Interesting primary story angle here

I just started receiving alerts from WMUR-TV News and they are helpful if you are a busy person trying to keep track of news going on in the state. This story, which aired in the last day or so, struck me as an interesting one: ["Primary Shuffle Causes Problems for Local Hotels"]. There is a video clip of the segment at the link too.

The Sleeping Professions

Guest Perspective/Ralph Nader

One of the most noticed photographs in the newspapers last week was that of a well-dressed Pakistani lawyer on the streets hurling back a tear gas canister toward the soldiers who were suppressing a demonstration by lawyers protesting the martial law (called “emergency rule”) of Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

Can anyone remember anywhere in all of modern history, large numbers of lawyers leading the resistance as they did on the streets of Pakistani cities way ahead of the workers, peasants and even the university students?

Pakistani police and troops rounded up the mass protests of lawyers and pushed hundreds of them into trucks on the way to the prison. Lawyers were willing to go to prison and endure beatings, while demanding the re-establishment of the rule of law and the independence of judges right up to the Supreme Court, a rare display of professional courage and duty.

What about lawyers in the United States standing up to the Bush regime’s regular violation of our Constitution, the imprisonment of thousands of people without charges and without attorneys, the assault on due process, probable cause, habeas corpus, the spying on Americans without court approval and the defiant, illegal use of torture?

No demonstrations yet. No resolutions by bar associations saying that Bush and Cheney should resign or be impeached.

Except some dozens of active civil liberties’ lawyers, law professors and the former head of the American Bar Association, Michael Greco, the 800,000 or more practicing lawyers have been pursuing business as usual. Given their canons of ethics and their status as officers of the court, this looking the other way is not very professional behavior.

Professional behavior also has been in short supply on Wall Street. Once again, the accountants, the corporate lawyers, and the Boards of Directors of such giant companies as Merrill Lynch and Citigroup either were paid to go to sleep on the job or cared less.

Both Merrill Lynch and Citigroup have announced that thus far they are writing off a total of $20 billion on subprime mortgage paper in the housing sector. At the same time, the bosses of these companies, Stanley O’Neal and Charles O. Prince, have been fired and awarded vast golden parachutes totaling $360 million for their mismanagement in taking on reckless levels of risk for short term premiums.

But where were the highly paid watchdogs for these companies in the accounting and legal professions? Professionals are supposed to prevent trouble, not just profit from it. This looks like a repeat of the previous busts during the savings and loan scandals and the dot com collapses.

Once again, see the bitter fruit of de-regulation or non-regulation by the federal and state governments. It will happen again and again to worker pensions, small investors and the workers, who are laid off, until there is regulatory law and order and the investors are given more dedicated legal authority over the corporations which they own.

This week, a new book titled Corpocracy (Wiley Pub.) by veteran corporate governance champion, Robert Monks, will be released to shine a bright light on this lack of shareholder rights and the passivity of large institutional shareholders (like pension funds, trusts and university endowments) toward meeting their fiduciary duties.

The gross greed, power and unfairness of this whole rigged system of non-accountability for the top bosses, who mess up big time but leave with the riches of Kings, were the subject of a remarkably forthright article in Sunday’s Washington Post by William S. Lerach—until recently, a very successful litigator against corporate scam artists.

Lerach pleaded guilty last month in federal court to a conspiracy charge regarding payments made to investor-plaintiffs in lawsuits brought against corporations claiming fraud and other misdeeds. For this behavior he will have to pay $8 million in fines and go to prison for at least one year.

Who was damaged by Lerach’s crime? The court was misled because it was not told that monetary incentives were given to ready-to-sign-on plaintiffs in the race to the courtroom to become the lead law firm in such class action lawsuits.

Compare this violation with the trillion dollars looted or drained from millions of workers, investors and pension-holders by the corporate crime wave of the past ten years. Lerach and his firm recovered billions of dollars for defrauded investors over that same time span.

Lerach can be forgiven for wondering why so many reckless bosses were rewarded at the expense of shareholders and company profits. Especially, since these big bosses of the huge losses through their rubberstamp, selected boards of directors, essentially decide what to pay themselves while they are in their suites and when they leave.

Top mismanagement of many U.S. companies—consider the domestic auto manufacturers, for example—is rife with rewards for bad jobs done. Big rewards. In any fair system of corporate governance and SEC regulation, these bosses at least would have had to give up their undeserved pay and cancel their golden parachutes.

