So the other day, I read where the “government” was approaching all the big phone companies and asking for secret access to their customer data. Data that it would be illegal for them to collect on their own, but if the companies would maybe just give it to them… well… who could say for sure?

And by “the other day,” I mean May 10, 2006:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

Awful. Horrible. Evil. What could be worse? 

A little bit later, I found out. Like when I read this: 

The National Security Agency and other government agencies retaliated against Qwest because the Denver telco refused to go along with a phone spying program, documents released Wednesday suggest.

Mmm. Not good.

That should be investigated, don't you think? Especially in light of the fact that the United States Senate is poised to pass legislation immunizing AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth for selling out your rights to privacy, while Qwest got punished for refusing to play ball.

But how? Just how could the United States Senate investigate such a thorny legal situation?

Well, first, I assume you'd have to find one of the United States. And  then I guess you'd have to see if that State had any Senators who did that sort of thing.

You know. Investigated legal stuff that was really, really important. 

Because this seems really important. Don't you think? AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth get free passes, and CEO Joe Nacchio, the guy who nixed the deal for Qwest gets, what, exactly?

Nacchio was convicted last spring on 19 counts of insider trading for $52 million of stock sales in April and May 2001, and sentenced to six years in prison.

Ew! Insider trading? Do we really want to touch that? Well, maybe. Maybe not. Here's something interesting about the case, though. Check out the chronology of events reported in the Rocky Mountain News story:

Nacchio planned to demonstrate at trial that he had a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., to discuss a $100 million project. According to the documents, another topic also was discussed at that meeting, one with which Nacchio refused to comply.

The topic itself is redacted each time it appears in the hundreds of pages of documents, but there is mention of Nacchio believing the request was both inappropriate and illegal, and repeatedly refusing to go along with it.

Nacchio was convicted last spring on 19 counts of insider trading for $52 million of stock sales in April and May 2001, and sentenced to six years in prison.

The NSA contract was awarded in July 2001 to companies other than Qwest.

See what I'm getting at here? The government says Nacchio is guilty of insider trading because when he sold his stock in April and May of 2001, he knew or should have known that it was significantly overvalued, because the company's earnings were dwindling.

But beginning in February 2001, Nacchio believes Qwest has got an inside track on a $100 million contract. And…

Nacchio also asserts Qwest was in line to build a $2 billion private government network called GovNet and do other government business, including a network between the U.S. and South America.

Why would Nacchio think he had that money sewn up?

Nacchio was on a Bush-appointed national security telecommunications advisory panel.

That's usually as good as cash in the bank with this “administration.”

So Nacchio might have had every reason in April and May 2001 to believe Qwest was looking good. It wasn't until July that the government steered the contracts elsewhere.

And then all of a sudden, Qwest stock's not looking so good. In fact, it looks terrible. And just two months before, CEO Nacchio was selling $52 million worth?

Book 'im, boys. Tell it to the judge, Nacchio!

Only Nacchio couldn't. Classified. “National security,” dontcha know. So it looks like it's six years in the pen for Nacchio.

Now that the blogs have gone ahead and said it aloud, this is something that's being whispered in nearly every conversation on the subject. Even in The Washington Post:

Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.

And, as the Wired blog reports:

Qwest CEO Not Alone in Alleging NSA Started Domestic Phone Record Program 7 Months Before 9/11
By Ryan Singel October 12, 2007 | 4:23:55 PM
Startling statements from former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio's defense documents alleging the National Security Agency began building a massive call records database seven months before 9/11 aren't the only accusations that the controversial program predated the attacks of 9/11.

[…]

And in May 2006, a lawsuit filed against Verizon for allegedly turning over call records to the NSA alleged that AT&T began building a spying facility for the NSA just days after President Bush was inaugurated. That lawsuit is one of 50 that were consolidated and moved to a San Francisco federal district court, where the suits sit in limbo waiting for the 9th Circuit Appeals court to decide whether the suits can proceed without endangering national security.

So here's the key. The domestic spying has always been justified by saying it was a necessary response to 9/11. But clearly there's damned good reason to believe these programs were conceived and initiated well before the September 11th attacks.

That would mean — gasp! — that your “government” is full of it.

