Miami Herald writes a big chapter on dirty money in politics: Allen Stanford

A few days ago I blogged a suggestion that progressives should take a new tack on national issues and go after campaign finance reform – get money out of politics.


So I hereby thank the investigative reporters at the Miami Herald for coming up with a whopper of an example of dirty money in politics. The lead story in the Sunday paper -- even though Florida’s sainted football coach, Urban Meyer, took up most of the front page by deciding to tend his health, and good for him, but, man, is that trivial – was about Allen Stanford and how he manipulated some members of Congress to protect his money-laundering/Ponzi-scheming empire.

Check it out. Even as Stanford was being charged he got a steamy email from US Rep. Pete Sessions: “I love you and believe in you.” So the Texas Republican is quoted as gushing to someone headed for jail for stealing a billion or more and giving a lot of it to our elected political leaders. Sessions was chair of the Republican National Congressional Committee, i.e. the recipient of a lot of Stanford’s largesse.

But the Democrats also are fat pigs in this picture, raking in $500,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2002. The Dems then had control of the Senate and Stanford needed to block a bill likely to bring his dubious brokerage under more scrutiny. No problem, Democrats apparently said. The bill went nowhere. That was reported as Stanford’s biggest single donation, and it went to my party.

This rant is bi- and non-partisan. Republicans and Democrats more or less equally lapped at the Stanford trough, as the Herald portrays it. In fact the article is a little faulty, I think, in not clearly putting party and state ID’s on the many members of Congress who took Stanford’s money. And let us not forget George W. Bush (R of Texas), whose 2001 inauguration raked in $100,000 to help celebrate, the Herald reports.

What really steams me in the Herald article is that in 1999 the State Department concluded that Stanford “helped create a money-laundering haven in Antigua.” Despite this big Con Man sign hanging around Stanford’s neck, our national leaders kept on taking his money, and, alas, quite a lot of his criminal activity took place in Florida.

Most wounding to this Democratic voter is that Florida Sen. Bill Nelson benefitted from a fundraiser at Stanford’s Miami office when he ran for re-election in 2006. So, Senator, in 1999 the State Department branded Stanford a money-launderer, and you took his money in 2006. Is anyone checking these obvious things?

Let us go back to the lesson of the day. We need to take money out of politics. This aspect of our political life attracts crooks and Ponzi artists. We little grass-roots donors are honest pips on a deck of marked cards. It is becoming more clear than ever that our political leaders are either crooks or deliberately oblivious to where a substantial portion of political money comes from.

This has got to change.

Note: This link goes to a sidebar with a bizarre story on how Stanford got a Democratic congressman to go to Venezuela and have Hugo Chavez sideline an opponent of Standord's fraudulent business. What next? A cake and a Bible?

Bill Nelson hears "public option" yells

Sen. Nelson got a little heckling Friday at the Florida Democratic
Party Conference in Orlando. He said he already voted for it and on
Tuesday a bill will ome out of the Senate Finance Committee.

Thank you, Bill Nelson! A vote for the public option

This was in the Senate Finance Committee today, but alas, not enough to get it through. The session is not finished, but it doesn’t look good for the public option. The vote was 13-10 against an amendment by Chuck Schumer. Bill Nelson, never having spoken for the public option, voted yes and was on the losing side, while two key senators did not vote for the public option –Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine.

They already are targets of campaigns to put pressure on them. Check it out at Democracy for America and Act Blue.

Earlier today the Miami Herald had a story from Washington correspondent Lesley Clark quoting, among others, my fellow blogger Dave Patlak on why MoveOn has put pressure on Bill Nelson. You know, Senator, you could have avoided all this by taking a leadership role early in the process, and maybe you could have helped put the public option in the bill. Anyway, I’m just saying. And remembering.

UPDATE: Sen. Nelson had an essay in USA Today with his position on --- not the public option -- Medicare Advantage and other aspects of senior care.

Dem Blogger videos Republican Senate hopeful

In this piece your blogging videographer, or your videoing blogger, takes a step into Republican territory. Marco Rubio is the subject. He’s the former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives who’s vying with Gov. Charlie Crist to be the Republican candidate for US Senate in the 2010 election. Rubio is raking in about a tenth of Crist’s money, according to the Sept. 20 workup in the Miami Herald that described how Crist spends most of his time (on our dime, fellow taxpayers, but that’s politics, ain’t it) dialing for dollars or squeezing official events between his appearances at fundraisers.

