Judging from the endless TV interviews I've  seen about this book , its contents and the author's self described  "my eyes now see" comments I'll offer my own  "my eyes now see" commentary on the book and why he may have written it .

In my view, Scott McClellan's late to the party moral awakening is, at best, an attempt at self-catharticism and perhaps a little reputation rehab -in the process .

That is my more charitable take on Scott's, Whitehouse vetted, book "What Happened". My more learned real world experience in this hyper-profit driven society we've become , tells me that this effort from Scott,  amounts to yet more of - what is, at best, naive parroting of previously mentioned Whitehouse proffered war rationales . My PR instincts tell me that , at worst this is just more spin . Yet still more, calculated prevarication from Scott, a long time Bush loyalist, to keep discussion of the war's true motivating factors off the table - a spin replete  with a concomitant chorus of "how could you Scotty"  that rivals anything we might hear on Sunday ,for its on key attributes and impeccable timing .

After all, given the choice, I'm sure the Bush Whitehouse would choose the taint of motivated by misguided ideology over that of callous war profiteers.Though the risk of that latter label being applied in the near term seems remote ,I suppose adding an additional layer of plausible deniability doesn't hurt ,especially if you get a nice book contract for your efforts .

While Scott McClellan's Book it is being heralded in the predictable corners - the same crowd that stood mum during the War's build-up - as a revelatory  and a damning  "tell-all" about  Whitehouse manipulation of the people via the Press  .  He nevertheless, still attempts to peddle the fiction, of the altruistic motive of  "Spreading of Democracy  To The Middle East " as the true and unyielding motive for Bush and company's  taking this nation  to war .  

"Spreading of Democracy To The Middle East " provides the Whitehouse quite the protective shield of "diminished laudability" among items on any list of  the War's motives , most will agree .  A shield that while  open to debate and even criticism is nevertheless , quite literally and figuratively - unimpeachable.

"Spreading of Democracy To The Middle East " - so posited . That done , I suggest that we add it to our list of "historical reasons for war fictions" ,  right after the "Domino Theory"   Viet Nam  War  connection .

In Scott's view of the world, we should ignore the impact of , removing  the Iraq oil supply, from the world market and its related contribution to record oil company profits . In Scotty world , we should likewise cleanse from our consciousness of defense contractors raking in still untold billions ,in perpetuity, from the Iraq War.  Yea Scott, we buy all that -wink wink .

McClellan seems to think that just because war profiteering is still off limits ,as a topic , for the New York Times and Washington Post , that the American public does not understand that the Iraq War is first and last about making money for Oil and Defense industry interest . Were it not we'd never have lifted a rifle.

So, "spreading democracy to the Middle East "is Scott's idea of revealing Whitehouse skullduggery?   If so , he might try  doubling or tripling   whatever stimulant has brought him to this stage of moral awakening  -clearly things are still quite foggy for dear Scott ,then perhaps his vision is quite clear.

From Sam Smith's  

UNDERNEWS

SO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT APPEASING HITLER?

GUARDIAN, UK, 2004
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.

While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.

Tantalising

Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.

Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.

Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.

The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.

The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.

The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.

A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort".

Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.

In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.

One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.

The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.

August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.

By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.

By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war.

Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.

In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.

There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.

There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper.

Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC's business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn't actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC's president.

May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest."

May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel travelled to these companies through UBC.

By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany.

Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush's name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo from the National Archives seen by the Guardian.

Red-handed

Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power.

The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.

Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company.

Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest.

The US National Archive documents show that BBH's involvement with CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush's friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant. "The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected," wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors."

But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not clear.

"SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next month.

Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion, but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Nazis bought some out, but not others.

The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war.

Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".

Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family."

Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.

In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp.

The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case. A ruling is expected within a month.

The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented."

The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director.

Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation."

The US government and the Bush family deny all the claims against them.

In addition to Eva Schweitzer's book, two other books are about to be published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush's business history. The author of the second book, to be published next year, John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time.

"You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said.

"This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg.

"The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were."

"There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."

Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks."

What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share. Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum.

The third person going into print on the subject is John Buchanan, 54, a Miami-based magazine journalist who started examining the files while working on a screenplay. Last year, Buchanan published his findings in the venerable but small-circulation New Hampshire Gazette under the headline "Documents in National Archives Prove George Bush's Grandfather Traded With the Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor". He expands on this in his book to be published next month - Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media and the Religious Right.

In the article, Buchanan, who has worked mainly in the trade and music press with a spell as a muckraking reporter in Miami, claimed that "the essential facts have appeared on the internet and in relatively obscure books but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes".

Buchanan suffers from hypermania, a form of manic depression, and when he found himself rebuffed in his initial efforts to interest the media, he responded with a series of threats against the journalists and media outlets that had spurned him. The threats, contained in e-mails, suggested that he would expose the journalists as "traitors to the truth".

Unsurprisingly, he soon had difficulty getting his calls returned. Most seriously, he faced aggravated stalking charges in Miami, in connection with a man with whom he had fallen out over the best way to publicise his findings. The charges were dropped last month.

Biography

Buchanan said he regretted his behaviour had damaged his credibility but his main aim was to secure publicity for the story. Both Loftus and Schweitzer say Buchanan has come up with previously undisclosed documentation.

The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to comment.

The Bush family recently approved a flattering biography of Prescott Bush entitled Duty, Honour, Country by Mickey Herskowitz. The publishers, Rutledge Hill Press, promised the book would "deal honestly with Prescott Bush's alleged business relationships with Nazi industrialists and other accusations".

In fact, the allegations are dealt with in less than two pages. The book refers to the Herald-Tribune story by saying that "a person of less established ethics would have panicked ... Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was 'an unpaid courtesy for a client' ... Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill."

The Prescott Bush story has been condemned by both conservatives and some liberals as having nothing to do with the current president. It has also been suggested that Prescott Bush had little to do with Averill Harriman and that the two men opposed each other politically.

However, documents from the Harriman papers include a flattering wartime profile of Harriman in the New York Journal American and next to it in the files is a letter to the financial editor of that paper from Prescott Bush congratulating the paper for running the profile. He added that Harriman's "performance and his whole attitude has been a source of inspiration and pride to his partners and his friends".

The Anti-Defamation League in the US is supportive of Prescott Bush and the Bush family. In a statement last year they said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser."

However, one of the country's oldest Jewish publications, the Jewish Advocate, has aired the controversy in detail.

More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business.

BUSH-HITLER TIMELINE

1924

WA Harriman establishes Union Banking Corp. in partnership with the German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who will be a major donor to the Nazi Party.

1930s

CONSORTIUM NEWS - Prescott Bush was a fanatical opponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt. There were even rumors that Bush tried to encourage a military coup against Roosevelt after his election as President in 1933. But the evidence - while intriguing - has never been conclusive.

Similar secrecy and uncertainty surrounded the intricate web of ownership and control of Harriman's Union Banking Corp., which Prescott Bush administered in collaboration with backers of Germany's Nazi Party.

As a rising star at the Harriman firm, Prescott Bush became a director (effectively in charge) of Harriman's UBC, which had a financial relationship with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, an early supporter of Adolf Hitler.

