Month: January 2014

MSNBC is lucky to have Steve Kornacki because his extensive experience covering New Jersey politics is paying off in spades now that its time to report on the intricate ways in which the governor’s office interacts with Democratic politicians, the Port Authority, real estate developers, and high-powered law firms. On his program Up With Steve this morning, Mr. Kornacki spent more than twenty minutes explaining how a mere four acres of land in the northern end of Hoboken became a hostage for the whole city’s Superstorm Sandy relief.

I can’t explain it any more concisely, but the barest-bone summary is that Governor Christie wanted Hoboken to approve a three block area for redevelopment, which is a technical term that would allow for huge subsidies. The three blocks are owned by the Rockefeller Group, a New York-based developer. When the mayor of Hoboken, Dawn Zimmer, would not go along with approving just those three blocks for redevelopment, Governor Christie sent two members of his administration to make a blunt demand, which was that Sandy relief would not be forthcoming until the real estate plan was approved. Importantly, Ms. Zimmer kept a journal in which she documented these threats at the time, and she provided that journal to MSNBC:

Two senior members of Gov. Chris Christie’s administration warned a New Jersey mayor earlier this year that her town would be starved of hurricane relief money unless she approved a lucrative redevelopment plan favored by the governor, according to the mayor and emails and personal notes she shared with msnbc.

The mayor, Dawn Zimmer, hasn’t approved the project, but she did request $127 million in hurricane relief for her city of Hoboken – 80% of which was underwater after Sandy hit in October 2012. What she got was $142,000 to defray the cost of a single back-up generator plus an additional $200,000 in recovery grants.

In an exclusive interview, Zimmer broke her silence and named Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Richard Constable, Christie’s community affairs commissioner, as the two officials who delivered messages on behalf of a governor she had long supported.

“It’s not fair for the governor to hold Sandy funds hostage for the city of Hoboken” because he wants support for one private developer, she said Saturday on UP w/ Steve Kornacki.

It’s significant that Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno is implicated in this scheme because she would succeed Chris Christie in the governor’s office if he felt it necessary to resign.

This story gives me a bit of an ambivalent feeling. On the one hand, this is North Jersey we are talking about, and Mayor Zimmer comes off as if she were literally “born yesterday.” On the other hand, she originally became mayor because her predecessor accepted a bribe in return for giving favorable treatment to a man posing as a real estate developer, and that sting operation was run by Christie’s U.S. Attorney’s office. The irony there is quite rich.

Finally, even though it’s nothing new for a New Jersey governor to throw his weight around to smooth a redevelopment project, holding up disaster relief funding is unconscionable, showing again that the Christie administration has taken traditional Jersey corruption to a whole new level.

A letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times:

Chicago “NATO 3” trial limits public access

The public’s right of access to trials is not absolute and, where specific threats exist, restrictions may be imposed to address them. In this case, public access is vital. Since the day the defendants were arrested, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office has attempted to control the public narrative, repeatedly picturing the defendants as “domestic terrorists” rather than protesters. This is a “high-profile” trial only because the state has inflated misdemeanor attempted vandalism charges into trumped-up terrorism charges. There is no apparent reason to suspect any threat to security.

The high profile of this case is no reason to stymie access to the trial or to intimidate members of the public who want to attend to show their support for the defendants. The public should not know the least about the cases that matter the most.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the turreted Cape May, New Jersey house. The photo that I will be using is seen directly below. I will be using my usual acrylics on a 8×10 gallery-wrapped canvas.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time, I have continued to work on the painting.

For this week I have continued to move ahead on the house itself as well as some of the other elements.  Starting at the top, I have added a layer of paint to the sky.  It is not the final layer but simply evens things out for visual purposes.  Moving down a bit, the roof of the turret has been repainted and now matches that of the porch.  The prior inconsistency had been bugging me a bit.  On the third story, I’ve reshaped some shadows just a bit.  On the first story and below, I’ve refined things  a bit but there is still much to do in this section.  At the base, I’ve begun to paint the sidewalk.  Finally, the structure next door has received its first layer of paint.  It is a bit too dark and will change in future installments.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week.  See you then.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

This is what victory looks like to Paul Wolfowitz:

BAGHDAD — Iraq has asked the United States for new arms to beat back the dramatic resurgence of al-Qaeda-linked militants in a western province and would like U.S. troops to train its counter­terrorism forces, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in an interview Thursday.

