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Will the Republican Party Repudiate the Koch Agenda? |
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Friday, 03 October 2014 07:49 |
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Lux writes: "The Kochs' VP for Policy and Research described an ideal society where the only government would be the military, police, and court system."
Republican leaders being asked to repudiate statements made at Koch summit. (photo: Undercurrent)
Will the Republican Party Repudiate the Koch Agenda?
By Mike Lux, Reader Supported News
03 October 14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i-3e_PIwkg#t=78
 t is no wonder why the Koch brothers always hold their political retreats with their fellow billionaires and multimillionaires in highly secretive sessions, the things they say and the agenda they lay out, while "inspiring" to Mitch McConnell, is repulsive to most Americans. They believe the minimum wage leads to Nazi-ism, Stalinism, Maoism, and suicide bombers. They believe the homeless should be dismissed by telling them to get off their ass. They compare Democrats to the leaders of North Korea. They say they want to decrease regulations "because we can make more profit."
But even more importantly than these absurd and offensive individual beliefs, is their absurd and offensive overall agenda. The Kochs' VP for Policy and Research described an ideal society where the only government would be the military, police, and court system:
"Government is thus limited to a small, but absolutely critical number of tasks, basically keeping our neighborhoods and cities safe from crime, defending our country from those who might violate our national territories, our commerce at sea, and providing justice in a fair and apolitical -- political court system."
In this ideal system, there would be no C, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no food or water safety protections, no national park system, no public education or student loan programs, no public roads and bridges. They would not have taxes on corporate profits or the wealthy at all. There would be no consumer, homeowner, or worker protections from Wall Street banks, big energy companies, pharmaceutical giants, health insurance companies, fast food companies.
This is the Koch agenda, laid out clearly and unequivocally at the Koch secret meeting in June, the agenda that Mitch McConnell found so inspiring. This agenda is so stark that since the news of his attendance at the conference came out, McConnell has either downplayed the meeting, contradicted what he said at the meeting -- for example, here on the minimum wage, or just refused to answer the question here and here.
McConnell isn't the only Republican candidate refusing to answer questions about their allegiance to the Koch agenda. The issue came up twice in the Joni Ernst-Bruce Braley debate in Iowa on September 28, and Ernst avoided the topic entirely the first time, and defensively and immediately changed the subject the second time. And Congressman Jim Jordan, another speaker at the secretive Koch conference, simply refused to answer the question as well.
The Koch agenda, which is now on tape and in transcript form for anyone who wants to look, is devastating to Republicans if Democrats make it an issue. Democrats just have to pound it home -- keep asking the question Republicans refuse to answer, about whether they would repudiate the agenda laid out at the Kochs' secret conference. Because the Republicans are so controlled by the Kochs, Democrats across the country need to be spelling out what the Koch agenda is, and asking Republicans whether they support it. If the narrative of this election is the debate over whether we want the Koch agenda, Democrats will win this cycle going away.
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Zimmerman Family Values |
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Thursday, 02 October 2014 13:24 |
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Robb writes: "Until his little brother, George, shot and killed an unarmed black teenager on the sidewalk of a Florida gated community more than two years ago, Robert Zimmerman Jr. was "the family fuckup.""
George Zimmerman in court. (photo: unknown)
Zimmerman Family Values
By Amanda Robb, GQ
02 October 14
Soon after George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin more than two years ago, George's loyal family learned that sharing his name meant sharing the blame. It also meant a surreal new life filled with constant paranoia, get- rich-quick schemes, and lots and lots of guns. Amanda Robb meets the Zimmerman family and finds out what it's like being related to the most hated free man in America
 ntil his little brother, George, shot and killed an unarmed black teenager on the sidewalk of a Florida gated community more than two years ago, Robert Zimmerman Jr. was "the family fuckup." He used the phrase with me a lot, but the first time was in October 2012, at a dark back table at the Algonquin Hotel's Blue Bar in Manhattan, six months after what all the Zimmermans call "the incident." He was downing a double gin and soda, and he was wearing a Hugo Boss suit, "diamond" earrings from Kohl's, and the remnants of airbrush concealer from a quick appearance on Fox News's Geraldo at Large. He went on to name all the ways he was a lousy namesake for his father, Bob, a former Army sergeant, and a disappointing son for his mother, Gladys, a fierce, devoutly Catholic first-generation immigrant from Peru. "Unemployed. College dropout. With a DWI and a boyfriend," he said, listing his sins. (The boyfriend was a big problem for Gladys, somewhat less so for Bob.) But then, overnight, George had become "the Wreck-It Ralph of America," and Robert—articulate, sweet-natured, maybe in over his head—was thrust into the role of family savior. "You know what that means?" he said, ordering a second gin and soda. "Zimmerman in charge of rebranding."
So Robert got to work, defending his brother in the media dozens of times over the next year. The circumstances may have been grim, but the small doses of celebrity could be fun. He had both Greta Van Susteren and Sean Hannity in his phone contacts. He braved HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, appearing on the show shortly before the first anniversary of the night that George shot Trayvon Martin. Unlike with the news channels, he got paid this time: $800. It was the only income Robert earned that whole year. He had a great time doing the show and an even better one afterward over drinks with fellow guest Donna Brazile, an African-American political operative who managed Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. "I miss black people!" he told her.
After George was found not guilty of second-degree murder in July 2013, Robert began thinking about how to accelerate the Zimmerman rebranding project. There had to be a way to capitalize on George's notoriety. A family business, maybe. He and his mother had an idea: George could be the frontman for a home-security company called Z Security Products. "They all start with Z," Robert explained, walking me through an imagined product line. "There's the Z Bar, the Z Rock, and the Z Beam. They're all targeted to women. One is to secure sliding doors. One is to put in the front door. The light is to carry and is designed by George. It has a little alarm—you know, Help me, help me!"