Brown Brothers Harriman supplied Thyssen with financing and other banking services that allowed the Nazis to build up their war machine. After Thyssen broke with Hitler in 1939, Thyssen's banking empire came under control of the Nazi government, with Prescott Bush continuing as a behind-the-scenes force in the relationship.

1937

Prescott Bush's investment firm sets up deal for the Luftwaffe so it can obtain tetraethyl lead.

1940s

NEW STATESMAN, APRIL 15, 2002 - In 1926, Averill Harriman welcomed a familiar name into his Wall Street firm (W A Harriman and Co) as senior partner - Prescott Bush, father to one American president and grandfather to another. The association was to end simultaneously in fabulous wealth and temporary ignominy - at the height of the Second World War, in 1942, the New York Herald Tribune reported that the Union Banking Corporation, of which Prescott Bush was a director and E Roland Harriman a 99 per cent shareholder, was holding a small fortune under the orders of Adolf Hitler's financier. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, all of Union Banking Corporation's capital stock was seized.

INDYMEDIA, ISRAEL - On October 20, 1942, the U.S. government had had enough of Prescott Bush and his Nazi business arrangements with Thyssen. Over the summer, The New York Tribune had exposed Bush and Thyssen, whom the Tribune dubbed "Hitler's Angel." When the US government saw UBC's books, they found out that Bush's bank and its shareholders "are held for the benefit of . . .  members of the Thyssen family, [and] is property of nationals . . .  of a designated enemy country." . . .

On November 17, 1942, The US government also took over the Silesian American Corporation, but did not prosecute Bush . . . The companies were allowed to operate within the Government Alien Property custodian office with a catch - no aiding the Nazis. In 1943, while still owning his stock, Prescott Bush resigned from UBC and even helped raise money for dozens of war-related causes as chairman of the National War Fund.

After the war, the Dutch government began investigating the whereabouts of some jewelry of the Dutch royal family that was stolen by the Nazis. They started looking into books of the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart. When they discovered the transaction papers of the Silesian American Corporation, they began asking the bank manager H.J. Kounhoven a lot of questions. Kouwenhoven was shocked at the discovery and soon traveled to New York to inform Prescott Bush. According to Dutch intelligence, Kouwenhoven met with Prescott soon after Christmas, 1947. Two weeks later, Kouwenhoven apparently died of a heart attack.

By 1948, Fritz Thyssen's life was in ruins. After being jailed by the Nazis, he was jailed by the Allies and interrogated extensively, but not completely, by US investigators. Thyssen and Flick were ordered to pay reparations and served time in prison for their atrocious crimes against humanity. . .

When Thyssen died, the Alien Property Custodian released the assets of the Union Banking Corporation to Brown Brothers Harriman. The remaining stockholders cashed in their stocks and quietly liquidated the rest of UBC's blood money.

Prescott Bush received $1.5 million for his share in UBC. That money enabled Bush to help his son, George Herbert Walker Bush, to set up his first royalty firm, Overby Development Company, that same year. It was also helpful when Prescott Bush left the business world to enter the public arena in 1952 with a successful senatorial campaign in Connecticut. On October 8th, 1972, Prescott Bush died of cancer. . .

In 1980, when George H.W. Bush was elected vice president, he placed his father's family inherence in a blind trust. The trust was managed by his old friend and quail hunting partner, William "Stamps" Farish III. Bush's choice of Farish to manage the family wealth is quite revealing in that it demonstrates that the former president might know exactly where some of his inheritance originated. Farish's grandfather, William Farish Jr., on March 25th, 1942, pleaded "no contest" to conspiring with Nazi Germany while president of Standard Oil in New Jersey. He was described by Senator Harry Truman in public of approaching "treason" for profiting off the Nazi war machine. Standard Oil, invested millions in IG Farben, who opened a gasoline factory within Auschwitz in 1940. The billions "Stamps" inherited had more blood on it then Bush, so the paper trail of UBC stock would be safe during his 12 years in presidential politics.

[Investigative journalist John] Loftus believes history will view Prescott Bush as harshly as Thyssen. "It is bad enough that the Bush family helped raise the money for Thyssen to give Hitler his start in the 1920s, but giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war is treason. The Bush bank helped the Thyssens make the Nazi steel that killed Allied solders. As bad as financing the Nazi war machine may seem, aiding and abetting the Holocaust was worse. Thyssen's coal mines used Jewish slaves as if they were disposable chemicals. There are six million skeletons in the Thyssen family closet, and a myriad of criminal and historical questions to be answered about the Bush family's complicity."

[Because of Israeli government suppression, this site is no longer available]

SARASOTA HERALD TRIBUNE The president of the Florida Holocaust Museum said Saturday that George W. Bush's grandfather derived a portion of his personal fortune through his affiliation with a Nazi-controlled bank. John Loftus, a former prosecutor in the Justice Department's Nazi War Crimes Unit, said his research found that Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a principal in the Union Banking Corp. in Manhattan in the late 1930s and the 1940s. Leading Nazi industrialists secretly owned the bank at that time, Loftus said, and were moving money into it through a second bank in Holland even after the United States declared war on Germany. The bank was liquidated in 1951, Loftus said, and Bush's grandfather and great-grandfather received $1.5 million from the bank as part of that dissolution . . . Loftus pointed out that the Bush family would not be the only American political dynasty to have ties to the "wrong side of World War II." The Rockefellers had financial connections to Nazi Germany, he said. Loftus also reminded his audience that John F. Kennedy's father, an avowed isolationist and former ambassador to Great Britain, profited during the 1930s and '40s from Nazi stocks that he owned. "No one today blames the Democrats because Jack Kennedy's father bought Nazi stocks," Loftus said. Still, he said, it is important to understand these historical connections for what they tell us about politics today. The World War II experience points out how easy it was then -- and remains today -- to hide money in multinational funds.
CONSORTIUM NEWS One of the Bush-connected companies, Consolidated Silesian Steel, made use of Nazi slave labor from concentration camps, including Auschwitz. After Germany declared war on the United States, the U.S. government investigated these relationships and seized Harriman's UBC in 1943 under the Trading with the Enemy Act. However, following the war, rather than face the ignominy of profiting off his dealings with the Nazis, Bush was compensated for the seizure of the bank, receiving a $1.5 million settlement from the U.S. government, an astonishing amount of money in 1945. .

http://prorev.com/2008/05/so-you-want-to-talk-about-appeasing.html#comments

 I am very disappointed in Geraldine Ferraro for her myopia on the baseless absurdity of her remarks.

Instead of running around insulting people , whether intending to or not , Ms Ferraro could be more valuable in the public sphere were she to use her position and influence  with the Clintons and advise them that they need to reveal their tax returns  - now .

 Ms Ferraro, a former member of the Clintons Finance Committee, knows firsthand, how problems with tax returns can torpedo a campaign. Information found in her tax records were a major negative in her 1984 Whitehouse Campaign, as some of us remember well  

Ms Ferraro should advise Hillary Clinton to document her political financial integrity to get this issue off the table, so the GOP won't do to her what they did to Ferraro in 1984.

