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GTDC endorses Blumenthal

Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Groton Democratic Town Committee unanimously endorsed Richard Blumenthal for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate. The endorsement was widely perceived as a blow to former GTDC member Merrick Alpert, in whose support no voice was raised.

The committee also endorsed Joe Courtney for Congress, Nancy Wyman for State Comptroller, Andy Maynard for State Senate, Fred Palm for Judge of Probate, Ted Moukawsher for State Representative from the 40th District, and Elissa Wright for State Representative from the 41st District. All of these candidates are running unopposed for their nominations. The committee also endorsed Kevin Lembo for Lieutenant Governor, with the understanding that it would support the eventual gubernatorial candidate’s choice, should he or she want someone else.

Getting back to Merrick, he has been labeling Blumenthal a “chicken” for not agreeing to more debates. Why is politics the only profession in which schoolyard taunts are considered anything other than bizarre behavior?


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Amazingly well preserved

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Could this be true?

Happy Birthday to My Happy Meal

(via Americablog)

If so, we really need good health care in this country.


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Same as it ever was

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

A cartoon from 1934, unearthed by my wife.


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For the record

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Several publicity hungry attorneys general have filed suit to have the Health Care bill, or portions thereof, declared unconstitutional. They are using the same overheated rhetoric that the Republican Congresspersons and Senators used. To us sane people, particularly us sane lawyers, the idea that this mild mannered health care bill is an “unprecedented expansion of government power” is bewildering. 14th Amendment anyone? Presidential war-making powers? Any of a hundred other examples?

That being said, I have to say that the prospect of success for this lawsuit is fairly good, considering that, if one simply looks at the state of the law today, it totally lacks merit. We no longer live in a country where the judicial system conforms to certain norms. That period in our history ended with Bush v. Gore. It only takes 5 votes to overturn this law, or gut it, and it can be done for the most specious of reasons, no doubt dressed up in language that would lead the ignorant to believe that the result was absolutely compelled by prior case law. There is no reason to think the present court will hesitate to do what it needs to do. Note also that the attorneys general had the ability to forum shop, to file in a district where they will likely get a sympathetic judge, in a circuit where they will get a sympathetic Circuit Court, so that the Supreme Court might be able to strike down portions of the bill while making itself look moderate by narrowing the lower court decisions.

Personally, unless one of the five drops dead soon (tis a consummation …) I give the attorneys general a 50/50 chance of winning. I am writing this now just to be able to say you heard it here first, should it come to pass. I hope I’m wrong, but the fact is that we currently have a lawless court. If they don’t like this bill, and decide they must deliver for their base (Justice Thomas wife just started a group designed to siphon money from the tea party yokels by whipping up their fear and anger), they will find their way clear to sweeping away more than a century of jurisprudence.


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Who wrote these rules?

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Republicans are shutting down the Senate to protest the Health Care bill. There’s a rule that says you need unanimous consent to hold hearings after 2:00 PM. Why would anyone have proposed such a rule? Why would anyone have voted for it?

It’s really time for the Democrats to turn the “nuclear option” tables on the Republicans. They don’t have to do anything now. They can just state as fact that if the obstruction doesn’t stop, the rules get radically changed on January 3rd, 2010 and there’s nothing the Republicans can do about it. The Republicans will pick up some seats in the Senate, but they’ll still be in the minority, as they will in the House unless I miss my bet. Right now the Republicans feel free to abuse the process because there has been nary a hint that anyone is serious about stopping them. It’s time to stop them. The Democrats are the ones with the most to gain if the filibuster is abolished. It has traditionally been used to stop progressive ideas and to preserve the most reactionary aspects of the status quo, e.g., lynching in the South, apartheid in the South, etc.


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The Times incorrectly corrects itself

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

A few days ago I noted that the Times had once again stated as fact that James O’Keefe had posed as a pimp when he visited Acorn offices during his infamous “sting”. I pointed out that that “fact”, along with many of the other “facts” stated about this event have long since been disproven.

Today, the Times issued a correction (and no, I am not claiming it is response to my post), which merely compounds the error:

Several articles since September about the troubles of the community organizing group Acorn referred incorrectly or imprecisely to one aspect of videotaped encounters between Acorn workers and two conservative activists that contributed to the group’s problems.

