Today's Stories

January 6, 2009

Pam Martens
It's All One Big Lie

January 5, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Will There be a Recovery?

Sousan Hammad
Phoning Home to Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Flying While Brown

Mats Svensson
Longing in Gaza

Jen Marlowe
Abeer's Baby

Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Gaza Phone Tag

Brian Cloughley
Israel is Immune From Criticism

Faheem Hussain
Gaza and India: a View From Pakistan

William Cook
Consider the Realities of Gaza

Dr. Trudy Bond
The Madness Among Us

Christopher Ketcham
The Revenge of the Blogger at the National Press Club: a Rotten Washington Interlude

Steve Early
Who Rules SEIU?

Dave Lindorff
When It Comes to Terrorism and POW Cases, Equal Justice Under Law is a Joke

Website of the Day
The Endangered Fish of the Colorado River Basin

January 2 - 4, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Diary of 2008: an Incredible, Hope-Filled Year

Uri Avnery
Molten Lead in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of the Gaza Assault

Paul Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Western Morality?

Brian Eno
Stealing Gaza: an Experiment in Provocation

Ralph Nader
America Must Stop Shirking Its Responsibility on Gaza

Omar Barghouti
UN Complicity in Israel's Massacre in Gaza

Graham Usher
Where Pakistan's Generals and the ISI Draw Their Lines

P. Sainath
The Economy is Worse Than It Appears

Belén Fernández
Pardon Our Dust: Israel's PR Campaign for Gaza

Deb Reich
Shiv'a in Gaza, December 2008

Gary Leupp
Defacing Mr. Jefferson's Wall: Preachers and the Inauguration

Michael Yates
Top Chef or Top Wage Thief? Tom Colicchio and the Economics of Restaurants

Joanne Mariner
How to Close Guantánamo

Seth Sandronsky
Funding the Israeli Military: the US Pipeline

Cynthia McKinney
We Lived to Tell the Story

Sonja Karkar
Israel's Dogs of War

Deepak Tripathi
Gaza in Perspective

Robert Fantina
Obama, Afghanistan and Israel

John Ross
The Year No One Can Remember

Norm Kent
The Heat on Duval Street: Why Head Shop Raids are Unfair and Unjust

Larry Portis
Syria and the Arab Barbie Doll--Before the Deluge

Richard Rhames
Is Conscience Dead?

Dee C. Lubell
We Come From the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright

David Yearsley
A Gay German at the Courts of the Medici and Hanover, and of Course the BBC

Lorenzo Wolff
Joe Ely, the Fighting Rooster of Rock

Marc Catone
Looting Lennon's Legacy

Poets' Basement
Five Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski

Website of the Weekend
Earth in High Rez

January 1, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
If Hamas Did Not Exist

Oren Ben-Dor
The Self-Defense of Suicide

Wajahat Ali
The U.S. Response to the Gaza Crisis: Unfair and Unbalanced

Saul Landau
In Cuba No One Man Could Steal $50 Billion From Other People

David Michael Green
What to Expect While We're Expecting

Website of the Day
Morbid Anatomy

December 31, 2008

Pam Martens
Wall Street's Collapse and the Ownership Society

Neve Gordon /
Jeff Halper
Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

Ted Honderich
The First Casualty of Israel's War

Brian Cloughley
Five Little Girls on a Sofa: Gaza's One-Sided Images

Ron Jacobs
What is Hamas, Really?

Vijay Prashad
Hot Rod and His Sikh Warrior: Blago's Indian Connections

Franklin Lamb
Mr. Mubarak, Tear Down That Wall!

Mike Whitney
My Brilliant Career

David Macaray
What Really Killed the Auto Bailout

Richard Thieme
The Betrayal of the Commons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Who Wins What in Gaza?

