Settle Manufacturing Complaints

GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug giant, has agreed to pay
$750 million to settle criminal and civil complaints that the
company for years knowingly sold contaminated baby ointment
and an ineffective antidepressant -- the latest in growing
number of whistle-blower lawsuits that drug makers have
settled with multimillion dollar fines.

Altogether, GlaxoSmithKline sold 20 drugs with questionable
safety that were made at a huge plant in Puerto Rico that for
years was rife with contamination. Cheryl Eckard, the
company's quality manager, asserts in her whistle-blower suit
that she warned Glaxo of the problems but the company fired
her instead of addressing the issues. Among the drugs
affected were Avandia, Bactroban, Coreg, Paxil and Tagamet.
No patients are known to have been sickened by the quality
problems although such cases would be difficult to trace.

Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/?emc=na

 

Is this merely the cost of doing business? Most likely, like the campaign contributions
 this company will most likely give to Max Baucus, it will be a mere trifle, a cost of 
doing business, like a subway fare or a bus token to a street vendor... 
UNLESS you let the world know about it.  So please do. Also see http://www.opensecrets.org/ for more 
data on the $4 million in campaign contributions that Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana)
gets from the healthcare industry. Senator Baucus is chair of the Senate Finance Committee
whose version of the healthcare reform bill was largely adopted into law. 
 

Memories of the Carter Administration

John Updike wrote a work of fiction entitled Memoirs of the Ford Administration about who remembers what now but the title was there to evoke boredom in the seventies, I suppose. Certainly not about such expansive matters of state as evoked by such titles as War and Peace, the Ford Administration conjured up a guy in a plaid jacket and a big smile from Michigan, a football player who was Nixon's successor when he resigned, a nice guy and not much more than that whose slogans like "Whip Inflation now" simply did not work.
Now, of course, Bernanke is worried about not enough inflation. Not enough inflation because the genii who work as government economists are too slow on the draw to detect stagflation. By the time they manage to do so, Bernanke's inflationary policies, if they are cranked up and in full force, should prove disastrous.
What a country. To give so much power to the likes of Paul Volcker and Bernanke is like giving the Wizard of Oz the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven and not expecting all hell to break out loose.
Now back to the Carter Administration. Ah, how I remember the Carter Administration so very well. Uh, Huh. The Carter Administration brought us the likes of Joe Duffy and the former dentist's wife, now Duffy’s, Anne Wexler who had funded Rolling Stone, a political team that led to oblivion, the various anti-war Baptist preachers who accompanied Carter and Joe Duffy including one guy named "BJ" (I am not making this up) who came to toil at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Then there was Kay somebody (everybody has forgotten her last name) known to have built empires during her stay as the home furnishings editor at The Washington Star, which was a fun paper. There was Duncan Spencer, who was recruited by her and acted as a sort of major domo for a while and there were various other characters in the culture agency to bore all.
There was one Glenn Marcus who worked as a gopher in the grants office later to work at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and to produce the film to be released at the unveiling of the World War II memorial and, of all people. a holdover from the Nixon Years, a person in the Research Grants Office named Marion Blakey, a very nice Southern woman with a great smile who later became head of the National Transportation Safety Board and later the FAA itself. They said she was a great administrator. I think she had a great smile.
Then there was Diana McLellan of the Ear gossip column and a woman I met later named Vicki Bagley who was married to Smith Bagley, the Chief of Protocol and later started Washington Life magazine.
The entire thing was rather more interesting than today because a lot of  people were on Quaaludes and all kinds of drugs and there was no such thing as 12 step attitudes about drugs and booze even in Hollywood, apparently, as shown by the film starring Bill Murray shot in 1980, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The most interesting thing that happened was when some doctor in the White House wrote someone a prescription for Quaaludes that she gave to yet another person to fill and a pharmacist busted them. Out went the doctor from the White House.
I knew guys at DOD who bragged about doing cocaine and the piece de resistance was a really sleazy drug dealer who claimed to have a $15,000 line of credit with the bank whose name I cannot recall. Wonder what happened to him? He used to supply very high officials.
The Carter Administration was famous for Jimmy Carter of peanut farm fame. He was actually heir to a peanut warehouse so technically a warehouseman. He had a wife named Rosalyn and a manner that was detail oriented to a fault which would now be better described as "wonkish." Carter was wonkish when it was unfashionable to be a wonk. No one even knew what a wonk was then.
Dredging up old memories makes me so very nostalgic but some very liberal economists have no fond memories of Carter. I can't recall his name right now but it was not Krugman although I was reading his stuff and Lester C. Thurow and Robert Kuttner. Maybe it was Robert Kuttner. In fact, I think it was Robert Kuttner indeed. More on his books later.

Politics: Economic Opportunity for the Inside- the-Beltway Unemployed

Ah tempores! The economy is slow so that makes politics big business. Regime change always stimulates the economy in the Washington Metropolitan area, as it takes an army of T-shirt makers, T-shirt printers, flyer printers, canvassers and phone bankers all getting paid to be part of the regime change industry. During the election cycle when Obama was running in 2008, he decreed that all official Obama campaign T-shirts be manufactured and printed in union shops presumably by members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union but there were no union shops close by in Northern Virginia so some entrepreneurial types among the Democrats simply had the logos privately printed on white T-shirts purchased at who knows? Target? Walmart? and began to sell them unofficially. When one such Democrat set up a stand in a Northern Virginia location, the crowd, thinking that the T-shirts were actually being given away, stormed the person who had had the nonunion T's printed and was trying to sell them, and walked off with the T-shirts. Wanting so much for Obama to win and not wanting to disabuse the crowd of the notion that the T-shirts were free, the T-shirt privateer was left with no money to show for the privately printed shirts and no means of getting reimbursement.