Chiquita: The Guns and Drugs and Union Killing CNN Didn’t Mention

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CNN has a report today on some of the many lawsuits victims of right and left wing violence have taken against Chiquita.

Family members of thousands of Colombians who were killed or who disappeared are suing Chiquita Brands International, alleging the produce company is liable because of its payments to paramilitaries.”We’re holding them accountable,” said Paul Wolf, a Washington-based attorney who is handling cases for family members of more than 2,000 victims.

[snip]

A federal judge in Florida is weighing whether the lawsuits, which constitute more than 4,000 claims against Chiquita, will go to trial.

I’m glad CNN has called attention to the suits. But I wanted to point out some of the important details, including the following details from a suit filed last March.

There’s the way Chiquita helped the right wing AUC import 3000 AK-47s.

In 2001, Chiquita facilitated the clandestine and illegal transfer of arms and ammunition from Nicaragua to the AUC.

[snip]

Instead of docking in Panama, the Otterloo [a ship registered in Panama and carrying 3000 AK-47s] instead went to Turbo, Colombia, where Chiquita, through Banadex, operated a private port facility for the transport of bananas and other cargo.

After the Otterloo docked at Chiquita’s port in Turbo, Banadex employees unloaded crates containing the assault rifles and ammunition. On information and belief, the AUC, which had free access to the port, then loaded these rifles onto AUC vehicles and took possession of them.

And there’s the way Chiquita helped the AUC export coke.

Colombian prosecutors have charged that the AUC shipped drugs on Chiquita’s boats carrying bananas to Europe.

[snip]

More than one and a half tons of cocaine have been found hidden in Defendant’s produce, valued at over 33 million dollars. Two of the ships on which drugs were found were named the Chiquita Bremen and the Chiquita Belgie.

And finally, there’s the way Chiquita relied on AUC to break the unions.

After its agreement with Chiquita, the AUC understood that one goal of its campaign of terror was to force laborers to work in the plantations. Anyone who disobeyed the order knew what would happen  to them. For example, one individual who worked in Chiquita’s offices at a plantation in Urabá, was present when paramilitaries arrived at the plantation and summarily executed a banana worker who had been seen as a troublemaker because his slow work held up the production line. Another individual saw paramilitaries arrive to threaten banana workers after a salary dispute.

[snip]

In addition to directly suppressing labor activity, the paramilitaries regulated the banana-growing population and protected Chiquita’s profitability by controlling the provision of medical services in the towns of Urabá. Residents of Apartadó reported that they feared seeing doctors because they believed that medical personnel were under the control of the AUC. On information and belief, this arrangement benefited Chiquita because it allowed the paramilitaries to inform the company of its employees’ medical issues that could potentially affect labor productivity, including pregnancy.

Whether or not this suit goes forward (and new documents released in April by National Security Archive make it clear that Chiquita considered their ties to terrorist groups a quid pro quo), it’s important to document what it means when corporations team up with terrorist organizations.

Obama wants to extend “free” trade with Colombia, when it’s not all that clear that these practices have ended.

As with Voting, in Marketing, Real People Don’t Count Anymore

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For some time, it has become increasingly clear that our politicians can pursue policies that benefit just their rich donors–austerity, killing Medicare, bailing out banksters at the expense of homeowners–while ignoring their purported constituents.

So I guess it comes as no surprise that advertisers are beginning to adopt the same approach.

The top 10 percent of American households, [AdAge] adds, now account for nearly half of all consumer spending, and a disproportionate share of that spending comes from the top 10’s upper reaches.

“Simply put,” sums up Ad Age’s David Hirschman, “a small plutocracy of wealthy elites drives a larger and larger share of total consumer spending and has outsize purchasing influence — particularly in categories such as technology, financial services, travel, automotive, apparel, and personal care.”

[snip]

“As the very rich become even richer,” as Ad Age observes, “they amass greater purchasing power, creating an increasingly concentrated market for luxury goods and services as well as consumer goods overall.”

In the future, if current trends continue, no one else but the rich will essentially matter — to Madison Avenue.

“More than ever before,” the new Ad Age paper bluntly sums up, “the wealthiest households will be the households with significant disposable income to spend.”