Greg Fuller

G.O.P. SEIZES 'GENDERLESS ISSUE' OF TAX RETURNS TO ATTACK FERRARO
By HOWELL RAINES, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: August 14, 1984
Republican leaders opened a concerted attack on Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro today after the announcement Sunday by the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate that her husband would not release his income tax returns.

The attacks, led by Senator Bob Dole of Kansas and a spokesman for Vice President Bush, reflected the private judgment of President Reagan's re- election strategists that her announcement offered a chance to dim Mrs. Ferraro's luster as the new star of the campaign year. The announcement ran counter to her earlier promise of full financial disclosure by her and her husband, John A. Zaccaro,

Republican strategists said that for the first time the Republicans had a ''genderless issue'' that they could use to discredit Mrs. Ferraro without risking a backlash of sympathy for her.

Dole Cites 'Public Interest'

''The public interest and the public's right to know have not changed,'' said Mr. Dole at a news conference in Dallas. ''Have Mrs. Ferraro's views on disclosure changed?'' Senator Dole, who acknowledged that his own returns were not part of the disclosure statement he files annually, held the news conference with the blessing of the Reagan re-election committee and the Republican National Committee.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mondale, the Democratic Presidential nominee, noted that Mr. Zaccaro had the right to make his own business decisions. At a news conference in North Oak, Minn., Mr. Mondale said: ''That's his decision and he's made that decision. As the Presidential nominee, I will take the responsibility for my running mate. She is fully complying with the law.'' He, added, ''Many, many businesses are very reluctant unless they're in public life to disclose such matters.''

Officials of his campaign tried to play down the significance of Mrs. Ferraro's reversal of position.

On July 24 Mrs. Ferraro had said she would ''disclose my tax returns and my husband's tax returns for the past several years,'' even though that disclosure is not required under Federal election laws.

On Sunday Mrs. Ferraro said her husband had refused to release his tax returns on the ground that it would create a disadvantage for his real estate company in New York City.

Mr. Mondale's guarded tones today seemed to support private statements from some of his associates, who said that the former Vice President and key aides wanted the couple to make a full, voluntary disclosure of their financial records.

But the campaign sources said that Mondale officials were so far putting no pressure on Mrs. Ferraro and Mr. Zaccaro in the hope that a decision to release the tax returns would be worked out between them.

The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 requires Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates and their spouses to disclose their sources of income and their financial liabilities. Only under a narrow set of circumstances can the spouse of a candidate be exempted. The law does not require that income tax forms be released.

However, since 1976 the candidates on both the Republican and Democratic tickets have voluntarily released their income tax returns. Today there was a chorus of demands from Republicans, some Democrats and the citizens' organization Common Cause that the Zaccaros continue this tradition.

Fred Wertheimer, president of Common Cause, noted that Mrs. Ferraro already has a case pending before the Ethics Committee of the House of Representatives. He said she was one of 16 members who claimed an exemption from disclosing her spouse's income under the Ethics in Government Act on the ground that she was totally separated from his financial activities.

Mrs. Ferraro is listed as an officer and stockholder of the company, P. Zaccaro Company Inc., and that is the basis of the Ethics Committee inquiry. 'Embarrassment,' Koch Says

Citing the ''common practice since 1976'' for Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates to release their tax returns, Mr. Wertheimer said, ''In light of this practice and in light of Representative Ferraro's initial statement that both her tax returns and those of her spouse would be made public, we believe it would be in the best interest of all concerned that this be done.''

Mayor Koch said today that Mrs. Ferraro's position was an ''embarrassment'' for which she was blameless.

''I really feel sorry for Geraldine Ferraro,'' said the Mayor, a Democrat. ''She cannot make her husband disclose. I believe he should.''

''I believe ultimately he will,'' he went on, because ''public opinion will make him.'' 'A Very Selfish Man'

Peter Teeley, press secretary for Vice President Bush, criticized Mr. Zaccaro as ''a very selfish man.''

''He must have something to hide,'' said Mr. Teeley. ''The other thing is when you've got the first woman on a national ticket who's got an opportunity to be the first female Vice President of the United States, if you're a millionaire and you're in business, that becomes so much less important than doing everything you can to help elect your wife to the Vice President's office and that would include releasing your income tax.''

Mr. Teeley said that Mr. Bush released his income tax forms for 1977 through 1980, and that in 1981 Mr. and Mrs. Bush's holdings went into the ''most stringent'' blind trust that could be arranged.

Under that trust they do not see the income tax returns, he said, because for them to do so would ''defeat the purpose of a blind trust,'' which is to prevent conflict of interest by prohibiting the officeholder from knowing where his money is invested. Republicans Assess Position

Mrs. Ferraro's statement was a dominant concern among Republican officeholders and strategists who were in Dallas today for hearings on the party platform. The consensus was that the tax-return issue and the broader question of Mr. Zaccaro's business dealings might settle the Republicans' problem of finding a way to run against the first female Vice-Presidential candidate of a major party.

One strategist said that her breaking of the ''iron law'' of modern politics, full disclosure, gave the Reagan-Bush team a chance to move the campaign debate away from the tax-increase issue that has dogged the incumbents for two weeks. 'Full Disclosure on Monday'

It's the new story,'' said a second strategist. ''We'll just see how far it goes,'' he said, adding that Reagan campaign officials were delighted when Mrs. Ferraro cited her husband's Italian heritage as a reason for his refusal to disclose his tax return.

''To try to laugh it off by saying her husband is Italian and you know how Italian men are is just not going to see,'' said the strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ''It implies that Italian men are unreasonable, stubborn and refuse to play by ethical rules.''

Mrs. Ferraro's aides said she would release the legally required disclosure forms and her own tax returns on Aug. 20.

Mr. Zaccaro, appearing on ''The CBS Morning News,'' said he would disclose ''whatever has to be done, according to the law.''

''It's all premature,'' he said in reference to the controversy, adding, ''We'll have a full disclosure on Monday.''

The term ''full disclosure'' led to speculation that he might include the tax returns along with the legally required statement of sources of income. But Ferraro aides said this was not the case.

Some Mondale advisers were surprised by Mrs. Ferraro's statement on Sunday. But the former Vice President said today that Michael Berman, a ranking campaign official, had been told in advance that the announcement would be forthcoming.

In his piece for The Huffington Post (below)"Live from New York...Vote Hillary ! ", Adam McKay , a former SNL writer , informs us  that Jim Downey , a longtime SNL skit writer and Ann Coulter BFF , is one of those writing the political skits on Obama . According to  Adam, Downey, is the same person who did a SNL political hit job on Al Gore in 2000.  Adam's insight is invaluable in explaining the dismal comedy but effective politics piped into viewers homes  over the last two weeks of SNL.  

SNL is an NBC production and NBC is owned by Defense Contractor GE. Former MSNBC /NBC journalist John Hockenberry  details in  "You Don't Understand Our Audience" how the GE "Standards Process" works at NBC In the piece , John paints  a clear picture of the importance of GE' influence on what we get to see on NBC/MSNBC  broadcast  .

At any rate, I and lots of others, have noted that SNL has gone out of its way, of late, to portray Senator Obama in an unflattering manner.  A step beyond mere lampoonery, shall we say.