Robert's ultimate goal was to turn George into a reality-TV star. His models were John Walsh, who began hosting America's Most Wanted after his 6-year-old son was abducted and killed, and the Kardashians, whose fame was launched by Kim's leaked sex tape. "I learn a lot from watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians," Robert told me. "Like, use the shit you've got." One idea was for George to be the focus of a Candid Camera-style program. One episode, for example, might feature a professor teaching a class about self-defense, and at the end of the episode it would be revealed—surprise!—that George was one of the students.
Robert knew none of it could happen, though, until George fixed his image, which meant going on TV —"and talking to George about media is like talking to the Pope about gay sex." George hated journalists. He blamed them for turning him into a national villain. There was only one media figure he liked: Hannity. Fortunately, Hannity—and especially Hannity's viewers on Fox News—liked him back. George, whose legal debt was in the seven figures, briefly had a website that accepted PayPal donations, and it lit up every time Hannity mentioned the incident on-air.
Still, George had said no to Hannity before. No media, no matter who it was—that was his rule. But by early 2014, George was nearing the end of his rope. Ever since he and his wife, Shellie, had an ugly split the previous summer, he'd been effectively homeless, couch surfing around the country. TV networks were offering to put him up in four-star hotels, and he was desperate to use the bathroom in peace. Robert was pushing him hard to reconsider Hannity. This time, George said yes.
Immediately, though, there were problems. First, Fox News expected the brothers to fly to New York. That would require George to show his ID at the airport, possibly to a black person. No way, Robert said. Even worse, the network wanted them to fly on February 26, the second anniversary of the incident. Robert tried explaining to a Hannity producer why that couldn't work: "It is like 9/11 for my family! We can't travel together that day—it's like having the whole royal family travel together!" Robert had a better, safer plan: He wanted Fox News to pay for the brothers, plus a full security detail, to drive the 1,100 miles from central Florida. About halfway, they'd need three hotel rooms—one for Robert, one for George, one for the security team—at a place with room service so that George wouldn't have to be out in public.
Fox News said no. Rebranding the Zimmermans would have to wait.
It was Grace, the little sister, who first grasped how all their lives were about to change. "We need to get guns!" she screamed when she saw the first news report pop up on her phone. The brief story didn't even have George's name—the shooter was still publicly unidentified—but that was no comfort. It was only a matter of time.
The Zimmermans already owned a lot of guns—at least ten altogether, between Grace and her fiancé, her two brothers, and her parents. Still, Grace bought herself a new Taurus pistol.
They had good reason to believe they might be in danger. Soon after Reuters published George's name on March 7, 2012, the New Black Panthers put out a $10,000 bounty for his "citizen's arrest." #Justice4Trayvon became a popular hashtag, and violent threats came in a flood. "All I can and will say I pray to God that your son geroge [sic] and Robert both choke on a sick dick and the mother and father both choke off a dick," someone posted on Bob and Gladys's website. "[I]t's not over we will have the last lol."
The family decided they could no longer stay put. George and Shellie holed up with a friend who was a federal air marshal, so they were reasonably safe. But for years, George's name had been on the deed to the house where his parents lived. Someone would find them. Bob worried about the large window that faced the street at the front of the house. "That's my mother-in-law's room," he said. Gladys's mother: 87 years old, Alzheimer's-afflicted. "I could just see somebody shooting into the bedroom or throwing a Molotov cocktail or something."
Robert, who bears a strong resemblance to George, was seen as particularly vulnerable. At the time of the shooting, he was living in suburban Washington, D.C., and in March, shortly after his thirty-first birthday, he got a call from a special agent at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who told him, Robert recalls, that "credible yet nonspecific" intelligence had identified him as a "target": "Anyone who wants to harm him will make no distinction between you because of the physical similarity. You need to go, and you need to go now." He left, joining the family on the run in Florida.
At one point, the Zimmermans booked a room at a cheap hotel in Maitland, Florida. But just forty-eight hours later, while her parents were out, Grace heard on the radio that the New Black Panthers were searching for George in that exact suburb. She panicked, waiting in the hotel parking lot for her parents to return, and as soon as they pulled up, she screamed the news: "Don't even go in!" They drove to a Chick-fil-A to figure out their next move.
George still hadn't been charged with a crime, and he was sick of waiting until it was dark outside to walk his dogs. So in early April, the couple snuck out of Florida to a scrubland trailer on a remote island off the coast of Maryland. The rest of the family, meanwhile, hid out in one Orlando-area hotel after another, moving every few days to avoid being seen by the same people. Money was getting tight—their only income was Bob's and Gladys's modest public-service pensions—so they often booked just one room for five adults. They paid in cash to avoid using credit cards. They used false names. They tore up their garbage and threw it into random Dumpsters. They usually declined housekeeping; maids, they told me, could be spies or thieves.
But even then, at the height of the public frenzy, there were peculiar lapses in their vigilance. For a while, the Zimmermans stayed at a Marriott in Sanford, Florida, that was filled with reporters, yet they rarely passed up the complimentary breakfast. "We were probably the only people there that were not media people," Bob says. "There were three CNN trucks in the parking lot and this big satellite. I'd have coffee and drink some orange juice with Gladys, and everybody's talking about us." Amazingly, they were never recognized.
The hotel-hopping went on for nearly two months, until Bob found a 1,200-square-foot two-bedroom house for rent on Craigslist in a nearby subdivision where most of the homes had been lost to foreclosure. In other words: cheap and very few neighbors.
There, the family formalized new security protocols. They watched the movie Argo to learn how to live like CIA. Code names for everyone. No mail delivered to the house. No visitors. No talking to the few neighbors they had. No long phone conversations—keep it short and vague to outwit surveillance. Never discuss your whereabouts via phone or text. Keep a weapon close by at all times. Robert slept with his gun. Still does.