Why market to the mere middle class (which is busy, in any case, falling out of the middle class) when marketing to the super rich is so much more lucrative?

If advertisers really do start blowing off the middle class, it might have an interesting mixed result. On one hand, there may be a greater gap between what people see on TV commercials and shows, driving insecurity about not matching the lifestyles you see on TV (then again, maybe advertisers will just stop advertising on TV).

But if the middle class isn’t the target of a barrage of advertising, it may lead to a less materialist lifestyle, leaving people to invest in their communities rather than their toys.

Who knows? One thing is clear: increasing inequality is totally defining our society. And it’s not entirely clear how the newly redefined society is going to end up.

Dear DNC: Automotive “I Told You Sos” Need to Be Directed Down-Ticket, Too

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The DNC and Midwestern state Democratic Parties are rolling out an extravaganza today, using the occasion of Chrysler paying back some of its federal loans to mock GOP presidential candidates for opposing the auto bailout.

The DNC had a press conference with Jennifer Granholm, Ted Strickland, and Bob King to mock people like Mitt, T-Paw, Gingrich, and Huntsman. “Many of these naysayers now want to be President,” Strickland said.

MI posted a release (though apparently didn’t care enough send it to members):

Chrysler is reportedly set to announce that it will repay $5.9 billion in loans to the U.S. government and American taxpayers. Chrysler’s good news comes on the heels of a report that Chrysler made its first quarterly profit since emerging from structured bankruptcy reorganization.  Chrysler posted a 22.5% increase of sales in April compared to the same month last year and first quarter net income of $116 million, marking a remarkable turnaround for Chrysler and the domestic auto industry.“This is a great sign for Chrysler communities across the state and another positive sign of the recovery of manufacturing here in Michigan,” said Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer. “Though it was unpopular in many parts of the country, President Obama and Democrats did what was needed to save the more than 1.4 million jobs that the American auto industry supports. If the President hadn’t acted to prevent Chrysler and GM from shutting their doors permanently, the entire state could have seen further economic disaster.”

After receiving loan packages and emerging from structured bankruptcy reorganization, Chrysler and General Motors are both hiring again and operating at a profit. Right here in Michigan, more than 12,100 manufacturing and auto dealer jobs have been created in the last year.

IN posted a release and sent it to DFH journalists from adjoining states:

In response to today’s news that Chrysler has repaid $5.9 billion in loans to the U.S. government and American taxpayers, Indiana Democratic Party Chair lauded President Obama for his strong economic leadership and success taking action to prevent the collapse of America’s domestic auto industry.Parker also said Indiana Republicans who voted against or publicly opposed Obama’s auto plan now find themselves on the wrong side of history.

“Indiana’s auto industry was hard hit by the recent economic crisis, and this is a great sign both for Chrysler and Hoosier workers,” Parker said. “President Obama’s plan wasn’t popular in many parts of the country, but Democrats did what was necessary to save the more than 1.4 million jobs that the American auto industry supports. Without that kind of strong leadership, many of our communities would have suffered economic disaster.”

Chrysler’s good news comes on the heels of a report that the company made its first quarterly profit since emerging from structured bankruptcy reorganization. Chrysler posted a 22.5% increase of sales in April compared to the same month last year and first quarter net income of $116 million, marking a remarkable turnaround for Chrysler and the domestic auto industry.

After receiving loan packages and emerging from structured bankruptcy reorganization, Chrysler and General Motors are both hiring again and operating at a profit.

Parker noted that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and U.S. Rep Mike Pence, who is seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination, both opposed the President’s auto plan.

(I haven’t seen one from OH yet, but they sent this wonderfully catty release earlier this month.)

Update: Here’s Obama’s statement (which lacks any “I told you sos”):

Chrysler’s repayment of its outstanding loans to the U.S. Treasury and American taxpayers marks a significant milestone for the turnaround of Chrysler and the countless communities and families who rely on the American auto industry. This announcement comes six years ahead of schedule and just two years after emerging from bankruptcy, allowing Chrysler to build on its progress and continue to grow as the economy recovers. Supporting the American auto industry required making some tough decisions, but I was not willing to walk away from the workers at Chrysler and the communities that rely on this iconic American company. I said if Chrysler and all its stakeholders were willing to take the difficult steps necessary to become more competitive, America would stand by them, and we did. While there is more work to be done, we are starting to see stronger sales, additional shifts at plants and signs of strength in the auto industry and our economy, a true testament to the resolve and determination of American workers across the nation.