Stephen Lendman
The Troubling Case of the Fort Dix Five

Worthy Group of the Day
Western Shoshone Defense Project

December 30, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
May We No Longer Be Silent

Tariq Ali
The Gaza Ghetto and Western Cant

Robert Bryce
The $775,000-a-Year GI

Jonathan Cook
Electioneering with Bombs

Gary Leupp
The Fishbarrel War

Dave Lindorff
Tough Guys Don't Walk: Will Cheney Seek a Pardon?

Brian McKenna
Ted Downing and Troublemaker Anthropology

John Walsh
The End of the Green Party

Ramzy Baroud
Gaza and the World

Bob Sommer
The Education of David Frost

Worthy Activist of the Day
Support Marie Mason

December 29, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's Attempted Endgame in Gaza

Neve Gordon
What, Exactly, is Israel's Mission?

Joshua Frank
Obama and the "Special Relationship"

George Salzman /
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The War Against Palestine: Exception From Humanity

Norman Solomon
A Hundred Eyes for an Eye

Ewa Jasiewicz
Gaza Today: "This is Just the Beginning"

Rob Larson
The Banks Laugh All the Way to the Bank

Kenneth Libby
Arne Duncan's Dark Years in Chicago

Robert Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

Elsa Johnson
High Noon at Black Mesa: Bush's Farewell Gift to Peabody Coal

Nicola Nasser
Resolution 1850: Bush's Parting Gift

Belén Fernández
Hanukkah Games

Worthy Group of the Day
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

December 26-28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Medusa's Head

Dr Eyad Al Serraj
The Boming of Gaza: "An Earthquake on Top of Your Head"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Cancerous Air

Bradley Simpson
Obama's New Intel Chief, Dennis Blair, Ran Interference for Indonesia's Butchers

Ralph Nader
Government Without Laws

Gary Leupp
Obama and the Graveyard of Empires

Ellen Cantarow
Richard Falk, Israel and the NYT

Matt Landon
The Great Coal Ash Flood: a Report From Swan Pond Road

David Macaray
SAG's Terrible Dilemma

Patrick Bond
End of Neoliberalism? Sorry, Not Yet

Norm Kent
Invoking Bigotry: Obama and Rick Warren

Brian T. Ketcham
Fuel Efficiency is Easy--Just Don't Let Detroit Tell You How to Do It

Rannie Amiri
War Clouds Over Gaza

Larry Portis
Changing the Ethnic Vocabulary

Richard Rhames
Welcome to Soup Kitchen America

Stephen Lendman
29 Red Flags: Early Suspicions About Bernard Madoff

James L. Secor
Unheralded Coup

Ramzy Baroud
Iraq, the Plot Thickens

Harold Pinter
Art, Truth and Politics: the Nobel Lecture

Cpt. Paul Watson
Tracking the Cetacean Death Star

Howard Lisnoff
Nixon's Cambodian Shock Treatment

Michael Dee
The Bill of Rights, Killed in Action by the War on Drugs

Steve Conn
Eight Predictions for 2009

Poets' Basement
Valentine, Kaung, Moser and Graham

Worthy Group of the Weekend
United Mountain Defense

December 25, 2008

Judy Gumbo Albert
What Were Those 1960s Terrorists Thinking, Anyway?

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Sole of Christmas

Hannah Mermelstein
Caution: Settlers Ahead

Worthy Group of the Day
Citizens' Coal Council

December 24, 2008

Bill Quigley
Five Bailout Lessons From Katrina

Saul Landau
Then and Now: Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008

Sam Smith
Evangelism and Politics

Brian Cloughley
Torture, Slaughter and Lies

John Ross
Where's al-Zaidi's Pulitzer?

Eric Walberg
Cold War Shivers

Norm Kent
What Will Obama Do About Marijuana?

Stephen Martin
Reasons for Cheerfulness

Worthy Group of the Day
Collateral Repair Project

December 23, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Ponzi Paradigm

Michael Yates
The Tombstone Economy

Chuck Spinney
The New York Times Flames Out in Defense Dogfight

Vijay Prashad
India's Reckless Road to Washington, Through Tel Aviv

Brian Horejsi
Interior Decorating: Obama, Salazar and the Future of America's Public Lands

David Macaray
Obama's Best Pick?