Even though O’Neal and Prince have admitted to “mistakes” and “flawed risk models,” O’Neal leaves Merrill Lynch with $160 million in addition to over $100 million he received in pay for the past two years.

Reports have Prince leaving with $100 million along with the $100 million he was paid as Citi’s CEO. Both companies’ stock value has fallen sharply in recent weeks.

In his article, Lerach mused about how the “legal system is a lot tougher on shareholder lawyers than it appears to be on Wall Street executives.”

During his time in prison, maybe the determined Lerach can plan his next moves to bring corporate crime, fraud and abuse against all too trusting individuals, institutions and government purchasers to systemic accountability.

Maybe he’ll take his strategies to a level far beyond the occasional class action suits that get through all the interference that indentured legislators and conservative judges put in their way.

For if we the people do not have a say, we will continue to pay and pay.

Huckabee surge ...

The blaring headline across the Drudge Report is "Huckabee Poll Surge in Iowa" and points to this article: ["Poll: Top Democrats Deadlocked in Iowa"]. But, it is not that much of a surprise for some of us folks who have been watching this race. Republicans are looking for a legitimate candidate who addresses their concerns. Huckabee is a more stable Pat Buchanan without all the alleged anti-semitism. In other words, he is good on a lot of things and quite electable.

Any new news on the Howie front?

No, not really, I've just been too busy to really follow along.
Over the past week, there were rumors that he would actually be heading back to WRKO, tail between his legs: ["The scoop on Howie"]. Some, like the Greater Boston blog, speculate that he might go back if Entercom cuts a couple of years off the extension: ["Radio waves"].
I honestly can't imagine Howie going back. He holds grudges for too long. But maybe the $7M is just too tasty to refuse. I mean, we all know how he has been phoning in his column for so long. He could just do the same thing with the radio show. Play the same bits over and over again. Talk about Who do you want to see naked on TV every day until listeners tune out ... or suffer along with him. Or, he could just learn to live on less like the rest of the world does. Who knows.
Jessica Heslam has a pretty good overview here of the pathetic state of talk radio in Boston: ["Hub talk radio in turmoil"]. Turmoil. That's an understatement.

Polly's Think Pink Radio-Thon raises $37k!

New Hampshire radio stations raised more than $37k in funds for breast cancer research on Thursday with a radiothon. Polly's Think Pink Radio-Thon, in honor of Pauline Robbins, a DJ from the Upper Valley, was thrown together in a matter of days but was quite successful. The stations involved included Nassau Broadcasting, Koor Communications, Dartmouth Broadcasting and Great Eastern Radio. Congratulations to all involved!

The first one to open an office is the first one to close it

According to New Hampshire Presidential Watch, John Cox has closed his campaign office in Manch: ["So long John Cox"].

Is U.S. Rep. Mike Capuano a traitor?

Author, blogger, and unsuccessful Cambridge politico Ralph Lopez thinks so: ["Capuano traitor"].

More on Tuesday's elections

Two articles from the Union Leader.
First, this one about the new school board member who is getting hammered because she is a college drop out and is only 23: ["School Board winner: Give me a chance"]. First, she won, fair and square. Second, she looks a bit old for 23. And what is this about the employment thing? So she works in a bar, big deal. Does that mean she can't advise the schools as a member of the board? No, it doesn't.
Second, a writer, John Whitson, comes up with this story - interview people who didn't vote and find out why: ["Manchester: Why didn't YOU vote?"]. As an experiment, I've always wanted to take a voter's list after an election and go around and talk to people about why they didn't vote. I know there are a ton of reasons. I think I have voted in every election I could possibly vote in since first turning 18. I can't imagine not voting. The process is just too important.
Down in Cambridge, there is this odd story: ["Embattled newsletter editor demands cash for campaign coverage"]. I can see putting the pressure on. Being an independent business person and publisher is not easy these days. But this seems a bit ridiculous.

Update: I missed one other big race: Bob Danderson lost his mayoral seat in Berlin. I interviewed Danderson in 2006 when he challenged U.S. Rep. Charlie Bass in the GOP primary. He noted in his interview how he was a Republican who was able to get elected in a largely Democratic city. Well, that didn't last long.

FoxNews attacks decency?

Hmm:

See what I mean?