Rubio’s counterpart of that latter activity – the fundraiser – is how I found myself in the same room with him for an hour Saturday evening, at my sailing club in Key Largo. One of the founding members is a leading local Republican, Ken Sorensen, who hosted a fundraiser for 50-60 people. I’ve had many a fine political argument at the sailing club bar with Sorensen, who is a former state representative and, then when termed-out, an assistant to Speaker Marco Rubio. Our last argument was about ACORN, and so it goes.

Speaking of ACORN, I was on the Herald website the other day and hit the editorial asserting that ACORN “must prove it’s squeaky clean” and be purged from top to bottom. In the Comments section I veered decidedly away from everyone who thought ACORN was below Lucifer. My comment suggested applying the same standard to the Republican Party, which even if confined to Jack Abramoff and his co-conspirators must have more people in jail than ACORN. Not to forget John “Torture Memo” Yoo, who’s got a column on the Herald op-ed page when he ought to be facing trial for war crimes. Yes, let’s do a top-to-bottom cleanup on the Republicans, and then turn to the small potatoes at ACORN.

Rubio, you’ll see in the following clip, took notice of my Flip camcorder and gave me a supporting role as citizen journalist sort of like the heroic “college students” who tipped us all off to the purportedly bad apples in an ACORN office. Well, Media Matters checked out some of that story and learned that the “college students” were Republican activists. Plus, the ACORN lady who sounded like Lizzy Borden with a propensity for killing her husband was just leading on the strange couple invading her office. The police say all her ex-husbands are alive and well. Anyway, that’s the poor backgrounding and unethical investigators you get from a far-right world where the gospel comes from Fox and Beck and no questions are asked.

You’ll hear Rubio, like everyone on his side, crow over how CBS and other media didn’t get this (over-hyped) story. Like George W. Bush, he’s probably mad that the US attorneys couldn’t find valid charges against ACORN, either. Well, there is this thing about ethics of prosecutions and of reporting, wherein you don’t start off by lying about who you are, like the “college students.” There is a place for hidden cameras and underground investigations, no doubt, but if Rubio’s taste prevails, “citizen journalism” will be the Wild Wild West.

As Rubio asks us to “listen closely,” I think I heard him saying that ACORN was “a front for political activists.” What’s that, some new offense? Maybe the “college kids” are “a front for political activists,” and we’ve got tit for tat here. Big deal. Readers are referred to the section above where I urge attention to war crimes first, small potatoes later.

The Atlantic, in its fresh October issue, has a rundown on rise of internet reporting with a close examination of how partisan politics is taking over from traditional media, and standards often suffer:

With journalists being laid off in droves, savvy political operatives have stepped eagerly into the breach. What’s most troubling is not that TV-news producers mistake their work for journalism, which is bad enough, but that young people drawn to journalism increasingly see no distinction between disinterested reporting and hit-jobbery.

In the next clip Rubio takes on Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, against whom he’s not running, and Gov. Crist, his main opponent, and says he doesn’t know what they stand for. I thought I’d find something on Bill Nelson’s campaign website or official website to contradict Rubio, but something must be under construction. Well, Nelson doesn’t have to run until 2012, so he has an excuse. And there is plenty of information, though no platform in sight.

Next he’s talking about health care legislation (my question, he didn’t mention it in his stump speech, nor environment/energy/education except in the most sketchy way), and he makes a pretty wild statement about health care in the rest of the world, making it sound as if no country ever has had a good public health system. It may be that he’s defining it so narrowly (he’s a lawyer, after all) that it would have to be a single-payer system that didn’t have the tiniest smidgeon of rationing of care to meet his standard. Well, great, but we’re here in the real world where tons of countries get better results with lower expenditures than ours. And our care is rationed all the time by insurance companies that get rich by denying care.

In the following clip I can agree with his drift on malpractice, especially where he says there’s an overabundance of lawyers.