But there’s something missing, perhaps because the DNC is too focused on national races and doesn’t appear to know much about the local industry. The DNC is focused on the GM and Chrysler headlines, not so much the suppliers, where the bulk of the jobs are. More importantly, the Democrats as a whole don’t seem to be cataloging the many examples where down-ticket Republicans are claiming credit for government investments in new technology that are just now paying off in jobs.

The problem is particularly acute here in W MI, home of some of the GOP’s biggest evangelists claiming business simply needs government to get out of the way. But it’s also home to a good number of factories–including, increasingly, clean energy factories supported by Granholm credits and federal stimulus dollars–that rely on government funding.

As Wizardkitten ranted wonderfully earlier this months, GOPers routinely show up to claim credit for these plants, even while ignoring that Democratic investments rather than GOP austerity made the plants possible.

Governor Snyder, who spent a campaign trash-talking both the state economic development team and the tax credits that are now growing a clean energy economy here in Michigan, not only used an advanced battery plant created with state incentives and stimulus money to introduce the Republican ticket last August, now has given his “Reinventing Michigan” award to another Governor Granholm/MEDC/Recovery Act success story – and tries to play it off as a victory surrounding his political talking points.

Read more →

Jared Bernstein’s Glorious Diarrhea of Quashed Ideas

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I rarely post solely to recommend you follow a blog or twitter feed. But I am here.

You see, Joe Biden’s economic advisor, Jared Bernstein, was recently liberated from the White House.

And, as part of that liberation process, it seems, he got himself a blog and twitter feed. His inaugural post explained he could do more and better on the outside, speaking truth.

Democrats lately seemed to be trapped in a position that amounts to: “sure, we have to cut and shrink—just not as much as the other guys want.”

There’s got to be a better way—a way to widen this terribly narrow debate.

Why couldn’t I do more to help from the inside?  One reason is that in order to move the ball forward, you need consensus, and in today’s politics, that is particularly elusive.  And that makes it especially hard to call out people and their arguments.  There’s a reason why Jon Stewart can speak truths that highly-placed elected officials cannot.  When you’re on the inside at a time like this, you’re constantly balancing the risk of losing the support of people you need to lead.

So, not meaning to be at all grandiose, I’m going to try to do my part to improve the debate from the outside, to make sense out of the arguments, to go for truth over truthiness, to elevate the facts of the case in a way that’s respectful to all sides of the case.  It’s also my hope that by dint of my recent experience at the White House, I can imbue this blog with a sense of political realism that’s sometimes missing in critical commentary.

And he’s got all the smarts of Paul Krugman with–excuse me, the Shrill One–better voice.

But what’s more fascinating to me is the way his blog reads like the exploding diarrhea of common sense ideas that were quashed within the Obama White House:

Social Security Benefits: They’re Important!

The Correct Diagnosis

Family Budget Not Equal to Government Budget

This Just In: Wars Are Expensive

What’s Going Down with Real Wages?

Along with this line from a post on the auto bailout I heartily endorse:

You’d be hard-pressed to find a policy intervention that did as much good yet engendered so much disdain.

Partly I want to say “duh!”

Partly I want to cheer that someone with an economist badge is finally putting these ideas into circulation.

And partly I’m fascinated by the seeming free association going on at the moment, with every reaction a seeming opportunity to expound on something–it seems–that has been gnawing on Bernstein for the last two years.

Finally, there’s the recognition that the entire time the White House was shunning truth-tellers like Krugman and Joe Stiglitz, there was apparently someone on the inside speaking many of the same obvious truths.

And with that recognition, the evidence that Bernstein’s truth-telling didn’t do anymore good from the inside than Krugman and Stiglitz did on the outside.

Mickey Mouse’s Night Vision Goggles

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Just weeks after the SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, a company best known for profiting wildly off of fantasy stories for children has trademarked Seal Team 6.

The Walt Disney Company has trademarked “Seal Team 6,” which also happens to be the name of the elite special forces team that killed Osama Bin Laden.

