A scary view of Putin

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As has been the case for centuries, men and women who are seeking profits will often uncover and follow the most fascinating stories of "what's happening" around the world . . . because those stories can often lead to profits. Personally, I tend to ignore most of the specific investment advice. But I love to follow the stories, especially the "big picture" stories. This story isn't pleasant. At all. But it has a strong ring of truth. And I believe it would behoove citizens of countries around the world to keep their eyes on it.

Corruption in high places

I saw this in the December 2 edition of The Week. Quoting from Woman Gets Jail For Food-Stamp Fraud; Wall Street Fraudsters Get Bailouts:

You get busted for drugs in this country, and it turns out you can make yourself ineligible to receive food stamps.

But you can be a serial fraud offender like Citigroup, which has repeatedly been dragged into court for the same offenses and has repeatedly ignored court injunctions to abstain from fraud, and this does not make you ineligible to receive $45 billion in bailouts and other forms of federal assistance. . . .

A normal person, once he gets a felony conviction, immediately begins to lose his rights as a citizen.

But white-collar criminals of the type we’ve seen in recent years on Wall Street – both the individuals and the corporate "citizens" – do not suffer these ramifications. They commit crimes without real consequence, allowing them to retain access to the full smorgasbord of subsidies and financial welfare programs that, let’s face it, are the source of most of their profits.

I urge you to read the whole story because the contrast between how Citigroup and Anita McLemore have been treated is far bigger than what the few words I have quoted could signify.

The injustice of the U.S. federal government is beyond imagination.

What's this about 'insider trading'?!? Who? Me worry?

Remember Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine fame?

That should be the epigram of our congresspeople. After all, they are above it all. No equality under the law for them!

Shah Gillani writes in today's Wall Street Insights & Indictments,

There's a ton of "insight" to be meted out about what's going on in the market. You've heard most of it from me, and everybody else. But today and tomorrow will be all about being an insider at the meetings going on over in Europe.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall at those meetings...

What we couldn't do with a little "inside information!"

But we can't be there, and besides, that would be insider trading, wouldn't it?

So, we'll all just have to stay glued to CNBC and Bloomberg to see what the future holds for us all.

Speaking of trading on inside information...

Have you heard about the hearings up on Capitol Hill?

Oh yeah, there's been serious discussions in Congress - by Congressmen and women -about reports of insider trading being conducted by privilege insiders, namely, some of their own.

It seems our always honest, always on-top-of-it, always looking-out-for-themselves Congressional leaders and their rank (and I do mean rank) and file are at it again, proving that although their net worth to the public may be zero, their access to non-public information is priceless.

While privately expressing indignation that their day trading jobs (conducted simultaneously with their legislative duties, so as not to distract them from either pursuit) should ever be subject to public scrutiny, lawmakers nonetheless held hearings about their access to inside information.

I guess to let Americans know that they are not crooks.

Last week, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs convened a get-together to ask each other if they knew anything about it and what to do about it, if it was true.

Nothing really happened.

Kind of like the deficit reduction talks, they decided to talk more about it in the future, although they weren't sure there was anything that needed fixing.

After all, one witness, Indiana University law professor Donna Nagy, told the Committee that Congressional insider trading was subject to anti-fraud provisions in federal securities laws, as well as federal mail and wire fraud statutes. In that case, they don't need to change anything; the Securities and Exchange Commission is on the case.

And thank goodness for that. I mean, thank goodness the Senate has no power over the SEC, other than to vote on their budget and on their chairman.

Not that they would ever threaten to withhold money from the powerless, oops, I mean powerful, regulatory body to subjugate them to their will again... because they just threatened that recently (more on that one another time). But then again, that was probably just part of their deficit reduction talks...

No, there's no undue influence to worry about in our government, with all its checks (and I'm not talking about payoff checks) and balances.

Thankfully, because we have such a great balance in Congress, after the Senate hearings last week the House held its own little "social" just two days ago.

The subject - believe it or not - was insider trading by Congress and their aides.