Finally, is it a waste of time to consider Rubio when Crist is raising money by the ton? If the primary were in a month or two it would be easy to dismiss the young (38) Rubio as someone polishing his resume to run against Bill Nelson two years later. But the primary is almost a year away, and Crist keeps getting skunked in Republican straw polls. What’s going on? A lot could happen.

Check out this story on Fine Print in which Rubio is itching to get into a debate with Crist. Could be interesting.

Meanwhile, our side's main contenders are Kendrick Meek, the congressman from Miami, and North Miami Mayor Kevin Burns.

For the record, the seat was held by one-termer Mel Martinez, who left for no good reason. Gov. Crist could have appointed himself to take the seat but instead named his sometime campaign manager George LeMieux, who's trying to live down the label of crony. So far has the US Senate fallen, when the Constitution, in the 17th Amendment, clearly prefers election rather than appointment to fill a vacancy. Now who's the strict constructionist? Your faithful blogger.

.

Bill Nelson's Senate speech on health

Over nine minutes, no room for mention of public option.

Bill Nelson speaks (a little) on health care

An item on my calendar later this morning is a trip to Sen. Bill Nelson’s office to deliver petitions on health care reform, so it was with considerable interest that I opened an email from Sen. Nelson with the subject line: Taking Action on Health Care Reform

Eagerly I searched through the email to see what he’d say about the public option. Nary a word. For the record, here’s the full text:

Most of the calls and mail coming into my office these days are from constituents worried about health care. Regardless of where anyone stands on the specifics of this issue, I think we all can agree the current system is unfair, too costly, and needs to be fixed.

President Obama gave some clearer answers in his speech to Congress last week about his views on reform. I found it interesting that what the president described is pretty close to the bill I'm helping prepare as a member of the Senate Finance Committee. I want to tell you basically what this bill does.

In essence, it will let folks happy with their insurance keep it, including seniors on Medicare and veterans. It also will create a marketplace--exchanges--where those without coverage, or those who are unhappy with what they have, can get coverage at an affordable price.

The bill will hold insurers' feet to the fire by requiring them to cover everyone and preventing them from dropping individuals who get sick. Additionally, it will contain several measures aimed at reducing overall medical and prescription drug costs and eliminating waste and fraud in the system.

I still intend to offer several amendments aimed at further improving the legislation. One of my amendments would require drugmakers to provide rebates to Medicare, just like they do to Medicaid. This would save Medicare a ton of money. Further, by eliminating the tax break drugmakers get for TV and other advertising, we would gain another $37 billion over the coming years to help pay for health care reforms.

The Senate Finance Committee will begin considering this bill as early as this week. Meantime, please know that I value your continued input.

See you at the office, Sen. Nelson. I'll be asking if you hear what your constituents are asking for.

UPDATE: A delegation of Democrats and AFL-CIO members went with Jill Weber of Progress Florida to deliver some 1,700 postcards signed by Floridians demanding health reform.

The staffer in the Coral Gables office listened to my complaint that the senator's email didn't mention the public option, and replied by saying she thinks it's to be assumed as part of the legislation. If that's as good as it gets, it's pretty meager. It's not as if our calls for the public option -- and competition to keep the insurance giants honest -- were some idea from Mars. After all, it's what the president wants. But our senator seems unable to use the words.

A little video from the event at Sen. Nelson's office in Coral Gables:

Sen. Bill Nelson is lobbied again on health care

Bigger crowd than last time -- Thanks to the many who turned out for Friday's meeting outside Sen. Bill Nelson's office in Coral Gables to push for a strong public option in health reform.

Here's my video report with a moving narrative by Miami Beach resident Isabel M. de la Rionda on how her husband lost his job and health insurance, and then had a mild heart attack.



Thank you, Ms. de la Rionda, for telling your story.

Our gathering seems to win approval from many who drove by and honked and waved. A few, however, apparently had drunk the Kool-Aid and believed in magic. "Get a job," was a characteristic yell. Well yes! Get a job. Has he noticed that millions of hard-working people have lost their jobs for no fault of their own? What magic will bring a job? And what magic will pay the medical bill while the unemployed wait for coverage in their next position? And will they get coverage for the heart attack they had in the last job?

This is the reality of hard times. Today's hard times. People still get sick even if they were happy with the health coverage they used to have when they used to have a job.