The trademark applications came on May 3rd, two days after the operation that killed Bin Laden… and two days after “Seal Team 6″  was included in thousands of news articles and TV programs focusing on the operation.

There’s a lot that’s wrong with this. Do we really need Mickey Mouse making a movie celebrating violence? Boom, boom! as Mickey double-taps the bad guy.

And how does Disney get to trademark a government unit? Shouldn’t they be paying a license fee to the government if they want to make money off Seal Team 6’s success?

Finally, though, I’d love to second the suggestion made by @AllThingsCT: if Disney is going to insist on profiting off the exploits of SEAL Team 6, then they had better be giving most of those profits back, preferably to military families who are struggling through multiple deployments and PTSD.

Why Can’t DOJ Investigate as Well as the Hapless Senate?

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There’s a lot to loathe about the current incarnation of the Senate, that elite club of millionaires where legislation goes to either get rewritten to serve corporate interests or killed.

What does that say about DOJ, then, that the Senate is doing such a better job at investigating crimes? In just one month’s time the Senate has produced two investigations that have left DOJ–and the SEC and FEC–looking toothless by comparison.

First there was Carl Levin’s investigation of the banksters, released last month. Matt Taibbi does us the favor of outlining the case Levin’s investigators made.

Here is where the supporters of Goldman and other big banks will stand up and start wanding the air full of confusing terms like “scienter” and “loss causation” — legalese mumbo jumbo that attempts to convince the ignorantly enraged onlooker that, according to American law, these grotesque tales of grand theft and fraud you’ve just heard are actually more innocent than you think. Yes, they will say, it may very well be a prosecutable crime for a corner-store Arab to take $2 from a customer selling tap water as Perrier. But that does not mean it’s a crime for Goldman Sachs to take $100 million from a foreign hedge fund doing the same thing! No, sir, not at all! Then you’ll be told that the Supreme Court has been limiting corporate liability for fraud for decades, that in order to gain a conviction one must prove a conscious intent to deceive, that the 1976 ruling in Ernst and Ernst clearly states….Leave all that aside for a moment. Though many legal experts agree there is a powerful argument that the Levin report supports a criminal charge of fraud, this stuff can keep the lawyers tied up for years. So let’s move on to something much simpler. In the spring of 2010, about a year into his investigation, Sen. Levin hauled all of the principals from these rotten Goldman deals to Washington, made them put their hands on the Bible and take oaths just like normal people, and demanded that they explain themselves. The legal definition of financial fraud may be murky and complex, but everybody knows you can’t lie to Congress.

“Article 18 of the United States Code, Section 1001,” says Loyola University law professor Michael Kaufman. “There are statutes that prohibit perjury and obstruction of justice, but this is the federal statute that explicitly prohibits lying to Congress.”

The law is simple: You’re guilty if you “knowingly and willfully” make a “materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation.” The punishment is up to five years in federal prison.

When Roger Clemens went to Washington and denied taking a shot of steroids in his ass, the feds indicted him — relying not on a year’s worth of graphically self-incriminating e-mails, but chiefly on the testimony of a single individual who had been given a deal by the government. Yet the Justice Department has shown no such prosecutorial zeal since April 27th of last year, when the Goldman executives who oversaw the Timberwolf, Hudson and Abacus deals arrived on the Hill and one by one — each seemingly wearing the same mask of faint boredom and irritated condescension — sat before Levin’s committee and dodged volleys of questions.

[snip]

Lloyd Blankfein went to Washington and testified under oath that Goldman Sachs didn’t make a massive short bet and didn’t bet against its clients. The Levin report proves that Goldman spent the whole summer of 2007 riding a “big short” and took a multibillion-dollar bet against its clients, a bet that incidentally made them enormous profits. Are we all missing something? Is there some different and higher standard of triple- and quadruple-lying that applies to bank CEOs but not to baseball players?

Then there’s the investigation of John Ensign. Scott Horton lambastes DOJ’s decision to indict Ensign’s cuckold but not Ensign himself.