First, there was a skit parodying the Clinton Campaign's manufactured  tales of long suffering Hillary, which enabled the Clinton Campaign to further hype its crocodile tear laden message:

Why you mean media folk picking on poor Hillary and not Obama ?  

In addition, to trying to paint a bigger bull's eye on Obama, those"tales of woe "also allowed Hillary to play the "picked on woman card".

Following that skit, SNL viewers were treated to, yet another Obama skit, supposedly based on candidate Obama, and featuring actor Fred Armisen. In last week's skit, Mr. Armisen plays the oratorically gifted and loquacious Mr. Obama - as a monosyllabic simpleton who is seemingly bereft of any substance or clues about anything. The portrayal would be more understandable were we lampooning our current POTUS - but Obama as a monosyllabic is incredulous and inexplicable.  The performance was beyond  just bad acting and bad writing -but it was those things as well.

Perhaps  playing a character like Mr. Obama is simply beyond Fred Armisen range as an actor ,but  his portrayal of Mr. Obama , even as lampoon , is among the worst acting jobs I've seen- since Robin Givens flashed "goo goo eyes " at Mike Tyson during a Barbra Waters interview.

How one connects Mr. Obama to the Amos and Andy type dimwit played by Armisen escapes me? The performance was so bad as to be character assassination by lampoon, not unlike the Jim Crow caricatures of Black folk of days gone by.  

And to top off the SNL pre-primary ode to Obama, they featured a cartoon sketch, right out of the race-baiting theme that the Clinton Campaign hatched, during the South Carolina Primary. They depicted Obama as having a "special" closeted relationship relationship with Jessie Jackson and AL Sharpton.

The Cartoon , like Bill Clinton's words in South Carolina and the "Call Me Harold ads run against Harold Ford during his Tennessee US Senate contest , makes clever use of our racial zeitgeist  .

Our racial zeitgeist is where we contemporary Americans keep what remains of our hatreds, stereotypes, taboos and our evolving assumptions about social order based on skin color.

If this zeitgeist were a room and we could  to peek inside it  , we'd  see a furious mess : old stuff dying , old stuff metastasizing to new stuff and new stuff being added as trends and  conditions change . All of us have some of the zeitgeist in us - but in varying degrees and configurations.

The Cartoon format is a perfect way to politically tap the zeitgeist, because what we take from the cartoon, is based on  each person's racial sensitivity. The carton gives you the added advantage of avoiding the intense backlash Bill Clinton caused in South Carolina when he tried to make similar appeals featured in the cartoon. Like Bart Simpson, cartoon characters get a pass and sometimes cartoonish people do too. It's just comedy right?

Here is how it works by category of voters

    * Not a racist bone in your body and know lots of Black Folk? No problem, to you the toon is just funny or you may think it exploitative and speak out. You are not the target audience for the bait.

    * You think Black Folk are from another planet? No problem - the toon is just reinforcement.  You are not the target audience for the bait because if you vote -we got yours.

    * On the fence with your racial stuff, and still got some of the old stuff you are trying to work through, but you like Obama's message?  Well, that cartoon just might push you back a bit in your progressive thinking and affect your vote. You just are a prime target for some good old political race baiting. It might not work on you but you are a target; it's not personal it's a numbers game.

In short, appeals to the racial zeitgeist can have the impact of reinforcing any latent or lingering racial bias in the voting population. We call it called race baiting because it is a trap designed to ensnare those of us with impulses and biases we may or may not even know we have.

As is widely known, Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton are frequently ridiculed by the Rush Limbaugh crowd and others as divisive figures, just to toss a little red meat to their listeners, from time to time. The Limbaugh/Coulter crowd frequently labels Jessie and Al as everything but children of God, and some of the Limbaugh/Coulter contempt has wafted into the nation's general political discourse. This voicing of contempt has caused the Reverends to be controversial among some voters.  

In the cartoon, the Reverends are portrayed as covert advisors to Obama. In addition, the cartoon showed Obama employing extraordinary, and  in the eyes of some, demeaning measures to keep these relationships out of the media's and the public's view - but the link between advisors and candidate is clearly made, in this animated skit.

Beyond the linkage that was created, the cartoon story line might even suggest to some viewers, that the relationships  might call for some non-animated scrutiny. In addition, due to the demeaning stuff, even some Black voters might be negatively impacted.  

The dilemma for the Obama campaign is, how does one recover from a "cartoon attack" without looking silly or seeming to take one's self to seriously?  I guess you could launch a cartoon to muddy your opponent similarly, but you'd  need a major network and a highly viewed TV program in your corner to have a similar level of impact - not to mention the time to respond.

As I watched the program, I'm thinking, can NBC be this brazen and desperate to go to these lengths? The answer is clearly: yes they can be, and yes they did. It was a political hit job plain and simple.  
Included in the hit job is the on air endorsement of HRC by guest host and by former SNL regular Tina Fey.  With all this in the tally, and though it would far exceed FEC guidelines in terms of dollar value, perhaps NBC should count the last two weeks of SNL as a Clinton campaign contribution. As Adam McKay, suggest in"Live from New York...Vote Hillary ! ",it looks like they did affect last Tuesday's Democratic Party Primary, what else they want or will do  -we shall see.

"Live from New York...Vote Hillary!"

By  Adam McKay

Let's face it, the Republicans love Hillary Clinton. They quietly in their heart of hearts pine for her to win the democratic nomination. The Republican Governor of Florida is rolling out the red carpet for a second primary which will favor Clinton. Pat Buchanan can't be quiet about how much he respects Hillary. Even Ann Coulter pal and SNL sketch writer Jim Downey has written several sketches portraying Hillary as picked on by the press. Downey is one of the all time great sketch writers but I know he's no Hillary fan. Don't get me wrong, I like Hillary and still think Bill Clinton is one of our great presidents. But it's weird. Weird like....well, Pat Buchanan praising Hillary Clinton.

Now it's possible the corporate right wants her to win in order to keep afloat the huge economy of Hillary hate bumper stickers that if my numbers are correct generates over 55 billion dollars in revenue for the south.* They also could be supporting her because after over seven years of the absolute incompetence that is the Bush administration they finally get that corporate welfare and tax breaks for millionaires are not good for the economy. Or maybe they think she's Hilary Swank.

But more likely, in fact, screw it, for sure, they are backing her the way I root for Nenad Krstic to cover Keven Garnett so the Big Ticket can put up twenty and twenty on him.

And yes, it's sad that someone as capable as Hillary would be considered fodder for McCain, a "don't change horses in mid-stream, even when it takes that horse twelve years to cross that stream" kind of guy. Senator McCain just got the thumbs up from Bush. Isn't an endorsement from W like a job reference from that astronaut chick who lost it and wore diapers? Well, she is an astronaut and Bush is president.

The biggest upside of this whole thing is that SNL has clearly still got clout even in this day of a thousand channels and a billion internet sites. They influenced a primary for F's sake. That's big. Now I wrote for the show in the nineties and it's an incredible place that's actually as exciting as it seems like it would be. I've seen SNL have incredible political influence in a good way (Dennis Miller's line about Reagan: "It scares me when the finger nearest the button has a string tied around it.") and a bad way (Portraying Bush and Gore as equally buffoonish in their debates. Bush was an embarrassment and the sketch made people think they were in the same ballpark.). It's had its left wing writers like Al Franken and it's right-wing writers like Jim Downey, who also wrote those Bush-Gore debates sketches. Franken is now running for the Senate and Downey is spinning primaries.