The case for universal coverage grows stronger every day.

UPDATE: Here's a link to the Miami Herald's story on the event. The comments run on and on, revealing the large crowd that has drunk the far-right Kool-Aid.

ALSO: I am uncomfortable about giving any hits to this anti-health-care doctor, but we should know the caliber of our opposition. Here's a link to the now-withdrawing doctor who passed along a photo-shop of President Obama as a witch doctor. In other words, they will stop at nothing.

And Channel 4: Our event at Sen. Nelson's office provided a lot of footage for a comprehensive report by Michael Williams broadcast on Channel 4.

Today is the day to lobby our Senators on health care

Obama-linked activist group to target Nelson, Martinez in health care rallies

Hey, that's us! We Democrats and allies are making news up there in Tallahassee with plans to be at our senators' offices around the state today lobbying for strong reform of health care. Not the first time, either. We've been at the offices of Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez repeatedly on this issue.

Come out at 4 p.m. to Nelson's office at 2925 Salzedo St. in Coral Gables. Health professionals: please wear your scrubs.

UPDATE: In case you don't have their numbers, here they are:

• Sen. Bill Nelson at 202-224-5274.
• Sen. Mel Martinez at 202-224-3041.

They just came in an email from OFA urging that we all call our senators and lobby for health reform.

AND FYI: I took part this morning in a news conference call with Peter Orszag, head of the White House budget office. Among the questioners was the Miami Herald's Lesley Clark, who asked Orzag what he thought of having Democrats put pressure on their Democratic senators such as Bill Nelson. Orszab declined to respond saying he's not licensed to do politics.

You could ask us at Sen. Nelson's office in Coral Gables this afternoon, Ms. Clark. You would hear that we want leadership from Sen. Nelson toward the goal of a strong public option for health reform. We put him in office and want to give him advice and hear his consent.

Public Option NOW!

Our health care system is broken, and American families and businesses urgently need a solution.
• Forty-six million Americans are uninsured.
• Premiums are growing four times faster than wages.
• Half of all personal bankruptcies stem from medical expenses
President Obama has challenged Congress to pass real health care reform in 2009 that upholds three basic principles:
1. Reduce costs by improving efficiency and investing in preventative care.
2. Guarantee every American the right to choose their plan and doctor—including a public insurance option.
3. Ensure quality, affordable care for every American.
Congress must past real health care reform in 2009.
We've petitioned. We've called. We've faxed. We've dropped off fliers. Now, the health care fight is really heating up in the Senate, and some Democrats are trying to bargain away the heart of President Obama's health care plan—a strong public health insurance option.
We need to escalate our campaign for real health care reform. On Thursday, July 9th, we are organizing a "Public Option NOW!" Health Care Rally at Senator Bill Nelson's Coral Gables Office at 4:00 PM.
On Thursday, July 9th, we will send a strong message to Senator Nelson and every senator: Health care reform must include a strong public health insurance option. NOW!

Sen. Bill Nelson still waffling on health care

We’re getting through to him, at least in the sense that he has heard the phones ringing off the hook. Sen. Bill Nelson, whose former job as state insurance commissioner makes us suspect him of being too close to the insurance business (definitely not a problem in his earlier career as astronaut), is listed as “unknown” on this chart at Open Left. Dear me, unknown is further from the goal than the maybes.

Come on, Senator. We who put you in office are in a big majority for strong health care reform with a strong public option. Why waffle? We like leaders better than those who tinker at the edge.

Here’s what’s up on his Twitter page, dated June 18.

Lotta folks asking me about health-care reform. We really need it. I'm working on it. But we need a viable plan for how to pay for it.4:43 PM Jun 18th from web

Please do go and vote on Jan. 29

I am giving Bill Nelson the benefit of the doubt and will consider his lawsuit a publicity stunt. Good. We need all the publicity we can get. Even bad publicity is useful, some say.

In any case, here is the word from Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Karen Thurman following the dismissal of Sen. Nelson's suit against the Democratic National Committee.

It boils down to: Please vote in the Jan. 29 primary.

"The Florida Democratic Party remains committed to participating fully in the state-run Presidential Preference Primary on January 29, 2008. We strongly urge all Florida Democrats to get out and vote in this fair and open election.