Alarmingly, the Justice Department not only failed to act against Ensign, it actually indicted Doug Hampton, Ensign’s former senior staffer, who was clearly a victim of Ensign’s predatory conduct and who had blown the whistle on him. The new report does suggest that Hampton may have engaged in improper lobbying activities, with Ensign’s connivance. But it also makes clear that Hampton’s statements about what happened were truthful and complete, whereas Ensign’s were often cleverly misleading, and sometimes rank falsehoods. In this context, the Justice Department’s decision—to prosecute the victim who spoke with candor and against his own interests, and let the malefactor who lied about his conduct go free—is perverse. It is also completely in line with recent Justice Department pubic integrity prosecutions, which have displayed an unseemly appetite for political intrigue and an irrepressible desire to accommodate the powerful.

And the NYT writes a more sheepish article featuring both an FEC official who apparently wouldn’t go on the record with his shock–shock! that there was gambling going on in the casino someone lied to the FEC.

An election commission official, who asked not to be identified while the case was pending, acknowledged that the commission took the senator at his word, whereas the Senate dug deeper. This official expressed anger to learn the true circumstances behind the $96,000 payment.

“I hate it when people lie to us,” the official said, adding: “If somebody submits a sworn affidavit, we usually do not go back and question it, unless we have something else to go on. Maybe we should not be so trusting.”

The NYT also cites several legal experts attributing DOJ’s impotence to embarrassment over the Ted Stevens trial (without, at the same time, wondering why William Welch is still at DOJ acting just as recklessly, only this time against whistleblowers and other leakers).

Several of these reviews of DOJ’s failure to act wonder why the understaffed Senate Ethics Committee or Levin’s Permanent Committee on Investigations–again, this is the hapless Senate!–managed to find so much dirt that the better staffed DOJ and regulatory bodies did not.

But Taibbi really gets at the underlying issue.

If the Justice Department fails to give the American people a chance to judge this case — if Goldman skates without so much as a trial — it will confirm once and for all the embarrassing truth: that the law in America is subjective, and crime is defined not by what you did, but by who you are.

These two Senate committees did an excellent job mapping out the crimes of the powerful. But unless we see action from DOJ, the committees will also have, by comparison, mapped out the stark truth that DOJ refuses to apply the same laws we peons abide by to those powerful people.

JP Morgan Chase Nickel and Diming the Last Nickels and Dimes from the Unemployed

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The National Consumer Law Center just released a report on something that’s been a pet peeve of mine for some years: states’ increasing reliance on pre-paid cards to distribute unemployment compensation, rather than checks. (h/t Susie) As the report explains, issuing funds via a card is much cheaper for the states. But what’s really happening is that unemployment recipients end up paying for the cards out of series of fees the banks issuing the cards charge (which violates the law that says administrative costs should not come out of benefits).

The report spells out in detail how banks are screwing unemployment recipients in which state:

  • US Bank refusing to let AR post its fee schedule
  • PNC requiring recipients to work with customer service to transfer fees to their own bank account in IN
  • Chase charging $1 for the very first in-network ATM withdrawal in TN
  • Chase charging $2.75 for out-of-network ATM withdrawals in WV, even in areas without convenient access to a Chase branch
  • Chase charging $.25 for cash back with a purchase in TN and RI
  • Chase charging $.10 for every point-of-service use after the second one in CO
  • Chase charging $.25 for PIN transactions in ME and TN
  • US Bank charging $20 overdraft fees (on pre-paid cards!) in AR
  • Chase charging $1.50 for denied transactions in MI and WV
  • Chase charging $.50 to check a balance and $1 for insufficient funds in RI
  • Regions Bank charging a $2.50 90-day inactivity fee in AL
  • Chase charging $12.50 to issue a check to close out an account in CO and CT

Check out this state-by-state summary to see what your state’s card charges and how that compares with other states.

This list, of course, demonstrates another thing: Chase’s significant role in the market (it serves 13 of the 40 states that use pre-paid cards) and–aside from US Bank’s egregious overdraft fees–its use of the most abusive practices.

That’s notable because Chase’s parent company–and its CEO, Jamie Dimon–is also taking the lead in threatening to cut off poorer consumers because the government wants to limit what debit card issuers like Chase can charge merchants.

Bank executives have said they will raise their fees to compensate for losing debit card processing revenues.They predict that some people will be unable to afford the fees, forcing them out of the banking system into the realm of check cashers and payday lenders.