There the balancing act over at the House was really in evidence. Really, imagine balancing the talks about insider trading in Congress when Spencer Bachus, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee presiding over the investment club meeting, is one of the most egregious of the alleged insider traders.

(I only use "alleged" because I like that word, it sounds so lawyerly, and I am talking about our lawmakers, don't you know.)

As far as Rep. Bachus, you just have to love his comment in the Wall Street Journal recently about the insider trading charges (oops, I mean discussions), when pinned to the mat about his excessive and very "timely" options trades conducted immediately after coming out of closed-door emergency meetings with the Treasury Secretary and Fed Chairman back in 2008.

He said, "More lawmakers should invest in the markets to better understand them."

Too bad he and the rest of Congress didn't invest all their net worth in mortgage-backed securities right before the crash, and if they had anything left, in MF Global.

But I digress.

Oh, you want me to mention that Jon Corzine, former Senator from New Jersey, will be visiting his old chambers today to tell his Senate buddies how not to invest by leveraging segregated customer funds in high-flying - make that high-yielding - bonds issued by low-flying PIIGS? That will be some good theater.

Oh, I'm still digressing.

Allow me to restore my sense of "balance."

I was talking about how the House hearings were being conducted by day-trading master Bachus. But in all fairness to him, you need to know that he was joined on the Committee by Rep. Gary Ackerman, a Congressman who received shares of stock he never paid for, for a favor he did in his official capacity.

It's not insider trading if you don't pay for something, right?

Back to my balancing act. The Senate committee looking into insider trading had two committee members who are equity-trading buffs.

Sen. Claire McCaskill nicely timed a half-million-dollar trade in Berkshire Hathaway right as the Big Bailout was signed, out of which Mr. Buffett's (he of not-so-clean hands) Berkshire was the recipient of some $90 billion, in one form or another.

And that Sen. Tom Carper, also on the committee, was a rabid trader of healthcare stocks during the healthcare debate in Congress.

Not that that means anything, does it?

No, it's all about balance in Congress.

Thank heaven, if there is one, that we elected these people.

Shah

P.S. Thanks for being a (big) part of Wall Street Insights & Indictments. The feedback I get from my readers is tremendously valuable. I need you to tell me when you "get" what I'm throwing out there... and, even more importantly, I want to know when you think I'm dead wrong. That's why I encourage you - today - to share your own thoughts on this story. Just go to stopinsidertradingincongress.com now to cast your vote.

And while our supposed "representatives" in Washington trade to their heart's content on their inside information, regular people--including billionaires--go to prison on far lesser crimes.

Consider Raj Rajaratnam, Martha Stewart and others. . . . But our "representatives" in Washington will get a pass?

Signed up for Sovereign Man "Notes From the Field" yet?

Quite enlightening!

Simon posted the following last Thursday (Thanksgiving Day):

I’d like to briefly pass along two interesting articles and one video that have struck me recently, and should you find the time today for a quick dose of reality, I highly recommend them.

The first is from Ross DeVol of the Milken Institute The Eight Best Innovation Ideas From Around the World. [Very inspiring! --JAH] Now, while it’s hard for me to support state-sponsored anything, DeVol does a great job of underscoring one of our primary points in this publication– countries around the world are starting to offer huge incentives and COMPETE for the best talent, labor, and capital.

From Singapore to Finland to Switzerland to South Korea, DeVol breaks down just a few of the places in the world that have made key policy changes to attract foreign businesses, professionals, and investment.

The second is a short article profiling Chinese professor and TV host Larry Lang’s recent comments during a lecture he gave in mainland China. In Lang’s words, the Chinese government is on the brink of bankruptcy, and that “every province is Greece.” [Disturbing! --JAH]

We’ve been beating this drum for quite some time, and if just a fraction of what Lang is saying pans out, the implications to the global economy will be severe. It makes me happy to be in Chile at the moment, working hard on our resilient community.

The last is a short investigative clip from German television . . . shedding light on the corruption and personal gain that goes on in the halls of the European Parliament.