There's no doubt our nation's comedic TV political coverage between SNL, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report is far better than the straight news. And though that's a pithy and tired observation, it's also stone cold, for better or for worse, true.

So put your bumper stickers on your cars Repubs: "Hillary in '08, Up Until November, and then McCain!" If you drive an Excursion it'll fit.

*My numbers are not correct-it's a spoof.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-mckay/live-from-new-yorkvote_b_90164.html?view=print

GE Tries To Bring Hillary Back To Life

Diary Entry by "Hoss" David P.

       Make no mistake, when Saturday Night Live does a "sketch" lambasting the media for it's alleged easy treatment of Obama, it does so to support the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, not to get a cheap laugh, which is the usual for SNL. It doesn't take a detective to understand that SNL is on NBC which is owned by none other than GE or General Electric. Hillary herself appeared on the show right after the opening skit. I suppose to just drive the point home for those laughing so hard they didn't notice the thinly veiled endorsement. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with this, I just want to connect the possible dots. Hillary Clinton shows up on SNL an NBC show. NBC is owned by general Electric. The SNL sketch was an obvious endorsement of Hillary while it ridiculed Barack Obama. Should I infer anything in this?

      General Electric is in several businesses under it's conglomerate status. A little research showed me that the largest sector of GE is involved with Finance. I didn't know that. GE Finance has global reach. GE is also involved with all the products you see advertised on TV plus considerable Jet Engine, AERO Space, Medical and Health Care technology involvement. They are indeed a defense contractor. But I just scratched the surface. GE is huge, depending on the list you find, GE is either the 1st or 2nd largest company in the world. For the record, GE is rated high as a company to work for by employers and employees. GE has been around over 100 years and they have had their troubles. Some scandals with selling Israel jet parts and several unresolved run ins with the EPA stand out in recent history.

      So why should GE endorse Hillary Clinton? Did they? Well, unofficially through their NBC show SNL. I know, Lorne Micheals says he's an independent producer, but these kind of coincidences will indeed create questions. So what's my point? My point is there just might be some substantive differences between the candidacies or Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton after all. At least as far as General Electric is concerned. Did anyone really believe that Barack Obama was a threat to Finance, Defense and other top dollar Corporations? I didn't until I sat and watched him be lampooned on the General Electric Network Show, Saturday Night Live.

     Suddenly I'm more interested than ever in Barack Obama. And it's also true that as if on cue from that SNL Skit there have been several other media scrutinies of Barack Obama in the press and TV Media. Kind of a let's take a second look type of thing. Still, you can't help but wonder at the connections between all these new developments. It would appear that the Establishment(Clinton et al), unable to put a dent in Barack Obama through debates and the usual political means, has resorted to comedy shows it owns and various Journalists to step in and step on Barack Obama.

     I'm writing this Tuesday night, so before long we'll know if any of this made a difference or if it was as most of Hillary's poorly run campaign, too little too late. I just looked at Yahoo News and their report was saying that Ohio was too close to call. That means Hillary will not make up any significant delegate ground even if she wins. I suspect Texas will be the same. The only question remaining will be, is Hillary Clinton going to concede the nomination to Barack Obama in the next few days as the DNC and other senior Democrats are hoping she will do if she is indeed still behind in delegates.  

I am a simple man of eclectic interests and tastes with no particular academic credentials. I still perceive, think, read and write somewhat. Writing music is a hobby of mine

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=6429

8% of registered voters in this state had a voice in the Democratic Primary ..

'Democracies die behind closed doors' .......Honorable Damon Keith

I respectfully ask that Senator Carl Levin , Governor Jennifer Granholm and State Party Chairman Mark Brewer to correct the impact of the course that the Michigan Democratic Leadership has taken and the position they have put the Democratic Party and the Nation in .

It would be one thing if the party leadership had ask for party members input and we all had a hand in the route taken ; that would have been the fair and practical thing to have done .

Instead, we were left with a process where none of the candidates came to our state , our issues were again an afterthought and only 592,000 of registered Democrats ,or  8% of registered voters in this state had a voice in the Democratic Primary ..

Start Change here in Michigan by scheduling a Democratic Caucus as soon as possible. Let the voice of the people be heard ..
 

 

The Clintons  gave us international corporate conglomerate favored NAFTA and WTO agreements that destroyed jobs , helped wreck our economy and made illegal immigration far worse (Fencing Off the Immigration Debate) . The Clintons  gave us media consolidation which killed local radio as a news and information source and put more power in the hands of right wing leaning broadcasters like Clear Channel and Sinclair - not to mention Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, a Clinton campaign contributor .

And the most recent GOP Lite  stunt  : when the Clintons  backs were against the wall after Obama took Iowa - Bill and Hill used some good ole "Slick Willie Horton Lite" ,in an effort to inject an extra measure of race into the mix  ; that's classic GOP racial politics ..

Oh - and did I mentioned the Clintons Welfare Reform  , that along with the problems listed above have been on the GOP goals and wish list at least since Ronald Reagan .

 One of the consequences of Clinton's Media consolidation is : informing folk on issues is now more difficult , due to the abandonment of news and community oriented programming . Richard Prince  has some telling anecdotes  on the impact of Media consolidation championed by the Clinton Whitehouse

Richard Prince's Journal-isms :

    Meanwhile, Eric Easter of ebonyjet.com Wednesday linked the campaign in South Carolina to the fight over media consolidation.

    "Not to be all self-serving, but an article I did back in August about how media consolidation would begin to impact politics is bearing out, according to our crack reporter, Adrienne Samuels, who's down in South Carolina looking for some red meat for us," he wrote on his blog.

    "As she noticed, Black talk radio, which would normally be blowing up the airwaves as part of the Get Out The Vote effort, is non-existent in this particular South Carolina race.

    "Why? It's all Clear Channel-owned stations in the major markets. Steve Harvey, Tom Joyner and a host of other syndicated content in the morning and throughout the dayparts. That means little to no local radio mobilization, no on the spot reports of violations or obstructions at precincts come election day, no chance for Obama or Edwards or Clinton to call in to radio stations and talk for 20 minutes directly to someone who can force them to contextualize their arguments for a specific audience with specific issues. . . .

    "Not that Joyner et al have no power to organize, of course. But in the trenches the local angle works much better. The ability of a voter to call in immediately and say he or she had trouble at the polls puts an immense amount of power at the hands of the guy in the street. A huge tool in black political organizing is gradually being lost."

http://www.maynardije.org/columns/dickprince/080124_prince/

MORE:

 Fool Me Once ...
The Clinton Game: America shouldn't fall for it this time

By Sam Fulwood
TheRoot.com
 Jan 28, 2008

I'm disgusted with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Not merely because they played the race card on Barack Obama, but because they've done it before.