Neil Watkins /
Sarah Anderson
Ecuador's Conscientious Default

David Michael Green
Hey, Reagan Democrats! Now Do You Get It?

Worthy Group of the Day
Focus on the Corporation

December 22, 2008

Pam Martens
Madoff's Money Trail Leads to Washington

Gary Leupp
Base Alienation: Obama's Team of Rivals

Mike Whitney
Bail Out the Economy? More Pay is the Only Way

Karl Grossman
Lost in Space: NASA at 50

Niall Meehan
Conor Cruise O'Brien: Historian, Politician, Censor

Steve Conn
Where Would Larry Summers Dump the Guantanamo Mess?

Uri Avnery
Israeli Elections: Spot the Difference

Corey D. B. Walker
The Politics of Freedom

David Swanson
The Purloined Constitution

Worthy Group of the Day
Socialist Worker

December 19 - 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
An Ethnic Cleansing in America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Salazar and the Tragedy of the Common Ground

Paul Craig Roberts
Country Without Mercy

Patrick Cockburn
The Baathist "Coup Plot"

Felice Pace
Green Myopia: Obama's Appointments Reveal What's Wrong with the Environmental Movement

Diane Farsetta
The Pentagon's PR Slush Fund

George Ciccariello-Maher
By the Time I Get to Arizona: ICE Raids and Resistance in Flagstaff

Eric Bergoust
Extinct Lifestyles: Redefining Prosperity

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Without Regrets: Cheney's Unrepentent Confession

Stan Cox
Clothes and Commentaries That Don't Fit

Michael Donnelly
Clinton III: Continuity We Can Believe In

Robert Weissman
The Auto Bailout

Ralph Nader
Excluded Democracy: Scholastic and the Two Party System

Alan Farago
Shock and Awe Economics

Sam Smith
Not All Public Work is the Same

Timothy G. Hermach
What Happened on the Way to the Inauguration?

Seth Sandronsky
Who's Not Getting By and Why

Rannie Amiri
All Quiet on the Gazan Shore

David Yearsley
Bach as Jihadi

Martha Rosenberg
Wyeth's Pay-to-Play

Dave Lindorff
White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy (But That's Not the Biggest Scandal)

Christopher Brauchli
Weekend at Bernie's: the Confinement of Mr. Madoff

Missy Beattie
President Meathead

Richard Rhames
Corporatizing the Kids

Stephen Martin
Full-Spectrum Dominance of the Big Lie

Paul Krassner
Milk and Twinkies

Lorenzo Wolff
Does Coldplay Give a Shit Anymore?

Poets' Basement
Kathwari, Halling and Payne

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Heartwood

December 18, 2008

Phillip Doe
The Man in the Hat: Salazar and the Status Quo

Ronnie Cummins
Vilsack: Another Shill for Monsanto

Jesse Sharkey
No School Left Unsold: Arne Duncan's Privatization Agenda

Saul Landau
Postcard from Venezuela

Peter Morici
What's Next for the Fed?

Dave Lindorff
Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture

Panos Petrou
Days of Rage in Greece

Jeff Cohen /
Norman Solomon
The 2008 P.U.-litzer Prizes: the Stinkiest Media Performances of the Year

Worthy Group of the Day
Organic Consumer Alliance

December 17, 2008

Peter Lee
Pushing Pakistan Over the Edge

Conn Hallinan
Angels and Demons in Mumbai

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Fatal Flaw

Jeff Halper
Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Alan Farago
The Audacity of Parkland

Peter Morici
The Big Hole

Norm Kent
Obama Lights Up

Col. Douglas MacGregor
The Price of Expediency

Margaret Kimberley
Blacks and Gay Rights

Ron Jacobs
The Myth of the Good Guy: Waiting on a President to Do the Right Thing