It’s just another example of the political class criminally enriching themselves at the expense of the taxpayers. [Fascinating to watch political "leaders" scramble like cockroaches out of the limelight! --JAH]

And, of course, let's not ignore the U.S. Congress and its own insider-trading scandals--all "perfectly legal" (for them; just not for anyone else). You know, regular citizens get thrown in prison, for years, for far less obvious infractions than these "ladies and gentlemen" engage in. But who are we to question?

Good for the goose, good for the gander?

You heard about the business owner who was visited earlier this month by two rather officious IRS agents over a supposed failure to pay four cents in income tax back in 2006. They demanded $202.35 to cover the four cents plus penalties and interest over the intervening years. (Crazy!)

And you've heard about President Obama's concern to ensure that no businesses that are delinquent in tax payments should receive federal contracts. (Good.)

Why is it, then, that Tim Geithner was approved as Secretary of the Treasury (yes, Treasury!) when he messed up on his taxes and permitted a woman to work for him illegally? When caught, he paid the taxes, but "the IRS waived the related penalties." (How nice for him! But how completely two-faced.)

And, though he eventually withdrew his name from the process for consideration, why does it seem that former Senator Tom Daschle was perfectly acceptable to the president as a candidate to become Secretary of the federal Department of Health and Human Services--despite his failure to pay $146,000 in back taxes? (!!!!)

And why was it only after massive pressure that Charlie Rangel finally--at least temporarily--stepped down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee (the committee responsible for writing tax legislation and bills affecting Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlement programs), despite well-documented problems with his fundraising, major known tax evasion on property he owns in the Dominican Republic, and improper use of four rent-stabilized apartments in Manhattan?

But this one seems to take the cake: Earlier this month it comes out that nearly 100,000 federal employees (including 678 congressional staff members) owe just shy of a billion dollars in back taxes--and yet they can't be fired. (Include retirees and military service members, the numbers go from nearly 100,000 up to 276,000 current or former workers who owe $3 billion in taxes.)

So not only do federal employees, on average, make significantly more than their private economy peers (see also here), but, apparently, they are also permitted to steal from their employer, the federal government (and we the people who actually pay our taxes) without repercussions.

Sorry. Another story to get your blood pressure up! (But you can do something!)

Perhaps I've had my head in the sand not to have seen this story about Goldman Sachs' too-cozy relationship with the federal government and U.S. citizens' tax money!

Good grief! (Emboldening mine--JAH.)

As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the [expletive deleted] chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman. . . .

--Anyone see any potential conflicts-of-interest, here?

Oh! Oh! Oh!

But talking about conflicts-of-interest! . . .

Goldman's primary supervisor is now the New York Fed, whose chairman at the time of its announcement was Stephen Friedman, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs. Friedman was technically in violation of Federal Reserve policy by remaining on the board of Goldman even as he was supposedly regulating the bank; in order to rectify the problem, he applied for, and got, a conflict-of-interest waiver from the government. [!!!!!!] Friedman was also supposed to divest himself of his Goldman stock after Goldman became a bank-holding company, but thanks to the waiver, he was allowed to go out and buy 52,000 additional shares [of a company that he is supposed to be regulating! --We're not even talking potential conflicts-of-interest. This is, absolutely and completely, a full-blown conflict-of-interest. And the government approves!?!?!!!!--JAH] in his old bank, leaving him $3 million richer. [Only $3 million? --JAH] Friedman stepped down in May, but the man now in charge of supervising Goldman — New York Fed president William Dudley — is yet another former Goldmanite.

Yeah.

"No problems!"

And we are supposed to trust our government to be looking out for us?!?

Let's see how these guys' disinterested "public service" works out in practice:

Although he had already engineered a rescue of Bear Stearns a few months before and helped bail out quasi-private lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, [then-Treasury Secretary] Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers — one of Goldman's last real competitors — collapse without intervention. ("Goldman's superhero status was left intact," says market analyst Eric Salzman, "and an investment-banking competitor, Lehman, goes away.") The very next day, Paulson greenlighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman. Thanks to the rescue effort, the bank ended up getting paid in full for its bad bets: By contrast, retired auto workers awaiting the Chrysler bailout will be lucky to receive 50 cents for every dollar they are owed.