But it's not just that. If Qwest's competitors were already abetting this bloodless(?) coup before 9/11, then the “administration's” domestic spying not only has little if anything to do with response to terrorism, but it also objectively failed to prevent 9/11.

So the next time Congress is threatened with having the “responsibility” of a threatened attack on its conscience if they don't knuckle under to the Bush junta, as was the case in the August FISA capitulation, perhaps they'll give some thought to the demonstrated record of failure the program evidenced with regard to the single biggest attack on American soil ever perpetrated.

And when they're asked to roll over once again, this time granting immunity to the companies that agreed to sell out your inalienable rights to the “government” in exchange for contracting money (taken out of Qwest's pocket, for refusing to play along), do you think maybe they should take five to figure out just what the hell's going on before they vote?

I do. But then again, what am I going to do? Vote “Bag of Hammers '08” if they don't?

The moral of the story? Political opponents of the Bush “administration” get fingered by the feds. You get spied on. And Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), writing the Senate's new FISA bill, says Nacchio — who refused to hand over customer data illegally to the governmetn — can rot, while AT&T and others — who gave you up to the feds — get retroactive immunity.

Any Senator who votes for this retroactive immunity under these conditions is a stone moron.

Sure wish there was some Senator from one of the United States who made it his business to look into matters of justice such as this.

Call me if you know any.

Okay, let's get to it (and note the poll to left).

The question has been called by Terri Hallenbeck in today's Burlington Free Press, so the debate is on. What about Anthony Pollina as a “unity” candidate for Governor? According to the article, Pollina Martha Abbott and David Zuckerman were at Friday's Democratic fundraiser trying to talk up the idea. The Freeps also reports they've been reaching out to liberal Dems on this for sometime (and yeah, now that the conversation is officially out in the open, I was contacted by Dave Z last week about the idea).

First of all, its worth noting again that plenty of us saw this coming. With these press reports, the “spoiler” argument is now up for grabs, as Pollina seems to be the only lefty making any meaningful moves towards running. If he announces this month, and the Dems find somebody in December or January, he'll have a legitimate point of debate that it's the Dem who will be the “spoiler.” To the leadership of the Democratic Party, I can only say: it should not have come to this.

But on to the matter at hand. The fact is, there's a lot to say on the topic, and a lot of air that would need to be cleared before meaningfully moving forward – if that seems like the wisest move. There are pros and cons – and a whole world of history, but while others will dance around it, I invite folks to flesh it out here (a GMD conversation which has already begun, actually). I'll lay out many of the cards after the fold…

Here's the deck of cards for the table-laying, as I see them:

Positive Card 1 – An Apollo-Soyuz Moment

It's finally a way for us all to start working together (maybe). Over the last few years, there have been many times where the Ds and Ps have actually cooperated behind the scenes – sometimes even in front of the scenes (most obviously with Zuckerman's committee chairmanship). This would be a far more extraordinary step.

The truth is, the level of cooperation has gradually risen as the prominence of partisan-warrior Pollina has dropped. Putting him front and center of the Progressive Party's public face again – but this time willingly holding hands with Democrats, not just individually, but institutionally would be a dramatic change. Some of his fans may not put up with it.

But the fact is, if he were willing to run with a P and a D by his name (it seems, at this point, his running as an independent is not an option) it would be an extraordinary move on his part – one that should be seriously considered and discussed graciously and openly by Dems. He's sticking his neck out, and gets a lot of respect in my book for doing so.

Negative Card 1 – Burnt Bridges

Let's be real: there are Dems who are going to hold a grudge against this guy forever.

He's been as openly contemptuous of Dems as Bernie ever was, but unlike Bernie, he hasn't tried to build bridges with Dems, he's tried to build bypasses around them. To make them irrelevent, with the express purpose of supplanting them. His notion of campaign finance reform has been squarely at odds with the very existence of a Democratic Party. To turn on a dime like this will be challenging.

But it goes deeper with many than a disagreement, some don't trust him personally. Pollina has, like Barack Obama, cast himself as a different kind of politician – someone above the backstabbing, self-serving world of the political. And like Obama, that packaging invites a special kind of scrutiny.

For many, that packaging blew up with the campaign finance issue several years back.