"No matter what anybody says, Florida Democrats will make the primary count by going to the polls and casting their votes on January 29th. The nation will be paying attention, and Florida Democrats will have a major impact on the race.

"Accordingly, the Florida Democratic Party will respect the voters' choice on January 29th in determining the allocation of our delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. We are confident that the Democratic Presidential nominee will seat Florida's delegation at the Convention."

There's www.makeitcountflorida.com for further information.

Also relevant is that it's time to start applying if you'd like to be a delegate to the Denver convention. You will be seated.

Open letter to Mel Martinez

The following letter by Jody Finver was so well put that I'm posting it without any change.

Open Letter to Senator Martinez

Senator Martinez,

I think it is high time that someone define the function of your job as Senator of the United States from the State of Florida. (Mr. Nelson you could stand to take a lesson here as well so pay attention. Close attention.)

Your job is to represent the will of the people, the will of your constituents, the will of the voting public. Your job is to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Technically, I am your boss. You work for me.

You do not work for the President. In fact, your job is to keep him in line and in check. You do not work for a political party. You work for the citizens of your State. Even the ones who don't have a right to vote or are not old enough.

Your performance thus far as my employee has been woefully lacking. Not only do you not listen, it appears that you do not care the slightest for the voting citizens back home.

If you did, you would stop hiding behind rhetoric and talking points and you would stop perpetuating flat out lies. You would fight tooth and nail to restore the Constitution. A Constitution that your parents prayed to be protected by and believed in so fiercely they sent you here for a better life.

Instead, you have turned your back on Floridians who want Habeas Corpus restored, Floridians that know the real body count in Iraq, Floridians who care more about our troops than your voting record reflects, Floridians that risked their lives for a Freedom you are not fighting to protect.

I honestly don't think you consider the will of the people, Mr. Senator. I think you are more concerned with raising money and raising fear. In fact, when I called your office about the Petraeus Report and asked your staffer if you were OK with lying to the American public as long as it served the needs of this Administration she said, "Yes." And I asked it twice.

Stop turning your back on the Constitution. Stop turning your back on the will of the people you are supposed to represent. Stop turning your back on our burned-out troops. And stop turning your back on the millions of Iraqi lives this country is responsible for taking.

The fact that the Senate wasted so much time over a print advertisement in the New York Times is infuriating. Shame on you all.

This is not what I am paying you for. Stop wasting my money, my time and my freedom.

Jody Finver
Miami, Florida

Vote on Jan. 29: Your vote will count

Sometimes we can be so pessimistic. Vote on Jan. 29? Heck no, it won't count ... will it?

Wait a minute. Yes, Florida has some problems with votes not counting. But that doesn't mean you should give up just because of a Republican-engineered flip of the finger at party rules.

The Florida Democratic Party made it official Sunday at a news conference in Pembroke Pines with Chairwoman Karen Thurman : Yes, vote on Jan. 29 "and make it count."

"The nation will be paying attention on Jan. 29, and Florida Democrats will have a major impact in determining who the next president of the United States of America will be," she said.

A score or more of state and local Democratic leaders stood with her as she made the announcement and fielded questions from a skeptical bunch of media reps who seemed to have swallowed the Rovian line that the vote wouldn't count, the delegates wouldn't be seated, the candidates will ignore all of poor Florida's desperate needs, and the sky will fall.

After Thurman declined to answer the third or fourth iteration of that list, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20) stepped in and said she would urge all to vote for the nominee of their choice. "We will make sure they count," she said, and the Florida Democratic Party expects the state's delegates to be seated at the Denver convention next summer.

Sen. Bill Nelson said in the party's written statement that the vote will certainly count, and "On Jan. 29, there will be multiple elections and other important issues on the ballot in Florida, whether the DNC recognizes the vote or not."

Miami-Dade Chairman Joe Garcia said, "Florida elects presidents. On Jan. 29 we will have a bigger impact than any caucus or small-state primary. The eventual nominee will seat our 210 delegates next year and our voice will be heard."

One of the keys to this, my friends, is to cease fighting among each other over the whole affair, and proceed to get out the vote. One way or another, the vote will count.