Immediately after the AIG bailout, Paulson announced his federal bailout for the financial industry, a $700 billion plan called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and put a heretofore unknown 35-year-old Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari in charge of administering the funds [They couldn't find anyone else who might have better qualifications? --JAH]. In order to qualify for bailout monies, Goldman announced that it would convert from an investment bank to a bank-holding company, a move that allows it access not only to $10 billion in TARP funds, but to a whole galaxy of less conspicuous, publicly backed funding — most notably, lending from the discount window of the Federal Reserve. By the end of March, the Fed will have lent or guaranteed at least $8.7 trillion under a series of new bailout programs — and thanks to an obscure law allowing the Fed to block most congressional audits, both the amounts and the recipients of the monies remain almost entirely secret.

But this, what we have already seen, may be small change compared to what's coming:

Sorry. I'm not going to quote the end. You really have to read the last few paragraphs for yourself on the article owners' site.

The collective message of all of this — the AIG bailout, the swift approval for its bank-holding conversion, the TARP funds — is that when it comes to Goldman Sachs, there isn't a free market at all. The government might let other players on the market die, but it simply will not allow Goldman to fail under any circumstances. Its edge in the market has suddenly become an open declaration of supreme privilege. "In the past it was an implicit advantage," says Simon Johnson, an economics professor at MIT and former official at the International Monetary Fund, who compares the bailout to the crony capitalism he has seen in Third World countries. "Now it's more of an explicit advantage."

Ouch!

Time to audit the Federal Reserve! (Follow the link; there is a wonderful series of tools to help you contact your congressional representative and senators. --My Republican Representative is sponsoring the audit bill; neither of my state's Democratic senators has signed on, yet. [But I thought the Democrats were opposed to big business' and governmental corruption, while the Republicans were always pro-big business?! (????!!!!)]

I'm writing!

U.S. to go the way of corruption?

I read this in the Rocky Mountain News several days ago. I was so disturbed, I couldn't even bring myself to post about it.

But after visiting so many other countries where corruption runs deep, I think we have to confront the reality. As I said to Sarita last night: what was wholly unimaginable even a year ago--that someone could casually suggest a $100 billion increase in federal expenses . . . why, that has become something of no account at all. A minor footnote on the trillions of dollars that Washington is now doling out with, it seems, "no thought for the morrow."

[S]o much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn’t understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent. . . .

While we're on that point: May I express my total lack of trust in anyone at Geithner's level of income and authority who says he "made a mistake" in his taxes so that he failed to pay payroll taxes? He didn't "make a mistake" the way you or I might, where we misunderstood some provision of the law. Perhaps he "made a mistake" in the sense that, "Oh, shoot! I got caught! That was a dumb move on my part! What a mistake!"

But it gets worse.

Krauthammer continues:

The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. . . .

He’d been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he’s not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don’t get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence. . . .

Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal’s private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he’d come to Washington to upend.

And yet more damaging to Obama’s image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package . . . [which is] not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It’s not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections . . . It’s the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus — and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress’ own budget office says won’t be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said. . . .

--Read the rest of the story for additional details.

It's sickening.

******

There was another article I saw sometime in the last day or two in which the author noted how, with all these billions and billions of dollars being handed out willy-nilly by the government, you can be sure the influence-peddlers, loaded with millions of dollars, are scurrying about the halls of congress seeking to release "a few billion here, a few billion there" to shower upon their favorite projects. After all, what's a 10 or 20 or even 100 million dollars compared to the billions that Washington can send your way?

You wonder why someone would pay Daschle $5 million for "nothing"?

It's not nothing.

And you and I--and our children--are the ones who will wind up paying for all this self-interested corruption.

Oh. By the way. How much is a trillion dollars, anyway? [From CNN on the 4th; 2:35]


And Christine can smile about this?

And now it begins to hit the fan . . .

So I got up this morning and began to look for information about Sarah Palin.