The term that the banks use for this is “unbanked.” The rules “will have the adverse consequences of making a portion of current bank clients unbanked.

You will not be able to profitably serve them,” Dimon told analysts during the bank’s fourth-quarter earnings conference call Friday.

About 5 percent of today’s banking customers “may be pushed out of the banking system,” he said.

You see the nice trap Dimon is setting for those who don’t profit mightily by sucking at the federal teat, like his bank does? Unbanked consumers are precisely those who, if they receive unemployment, will rely on these cards and have to pay their usurious fees. So after forcing them out of the banking system because JP Morgan refuses to cut its escalating profits in response to Dodd-Frank, JP Morgan will still profit off these people by nickel and diming them at the time they can least afford to be nickel and dimed.

Corporate Fairy Tales in Afghanistan

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It’s a corporate fairy tale: working class boy joins the military, goes into banking, brings the joys of mineral exploitation to exotic locales.

From Congo to Colombia, from Iraq to Sierra Leone, [Ian] Hannam [the JP Morgan banker overseeing the development of a gold mine in Afghanistan] and his small team of soldiers-turned-bankers and advisers did business with oligarchs, gem dealers, and former mercenaries. He could be bracingly direct. When he landed in Baghdad for a meeting with Iraq’s oil minister, the minister asked, “What are you here for?”

“I’m here to make five new Iraqi billionaires every year for the next 10 years,” Hannam said with a twinkle in his eyes.

And it ends, I guess, as corporate fairy tales do: with the mineral riches finally being liberated from the oppressive soil.

But at least someone will have begun releasing the wealth trapped in Afghanistan’s stones.

It’s all the bits in between that raise eyebrows about the viability of our little project in Afghanistan and the structure of our empire. While the story focuses on Hannam, the JP Morgan banker, it’s as much a story about General Petraeus.

Then, in 2009, mining in Afghanistan got the push it needed — from the U.S. military. Petraeus had been appointed commander of U.S. Central Command, which had ultimate authority over Afghanistan. He realized that a U.S. exit from Afghanistan depended on getting the country’s economy running.

[snip]

Realizing that conventional foreign-aid organizations weren’t getting the job done, Petraeus moved a crack economic stabilization team from Iraq into Afghanistan. That team quickly realized that mining would be key.

And Deputy Under Secretary for Defense Paul Brinkley.

Hannam was at the banquet hall for a reception thrown by the Trade Bank of Iraq to honor J.P. Morgan. Also at the reception was Paul Brinkley, a deputy under secretary of defense charged with jump-starting Iraq’s stalled economy. A former tech company executive, Brinkley served as a matchmaker of sorts between Iraqi entrepreneurs and foreign businessmen. With the blessing of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, he operated outside normal bureaucratic channels, eschewing the bulletproof vests and helmets his civilian colleagues wore in combat zones. In three years he had secured some $8 billion in private investment contracts for Iraq, helping start textile mills, cement factories, and electronics companies. Hannam and Brinkley had heard about each other’s work. J.P. Morgan had been one of the first Western companies to plant the flag in Iraq, overseeing the country’s currency and setting up a big oil project in Iraqi Kurdistan. Hannam and Brinkley fell into conversation about Afghanistan, which was to be Brinkley’s next posting.

These men, of course, were prominently seen last June pushing James Risen to report a breathless story on Afghanistan’s $1 trillion mineral riches the night before Petraeus would testify to Congress.

[Risen] explained that he based his report on the work of a Pentagon team led by Paul Brinkley, a deputy undersecretary of defense charged with rebuilding the Afghan economy. Using geological data from the Soviet era and USGS surveys conducted in 2006, Brinkley dispatched teams to Afghanistan last year to search for minerals on the ground. The data they’ve come back with, combined with internal Pentagon assessments that value the deposits at more than $900 billion, constitute news, according to Risen. (Those surveys are still under way, according to a briefing Brinkley gave yesterday.)

[snip]

So was the story a Pentagon plant, designed to show the American public a shiny metallic light at the end of the long tunnel that is the Afghan war, as skeptics allege? Risen said he heard about the Pentagon’s efforts from Milt Bearden, a retired CIA officer who was active in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The men co-authored a book, “The Main Enemy,” in 2003, and Bearden is now a consultant working with Brinkley’s survey team.