In the encounters, the activists posed as a prostitute and a pimp and discussed prostitution with the workers. But while footage shot away from the offices shows one activist, James O’Keefe, in a flamboyant pimp costume, there is no indication that he was wearing the costume while talking to the Acorn workers.

The errors occurred in articles on Sept. 16 and Sept. 19, 2009, and on Jan. 31 of this year. Because of an editing error, the mistake was repeated in an article in some copies on Saturday. (Go to Article)

The fact is, that as I stated in my previous post, O’Keefe never posed as a pimp, at least not while he was with the Acorn people. You can read Acorn’s own analysis here (and I think you’ll find it convincing) as well as the independent report of Scott Harshberger, here, where he states:

The videographers represented that they needed help and had been turned down elsewhere, and that Ms. Giles was a dancer and Mr. O’Keefe was a college student trying to help her. Although Mr. O’Keefe appeared in all videos dressed as a pimp, in fact, when he appeared at each and every office, he was dressed like a college student – in slacks and a button down shirt. Ms. Giles, however, was dressed as she appears in the videos.

The report, by the way, notes that more often than not, the Acorn employees saw through the act. Giles did sometimes claim to be a prostitute trying to get away from an abusive pimp, so I won’t even take issue with the fact that the media always reports the “sting” as her posing as a prostitute, but there appears to be no evidence that either she or O’Keefe ever claimed that he was a pimp.

All the Times did in its correction was correct an assertion that wasn’t even made in the article in question-that O’Keefe was dressed like a 1970s era pimp stereotype. Is it so hard to point out that their entire story is at best unproven, and, given the weight of the evidence, false?

I don’t know why this situation particularly offends my battered sensibilities. Perhaps it’s the utter failure of the Democrats to rise to the defense of an organization that served their constituency, combined with the mob mentality displayed by the media in accepting the word of an obvious dick as gospel But those are everyday occurrences, so they really don’t explain it. Still, I find the whole thing singularly offensive.


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A great big shining lie?

Monday, March 22, 2010

This morning Paul Krugman contrasted the approach of the two parties to health care: the Democrats trying to accomplish something for the public good; the Republicans engaged in cynical and destructive partisan politics. In the course of his column he observed:

And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

I just re-read Krugman’s column on line, and the following is appended to it:

Editors’ Note:
This column quotes Newt Gingrich as saying that “Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation, a quotation that originally appeared in The Washington Post. After this column was published, The Post reported that Mr. Gingrich said his comment referred to Johnson’s Great Society policies, not to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Odd isn’t it, that David Brooks gets to make up facts without corrections (well, with one correction, but not of the most egregious lies), but Krugman doesn’t, even if this facts are well sourced, as Krugman’s column directly quoted the story from the Washington Post. But was the Post story inaccurate, as Gingrich now claims, or did Gingrich feel it necessary to backtrack? Gingrich prides himself as a student of history, though he has obviously learned very little from it, but as a beneficiary of the Republican Southern Strategy he could hardly have been unmindful of Lyndon Johnson’s famous observation, made when he signed the Civil Rights Act:

‘We have lost the South for a generation.”

The important point, lost to people like Gingrich, is that Johnson signed the bill knowing fully well that he was giving the South to the Republican. He signed it anyway, because it was the right thing to do, a motivation entirely foreign to the Republican party. But, for purposes of our discussion today, we must only ask ourselves, wasn’t it this quite famous quote to which Gingrich was alluding when he went over the top yet again on health care?

If it makes the Dems feel any better, if Gingrich is right, they haven’t lost nearly as much as they lost back then. Mostly they’ve lost old white men, who they didn’t have in the first place.


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The reality of health care reform

Monday, March 22, 2010

One of my son’s college friends, who we see each summer in Vermont,writes about the reality of health care reform for those who really need it. He’s a cancer survivor, still quite young, whose life choices have been severely restricted by his ability or lack of ability to get health care. The bill isn’t perfect, but all in all, it’s probably a good thing that we didn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.


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Dear Comrade Obama

Monday, March 22, 2010

Heil Obama!