It worked to perfection for them in 1992. I saw it up close when I was a part of the Los Angeles Times' political team covering Bill Clinton's successful bid for the White House. Clinton entered the race a decided underdog, backed by a fragile coalition of black believers and disaffected white Reagan Democrats. As we crisscrossed the country, it became increasingly clear how he intended to keep the two disparate constituent groups in his corner: He would send mixed messages. In Southern churches filled with pious African-American worshipers, he sounded like a black Baptist preacher. In rural white communities, he did not hesitate to use racially coded rhetoric.

Early in the campaign, Clinton told a largely white audience that he represented the "new Democrats" who "should no longer feel guilty about protecting the innocent" victims of crime. Then he interrupted his campaign appearances to fly home to Little Rock, Ark., to demonstrate his willingness to let the execution of mentally retarded Ricky Ray Rector proceed without interruption. Rector's execution allowed Clinton to distance himself from political rival the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who had publicly urged Clinton to spare Rector's life. Second, it made him look tough on crime, especially crimes committed by black men on white victims. Together, these acts solidified Clinton as a "new Democrat" in the eyes of white voters.

Then came Sister Souljah.

On a blisteringly hot Saturday in June, I covered a Clinton speech at Jackson's Rainbow Coalition at a downtown Washington, D.C., hotel. Relations between Jackson and Clinton were frosty. The civil rights leader had run unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 1984 and 1988. He was withholding his support of Clinton and was toying with the idea of joining forces with third-party hopeful H. Ross Perot.

I didn't realize it immediately, but Clinton had come primed for a fight with Jackson. He brought in the heavy guns for his appearance before some 300 African-Americans. In the media gallery, the candidate's heavy-hitting advisers milled about. Paul Begala, George Stephanopoulos, and James Carville stayed behind the scenes plotting strategy. The fact that all three were there suggested that something big was going on.

Clinton gave a well-received speech that roused the crowd with a full-throated attack on President Bush's policies. Then, in what seemed to all to be an unscripted moment, Clinton said he felt compelled to discuss racism with the audience because, he declared, all Americans must speak out against it.

Then, he turned his full attention to Sister Souljah, a young rapper who had expressed solidarity with the rioters in Los Angeles who attacked white motorists following acquittals in the Rodney King police-beating case. A few days earlier, Sister Souljah had been quoted in a Washington Post profile saying: "I mean if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? ... So if you're a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person?"

The day before Clinton's speech, Sister Souljah had been invited to speak at the Rainbow Coalition forum where Jackson had praised her for contributions to his organization's work. Clinton knew Jackson was vulnerable. "If you took the words 'white' and 'black' and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech," Clinton said, drawing audible gasps in the predominately African-American audience of Jackson supporters. He went on to take notice of her presence at the meeting the day before.

Jackson was embarrassed and outraged. Visibly shaken, he told me, "I do not know why he used this platform to address those issues. It was unnecessary. It was a diversion. ... Perhaps he was aiming for an audience that was not here."

Indeed, he was. Suddenly, I understood it perfectly. That's why the team from Little Rock was at the ready. They were there to spin the story for the fat Sunday papers and well-watched talking-head shows.

Knowing that the second day story would be reaction from black leaders to the candidate's comments, I (joined by Gwen Ifill, then of the New York Times) rushed to grab a quote or two from black congressional leaders. I wanted to know if they were as offended by Clinton's comments as Jackson was.

Comparing notes, Ifill and I realized that Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., had made almost identical comments to us. Clinton had given them his talking points in advance, covering himself beautifully.

You don't have to strain to see the parallels.

Faced with the prospect of losing, the Clintons tried to marginalize Obama by making him nothing more than the black people's candidate.

After the results were announced in South Carolina, Bill Clinton added the kicker: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88," Clinton said in a speech on his wife's behalf. "Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here. ... Now we go to February 5 when millions of Americans finally get in the act."

See why I'm so disgusted? I know which Americans Clinton is talking about.

Sam Fulwood III is a writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and lecturer at Case Western Reserve University.
URL: http://www.theroot.com/id/44468
©   TheRoot.com

http://www.theroot.com/id/44468/output/print

   Sleeping with the Enemy

by BooMan
Thu Jan 31st, 2008 at 11:31:13 AM EST
Apparently, ABC News got their mitts on some tapes of old Wal-Mart board meetings and aired a nasty piece on Hillary Clinton on this morning's Good Morning America:

    In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986 and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world's largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers.

The substance of the charge is that Hillary was mute in meetings where union busting was rigorously discussed. I think it is important to put this is some perspective.

    President Clinton defended his wife's role on the Wal-Mart board last week after the issue was raised by Sen. Barack Obama in a CNN debate.

    His wife did not try to change the company's minds about unions, the former Arkansas governor said.

    "We lived in a state that had a very weak labor movement, where I always had the endorsement of the labor movement because I did what I could do to make it stronger. She knew there was no way she could change that, not with it headquartered in Arkansas, and she agreed to serve," President Clinton said.

The tapes show that Hillary advocated for more environmentally-friendly business practices and better treatment for female employees, but it turns out she wasn't particularly effective as an advocate.

    Critics say Clinton's efforts produced few tangible results, and Wal-Mart is now defending itself in a lawsuit brought by 16 current and former female employees.

    "I don't doubt the sincerity of her efforts, but we don't see much evidence that conditions for women at Wal-Mart changed much during the late 1980s and early 1990s," said Joe Sellers, one of the lawyers suing Wal-Mart on behalf of the women.

Personally, I am not particularly disturbed by this news. It seems to me to be a lot of quibbling that takes too little account of the circumstances of the time. What I find more disturbing than Hillary's time on the board of Wal-Mart is her ongoing relationship with the company.

    According to the New York Times, Sen. Clinton "maintains close ties to Wal-Mart executives through the Democratic Party and the tightly knit Arkansas business community." The May 20, 2007 article also reported that her husband, former President Clinton, "speaks frequently to Wal-Mart's current chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr." and held a private dinner at the Clinton's New York home in July 2006 for him.

It's one thing to maintain old contacts, it's quite another to hold private dinners at your home for union busting CEO's. It reminds me of a couple of other tidbits I've seen recently.

    Asked whether his infidelity is hypocritical, in light of his political commitments, [Richard Mellon-Scaife] refers not to a moral principle but to his own personal history. "My first marriage ended with an affair," he says, amused. And monogamy is not, he continues, an essential part of a good marriage. "I don't want people throwing rocks at me in the street. But I believe in open marriage." Philandering, Scaife says with a laugh, "is something that Bill Clinton and I have in common."

    Those are surprising words indeed to hear from a man who spent so lavishly to uncover Bill Clinton's sexual peccadilloes and to advance the movement fueled by family values. But it would be a mistake to read the saga of Richard Mellon Scaife's divorce as simply a story of moral hypocrisy. His treatment of women, especially his first wife, suggests a high regard for his own gratification...

    ...Scaife speaks of a "very pleasant" two-hour-and-fifteen-minute private lunch with Bill Clinton at the former president's New York office last summer. "I never met such a charismatic man in my whole life," Scaife says, glowing with pleasure at the memory. "To show him that I wasn't a total Republican libertarian, I said that I had a friend named Jack Murtha," a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. "He said, `Oh, Jack Murtha. You're talking about my golfing partner!' "

And who can forget this CBS News headline: Rupert Murdoch Loves Hillary Clinton: Conservative Media Mogul To Host Fundraiser For Liberal N.Y. Senator?