“Several months ago, Milt started telling me about what they were finding,” Risen said. “At the beginning of the year, I said I wanted to do a story on it.” At first both Bearden and Brinkley resisted, Risen said, but he eventually wore them down. “Milt convinced Brinkley to talk to me,” he said, “and Brinkley convinced other Pentagon officials to go on the record. I think Milt realized that things were going so badly in Afghanistan that people would be willing to talk about this.” In other words, according to Risen, he wasn’t handed the story in a calculated leak. Calls and emails to Brinkley and to Eric Clark, a Pentagon public relations contractor who works with him, were not immediately returned.

All of which makes you wonder about the provenance of this story…

And of course, in addition to Hannam, Petraeus, and Brinkley, there is JP Morgan itself, which seems to be investing a lot of time in a project they don’t expect to be profitable and won’t put their own money into.

In late September, J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Brinkley, and Mining Minister Wahidullah Shahrani met at J.P. Morgan’s headquarters in Manhattan. Dimon pledged J.P. Morgan’s support. On the way down in the elevator, Dimon told Shahrani, “You’re in good hands with Ian. He’s eccentric, but he gets things done.”But soon Brinkley’s team was wondering. On the day the deal signing was to take place, Hannam’s team stopped acting like former warriors and began behaving like, well, nervous investment bankers. Hannam, after talking about how rich he was going to make his clients, suddenly began to complain that there was no way to make a profit. The 26% royalty rate for the mine, his team claimed, was way too high. Mining Minister Shahrani was bewildered — the rate had been agreed upon years before, when the Naderi family had first bid for the mine. Nothing had changed.

Brinkley’s Pentagon team was deeply frustrated. They felt the bankers had pulled a fast one. Had Hannam’s group not done its homework? Or were they just being bankers, trying to squeeze more money out of the deal with some 11th-hour brinkmanship?

Brinkley lit into the J.P. Morgan group: “When are you going to get this done? You’ve told people you’re going to do it!” The bankers, in turn, felt they were being unfairly pressured by the government, which seemed desperate to get the deal done even if it was uneconomical.

[snip]

J.P. Morgan says it isn’t putting any of its own money into the project. Hannam secured $40 million from investors in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. They included Enso Capital founder Joshua Fink, son of BlackRock’s Larry Fink; British mining titan Peter Hambro; and Thai businessman Pairoj Piempongsant. Hannam created an investment vehicle, Central Asian Resources, to enter into a joint venture with Naderi’s new mining company, Afghan Gold.

Which in turn makes you wonder about the off-and-on relationship between the President and Jamie Dimon, particularly in the months leading up to JP Morgan playing hardball on the gold mine in Afghanistan. Have there been other considerations involved in the government’s relationship with JP Morgan? When Dimon boasts about JP Morgan being a good bank–in spite of the fact that they practice some of the same reprehensible policies as their rivals–is he saying something more?

Mind you, it’s not that Petraeus is wrong: Afghanistan needs something besides poppies if it’s ever going to become a viable nation-state.

I’d just like a bit more transparency about the public-private endeavors our government builds to make that happen. And I’d like a lot more information about all the favors being exchanged to make that happen.

ComcastSucks Got Suckier So FCC Commish Could Get a Swank New Job

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Our entire country’s mediascape will no doubt get suckier as Comcast returns to its typical bad behavior after having eaten NBC. We will become less well-informed. We will fall further behind the rest of the world for broadband access. And we will continue to wait for ComcastSucks repairmen.

And all so Meredith Attwell Baker could get a swank new job at ComcastSucksNBC.

Meredith Attwell Baker, one of the two Republican Commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, plans to step down—and right into a top lobbying job at Comcast-NBC.

The news, reported this afternoon by the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, and Politico, comes after the hugely controversial merger of Comcast and NBC earlier this year. At the time, Baker objected to FCC attempts to impose conditions on the deal and argued that the “complex and significant transaction” could “bring exciting benefits to consumers that outweigh potential harms.”

Four months after approving the massive transaction, Attwell Baker will take a top DC lobbying job for the new Comcast-NBC entity, according to reports.