Pollina was running for Lieutenant Governor and had intended to accept public financing under the state's campaign finance laws. As part of that law – that he himself was instrumental in passing – there were deadlines and restrictions on things of value that can be shared between candidates and political parties. Polls are expensive things, and were very much considered a thing of value under that scheme.

Now, if the Progressive Party had commissioned a poll and made it public for all to see, that would've been one thing – but they didn't. They paid for a poll and shared it with Pollina and others behind the scenes – a violation of the law's limits in letter and spirit. How do we know this? Because high profile Progressives were naively talking it up around the Statehouse.

So my boss at the Democratic Party at the time wrote a letter to the AG's office asking him to look into it. That's when all hell broke loose. Pollina sued Sorrell, Deb Markowitz and my boss (Mark Michaud). In fact, they sued Michaud by name – not even under his title as VDP Executive Director – which made the whole thing stink of a SLAPP suit, designed to intimidate. Pollina was heard to suggest that it was all a conspiracy (“I smell Dean! I smell Leahy” – I was told by someone), before finally being scolded out of court by Judge Sessions.

He never took any responsibility for screwing up (in fact, his arguments to throw out the law when it worked against him were later used by anti-campaign reform forces in court). Instead, the only thing I would ever hear from the edges of that crowd were angry charges of hypocrisy – insistence that Doug Racine had to be just as guilty. That was hogwash, as Doug is an absolute boy scout about the law, and the Racine campaign at the time was downright paranoid about dotting every 'i' and crossing every 't' rather than make a mistake.

But the message was that the evil, corrupt Dems just couldn't be more pure on any matter than the Progs, so it must be hypocrisy. No further proof necessary.

It was ugly, and writing it up STILL makes me mad all over again. And -correct me if I'm wrong – but to this day, there's never been a simple acknowledgement of responsibility for screwing up.

And for many, that cemented in their minds the notion that Pollina, at the end of the day, was no less a “politician” than any of those he routinely railed against.

Negative Card 2: Weeniecrats

Vermont is full of Douglas Democrats. Tarrantcrats. Those who demanded that the left of their party pull together and play like a team when the Party's candidate for Governor was the annoyingly conservative Howard Dean in the 90's, but who would hypocritically refuse to play like a team if someone too liberal for their tastes were the Party's candidate.

I don't know how you get those folks to shape up, but there are enough of them to really screw things up on Election Day.

Negative Card 3: The Anti-Dem Faithful

They aint gonna like it. Sure, some will rationalize it as the next step in attaining Pollina's historical goal of supplanting the Dems, but the fact is, if Pollina accepts a D by his name, there are several of his allies who will stay home from voting – and perhaps more importantly (as their numbers are probably too small to impact the voting totals too much) – to stay home from volunteering.

Crass Card 1 – Can Pollina win?

I take no joy in saying this, but no freaking way.

In a straight shot at Douglas, he comes in less than Clavelle, who was a bridge builder to the middle (and even the right). Pollina has historically alienated at least as many people as he has reached out to, and Democratic voters (as we all know) tend to be the last group willing to fall into line when told to.

And despite his long efforts to work with those in the working class crowd who are GOP-oriented, most of them still won't vote for him. A few will – and that'll be the few his campaign will parade around the spaghetti dinners to demonstrate his working class cred, but that'll be the end of it.

What about Bernie you say? How does he do it? Well, for one thing he does it by not getting in his own way. By picking up the “independent” label, he adopts a very powerful, positive term, and in the process allows folks to project many of their own political hopes onto him. And that's not phoniness, either. Once he's got their attention in that way, he makes real connections.

But Pollina will not run without the Progressive brand he's worked so long and hard to market, and for many on the right, as well as the middle, that P is a big ol' scarlet letter. Clavelle couldn't shake it, even though he explicitly dropped it for the D tag. A lot of folks cling to the notion that running as a Dem was precisely WHY Clavelle lost, but that's ridiculous. It brought him votes – I daresay at least 10 or 12%. The problem was, that it needed to buy him more like 26% above and beyond what he could get by running as a P. Remember, we all talk of the Clavelle campaign as a monumental failure, but he had a lot better showing than Pollina ever did – even on his best run.