    To call them a political odd couple would be a rash understatement.

    Conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch will host a fundraiser for liberal New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Financial Times reports.

    The mating ritual of the unlikely allies has been under way for months. Clinton set political tongues to wagging last month by attending a Washington party celebrating the 10th anniversary of Fox News, the cable news channel owned by Murdoch.

    The Financial Times quoted one unnamed source as describing the Clinton-Murdoch connection in this way: "They have a respectful and cordial relationship. He has respect for the work she has done on behalf of New York. I wouldn't say it was illustrative of a close ongoing relationship. It is not like they are dining out together."

It's only in this larger context that I find Hillary's work for Wal-Mart to be disturbing. It's not that she didn't quit the board way back when, it's that she and her husband don't seem to know who the enemy is, despite all their experience dealing with them.

http://www.boomantribune.com/

 UNDERNEWS
A FEW FACTS ABOUT THE CLINTON YEARS

RALPH NADER - A brainy White House assistant to Mr. Clinton told me in 1997 that the only real achievement his boss could take credit for was passage of legislation allowing 12 weeks family leave, without pay.

He pushed through Congress the NAFTA and the World Trade Organization agreements that represented the greatest surrender in our history of local, state and national sovereignty to an autocratic, secretive system of transnational governance. This system subordinated workers, consumers and the environment to the supremacy of globalized commerce.

That was just for starters. Between 1996 and 2000, he drove legislation through Congress that concentrated more power in the hands of giant agribusiness, large telecommunications companies and the biggest jackpot - opening the doors to gigantic mergers in the financial industry. The latter so-called "financial modernization law" sowed the permissive seeds for taking vast financial risks with other peoples' money (ie. pensioners and investors) that is now shaking the economy to recession.

The man who pulled off this demolition of regulatory experience from the lessons of the Great Depression was Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, who went to work for Citigroup - the main pusher of this oligopolistic coup -just before the bill passed and made himself $40 million for a few months of consulting in that same year.

Bill Clinton's presidential resume was full of favors for the rich and powerful. Corporate welfare subsidies, handouts and giveaways flourished, including subsidizing the Big Three Auto companies for a phony research partnership while indicating there would be no new fuel efficiency regulations while he was President.

His regulatory agencies were anesthetized. The veteran watchdog for Public Citizen of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Sidney Wolfe, said that safety was the worst under Clinton in his twenty nine years of oversight.

The auto safety agency abandoned its regulatory oath of office and became a consulting firm to the auto industry. Other agencies were similarly asleep in job safety railroads, household product safety, antitrust, and corporate crime law enforcement. . .

TIME: CLINTONS LOSING THE ESTABLISHMENT

TIME - With the Obama endorsement of Ted Kennedy following in the footsteps of endorsements from party luminaries such as Claire McCaskill, Janet Napolitano, and Kent Conrad, it's clear that Hillary Clinton is not getting the support of some of the establishment Democrats she might have been counting on. This is an important development that is not just about campaign momentum. "Party luminaries" comprise about 800 of the delegates to the Democratic convention -- approximately 20% of the total. Up until now, it has been widely assumed that the party establishment would rally heavily to the establishment candidate, namely Clinton, providing her a necessary boost of delegates should the race remain close.

With a general revulsion to the Clinton's campaign tactics now settling in, that assumption is now questionable. Moreover, even if Clinton should ultimately prevail in a close contest, she and her husband have so alienated a significant number of Democrats that there is likely to be a significant swath of delegates on the floor in Denver who are going to need a lot of persuading to keep them from embarrassing Clinton in her moment of triumph.

http://prorev.com/indexa.htm

 

 McClatchy Washington Bureau

 Sun, Feb. 03, 2008
Clinton's '35 years of change' omits most of her career
Matt Stearns | McClatchy Newspapers

February 03, 2008 11:09:08 PM

WASHINGTON -- To hear Hillary Clinton talk, she's spent her entire career putting her Yale Law School degree to work for the common good.

She routinely tells voters that she's "been working to bring positive change to people's lives for 35 years." She told a voter in New Hampshire: "I've spent so much of my life in the nonprofit sector." Speaking in South Carolina, Bill Clinton said his wife "could have taken a job with a firm ... Instead she went to work with Marian Wright Edelman at the Children's Defense Fund."

The overall portrait is of a lifelong, selfless do-gooder. The whole story is more complicated -- and less flattering.

Clinton worked at the Children's Defense Fund for less than a year, and that's the only full-time job in the nonprofit sector she's ever had. She also worked briefly as a law professor.

Clinton spent the bulk of her career -- 15 of those 35 years -- at one of Arkansas' most prestigious corporate law firms, where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards.

Neither she nor her surrogates, however, ever mention that on the campaign trail. Her campaign Web site biography devotes six paragraphs to her pro bono legal work for the poor but sums up the bulk of her experience in one sentence: "She also continued her legal career as a partner in a law firm."

The full truth doesn't fit into the carefully crafted narrative the campaign has developed about Clinton, said Sally Bedell Smith, the author of "For Love of Politics," a study of the Clintons' partnership.

"She wants to be seen as someone who has devoted her life to public service," Smith said. "I suppose if you say it enough, maybe you can get people to believe it."

Spokesman Phil Singer said the campaign highlights Clinton's side work because it discovered early on that voters didn't know about it.

Clinton did a great deal of public service work during her time at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. She served on the board of the Legal Services Corp. during the Carter administration and for a time was its chair. She helped found a child advocacy system in Arkansas and took on several tasks as the state's first lady, such as revisions of the state's education system and rural health care delivery. She also served on the board of directors of the Children's Defense Fund, and on the board of a children's hospital.

"It's important for voters to know that she worked to improve rural health care, to improve education," Singer said. "Yes, she worked at a law firm. Are voters interested in hearing about some accounting case she worked on, or things people care about in the real world? ... That's the point, that's the rationale. It's nothing more complicated than that."

Clinton did receive a smaller salary than most other Rose partners, topping out at about $200,000, in part because of her outside activities, according to several biographies.

But "these were all activities on the margins of her professional life, working as a corporate lawyer, representing corporations," biographer Smith said.

In her autobiography, "Living History," Clinton mentions two cases. In one, she represented a canning company against a man who found part of a dead rat in his pork and beans. In another, she represented a logging company accused of wrongdoing after an accident injured several workers. While Clinton used both anecdotes for comic effect, in both cases she was working for corporate interests.

She also served on corporate boards, including that of retail giant Wal-Mart from 1986-1992, frozen yogurt purveyor TCBY from 1985-1992 and cement manufacturer LaFarge from 1990-1992. She earned tens of thousands of dollars in fees from each.

Clinton's firm represented Wal-Mart and TCBY while she sat on their boards, a cozy practice that corporate governance experts frown upon because of the potential for conflicts of interest.

Politicians naturally want to stick to their chosen narratives, but other aspects of Clinton's relationship with the Rose Law Firm could remind voters of the more controversial side of the Clinton legacy.