Editor's Note: It was suggested in a subtle way that I depersonalize the original version of this post. So, for the record, this is an edited version. I'm not one for editing stuff this way. I say what I mean and mean what I say. But, after reading it over a few times, I agree that it needed to be edited. The point is made without sharing horror stories.

A few months back, I wrote about the local weekly arts newspaper, The Hippo, advertising a job for a new features reporter. I posted the ad and then made a crack about how I was really sick and tired of media outlets in New Hampshire essentially selling the jobs in our state to people outside of our state. It seems to say, "Granite Staters need not apply." The Hippo didn't do this and I thanked them for it, not that it probably mattered to them.
But, lo and behold, look what I found on the New Hampshire Association of Broadcasters' Web site ... a New Hampshire Public Radio ad for a talk show producer.
Here is a segment of the ad:

NEW HAMPSHIRE OFFERS BUCOLIC NEW ENGLAND SCENERY AND IS A HAVEN FOR OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES LIKE HIKING, SKIING AND FISHING. NEW HAMPSHIRE IS ALSO A VERY AFFORDABLE PLACE TO LIVE WITH NO STATE INCOME TAX AND NO STATE SALES TAX. CONCORD, WHERE NHPR IS BASED, IS AN HOUR FROM BOSTON, FROM THE SEACOAST AND FROM WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST.

Why would they post this listing on a New Hampshire job board? We know how great it is to live here ... we already do. You don't need to tell us that. The polite thing to do, which would probably net more potential job applicants, would be to post a local notice without going on and on about how great it is to live here, and post a national notice like this one. Unless, of course, Granite Staters need not apply, and then, we get the point, thank you very much.
People may ask, what is the point? Well, the point is this: This is how the people covering your state get hired to cover your state. It is sickening when you think about the fact that media employers in our state, who may not know as much as others about New Hampshire, are telling you who is qualified and who is not qualified to tell the stories of our state.
I have been hearing that donations at NHPR are down right at a time when they need more money because they are expanding into a bigger location, at the old Blue Cross Blue Shield building in the South End of Concord [It is an exciting change for the network and it looks like a great space]. And this new show, not unlike another show proposed in 2005 called "The Current," which never went anywhere, seems like a new opportunity for them. But one has to wonder where the money will come from.
Earlier this year, they didn't limit the amount of donations for the Prius raffle whereas last year, the odds were better because there was only X-amount of donations taken. Why limit the popular contest, especially when you need more $100 donations?
Back in April, a few weeks after the interview, I was asked to make another donation to NHPR. The phone conversation went something like this:

Pablo: Hi, I'm Pablo from NHPR. How are you tonight?Me: Fine.Pablo: We know you are a regular listener to NHPR so you know all the wonderful things we do, correct [or something like that]?Me: Actually, I just stopped listening to NHPR recently [Go ahead, ask me why, Pablo, ask me why! I really want you to tell you ...]Pablo: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that ... Can we sign you up for your annual contribution of $100?Me: No.Silence for a moment.Pablo: Well, can we renew your $35 annual membership.
Me: No, sorry.Silence again [Come on Pablo, ask me why ...].
Pablo: OK, thank you for your continued support and we will talk to you again soon.Me: OK, bye.

Come on people, you don't want to know why? Over the years, I have had to talk to people who weren't happy with the product I was employed to deliver. I ALWAYS ask why someone is canceling their subscription or canceling their ads. Always. Why didn't Pablo want to know? Shocking, isn't it?
Lastly, I wonder why any radio network with as many stations as NHPR, with a ton of employees gathering news and interviewing people, would ever need to hold listening sessions around the state to find out what the pulse of the state is or what listeners think? Doesn't that say a lot?

The Price of Oil

Guest Perspective/Ralph Nader

Question of the day - who and what is determining the price of oil and your gasoline and home heating bills? Don’t ask Uncle Sam, because George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are running a regime marinated in oil that does not issue reports which explain the real determinants of petroleum pricing beyond the conventional supply-demand curves.

First, let us create a historical framework to provide some background. In the good ‘ole oil days, before the producer-countries’ cartel in the Third World gained pricing power, there were seven giant oil companies called the ‘seven sisters’ led by Standard Oil (now Exxon) and Shell. As chronicled in Robert Engler’s classic book, "The Brotherhood of Oil," they were able to affect pricing through extra-market means. Economists called them a tight oligopoly.