And in case someone—or multiple someones—decided to mount an attack on the house, the Zimmermans pre-packed their own "go-bags" filled with everything they would need to flee in a rush, as well as what they called "footballs"—like the one President Obama has with the nuclear codes—that contained laptops, cell phones, and other essential electronics.
They also memorized a color-coded threat-ID system. Code blue: Law enforcement at the door. Code brown: Draw your weapons. Code black: Come out guns blazing.
Two years later, #Justice4Trayvon is down to about three tweets a day, but the Zimmermans nonetheless say they expect to be in fear for the rest of their lives. They're still in that house Bob found on Craigslist, but no one outside the immediate family knows where it is, not even close relatives. Two of Gladys's brothers, an insurance salesman and a retired deputy sheriff, live in the Orlando area. "We certainly trust both of these individuals," Bob wrote to me in an e-mail this spring. "However, we have never informed either where we live. The potential risks are simply too great."
At the time of that e-mail exchange, the family were considering letting me visit their safe house to witness how they live now. They were eager for the world to see them as they see themselves: ignored, unmourned victims. Collateral damage of an incident for which—to be clear—they still do not consider George responsible. We even got so far as to negotiate terms of my visit in order to preserve their security. I would have to wear a hood while they drove me from my hotel to their house, and I would have to leave my cell phone behind. Grace, in particular, was alarmed about my phone's GPS capabilities, which I could use to pinpoint their location.
I agreed to all of their conditions—I did tell them that I thought the hood seemed a little Abu Ghraib-y, so we compromised on a blindfold. Ultimately, though, none of it mattered. Robert, who is always the one pushing the family to step out of the shadows for the right promotional opportunity, wanted me to come. He worked hard to persuade his parents. But after a few days of deliberating, they gave me their answer.
"I understand you may consider us uncooperative or somewhat paranoid," Bob wrote. "However, we live with a situation that can not easily be imagined. We have known the results when various individuals have realized one of us is a Zimmerman."
"We have known the results." It's not clear to me what he's referring to. The New Black Panthers? They never came knocking. The Internet threats? Just empty words, lobbed from a distance. That time a Publix employee recognized George and refused to make him a sandwich? The time Robert was almost beaten up in a Starbucks? Nothing actually happened, so it's hard to know if the threat was real or imagined.
This much is certain: The Zimmermans rarely venture out of that small house in central Florida. They are isolated and bored. They pass the time caring for Gladys's mom and watching Spanish-language telenovelas and Duck Dynasty and Real Housewives and Fox News. George, unbelievably, seems to be back in neighborhood-watchman mode; this summer the police found him sitting in his truck outside a friend's motorcycle shop in the middle of the night. For a few concentrated months, the Zimmermans were a twenty-four-seven cable-news fascination, which can be intoxicating and terrifying all at once. But that's over now. The country has mostly moved on, to Ferguson, to Michael Brown, to the next shooting death of a teenage kid, the next Trayvon Martin, the next George Zimmerman.
Maybe George's relatives are right about the risk to their lives—maybe it still exists as much as it ever did. Or maybe it's just a way for the Zimmermans to feel as if they still matter. Maybe their paranoia, and all the rules and routines that it requires, just gives them something to do.
Eventually, Bob and Gladys agree to meet me in person at the Westin in Lake Mary, Florida, which I'm told is not too far from their secret home. We meet for dinner, and before they scoot into the booth, they both check over the seatbacks to make sure no one is eavesdropping.
Gladys is darker-skinned than she appeared on TV during the trial, beautiful and indigenously featured. She wears a little white cardigan over her shoulders, like a country-club matron, but in conversation she is fierce and brassy and speaks heavily accented English. It infuriates her that George is often described as a white man, which she considers an affront to her Peruvian heritage. She can be startlingly callous about Trayvon Martin's family, about the help they've received, financial and otherwise, which she feels her family has been unfairly denied. It often seems as if she believes the Zimmermans have suffered equally, as if they have lost a son as well.
Bob is more sorrowful, more measured, but just as tin-eared regarding the Martins, albeit more benevolently. Shortly after the incident, he heard that Trayvon was chronically truant in high school. "So I thought, well, maybe at some point we can get with his parents," he told me, "and have some kind of thing where we reward kids that improve their attendance."
One of Bob's sayings is an old military line: "Stop bleeding, keep marching." It's the story of his life. His singular goal was not to be like his own father, a vicious drunk who used to beat him ruthlessly. By age 14, Bob was a ward of the state of California; he spent the next decade incarcerated or homeless. He turned his life around by joining the Army. He got his college degree at 50 and had a long military career that ended at the Pentagon. Because of his job, he always owned a gun, but he taught all his kids to stay away from firearms. "If we ever touched or handled a gun," Robert told me at one point, "Dad was gonna beat the shit out of us. Period. He made it absolutely clear, like bare bottoms, you're gonna get the shit beaten out of you. He was always saying, 'Guns will get you into more trouble than they will ever get you out of.' "
But now, sitting across from me, picking at a burger and sipping iced tea, Bob talks as if the cycle of violence has become an inescapable fact of life. His face is a ringer for Bryan Cranston's on Breaking Bad—the early seasons, when Walter White has the defeated look of a man kicked in the teeth by life. "I am sure there are people, you know, some young kid that has nothing going for him, but he's able to get a pistol, wants to make a name for himself. 'Maybe I'll kill one of the Zimmermans. Maybe George, maybe one of his family members. I'll be famous.' You know? That happens," he says. "And that's what worries me."
George has arranged for Gladys and Robert to take a concealed-weapons-certification class the next evening. (George already has a permit; Bob refuses to say if he has one.) It's a three-hour course, required in order to carry a weapon in Florida. The class is held at an Orlando gun store called the Arms Room, where George did a meet-and-greet back in March. Gladys invites me to come along with her and Robert.