Already, last night, I had read of her possible ethical lapse with her ex-brother-in-law.

And in the same article, I read negative comments from her own state's leading papers about her lack of experience and lack of interest or drive toward national politics:

From the editorial in the Daily News-Miner in Fairbanks:

Sen. John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate was a stunning decision that should make Alaskans proud, even while we wonder about the actual merits of the choice.... Alaskans and Americans must ask, though, whether she should become vice president and, more importantly, be placed first in line to become president.

In fact, as the governor herself acknowledged in her acceptance speech, she never set out to be involved in public affairs. She has never publicly demonstrated the kind of interest, much less expertise, in federal issues and foreign affairs that should mark a candidate for the second-highest office in the land. Republicans rightfully have criticized the Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, for his lack of experience, but Palin is a neophyte in comparison; how will Republicans reconcile the criticism of Obama with the obligatory cheering for Palin?

Most people would acknowledge that, regardless of her charm and good intentions, Palin is not ready for the top job. McCain seems to have put his political interests ahead of the nation's when he created the possibility that she might fill it.

And from the editorial in the Anchorage Daily News:

It's stunning that someone with so little national and international experience might be heartbeat away from the presidency.

Gov. Palin is a classic Alaska story. She is an example of the opportunity our state offers to those with talent, initiative and determination...

McCain picked Palin despite a recent blemish on her ethically pure resume. While she was governor, members of her family and staff tried to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the Alaska State Troopers. Her public safety commissioner would not do so; she forced him out, supposedly for other reasons. While she runs for vice-president, the Legislature has an investigator on the case.

For all those advantages, Palin joins the ticket with one huge weakness: She's a total beginner on national and international issues.

Gov. Palin will have to spend the next two months convincing Americans that she's ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency....

I'm afraid I'm rather naïve. Even though I say this blog mixes in "a little politics," politics is really not a major interest of mine. That I don't normally follow political races.

But reading the article I just referenced from The Huffington Post--and seeing several other articles whose titles alone oozed similar animosity--I realized, if Palin is supposed to become vice president, she is going to have to endure some pretty grueling tests.

But now to this morning.

I bump into an article that suggests Palin may have "faked" pregnancy to cover for an out-of-wedlock baby born by her daughter?

Ouch! And, Oh! And, Oh, no!

Is this "politics as usual"? Rumor-mongering? Will Sarah Palin stand up to scrutiny?

If the independent public investigator assigned to discover the facts in the case concerning Palin's ex-brother-in-law should determine she actually did overstep the bounds of propriety in his case, and/or if the rumor about a faked pregnancy proves true, not only do McCain and Palin have major ethical issues on their hands, but McCain's choice of running mate--the lack of discernment her choice shows--will become a major negative factor in McCain's election strategy. And one would have to question the entire Republican Party: are they really so short of qualified candidates that they have to choose someone with virtually no national standing to become the vice presidential candidate?

Though then, come to think of it, the same question could be asked of the Democrats concerning Obama. He has some major ethical issues of his own, doesn't he?

As Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch (JW), notes in his latest fund-raising letter, JW felt the need to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the Illinois State Archives (ISA) to produce "any and all public documents . . . resulting from Illinois State Senator Barack Obama's years in office (1997-2004) that the ISA have in their possession."

Why?

Because

Back when he was questioned about his records on Meet the Press last year, Senator Obama stated

"Well, let's be clear. In the state Senate, every single piece of information, every document related to state government was kept by the state of Illinois and has been disclosed and is available and has been gone through with a fine-toothed comb by news outlets in Illinois . . . every document related to my interactions with government is available right now."

Yet the State Archives responded to our request by telling us that they don't maintain those records, nor have they received any requests from Senator Obama to archive any of his records.

"Clearly," Fitton says, "Barack Obama, just like Hillary Clinton, has a records problem. Our investigation suggests Senator Obama could have had his records archived so that they are available to the public but has chosen not to. Apparently he does not want a complete paper trail of his time in the Illinois State Senate.
So much for 'transparency' from the candidate who has made honesty and integrity his calling card!"