My prediction:

Pollina with a straight shot: 35%

Pollina in a 3-way race: 14%

Crass Card 2 – Money & Resources:

Some of the usual suspects who put a lot of money behind big ticket Dems will step up and support Pollina, but many will not. Douglas's financial advantage will increase with a Pollina unity candidacy.

And Pollina would rightfully expect access to Democratic resources – such as their now unmatched voter lists and polling data. Such information is the prized possesion of the VDP, and its hard to imagine them turning those over to Pollina, which would likely mean turning them over to the Progressive Party.

Nor would Pollina find the resource-sharing mechanism for Democratic campaigns very tasteful: the Coordinated Campaign. A legal entity that would require Pollina to fundraise into for his “buy-in” to the resource sharing. This would be tantamount to Pollina raising tens of thousands of dollars into the Democratic Party.

Just try and get your brain around that one.

Positive Card 2 – Money & Resources:

People get excited about Pollina they way they don't get excited about too many Dems. Field assets could be combined in some key areas and the potential is there for a fantastic ground campaign. This would go a long way towards refocusing anti-Douglas work back towards the ground which, honestly, is where the left has a traditional advantage that they've frittered away through self-doubt and a tendency to run field operations as though they're either secondary, or as though we're all still living in the sixties.

Also – Organized Labor in Vermont just adores Pollina. That's why the state AFL endorsed him over Shumlin for Lite Guv, even though Shumlin had a 100% AFL-CIO voting record (ouch). Whereas Labor will likely help out whoever the Dem candidate is, expect them to do so with greater enthusiasm if it's Pollina.

Crass Card 3 – The Spin of Defeat:

There's going to be some ugly, defeatist calculating going on. If Douglas can't be beaten (as many believe – if they didn't, the Dems would have a candidate by now), some will try to calculate what kind of loss would look best. If Pollina runs as a P-D and loses, maybe it can be blamed on Pollina and the Dems don't lose any perceived power. On the other hand, the very fact that the Dem bench is all too chickenshit to run against Douglas in the first place suggests a major loss of face, and therefore perceived power. If Pollina runs in a threeway, and Douglas wins, maybe that can be blamed on Pollina too.

Sounds ugly, I know – but there's no question many are thinking in such terms.

Put it all together and you get…

If it went this way, and we saw a Pollina-Dunne unity ticket, a big part of me would be thrilled. I can certainly let bygones be bygones, and would strongly and relentlessly encourage others to as well In fact, I would bust my butt to help him succeed and give naysayers quite a bit of hell if they didn't shut up and get on board.

But in all honesty, I'd be feeling that we'd be working to raise some important issues and open some strategic vulnerabilities to take Douglas down in 2010, as I just don't see Pollina coming close. I really wish I did.

So- yer-alls turn. Let's see those cards – don't hold back. It'll probably get heated, and that's okay, because it probably needs to – but let's see if we can't make it productive.

Fire away…

Ah, we political junkies. Always surprised when others aren't as worked up about this stuff as we are.

So our poll is wrapped, and we didn't even get half of the respondents that Seven Days got on theirs (Obama was the winner out of, I think 100-& -20-some votes… of course, I cant find a link – the Seven Days site is awful for finding stuff that's even in the recent past). On our site, we got a measly 44 voters – virtually the same amount as on our first online poll waaaaay back when we had about 20% of the readership. Go figure.

In any event, Edwards was the winner – while coming in only a distant fifth at Seven Days. I'm not sure what that means either way. Probably nothing, but its still fun:

Ugh. The Dems put this up recently.

It's all just a game for him, I suppose. Gotta pick the winner.

Guess who the losers are?

What's your take on this image? Pop over to the photojournalism analysis at BagNewsNotes and chime in. Happy Saturday!

(Terrific diary. I came upstairs to post about the Rich article myself, but this is much better than what I had in mind. – promoted by odum)

This is the Great Age of American Irony.  In the span of 24 hours, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and New York Times cultural commentator Frank Rice agree on problems and failures of democracy.  But, as usual, the ownership of culpability lies somewhere else.  

Following an unsuccessful meeting with Putin in Moscow, Condoleeza Rice addresses civic and human rights advocates in Moscow: 

Ms. Rice … indirectly chided Mr. Putin for overseeing a steady erosion of the independent media, the courts and the legislative branch.