Almost immediately, things get weird. The class's instructor, a police officer in Belle Isle, repeatedly recommends "accessorizing your gun," which he illustrates by lisping and wagging his wrist like a stereotypical "queen." The instructor keeps up the act until he finds out I live in New York City. Then he veers into Colonel Klink from the 1960s TV series Hogan's Heroes. "Welcome to Germany," he says. "Everyone on the train!"
We don't actually learn to fire our weapons in this concealed-weapons class, so eventually I tell the instructor, "I have no idea how to load, aim, or shoot a gun." He recommends I get a .38. "It's a good baby gun," he says. "Yes!" Gladys exclaims. "Personally, I love my .45!" Then she does this kind of Angie Dickinson draw-and-aim move from the TV show Police Woman.
Ever since the shooting, George has been like a bogeyman in the lives of the other Zimmermans—always in their thoughts, but mostly a spectral presence, rarely seen. The unraveling of his six-year marriage to Shellie, just weeks after the verdict, took them all by surprise. They found out from the media. After Shellie asked for a divorce, she and George got into such a huge fight that she called 911 to report that George had punched her father in the nose, smashed her iPad, and threatened them both with a gun. Eight police units, some with tactical gear and ballistic shields, took George into custody. (Shellie never pressed charges.)
Another surprise: George almost immediately took up with a new girl, a busty blonde former neighbor named Samantha Scheibe. But just ten weeks after Shellie called 911 on George, another domestic spat led Samantha to do the same. (The charges were eventually dropped.)
Robert told me often that he believes George is suffering from PTSD. On the rare occasions when they talk, George often loses the thread of the conversation. He has also developed a very short fuse, especially when he thinks someone is trying to tell him what to do. "What is your point?" he'll say. "Tell me the point! In two words: What is the point?" When you try to answer, he cuts you off and yells it again.
Money woes are only adding to the strain on the family. The Zimmermans are broke and deeply in debt. George owes his attorneys $2.5 million. Bob and Gladys spent $6,900 on hotel rooms, $7,700 on living expenses, and more than $20,000 so far to rent their secret-location house. They are still paying the mortgage, even a lawn guy, on the home they've left empty. A pair of lawsuits—one against NBC for selectively editing the tape of George's 911 call after the shooting, one against actress Roseanne Barr for tweeting the address of Bob's house—have gone nowhere. For most of the past two years, all three of the family's adult children were unemployed. George still is.
Bob understands George's reluctance to look for a job. "When your name, Social Security number, and everything is out on the Internet, it's hard to do anything," he says. "So he may never be able to work. He may never be able to get Social Security. He may never get Medicare. If he buys a house, then people can go on the Internet and find out exactly where he lives."
He was tougher on Robert, who he thought should just get a job as a busboy. After all, he would remind Robert, he spoke Spanish. Robert was trying to find work; it just wasn't going very well. He applied for jobs as a prep chef, an emergency dispatcher, and a disability-benefits evaluator, but he didn't get any of them. Late this past summer, he finally found work as a deliveryman.
George has had some chances to cash in on his notoriety, but they've all fallen through somehow. A couple of "get beaten up for money" opportunities, in which George would get pummeled by some famous black guy for a pay-per-view audience—the first time, it was supposed to be DMX—never got off the ground. On a lark, he gave painting a try, and the first canvas he ever put up for sale, a blue-toned American flag, scored $100,099.99 on eBay. His second painting, though—a portrait of the prosecutor in the Martin case, Angela Corey, that he might have copied from an Associated Press photograph—earned him a cease-and-desist letter. That seems to have soured him on his budding art career. He and Robert have talked about possible subjects for his next painting—Robert proposed killer whales; George suggested Anne Frank, because, according to Robert, he identifies with her—but he hasn't gotten around to it yet.
Ever since Robert appeared on Bill Maher's show, George has had an open invitation to take a turn himself. But he was afraid of Maher. An adviser suggested Univision instead. The boys had grown up watching the Spanish-language network with their mother and grandmother. It wouldn't pay, but George could seem multicultural by doing a TV appearance in Spanish. Maybe it would open some doors. George said okay.
It was his first interview since his trial. Univision put up George, Gladys, and Robert in Miami and provided constant security. Still, Robert prepped for the trip by studying videos of the assassination attempt on President Reagan."[George] is the liability," he said, walking me through what he'd gleaned. "[I am] the eyes, you know, the Secret Service guy to see if someone is on a balcony taking a picture. Where are these people's hands? Why are they coming here? What's wrapped up in that towel? Can I see your hands?"
Throughout their stay in Miami, Robert carried a backpack filled with handguns, which he called "the babies." "You never say, 'Get a gun,' " he said, explaining the nomenclature. "That alerts bad guys. You say, 'Get the baby!' "
The Univision appearance went smoothly enough—no gotcha questions, no need for a baby—so, emboldened, George agreed to another media stop, this time on CNN. It would tape at the Ritz-Carlton in Miami. The network agreed to pay for two hotel rooms for three nights and, according to Robert, "everything" they wanted during their stay. (For this article, George refused to speak with me on the record unless GQ provided a similar hotel room—he asked for a week's stay—but the magazine declined.)
The Zimmermans seized on their brief stint of subsidized luxury. They ran up a big room-service bill, cleaned out the minibars, got their clothes laundered, made several trips to the spa, treated a party of ten to dinner at the hotel restaurant, and bought swag—from bracelets to bath fizzies—at the gift shop.
Toward the end of their stay, according to Robert, a manager presented him with a bill for $3,600. He says he called CNN, outraged, only to have the producer accuse them of splurging shamelessly on CNN's dime. "You and your brother are evil!" he remembers her screaming. The hotel manager threatened to call the police. Alone in his room, Robert started shaking. He wrapped all the blankets around him, ordered shrimp, chain-smoked cigarettes, got roaring drunk. Nothing helped. He called his mother in a panic. "I can't get warm," he sobbed. "I just can't get warm."