There was her work on behalf of Madison Guaranty, a failed savings and loan at the heart of the Whitewater investigation -- the billing records of which were mysteriously found in a White House storage room years after investigators first asked for them. And there's Webster Hubbell, a Rose partner, Clinton pal and high-ranking Justice Department official who was convicted of fraud charges related to his work at the firm.

Clinton isn't the only candidate downplaying less high-minded work. Rival Barack Obama cultivates a squeaky-clean image and referred to his work as a "civil rights attorney" at Thursday's Los Angeles debate. He didn't mention other work he did during his decade at Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, a small Chicago law firm, helping craft housing deals involving millions of dollars in public subsidies.

Among those involved in some of the deals: Obama patron Tony Rezko. He donated thousands to Obama's campaigns, raised thousands more and was even involved in the purchase of the Obama family home in Chicago.

These days, Rezko is awaiting trial in federal court on fraud charges.

McClatchy Newspapers 2008

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/v-print/story/26377.html

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: "Well, you know, Hillary Clinton is an old friend, but they are not friends in politics. "

HR CLINTON: LEAVE NO CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND REFERENCE BEHIND

NBC - During the question and answer session, when Clinton was asked

about helping the Latino community, she cited her work for the

Children's Defense Fund.

"During the course of my work on behalf of the Children's Defense Fund

and many of the other positions and jobs that I've had, I have worked

closely with practically every community in America. I don't know any

that I haven't worked with. Obviously, I have deep roots and very strong

relationships in the African-American community and in the Latino

community, because I think it's important that we see ourselves as the

United States of America, that we see ourselves that we are all part of

the American community. But different communities have different needs.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/24/605658.aspx

 From an interview with Marion Wright Edelman, head of the Children's

Defense Fund, July 2007

AMY GOODMAN, DEMOCRACY NOW: [Hillary Rodham Clinton] used to be the head of the board of the Children's Defense Fund, of the organization that you founded. But you were extremely critical of the Clintons.

I mean,when President Clinton signed off on the, well, so-called welfare reform bill, you said, "His signature on this pernicious bill makes a mockery

of his pledge not to hurt children." So what are your hopes right now

for these Democrats? And what are your thoughts about Hillary Rodham

Clinton?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, you know, Hillary Clinton is an old friend,

but they are not friends in politics. We have to build a constituency,

and you don't - and we profoundly disagreed with the forms of the

welfare reform bill, and we said so. We were for welfare reform, I am

for welfare reform, but we need good jobs, we need adequate work

incentives, we need minimum wage to be decent wage and livable wage, we

need healthcare, we need transportation, we need to invest preventively

in all of our children to prevent them ever having to be on welfare.

And yet, you know, many years after that, when many people are

pronouncing welfare reform a great success, you know, we've got growing

child poverty, we have more children in poverty and in extreme poverty

over the last six years than we had earlier in the year. When an economy

is down, and the real test of welfare reform is what happens to the poor

when the economy is not booming. Well, the poor are suffering, the gap

between rich and poor widening. We have what I consider one of - a

growing national catastrophe of what we call the cradle-to-prison

pipeline. A black boy today has a one-in-three chance of going to prison

in his lifetime, a black girl a one-in-seventeen chance. A Latino boy

who's born in 2001 has a one-in-six chance of going to prison. We are

seeing more and more children go into our child welfare systems, go

dropping out of school, going into juvenile justice detention

facilities. Many children are sitting up - 15,000, according to a

recent congressional GAO study - are sitting up in juvenile

institutions solely because their parents could not get mental health

and healthcare in their community. This is an abomination.

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/7/24/childrens_defense_funds_marian_wright_edelman

The Re-imagining of Hillary Clinton

by Randy Shaw, 2008-01-14

"She has spent the majority of her life working for poor families, poor children, fighting for the principles that Martin Luther King stood for." --Minyon Moore, Clinton Campaign Advisor, as quoted in the January 11th New York Times

Rather than attempt to sway votes, I want to discuss what it means when people who have put personal ambitions ahead of principles suddenly reimagine their life histories to achieve immediate goals. Hillary Clinton not only has not spent the majority of her life "working for poor families," but she used her sizable clout as First Lady to defeat, suppress and ultimately disempower those dedicating their lives to this cause. Her supposed mentor, Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund, was among those pleading with Ms. Clinton to oppose welfare "reform" in 1996 -- to no avail. The historical record shows that Clinton has not spent her life working for poor families, poor children, or fighting for King's principles; rather, she chose to lend her considerable talents to a six-year stint on the Wal-Mart Board of Directors, and as an attorney represented banks, Wal-Mart and other corporate interests with the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas. Granting Senator Clinton this fictional and reimagined personal history as a poor person's advocate demeans those who actually have spent their lives working for the poor. It is particularly outrageous when federally funded legal service programs -- upon whom the poor depend -- were slashed to the bone during the Clinton presidency.

One can debate Hillary Clinton's commitment to "change"or her actual level of political experience, but her personal history is a matter of public record. And this history finds her pursuing a career representing and embracing corporate America, not "fighting for the principles that Martin Luther King stood for."

King died while in Memphis seeking economic justice for garbage workers. Clinton could have lent her talents to working for low-income workers, but instead chose to use her intelligence and legal skills to benefit Wal-Mart, likely the nation's leading exploiter of low-income families.

Clinton earned $18,000 a year on the Wal-Mart Board, plus $1500 per meeting. That's nearly as much as the fulltime salary of legal services attorneys in Arkansas in those days -- and this was on top of Clinton's salary with the Rose Law Firm, for whom she performed legal work for Wal-Mart.

As recently as 2004, Hillary Clinton described <http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0312-01.htm>  her years on the Wal-Mart Board of Directors as "a great experience in every respect." Lending one's talents to Wal-Mart is a strange route toward a goal of helping working families or poor children.

In fact, Clinton's career biography does not reflect someone primarily dedicated to using her talent to help low-income families and children. The fact that her campaign wants voters to believe otherwise, and has reimagined an entire fictional career history for Clinton, does not make it so.

While First Lady of Arkansas, Clinton served on the Board of both the Children Defense Fund and Legal Services in Arkansas. She no doubt helped both organizations. But such Board service hardly qualifies her as someone who has spent the majority of her life "working" for poor families and children.

Is Senator Clinton's reimagined past mere campaign puffery? Don't politicians always put the best light on their life histories, and isn't Clinton simply following this tradition?

Yes and no. There is a difference between a frequent and questionable Clinton statement like -- "I've been fighting for change for 35 years" -- and the more easily refutable claim that she has been working for the poor.

Because that is flatly untrue. And worse, it conflicts with Clinton's performance as First Lady, in which she had an opportunity to stop attacks on the poor but -- based on who you believe -- she either did nothing or encouraged her husband's worst instincts.

The first fact about Clinton that I recall learning was that President Carter had appointed her to the Board of the federal Legal Service Corporation. The legal services community felt that her husband's election meant that we finally had a legal services ally in the White House.

We sure were wrong. After withstanding the attacks on legal services during Reagan-Bush, federal funding for legal aid to the poor was not only decimated under President Clinton, but so many limitations were placed on who could be served and how that the Clinton years destroyed the effectiveness of federally funded legal services.

Where was Hillary Clinton when poor families and children lost their access to legal representation? She was missing from the fight. And given her husba