And then there is the matter of his relationship with Tony Rezko.

[W]e know that Senator Obama has a tangled history of personal and business dealings with one Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a naturalized American citizen who immigrated to the United States from Syria, settled in Chicago and who has long served as a political godfather to Barack Obama.

Over the years, in fact, Mr. Rezko has basically bankrolled Senator Obama's political career — beginning with Obama's first campaign for public office in 1996.
Rezko and members of his large family have contributed more than $200,000 to Obama campaigns since then. (The highly respected London Times referred to Rezko as "Mr. Obama's long-serving bagman.")

The relationship between Rezko and Senator Obama is so close that the Senator and Rezko went in on a real estate deal together! In fact, Obama's dealing with Rezko may have allowed Obama to pay $300,000 below the asking price for his $1.65 million Chicago mansion.

Obama and Rezko "walked through" the mansion together. They bought adjoining properties on the same day, and Rezko paid full freight on the deal (to the same owner Obama bought his house from).

This story gets more interesting when you consider that on June 4th in Chicago Tony Rezko was convicted in court for fraud and for a kickback scheme designed to shake down investment firms seeking Illinois state government business. . . .

Papers filed in this case show that about a month before Obama's suspicious land deal, Rezko received a wire transfer of $3.5 million from Nadhim Auchi, an Iraqi billionaire now living in Britain who made his fortune through "business dealings" with the corrupt Saddam Hussein regime. This transfer raises the question posed by the London Times — whether or not "funds from Nadhmi Auchi . . . helped Mr. Obama buy his mock Georgian mansion in Chicago."

Rezko has now been convicted for his alleged corrupt dealings with the administration of another prominent Illinois Democrat, Governor Rod Blagojevich. Over the years, Rezko also contributed generously to the Governor's campaigns...and was rewarded with appointments to state boards and commissions. . . .

Fitton concludes: "Corrupting the state government of Illinois is bad enough; but now the question is whether Tony Rezko has corrupted Barack Obama, the man who may be our next president."

And the list of scandals--or potential scandals--continues:

• There is the matter of his long-standing relationship with the firebrand and, apparently, anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright.


• And his relationship with William Ayers, a founding member of the Weather Underground who set off bombs in the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. (According to Fitton, they claimed "credit" for 25 such bombs.) Ayers was quoted in the New York Times as saying "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
  
  Is the quote about not having "done enough" taken out of context? I can imagine. But then having a presidential candidate associating with an unrepentant anti-government bomber?


• Some seriously shady-looking stock deals.
  

  Two months after he took his Senate seat in 2005, the Senator purchased $50,000 worth of stock in highly speculative ventures, whose major investors were some of his biggest campaign contributors.
  
  One of the companies was a biotech concern that benefited from legislation that Senator Obama pushed just two weeks after purchasing $5,000 worth of its stock.
  
  When he was working to pass that legislation, just whose interest was the Senator advancing . . . his constituents', the company's, or his own?

Suddenly, in the context of all of these issues, even supposing Palin engaged in some--what well-wishers might like to call "white lying"--I sense Palin's sins probably pale in comparison.

BUT. What really bothers me: why can't the United States field some better-qualified candidates for president and vice president. Are these really the best we have?

Obama's ethics . . . and ethical advisers

A recent letter I received from Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch begins with a note that "no presidential candidate in recent memory has received as little scrutiny on matters of ethics as Barack Obama."

As one example of what I mean, be sure to read . . . about the Senator's vice presidential search committee.

The fact that Obama adviser James Johnson was forced out because of sweetheart mortgage deals and his role in the accounting scandals at Fannie Mae did make headlines nationally.

But as we note in our Verdict story, far less coverage has been given to the fact that longtime Clinton operative, Eric Holder, was also part of the V.P. selection team. . . .

During his years at the Clinton Justice Department, Holder was at the center of many scandals related to the corruption of the Clinton presidency, including the Marc Rich pardon, Chinagate, and the Elian Gonzalez raid. It is a scandal that this is someone Sen. Obama turned to for advice on selecting a running mate!