The Iraqi leader said he provided the wish list after a phone call with Vice President Biden on Tuesday. U.S. officials said it might be easy to deliver those weapons, which include assault rifles and artillery, to Baghdad soon.

“Some is on hand, and we can supply it quickly,” a senior American diplomat said Thursday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid.

Any questions?

In one of the least surprising rulings in history, a Pennsylvania Commonwealth judge has said that Republicans’ voter photo ID bill is unconstitutional. It was kind of hilarious the way the GOP had to stipulate that no actual voter fraud has been discovered and then spent our tax dollars defending the law anyway even though the only remaining purpose of the bill was voter suppression. They just made the whole voter fraud idea up and actually admitted in court (in so many words). They’ll probably appeal it all the way the U.S. Supreme Court because it’s not like we could use the money to fund the Philadelphia school system or anything.

As I suspected, the president’s proposed reforms don’t go as far as I would like. But, they actually go further than I thought they would. So, I guess I am pleasantly surprised but still unsatisfied. I was never overly concerned about the retention of metadata, but I did see the compromise of encryption systems as a serious problem. I don’t see that addressed in the president’s remarks. I’d like to see the FBI’s national security letters further restricted or completely overhauled. There are probably several other things I’d like to see changed that I am not thinking of right now. What do you think?

With President Obama set to call on Congress to overhaul to NSA’s surveillance programs, it’s important to understand what he’s up against. He is not messing with people you want to be messing with.

Edward Snowden has made some dangerous enemies. As the American intelligence community struggles to contain the public damage done by the former National Security Agency contractor’s revelations of mass domestic spying, intelligence operators have continued to seethe in very personal terms against the 30 year-old leaker.

“In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself,” a current NSA analyst told BuzzFeed. “A lot of people share this sentiment.”

“I would love to put a bullet in his head,” one Pentagon official, a former special forces officer, said bluntly. “I do not take pleasure in taking another human beings life, having to do it in uniform, but he is single handedly the greatest traitor in American history.”
That violent hostility lies just beneath the surface of the domestic debate over NSA spying is still ongoing. Some members of Congress have hailed Snowden as a whistleblower, the New York Times has called for clemency, and pundits regularly defend his actions on Sunday talk shows. In intelligence community circles, Snowden is considered a nothing short of a traitor in wartime.
“His name is cursed every day over here,” a defense contractor told BuzzFeed, speaking from an overseas Intelligence collections base. “Most everyone I talk to says he needs to be tried and hung, forget the trial and just hang him.”

One Army intelligence officer even offered BuzzFeed a chillingly detailed fantasy.

“I think if we had the chance, we would end it very quickly,” he said. “Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby. He thinks nothing of it at the time starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it’s a parasite from the local water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower.”

We’d like to think that our intelligence services are filled with do-good patriots who only want to keep America safe, and that is for the most part true. But their ranks include no shortage of what you and I would consider homicidal maniacs. Cross them in the wrong way, and even if you are an American, some will want you dead.

We have no problem understanding this phenomenon in Russia or Syria or Egypt, that intelligence services have the final say on who rules the country, but we’ve been fed on myths about the virtues of American democracy that make it hard for us to understand (pdf) how difficult and risky it can be for an American president to rein in the intelligence services.

You may have your own theories about the JFK assassination, but one thing is clear. In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy said that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” He began that process, and he didn’t get to stand for reelection. Whether a faction within the CIA played or role in his death or not is still hotly disputed, but no president can feel comfortable that they can cross the intelligence community with impunity.

I suspect that most progressives will feel that the president’s proposals don’t go far enough. I anticipate that I will feel that way, myself. I am also a realist. No one wants to be put on the same list as Edward Snowden.

The radio in my used car doesn’t work and I have had only one CD to listen to for the last month. I only need one CD.

What are you listening to?

Since we are doing a poll on the 2016 Republican nominee, it’s only fair to do a poll on the Democratic nominee. Click on ‘comments’ to vote.

Please explain your reasoning.

I haven’t done a poll here in years. But let’s try it out. Who do you think the Republicans will ultimately nominate as their candidate for president in 2016? Click on ‘comments’ to take the poll.

Please explain your reasoning.