Unconsoled, Robert called the only person he could think of: Dr. Drew, who'd been kind to him when he went on Drew's TV show shortly before George's trial. He reached a producer, who told him Dr. Drew wasn't available. But the guy was nice, at least. He stayed on the phone awhile and talked Robert down. Eventually CNN agreed to pay the bill, and the next morning Robert returned the only purchases he could: a bottle of Mercedes-Benz cologne and a Ritz-Carlton wallet that George had bought him to say thanks.
Over the summer, I visit Robert in the apartment his parents are currently renting for him in suburban Washington, D.C. His family-spokesman gig has been making him feel especially torn lately. On the one hand, he enjoys the attention. (At one point he tells me a long, hilarious story about a surreal night of drinking recently in New York City with a female cable-news talking head and the Navy Seal who allegedly shot Osama bin Laden. Robert says he wound up in bed with the cable-news commentator and, even though his sexuality seems to be pointed in the wrong direction, they began hooking up, until his bracelet got caught in her hair.)
On the other hand, Robert keeps discovering that life in semi-public isn't easy for a Zimmerman. He and a date recently watched the movie Diana, about the late British princess. "It made him get who I am now," Robert says. "And he couldn't take it." It dawned on Robert that he'll "never be able to fuck somebody without thinking, What's going to happen? Are they recording me? Did they leave their laptop open? Is this being broadcast live? Is this person two weeks later going to find out who my brother is and then sell something? Are they going to say you raped them?"
Robert has his "go-bag" with him, and he offers to show it to me. He zips open a gray messenger bag sitting on a musty comforter in the bedroom. Inside are tax forms, pay stubs, and a car registration, plus some documents that seem useless. There are several birthday cards, a neat stack of receipts from Disney's Wilderness Lodge, a thank-you note for singing at a funeral, and his ninth-grade standardized test scores, as well as DVDs of his media appearances and a video of George's birthday party two years before the incident.
Robert wants to watch that one. A grinning George sits on a chair and opens gifts. Polo shirts, kitchen appliances, a laptop computer. Kids wander around. Guests chat and laugh—a few African-Americans among them. Occasionally, Bob steps into frame. He rubs his son's close-shaved head, hugs and kisses him. He looks youthful, vibrant. Not at all like Walter White on Breaking Bad.
Before I leave, we Skype with the rest of the family, minus George, who are all at home in Florida. The connection is choppy. Bob, Gladys, and Grace are in the kitchen, and all three of them look tired. Both of the family's lawsuits—their best hope at financial salvation—are going nowhere fast. A federal magistrate bounced the case against Roseanne Barr back to a state court. And a circuit-court judge just tossed out George's case against NBC.
But that's not what they want to talk about today. They want me to understand that the world is aligned against them and that what sustains them is their closeness as a family. George texts all the time. He even called recently. He wanted to know the name of a recent pop song, one with a chorus that goes la la la.
Bob tells me that George's big fear right now is that he'll be charged with federal civil rights violations for the Martin shooting.
"He's worried," Bob says, "that if FBI agents come and kick in his door, he's probably gonna shoot a few of them."
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Megabanks Have the Federal Prison System Locked Up |
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Thursday, 02 October 2014 13:20 |
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Wagner writes: "For the 790 federal prisoners incarcerated at MCC, Bank of America controls the provision of money transfers, e-messaging and some telephone services."
The poor end up in jail. (photo: i-stock)
Megabanks Have the Federal Prison System Locked Up
By Daniel Wagner, Center for Public Integrity
02 October 14
Bank of America has sole control over money transfers and e-messaging for 214,365 federal inmates—producing a $76.3 million windfall for the company.
 n Wall Street, Bank of America plays a perpetual second fiddle to JPMorgan Chase & Co., the only U.S. bank that holds more assets.
A few blocks north, however, at the New York Metropolitan Correctional Center, there exists a market that Bank of America has locked down, literally. For the 790 federal prisoners incarcerated at MCC, Bank of America controls the provision of money transfers, e-messaging and some telephone services.
The bank’s monopoly extends across the federal Bureau of Prisons system—121 institutions housing 214,365 inmates. Since 2000, Bank of America has collected at least $76.3 million for its work on the program.
When inmates are released, JPMorgan steps in, issuing high-fee payment cards to distribute money from their prison accounts, which include earnings from jobs and money their families send them.
The banks’ exclusive deals came not from the Bureau of Prisons, but from the U.S. Treasury.
The agency awarded the contracts using a 150-year-old authority that allows it to sidestep the oversight, transparency and competition typically required for federal contracting. That means that for 14 years, Bank of America has never been required to compete with other vendors who might do the work better or for less money, according to Treasury documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
JPMorgan’s no-bid deal to issue debit cards for various federal agencies began in 1998, was extended in 2008 and eventually expanded to include cards for federal prisons. Fees from inmates make up most of the bank’s compensation for these cards, documents show. A separate Treasury document from 2013 said that about 50,000 released prisoners had been issued cards and listed fees of $2 for withdrawing money from an ATM and $1.50 for leaving an account inactive for three months.
JPMorgan, Treasury and the Bureau of Prisons declined to provide a current fee schedule for the cards. Bank of America, JPMorgan and the Bureau of Prisons all declined numerous requests to discuss the banks’ deals inside U.S. prisons.
The documents show how Treasury has expanded the scope of Bank of America’s contract—originally focused on managing accounts for inmates and tracking inventory at prison stores—to include an array of services for the nation’s largest prison system, from providing e-messaging to supplying the prison system with handheld scanners. The deal allows Bank of America to subcontract with other prison vendors, positioning it as a hub of prison services that are procured outside any government bidding process.
The contract has been amended 22 times in the past 14 years.