In ComcastSucksNBC’s announcement, Baker boasted about how excited she is to start her new job.

I’ve been privileged to serve in government for the past seven years under President Obama at the FCC and President Bush at NTIA, I’m excited to embark on a new phase of my career with Comcast and NBCUniversal,

Somehow, she forgot to mention how proud she is about personally contributing to the decline of her country to serve her own greed.

MI Dems to Benton Harbor: You’re on Your Own

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Eclectablog, who has been doing solid reporting on the takeover of Benton Harbor by an Emergency Financial Manager, has been wondering why MI’s Democratic Party hasn’t been more vociferous in supporting Benton Harbor. Today, he reported that MI Dems Chair Mark Brewer told Berrien County’s Dems that the MDP would not help them.

The occasion was the monthly meeting of the South County Democratic Club in Berrien County. Commissioner Dennis Knowles was in attendance. According to Commissioner Knowles, with whom I have spoken, Chair Brewer informed him that the MDP “could not help Benton Harbor” though he encouraged their recall effort of Rep. Al Pscholka. The MDP, however, will not assist in any way. In other words, Benton Harbor is on their own.

Now, while I don’t always agree with Brewer’s tactics, I respect his pragmatism, so I suspect part of what’s going on is driven by funding and/or a sense of the viability of recall efforts (the Snyder recall, in particular, would be really difficult to pull off because of the way our recall law is written).

But I also suspect something else is going on. Remember, Democrats in MI have themselves supported the concept of Emergency Financial Managers. In fact Jennifer Granholm’s administration put Pontiac and Benton Harbor itself into EFM status. So while Dems might be happy to knock off some Republican State Reps, they apparently remain committed to a city-based approach to financial stability. And that, it seems, stems at least partly from the way race has played out in this state.

As I noted before, one of the key factors contributing to Benton Harbor’s awful state is racism. Ditto Detroit, the schools of which are widely assumed to be the next target for Snyder’s EFM law. In both cases, a long history of segregation has resulted in the loss of the tax base of the city as more affluent whites left. The proper financial solution to that problem should have been more regionalized funding, but that wasn’t politically viable. Remember–MI is the home of the Reagan Democrats, the working class whites whom Reagan persuaded to put social  issues ahead of their own class interest.

The thing is, it probably could be today. Or could have been just after the 2008 election. Here’s what Stan Greenberg said at that point when he claimed–prematurely, given the rise of the TeaPartiers–the Reagan Democrats were dead.

For more than 20 years, the non-college-educated white voters in Macomb County have been considered a “national political barometer,” as Ronald Brownstein of National Journal described them during the Democratic convention in August. After Ronald Reagan won the county by a 2-to-1 margin in 1984, Mr. Brownstein noted, I conducted focus groups that “found that these working-class whites interpreted Democratic calls for economic fairness as code for transfer payments to African-Americans.” So what do we think when Barack Obama, an African-American Democrat, wins Macomb County by eight points?

I conducted a survey of 750 Macomb County residents who voted Tuesday, and their responses put their votes in context. Before the Democratic convention, barely 40 percent of Macomb County voters were “comfortable” with the idea of Mr. Obama as president, far below the number who were comfortable with a nameless Democrat. But on Election Day, nearly 60 percent said they were “comfortable” with Mr. Obama. About the same number said Mr. Obama “shares your values” and “has what it takes to be president.”

Given Macomb’s history, this story helps illustrate America’s evolving relationship with race. These voters, like voters elsewhere, watched Mr. Obama intently and became confident he would work for all Americans and be the steady leader the times required.

For a brief period in 2008, MI (which is a pretty damned segregated state) put aside its legacy of racism in hopes a black President could bring benefits for all Americans. (Then Republicans used Obama’s imperfect effort to do that–in the form of health care–to stoke that racism again.)

It seems to me, Democrats need to finally, enthusiastically embrace a model that puts collective well-being at the center of a plan to respond to globalization, rather than letting black cities suffer the twin plights of racism and globalization. And that ought to include not only some political support for Benton Harbor’s fight for democracy, but also some creative solutions that don’t amount to starving cash strapped cities all in the name of short term–and short-sighted–fiscal responsibility.