OPEC later took their place at the table in the mid to late Seventies and set the price of crude oil at highly publicized meetings of the various member countries representatives from the Middle East, South America and Africa. Adjusting, ‘seven sisters’ concentrated their pricing and supply power downstream at the refining, pipeline and marketing levels.

Pricing power was never total but it was always complex, occurring in the interstices of an industry few outsiders understood, and fewer regulators could affect. Besides, natural gas was de-regulated between 1978 and 1993, after which its prices really took off.

Today, a third party has moved to the table - the New York Mercantile Exchange, a similar operates in London and a new one in Dubai. There, boisterous traders buy and sell futures contracts on the delivery of oil. But as Ben Mezrich, the author of the new book, "Rigged," said recently, the dollar amounts of these futures contracts are far, far larger than the actual oil deliveries they represent as they turn over and over at the Mercantile Exchange.

So now the critical resource of oil is driven by speculation at ever higher abstract electronic levels of futures trading. Increasingly, the distance becomes greater and greater between this abstract trading (fueled by rumors of storms in the Gulf of Mexico, or some possible political turmoil in a region of the world, or some other frightful excuse for bidding up) and the physical supply and demand for oil and its refined products.

These oil gamblers in New York and London try to justify their frenetic daily bidding by saying that these futures markets provide liquidity, and a clear price for oil. Alright, but who benefits when, how and where?

Certainly, the strain between physical supply and demand in recent years does not explain such extreme volatility. With OPEC countries down to supplying only 40 percent of the world production, Chinese demand for oil growing fast, and the expansion of production by Saudi Arabia and others to meet this demand, crude oil supplies are not tight enough to explain such pricing behavior.

Old factors like inadequate oil company investment in refinery capacity, longer down times for repairs than some observers believe necessary, and the slumping dollar are factors that western governments, especially the Bush regime, have not wanted to investigate. After all, with consumers paying sky-high prices for these fuels, free market theorists are supposed to expect expanded supplies from recoverable reserves to grow. But, of course, the global market for oil is anything but a free market from the producers- both corporate and governmental- toward the downstream companies to the consumers.

In recent days, the price of crude oil escalated to over $90 a barrel, fluctuating up to a high of $96 a barrel. Yet the average price of gasoline in the United States - around $3 per gallon - is about what it was earlier this year when the price of crude oil was around $60 a barrel. Why the disconnect?

“It’s a big gambling hall,” The Washington Post quotes Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer. “This time it’s just speculation,” Peter C. Fusaro, chairman of Global Change Associates, told the Post, adding, “There’s a large bet out there that prices will continue to trend higher. But it’s detached from fundamentals because there’s no shortage of oil.”

Meanwhile, the government of Big Oil runs Washington, D.C. It thumbed its nose at pleas from then Chairman of the powerful Finance Committee, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) who asked the major companies, swimming in massive profits, to contribute some charitable dollars to help the poor pay for their winter home heating bills, and has smugly watched the major Presidential candidates avoid the subject in their debates and declarations.

Oil companies seem to spend more executive effort looking for oil by merging with other companies (note the unchallenged merger of Exxon and Mobil under the Clinton administration) than with developing efficient oil-producing and consuming technology or expanding their solar energy subsidiaries.

So long as the price of crude oil is set by speculators on trading floors, so long as the oil-indentured politicians are not challenged by new candidates standing tall for people and environments, so long as we do not protest for change and press ourselves to prevent wasteful habits and uses, get ready for higher oil prices.

Interesting elections all around

Folks interested in some of the Concord election stuff can go here: OurConcord.com.
In ManchVegas, Republican Frank Guinta won reelection, with less than 20,000 people voting.
In other races, there are two significant races to look at and, since I lived in both locations, I still keep track of the races.
First, over in Somerville, there is another squeaker in the at-large alderman race, with the fourth and fifth finisher 21 votes apart: ["RECOUNT! Lafuente 'definitely' demands ballots be impounded"].
In Boston, the city's first Latino councilor, Felix Arroyo, goes down to defeat reaching for his third term: ["City of Boston, Election Results"]. More than 3,400 votes separate Arroyo to newcomer John Connolly, so there won't be a recount there. Just 15 percent of the city voted.
Two quick points: 1) Arroyo got trounced, proving hunger strike campaigns don't work, and, 2) again, for the whateverth time, there is no "New Boston."