Thank you glorious leader for bringing socialism and/or communism and/or fascism and/or totalitarianism to our country. I always knew that making health insurance slightly easier to get, slightly more affordable, and slightly more fair would bring us to a new era, freeing us from the shackles of capitalism and freedom. The day we have all awaited is now at hand.

I write today to offer my services to implement your grand vision. As you know, I have been a steadfast supporter (you can disregard certain posts that were inserted into this blog when I wasn’t looking) throughout the long and arduous struggle against truth, justice and the American Way. Now that we have conquered, it is time to enjoy the fruits of our victory.

I have but one request.

Please, mein Führer, can I be on the death panel? Ever since the summer it has been my ambition to sit in judgment. You can see me below, with some other aspirants, getting ready for our roles in this patriotic process.

I think we can all agree there are certain people that don’t deserve to live: the aged, the infirm, and the Republican. Now, with the death panel authority that I’m sure is buried somewhere in the bill, we can make sure that each is treated according to his or her deserts, and surely none shall escape whipping. You can count on me to ferret out the liberty loving swine that have, until now, stood between us and our communistic/fascistic/socialistic government run utopia. By the time I’m through, there will be no one left to watch Fox, and no Fox left to watch.

Please choose me, you won’t regret it.


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Lockwood redux

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Dave Collins, at the Day, informs us that Andrew Lockwood is once again running for office, this time for State Representative. Collins chose to concentrate on Lockwood’s tendency to leave his taxes unpaid. Perhaps Collins forgets that for the GOP, that’s a plus. After all, who better to represent a party with a no-tax mantra than a person who pays no taxes.

Lockwood ran for the New London City Council before, and I believe I wrote about my own experiences with him at that time, but since he’s put himself forward again, I feel it my duty to repeat myself, for if I can dissuade even one person from voting for him, I will have done a good deed.

Lockwood was involved in my first exposure to the subprime mortgage business. In this case, to call the loans subprime is giving a false impression. They were subprime to the fourth or fifth power. Here is the substance of the complaint that I brought on behalf of three sets of homeowners against Lockwood, a closing attorney, and, I think, the appraiser and loan broker. My memory is hazy on the latter point. I should have sued the lender, but I was young and naive. These events took place in, I believe, 2000 or thereabouts.

I had four clients, two single women and a married couple. The married couple were on SSI, a government program that supplies a subsistence level of income for disabled people. This is politically incorrect, I know, but I’ll use the term anyway: they were mentally retarded. All of my clients were incredibly poor.

Lockwood bought three distressed properties in New London, none of which cost him more than $20,000.00. He made little or no improvements. He talked my clients into buying them (none of them were aware of his purchase prices) and “helped” them with the application process. Through his good offices, my retarded client (the male) was transformed into a $5,000.00 per month manager of a car dealership Lockwood owned at the time, without ever having to go to work or draw a paycheck. The houses appraised out at between $80,000 to $100,000.00 each, meaning Lockwood turned an obscene profit. I had a real appraiser take a look at them and-but you can guess-he disagreed with those figures. Each client got a mortgage they couldn’t possibly afford to pay, each of which had a balloon feature that they were doomed to be unable to satisfy, had they somehow made the payments prior to the balloon payment. The closing documents showed down payments that were never made. When I brought these facts to the lender’s attention, it was curiously complacent about them. Silly me, in my naivete, believing that the lender would care that the loan would never be repaid. It had, of course, long since been collateralized and sold.

In the end, because of the litigation, the fraud was somewhat victimless, except for the bank that ended up with the paper. My clients got free housing for awhile (it was literally impossible for them to make the payments), then got out from under the mortgage, and got some money into the bargain. None of it came from Lockwood, of course. I knew right away that he was the type of guy who would never have assets that anyone could find, though he would always find a way of living a comfortable life.

According to Collins, Lockwood has a law degree, but is not a lawyer because he has thrice flunked the bar, something that in my humble opinion takes special talent. I hope and pray that practice doesn’t make perfect.

So, if any 39th District voters come upon this, please consider carefully whether you want to send a guy like Lockwood to Hartford. I suppose he could argue that he would have a head start on his fellow representatives, but personally I think that a legislator should wait until after they’re elected before becoming a crook.


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