Lubricating the system
Across the country, jails and prisons are hungry for ways to shift their operational costs onto inmates and their families. Inmates need money to pay for essentials like toiletries and court fines as well as extras like higher-quality food than what is served in prison cafeterias. Their families often pay high fees to send them the money. Inmates, in turn, pay marked-up prices for items sold at prison stores.
The oil that lubricates this entire system is supplied by the prison bankers, vendors that collect all the inmates’ money in a pipeline of cash from which payments and fees can be pulled. Bank of America’s lock on federal prisons makes it a major player among prison bankers, many of which provide a range of high-cost financial services to inmates and their families and share their profits with the prison systems they work for.
Providing services inside prisons is a growing business, but it’s not new. The first accounts for federal inmates were set up in 1930. Inmates’ families could no longer bring them food and clothing, the government decided, but instead would be allowed to send money into individual accounts. Until the early 2000s, most deposits were made by mail using postal money orders, a process that was nearly cost-free. Before Bank of America’s contract, the Treasury Department held inmates’ funds.
Bank of America’s prison contract is an example of how the Treasury Department leans on a power granted during the Civil War to pick and choose its own bankers and allow other agencies to avoid procurement rules that might force a competitive bidding process.
By hiding these deals from the public, Treasury “invites opportunities for waste and fraud,” said Neil Barofsky, who provided independent oversight of Treasury’s $700 billion bailout program after the 2008 financial crisis. He said Treasury’s expansive use of the authority reminds him of what he saw while working with the agency.
“The reaction from Treasury when dealing with banks was to find a way to say no to being transparent,” said Barofsky, now a partner with the law firm Jenner & Block LLP.
Treasury’s power to award the deals, known as financial agency agreements, was created in 1863 to support the nation’s first national banking system, around the time the greenback was introduced. Since then, the department’s broad use of this power has drawn criticism from lawmakers, auditors with the Government Accountability Office, federal appeals court judges and the department’s own inspector general. Treasury has said the selection process is competitive enough and the contracts are handled responsibly.
In a 1975 report, however, government auditors said Treasury was reimbursing banks operating on overseas military bases for office parties and club dues, leaving them with “little or no incentive to operate the facilities profitably or efficiently.”
Twenty years later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned Treasury’s selection of Citibank as a financial agent to deliver electronic benefits like Social Security, calling it “arbitrary.”
And in 2008, the Government Accountability Office said a deal with JPMorgan to provide stored value cards on Navy ships was “at risk of delivering a system solution that falls short of cost, schedule and performance expectations.”
Most recently, Treasury’s inspector general last spring criticized oversight of a program to deliver federal benefits on debit cards issued by Dallas-based Comerica Bank. Te inspector general found that officials had failed to keep tabs on fees charged to consumers and did not justify the decision to pay Comerica an extra $32.5 million for work it had promised to do for free. Treasury agreed to rebid the deal, then quietly extended its partnership with Comerica for five years.
Twenty-two amendments, no bidding
Treasury has spent more than $5 billion in the past decade on financial agency agreements with a handful of banks, often without considering whether another company could do the work cheaper or more effectively, documents show.
Consider how Bank of America’s prison deal has swelled in the 14 years since it was awarded.
The original contract to hold and manage inmates’ accounts and track their purchases from prison stores was amended six months later, adding up to another $1.47 million to Bank of America’s compensation. In 2003, officials added telephone service to the deal, boosting the bank’s potential compensation to $25.8 million. Later, the work grew to include e-messaging for inmates.
Bank of America’s contract has been amended 22 times since 2000 and the cost has swollen more than fivefold, to $76.3 million from an original $14.4 million, Treasury officials say. They say the Department of Justice, the parent agency of the Bureau of Prisons, has reimbursed Treasury for those costs.
The contracts say these services might help the Bureau of Prisons reduce staff time spent opening letters or entering account deposits manually. Yet they never articulate why the work could not be procured directly by the Department of Justice using typical contracting procedures.
Bank of America and Treasury designated two subcontractors to perform the work: DynCorp International, a major military contractor based just outside of Washington; and Advanced Technologies Group, a Kansas-based technology company that shares a parent company with Keefe, the biggest operator of prison commissaries.
Neither company would have been eligible to deal directly with Treasury because financial agents must be banks or credit unions that are insured by the federal government.
Mother ship of contracts
The bank’s power to choose which vendors provide money transfers and technology partners has rankled potential competitors including Ryan Shapiro, founder and CEO of JPay, which provides prison banking services to most state inmates. He has called Bank of America’s deal “the mother ship of all contracts.”
Shapiro spent years trying to break through the Bank of America stronghold and offer money transfers to federal prisons—a role explicitly reserved for Western Union and others chosen by Bank of America under the bank’s contracts with Treasury. He spent heavily on lobbying and involved his congresswoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., whose political action committee had received an $5,000 contribution from Shapiro in 2010. Still, he was unable to open the bidding process.
“They hand-pick the vendor,” Shapiro said in 2012. “It’s a veiled way of basically just knighting the company you want.”
The Center obtained contracts that covered the beginning of Bank of America’s deal through mid-2012 through a Freedom of Information request. Both Treasury and the Justice Department failed to fulfill more recent requests for records detailing the program’s recent finances.
Bank of America’s role in the system is well hidden, says Jack Donson, a private prison consultant who spent 23 years working for the Bureau of Prisons. He was surprised to learn that Bank of America chooses the subcontractors and ultimately is responsible for systems that he dealt with on a daily basis before he left the agency in 2011.
Programs like those operated by Bank of America don’t always deliver the efficiency they promise, Donson said, because they add a new layer of bureaucracy. “Now the profit is going to two places,” he says. “The profits should not go to the private sector; it should remain with the agency.”
Trust fund department
The Bureau of Prisons has created a new office to manage inmate services like accounts and e-messaging since the vendors came in, Donson says. When he started in the 1980s, a prison’s inmate finance office was run by one or two people. Today there’s a whole Trust Fund Department. “People have to bid out those contracts, then people have to track those contracts,” Donson said.