Destroying the Rule of Law

Guest Perspective By Ralph Nader

Every law student promptly learns the national ideal that our country is governed by the rule of law, not the rule of men. Today, the rule of law is under attack.

Such activities have become a big business and, not surprisingly, they have involved big business.

On October 25th, Secretary Condoleeza Rice officially recognized before a House Oversight Committee that, remarkably, there was no law covering the misbehavior of Blackwater Corporation and their private police in Iraq.

Any crimes of violence committed by Blackwater and other armed contractors commissioned by the Defense and State Departments to perform guard duty and other tasks, fell into a gap between Iraqi law, from which they have been exempted by the U.S. military occupation and the laws of the United States.

Since the United States government is ruled by lawless men in the White House who have violated countless laws and treaties, Bush and Cheney clearly had no interest in placing giant corporate contractors operating inside Iraqi jurisdiction under either the military justice system or the criminal laws of the United States.

Presidential power has accumulated over the years to levels that would have alarmed the founding fathers whose constitutional framework never envisioned such raw unilateral power at the top of the Executive branch. Accordingly, they only provided for the impeachment sanction. They neither gave citizens legal standing to go to court and hold the Presidency accountable, or to prevent the two other branches from surrendering their explicit constitutional authority-such as the war-making power-to the Executive branch. The federal courts over time have refused to adjudicate cases they deem “political conflicts” between the Legislative and Executive branches or, in general, most foreign policy questions.

Being above the law’s reach, Bush and Cheney can and do use the law in ways that inflict injustice on innocent people. Politicizing the offices of the U.S. Attorneys by the Justice Department, demonstrated by Congressional hearings, is one consequence of such Presidential license. Political law enforcement, using laws such as the so-called PATRIOT Act, is another widespread pattern that has drag netted thousands of innocent people into arrests and imprisonment without charges or adequate legal representation. Or the Bush regime’s use of coercive plea bargains against defendants who can’t afford leading, skilled attorneys.

Books and law journal articles have been written about times when government violates the laws. They are long on examples but short on practical remedies of what to do about it.

Corporations and their large corporate law firms have many ways to avoid the laws. First, they make sure that when Congress writes legislation, the bills advance corporate interests. For example, numerous consumer safety laws have no criminal penalties for the violations, or only the most nominal fines. The regulatory agencies often have very weak subpoena powers or authority to set urgent and mandatory safety standards without suffering years or even decades of corporate-induced delays.

If the laws prove troublesome, the corporations make sure that enforcement budgets are ridiculously tiny, with only a few federal cops on the beat. The total number of Justice Department attorneys prosecuting the corporate crime wave of the past decade, running investors, pensioners and workers into trillions of dollars of losses and damaging the health and safety of many patients and other consumers, is smaller than just one of the top five largest corporate law firms.

Out in the marketplace, environment and the workplace, the corporations have many tools forged out of their unbridled power to block aggrieved people from having their day in court or getting agencies or legislatures to stand up for the common folk.

Companies can wear down or deter plaintiffs from obtaining justice by costly motions and other delaying tactics. When people get into court and obtain some justice, the companies move toward the legislature to restrict access to the courts. This is grotesquely called “tort reform”-- which takes away the rights of harmed individuals but not the corporations’ rights to have their day in court.

Lush amounts of campaign dollars grease the way for corporations in the legislatures in the fifty states and on Capitol Hill.

As if that power to pass their own laws is not enough, large corporations become their own private legislatures. You’ve been confronted with those fine-print standard form agreements asking you to sign on the dotted line if you wish to secure insurance, tenancy, credit, bank services, hospital treatment, or just a job.

Those pages of fine print are corporations regulating you! You can’t cross any of them out.

You can’t go across the street to a competitor- say from Geico to State Farm, or from Citibank to the Bank of America, because there is no competition over these fine-print contracts, with their dotted signature lines. Unless, that is, they compete over how fast they require you to give up your rights to go to court or to object to their unilaterally changing the terms of the agreement, such as in changing the terms of your frequent flier agreement on already accumulated miles

Oh, for the law schools that provide courses on the rule of men over the rule of law.

Oh, for the time when there when there will be many public interest law firms working just on these portentous dominations of concentrated power to deny open and impartial uses of the laws to achieve justice and accountability.

More Hilary doublespeak

Courtesy of the John Edwards campaign:

Ugh, Hillary