I've often said, in reference to Bill and Hillary Clinton, "what is past is prologue."

Well, people who care about ethics in government should be very concerned that Barack Obama turned to people like James Johnson and especially Eric Holder to help select the person who may well be "one heartbeat away" from the Oval Office.

Sen. Obama's ethical judgment about people like James Johnson and Eric Holder is troubling enough to citizens who want to see Washington cleaned up.

(And many Americans still can't figure out how Sen. Obama could sit and listen to the hate-filled, anti-American sermons of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, for 20 years.)
But what has me most concerned are the issues of corruption and ethical lapses that are related directly to Sen. Obama himself.

Judicial Watch does not endorse or oppose candidates for public office.

But unlike the mainstream media, we will not ignore serious allegations of ethical misconduct by a leading candidate for the presidency.

(That goes for John McCain, too, against whom we have filed an official complaint with the Federal Election Commission regarding a suspicious foreign campaign fundraising event!)

Right now, it is critically important that your Judicial Watch continues to investigate issues like:

** Sen. Obama's close financial and personal ties to convicted criminal Tony Rezko;

** His stock dealings and related votes in the U.S. Senate;

** His pork-barrel earmarks for friends, family members, and campaign contributors;

** His relations with domestic terrorist William Ayers;

** And his missing or non-existent official papers from his years in the Illinois State Senate.

In the Judicial Watch Verdict article, we read the following:

Soon after securing enough delegates to claim the nomination, Obama announced that former Fannie May Chairman James Johnson, former Clinton deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, and Caroline Kennedy (daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy) would lead his search for a vice presidential running mate. Obama's decision led to a barrage of negative press coverage following news reports linking Johnson to a mortgage scandal.

According to a recent article in Bloomberg:

"Former Fannie Mae Chairman James Johnson said he has quit Senator Barack Obama's vice presidential search committee after the Wall Street Journal reported he may have received preferential mortgage terms from Countrywide Financial Corp."

The Washington Post also reported that Johnson allegedly benefited from shady accounting practices at Fannie Mae when earnings were manipulated in order to give executives large bonuses.

As is typical for Washington, Johnson was ditched by Obama not because Johnson did anything wrong (which he may have), but because he was a "distraction." In fact Obama initially called the questions about Johnson's ethical problems a "game."

While Johnson has received a fair amount of scrutiny, the press has yet to fully detail the misdeeds of another of Obama's vice presidential vetters, Eric Holder.

A regular readers of the Verdict may recall, Holder, while serving in the Clinton Justice Department, lobbied for a pardon deal on behalf of fugitive financier Marc Rich, who fled the United States in 1983 to avoid prosecution on racketeering, wire fraud and tax evasion charges. (Denise Rich, Marc Rich's ex-wife, paid large sums of cash to the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton's senate campaign, and the Clinton Presidential Library to help grease the wheels.) Or Rich was one of about 140 criminals who received pardons from Bill Clinton in the last hours of his administration on January 20, 2001.

Moreover, as Janet Reno's Deputy, Eric Holder was responsible for much of the infamous corruption at the Clinton-Gore Justice Department. It was Holder who planned the illegal and violent, pro-Castro raid on the Gonzalez family home in Miami. Holder also suppressed the Justice's department's investigation of Chinagate, a Clinton-Gore scheme to sell access to Communist Chinese operatives in exchange for campaign contributions. Reno's Justice Department was one of the worst and, frankly, corrupt in modern memory, and Holder was at the center of that storm.

"Obama has told the American people he's a different kind of politician, one that is above politics as usual," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "But he seems to have a troubling blind spot when it comes to the ethics of his cronies."

Supposing the Judicial Watch charges are even halfway legitimate, I find them extremely distressing. What has happened to the "Fourth Estate"? I thought it had a job to do. Though Carlyle said that anyone with a tongue is a member of the Fourth Estate, it has always been my understanding that the press is supposed to hold the government--and members of of government--accountable. I get the distinct impression that the major news outlets are doing less and less of this kind of watchdog service.