The money inmates spend on email and goods from prison stores is plowed back into a so-called inmate welfare fund that is supposed to be used for extra programs to benefit inmates. Yet in the federal system in 2010, more than 75 percent of that money went to inmate wages. About one half of one percent of the money was spent on psychological programs. Nineteen percent went to recreational activities.
Donson was not surprised that money earmarked for programs to benefit inmates actually pays for staffing and other costs.
By working with Treasury and Bank of America, the Bureau of Prisons has kept its preferred vendors in place without competition for nearly 15 years, something it could never do under normal contracting rules.
Those rules were designed to prevent agencies from favoring certain contractors and abusing their discretion, says Kathleen Clark, a law professor at the Washington University School of Law. Treasury’s broad use of its authority presents “a risk to fairness,” she says.
“It’s hard for me to understand what the justification is for circumventing these rules,” Clark says, “other than it’s convenient and it’s easier.”
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FOCUS | Attempted Left-Wing Lynching Attacks Personal Integrity |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Thursday, 02 October 2014 09:30 |
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Boardman writes: "Doug Lamborn is pretty much a lamebrain of the run-of-the-mill Republican variety."
Representative Doug Lamborn, (R-Colo.), is accused of urging generals who disagreed with the president to resign. (photo: Getty Images)
Attempted Left-Wing Lynching Attacks Personal Integrity
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
02 October 14
n September 25, 2014, Corey Hutchins posted a piece on Medium.com with a headline strange enough to serve as a warning all by itself, since it suggested that some Republicans were somehow, actively plotting against the president, right now, as you read the headline:
Congressional Republicans Urging
Military Officers to Rebel Against Obama
“Rebel Against Obama!” That sounds pretty spectacular, like “Seven Days in May” or some other political conspiracy fiction, but the headline actually inflates the significance of the story that follows. The subhead gives a hint of the downsizing to come:
Colorado representative wants generals to quit in protest
If you react to the idea of generals quitting in protest (to whatever), it’s more intriguing than focusing on the desires of the lone “Colorado representative.” Still, it’s almost exciting to think about all those possible rebels in uniform, even if the rebellion under consideration is merely quitting the field of battle loudly. Here’s the way the story starts:
Members of Congress have been talking to U.S. generals behind the scenes and urging them to publicly resign “in a blaze of glory” if they disagree with how the White House is handling conflicts in the Middle East, according to U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado.
The Republican member of the House Armed Services Committee made the remarks at a Sept. 23 liberty group meeting in the basement of a Colorado Springs bar … [sic] following a kilt-wearing contest.” [Links in original]
Corey Hutchins was apparently the only reporter covering Lamborn’s kilt-contest event with an audience of about 50. The rest of the story describes a relatively mundane exchange (see below) between an audience member and the congressman in which he allows that, as far as he knows, nothing like a rebellion is going on now, and hasn’t been for years. Neither the Pentagon, nor Lamborn’s office, nor the House Armed Services Committee responded to the reporter’s inquiries, and Lamborn’s Democratic opponent, a former Republican, issued an anodyne statement that said, in part, with little intelligence and less relevance to the actual event:
It is inappropriate for Congressman Lamborn to politicize our military for his own gain. Our elected officials should not be encouraging our military leaders to resign when they have a disagreement over policy. Congressman Lamborn’s statement shows his immaturity and lack of understanding of the American armed forces. Someone who serves on the House Armed Services Committee should know better.
That opponent is retired major general Irv Halter, 58, who once called himself “a common sense, get something done type of person.” He is the first serious competition Lamborn has faced since he defeated two colonels running as Democrats in 2006 and 2008. Describing his politics, and quoting Ronald Reagan without attribution, Halter told the Colorado Springs Independent in 2013:
I didn’t leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me. What disturbs me about the Republican Party is it’s become the party of “My way or the highway.” It’s all about a certain doctrine and if you don’t adhere to that doctrine, you’re called names….
If people want incendiary speeches about the other side, don’t come see me. Enough of that. Let’s send capable, competent people of character to Congress.
Now Halter’s campaign Facebook page features at least eight posts in reference to “Lamborn’s inflammatory comment” and asks you to contribute if you are “incensed.” And Halter’s rather slow and unreliable campaign website is full of the Lamborn “rebellion of the generals” story which, in the hands of Rachel Maddow on MSNBC September 26 became a “story” about a congressman fomenting mutiny in the military in a time of war. Seriously, that’s what she said, with almost no accuracy at all.
“… trying to inspire mutiny in the military during wartime….”
Maddow returned to the Lamborn story on September 30, saying the congressman was “trying to inspire mutiny in the military during wartime.” In the meantime, the MaddowBlog website has been posting skewed versions of the story almost daily. Other, non-local media have been slow to jump on this made up story, exceptions being Huffington Post and Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald, whose piece ran under the nonsensical headline: Talking Treason: Is Hatred of Obama Trumping Patriotism?
So what’s going on here?
Doug Lamborn is pretty much a lamebrain of the run-of-the-mill Republican variety. He’s a lawyer who spent 12 years in the Colorado legislature before being elected to Congress in 2006. His record is unspectacular. He has voted the party line more than any other Republican. He enjoyed shutting down the government. He’s prepared to shut it down again if he has the chance. He wants to de-fund public broadcasting. He doesn’t want to penalize people who hire illegal immigrants. He opposes more restrictions on dog-fighting. He referred to President Obama as “like touching a tar baby.” National Journal says he is the most conservative congressman.
His district includes Colorado Springs and is one of the most conservative, militarized, and Christianized districts in the country. All the same, someone like Lamborn might be vulnerable even there, when opposed by a centrist former general in a reasonable campaign that wasn’t helped by McCarthyite tactics from the left. That chance is gone, now, because Halter decided to run with the smear that Corey Hutchins set in motion and Rachel Maddow pushed over the top.