Worthy Group of the Day
Campaign to End the Death Penalty

December 16, 2008

Vicente Navarro
A Forgotten Genocide: the Case of Spain

Patrick Cockburn
Each Shoe was Worth a Thousand Words

Thomas Michael Power
Back to the Pump: an Economic and Environmental Dead End

Jason Hribal
Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo: the Story of Ken Allen and Kumang

Farzana Versey
Straw Warriors and the Pantomime of Patriotism

Wajahat Ali /
Ahmed Rashid
Indian Muslims: Defining Their Loyalty

Mats Svensson
The Order to Destroy has been Given

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Mumbai Terror's Afghan Roots

David Macaray
Workplace Violence and Termination Etiquette

Howard Lisnoff
Left Control of Academia? The Case of William Felkner

Worthy Group of the Day
AWR: the Last, Best Hope for Saving the Big Wild

December 15, 2008

Andy Worthington
Hit Me Baby One More Time: a History of Music Torture in War on Terror

Franklin Lamb
Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter

Karl Grossman
Dr. Chu's Nuclear Prescription

Brian Cloughley
Land of the Free (To Torture and Imprison Without Trial)

Mary Lynn Cramer
Stiglitz's Foolishly Flawed Morality

Steve Early
From Nicky Pockets to Blago: Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor

Thomas Christie
Pentagon Train Wreck Awaits Obama

Ken Paff
Remembering Ron Carey: a Great Labor Leader

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What is India to Do?

Dave Lindorff
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

Alan Farago
The Artless Dodger

Worthy Group of the Day
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund

December 12 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to Chicago, Beacon of American Values

Michael Hudson /
Jeffrey Sommers
The End of the Washington Consensus

David Price
The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nukes Up the Hudson

Frank Barat
An Israeli in Gaza: an Interview with Jeff Halper

John Ross
Writing a Thesis in Blood

Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian Imperialism: Obama and the Genocide Task Force

David Macaray
Killing the Auto Bailout: a Dagger to the Heart of Organized Labor

Ralph Nader
Antidotes to Plunder: a Holiday Reading List

Eamonn Fingleton
Whatever Happened to Iris Chang?

Lawrence Velvel
Why Blagojevich Might Be Acquitted

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Housing Crisis: a Timebomb China Can't Defuse

Sam Husseini
Putting the Pro in Protest

Tom Barry
Incentives to Detain: How Immigrants Drive Prison Profits

Howard Lisnoff
Why I Went to Jail

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Immigration Problem

Raj Patel
The WTO and Other Fairy Tales

Ron Jacobs
The Manufacturing of History

Paul Watson
Risky Business Down Under

David Yearsley
They Also Serve Who Only Pull or Tread

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Want Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star...

Kim Nicolini
Finally, a Vampire Movie You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Susie Day
Proposition 1984: the Problem with Heterosexuals

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Lerch and Crete

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Energy Justice

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Vicken Cheterian
The Zarqawi Generation

Ray McGovern
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Must They Hate Us So?

George Wuerthner
Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Berg's Strange Obsession

Worthy Group of the Day
Animal Balance

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

January 6, 2009

Markets Without Regulators

After the Fall

By ALAN FARAGO

We have only a little knowledge how the federal government intervenes in financial markets. What we do know is that since the fall, US Treasury and Federal Reserve policy makers have been flying blind, sailing in uncharted waters: pick whatever metaphor you choose to dissolve the fabrication of markets based on supply and demand, and, free.

In fact, one’s metaphor is an excellent place to start. Comparing two seemingly unrelated subjects is a perfect way to begin decoding how wrong we were to trust that fiscal prudence guided the nation's premier financial institutions.

The power of metaphor explains in part the value of gold (as distinguished from price). Gold is the currency whose price is being suppressed: a rapid bull run in gold means a run on credibility and order. The value of gold endures and reflects the same lack of confidence that somber fiscal conservatives once assigned to excessive regulation by government. Put another way, there has been metaphorical gold in demonizing government.