“In any country, if you don’t have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development,” she said.

Opining along the same theme, Frank Rich references democratic failure in the wake of 9/11 leading to the Iraq War: 

Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.

Both Rice and Rich agree that democratic institutions are crumbling and that it's time to go directly to “the people” in order to develop or restore the balance of powers.  In either case, it's difficult to imagine the people will be revolting.  That's not how democracy works.  It works through the process of representation, and that's the institution suffering the most, even here at home.

As for Condoleeza Rice, there really are no surprises in her pot-calling-the-kettle-black moment regarding the expansion of presidential powers in Russia.  But what of Rich's assessment of the American public?  Using the lens of a not-so-great 2006 Hollywood movie, he suggests that ordinary Americans are yawning over the scope and scandals of war contractors as if we have become apathetic “Good Germans”.    According to Mr. Rich, American's have let themselves become duped, numbed, or indifferent in respect to foreign policy.  If such a suggestion were to come from actor George Clooney, it would be reasonable to accept the comparison in context to Hollywood advocacy.  But coming from a New York Times commentator, the Good German theory falls flat under the weight of reality.

With 70% of the populace against the war, it's not like the American people are simply flipping from the front page to the Arts & Leisure section when we should be protesting in the streets.  Yet Rich waxes prosaic in an echo to the 2006 film starring Clooney, telling the American public that we are like the German people of the Nazi era, “lying to ourselves” in regard to our culpability as a whole.  From the perspective of the reader, Rich's inclusive use of the plural “we” comes off the page more like an accusatory “you”.  As in, “You are lying to yourselves.  You are culpable.  You are letting injustice occur.” 

It's not like Americans have rolled over and fallen asleep on the issue of foreign policy.  It affects families, the price of gasoline and building supplies, as well as our ability to travel freely and arrive as welcome guests in foreign lands.  We are paying attention every day.  We are actively engaged.  And it's not like there haven't been war protests, marches, or demonstrations even though such events are frowned upon by the American Elite as gestures unbecoming of decorum.  Such events are not covered by the yawning media.  Nonetheless, the American public uses it's power to the best of its ability.  Democratic Party success in 2006 constituted a mandate from the American public for a change of policy direction.  Anti-war advocates then asked for measures to be taken.  They proposed an impeachment process be initiated; they proposed a down vote on the war funding bill; they called for a strategic filibuster.  The media rolled over and fell asleep.  Our Legislative branch of government on both the state and federal level did not listen.  They responded by telling us to “wait for 2008.”  Yet Rich calls the American public to action on the 14th of October, 2007, as if so many Good Germans in the American public have done nothing at all.

The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day.

One wonders what tipping point occurred for Frank Rich four years into an expensive, unnecessary war.  Did he finally get a chance to see George Clooney as an American war correspondent on DVD?   Was there something in the fresh autumn air that inspired Rich to see a new possibility for American policy makers to actually listen to their constituents?  Absent an obvious tipping point, it seems as if he writes from the dying embers of the fourth estate left to the business of stories and sentiment.  It seems as though he wants the American public to confess a silent partnership and clean up the mess of foreign policy even the New York Times helped funnel to the public in 2003.  Interestingly, a member of the American public challenged the Times way back then, on March 30th, 2003:

To the Editor: I find it hugely ironic that the most trenchant commentary on the president's manipulation of the media is found in Frank Rich's article ''They Both Reached for the Gun'' [March 23]. Instead of the National or Op-Ed pages, it is in Arts & Leisure. This seems consistent with the media's supine coverage of the war in Iraq and the events leading up to it.

GORDON AUBRECHT
Delaware, Ohio

Democracy is at risk when we forget it's basic premise of Representation, Checks and Balances, and public engagement.  Condoleeza Rice may chide Vladimir Putin all she wants, and Frank Rich can goad the American public.  But as long as our administration, our legislative branch, the White House, and even the New York Times refuse to take a good hard look at their own culpability and begin reporting, representing, and responding to the American public's dissatisfaction and lack of support for foreign policy and this war, then modern democracy will indeed be subject to failure here in the land where it was born.

Respectfully Submitted,

Nate Freeman

Northfield, Vermont