So what’s the proof that Lamborn has been smeared? Here’s the complete transcript of what Lamborn said about this subject, as provided by Hutchins, who recorded it. The transcript is credible, and begins with a comment from an audience member:
VOTER: Please work with your other congressmen on both sides of the aisles and support the generals and the troops in this country despite the fact that there is no leadership from the Muslim Brotherhood in the White House. [applause] It was not necessarily a question but [unintelligible].
LAMBORN: You know what, I can’t really add anything to that, but do let me reassure you on this. A lot of us are talking to the generals behind the scenes, saying, ‘Hey, if you disagree with the policy that the White House has given you, let’s have a resignation. You know, let’s have a public resignation, and state your protest, and go out in a blaze of glory.’ And I haven’t seen that very much, in fact I haven’t seen that at all in years.
So was this snatch of dialogue at an obscure event with low attendance reported accurately anywhere? Or was it hyped, or misreported, or distorted, or lied about in a style made all too common on the right by Limbaugh, Fox, and the rest of that pack?
Whatever the motive, the reporting was corrupt and dishonest
Lamborn is the only source for this story, and there is no independent corroboration for any of the more lurid interpretations of what it might mean. Lamborn’s spokesperson has said that Lamborn was referring to conversations in the past, not current conversations about current military policy, which Lamborn supports even though it’s not bloody enough for his taste. What Lamborn was essentially talking about was resignation in protest, and its current rarity.
Resignation in protest is honorable.
Resignation from government in protest is as honorable as it is rare. It is an act of personal sacrifice for the sake of principle. Last February, Oklahoma Republican senator James Inhofe told reporters that some members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were considering resigning in protest over Pentagon budget uncertainty; he wouldn’t say who they were, and they didn’t resign on principle. On September 28, American Thinker called for Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to resign for apparently contradicting his commander-in-chief on the issue of ground troops in the war against the Islamic State; Dempsey remains in office. This article concludes:
Resignation in protest is an honorable tradition, and one that seems to have been forgotten in recent decades, and not just in the military. It places duty above ambition, and in some cases, personal financial gain. General Dempsey has served this nation with great distinction for decades. Now he can cap his career with an important service, by letting the public and the Commander he serves know how grave the mistake is that he sees so clearly. He could revive a tradition that needs resuscitation, as well.
Perhaps the most dramatic resignation in protest occurred October 20, 1973, when President Nixon ordered the firing of special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. Believing the president’s order to be illegal, Attorney General Elliot Richardson resigned in protest. Believing the president’s order to be illegal, Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned in protest. Solicitor General Robert Bork then executed the order.
Thomas Ricks, writing in Foreign Policy on September 26, puts the principle of resignation in protest in perspective as it applies to the military, and especially to the highest ranking military officers:
If he [Gen. Dempsey] slaps his four stars on the table and tells the president to find somebody else to pitch the next inning, it will make a real difference.
In a telling study of the Vietnam War, H.R. McMaster, now an Army general officer himself, castigates the military general-officer class of that era for quietly carrying out orders that they knew to be wrong. In 2003, many generals strongly disagreed with President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq, but none resigned in protest. How does this happen?
General officers have offered a number of rationalizations for lack of moral courage over the years....
“Republicans Urging Military Officers to Rebel Against Obama”???
Lamborn is recorded on tape saying, somewhat awkwardly, that an honorable general will resign on principle at some point when that principle becomes important enough. He doesn’t even say he or anyone has tried to persuade any general to resign, and he doesn’t mention any specific principle. He says only that resignation is an option for any general with principle.
That is not the same as what Hutchins reported: “Members of Congress have been talking to U.S. generals behind the scenes and urging them to publicly resign ‘in a blaze of glory’ if they disagree with how the White House is handling conflicts in the Middle East, according to U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado.”
That report is fraudulent in many ways: in having only one source; in having no corroboration at all; in a made-up reference to the Middle East; and in falsely saying anyone was “urging” generals to resign, when all Lamborn actually said was that a resignation in protest was appropriate, conditionally, if a general had any principle worth resigning over.
Reality is not the same as what Rachel Maddow reported, starting with calling the Hutchins piece “a scoop” instead of an imaginary nothing. She ran the full tape on September 26, but when she re-ran it then and later, she omitted the critical last line: “I haven’t seen that at all for years.” And she rattled on for several minutes about things that were not in fact said, concluding, falsely, that: “… maybe Republicans in the House Armed Services Committee are en masse trying to incite mutiny in the military. Because that’s the prospect he raised …”
Actually, no, that’s NOT the prospect he raised, any more than he mentioned the House Armed Services Committee or said any group was working “en masse.” All of that is Maddow’s projection, based on a sloppy reading/hearing of what Lamborn said, which in no way came close to implying any “mutiny.” A mutiny, by definition, is a defiance or seizure of authority by lower ranks. A mutiny is quite the opposite of a resignation in protest, which is precisely what Lamborn said, and which is honorable.
The best thing to be said about these two reporters is that they didn’t get it anywhere near as wrong as Newsweek’s Eichenwald, who started his piece this way, untethered from reality:
Congressman Doug Lamborn, a Republican from Colorado, is an un-American demagogue, willing to sabotage this country for his own grandstanding narcissism. If his words are to be believed, this brigadier blowhard is thoroughly unfit for public office and instead should be rotting in jail on charges of treason.
What these reporters and their distortions have in common is an implied willingness to accept and defend the idea that being at war means that no one has a right to dissent any more, that going to war, even illegally, nullifies the Constitution. Now that’s something to mutiny against.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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he tone of the answering machine message was routine, like a reminder for a dental appointment. But there was also an undercurrent of urgency. “Please call me back,” the voice said. “It’s important.”