Now, in consideration of the failure of financial institutions, there is need for a new understanding. Perhaps that understanding also starts with metaphor and not necessarily the belief that a trillion dollar investment will re-package the good times.

There is a chance Congress and the White House will get it right. But there is equally a chance they won’t, and given the stakes, it is imperative that time and thoughtfulness take into account what a trillion dollars of fiscal stimulus without clear and adequate controls will do.

So in respect to the power of metaphor, presumably not carried by President-elect Obama in one of his two overstuffed briefcases, consider the federal court sentencing hearing scheduled for Monday of Jorge and Carlos de Cespedes.

The de Cespedes brothers are facing prison time for using their Miami-based company, Pharmed, once one of the largest Hispanic businesses in America, to bilk millions from the Kendall Regional Medical Center. The federal judge has received more than 180 letters expressing support of a lenient sentence (‘180 letters urge leniency for former Pharmed owners in fraud charge’, Miami Herald, Jan. 2, 2009).

The Miami Herald article describing the de Cespedes’ travails notes that in 1998-- the year Jeb Bush became governor of Florida-- Carlos de Cespedes was one of "25 community leaders who signed a public letter decrying corruption in South Florida." (The connection between the Cespedes, big Republican donors, and Jeb Bush is not incidental.)

The Jeb Bush "laissez faire" doctrine of government is in tatters; the result of the misplaced faith that commerce could do better than government in protecting free markets. Gov. Bush described what he believed to be the foundation for Florida's future in his 2003 inaugural speech: "There will be no greater tribute to our maturity as a society than if we can make these buildings around us empty of workers; as silent monuments to the time when government played a larger role than it deserved or could adequately fill."

His audience did not mistake his meaning: get the regulators out of the way of progress.

In its outstanding 2008 eight month investigation, “Borrowers Betrayed”, The Miami Herald details the lack of regulatory supervision of mortgage brokers by the state of Florida, allowing convicted felons easy access to prey. Miami Herald editors unfortunately kept the series’ focus on poor victims exploited by greedy mortgage brokers and lax bureaucrats; they pointedly did not trace that corruption up the political food chain. Had they done so, they would have tracked readers straight to the governor’s mansion and powerful Republicans banking on a permanent majority in Congress and the White House.

In the New York Times, Michael Lewis puts this reality in appropriate context of the calamity: “Americans enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics.” (‘The End of the Financial World as We Know It, NY Times, January 4, 2009)

The history of political malfeasance in places like Miami rarely rises to volumes of criminal prosecutions, but the bits and pieces – like the 1998 letter from the signatories of the Mesa Rodonda against corruption-- should be scrutinized for what it says about the capacity of wealthy, well-heeled lawyers, lobbyists, and speculators to game the system.

The point to consider: how misdirection by state leaders like Jeb Bush in furtherance promoted the blurring of edges, made it larger and instead of bright lines-- lines like Miami's Urban Development Boundary separating developable land from land unfavorable to development—and allowed corruption to flourish. In many respects, the equation is intact and thriving; spending down principal until help arrives.

That help? The trillion dollars of your money and mine.

"We believe there is much we can do as a community to clean up our act”, proclaimed Hispanic business leaders in June 1998 under the umbrella of Mesa Rodonda to express outrage against rampant corruption in Miami-Dade County. "We have had it!" begins their letter. "Once regarded as the crime capital of America, we are now perceived as its corruption capital." ("Hispanic business leaders call summit to fight corruption", Miami Herald, June 2, 1998) Carlos de Cespedes was among the signers.

A week later the Miami Dade State Attorney's Office announced: the arrest of Antonio J. Reyes, Director and Chief Operating Officer of Thermoplastic & Signs, Inc., in connection with a joint investigation by the State Attorney's Office and the Miami-Dade Police Department Public Corruption Unit. "(Investigators) uncovered numerous circumstances wherein Reyes and his company submitted bills, under the County's paving contract, with Church & Tower, for roadway striping work that was never done. Reyes' company was hired as a sub-contractor under the County contract to do this work and submitted invoices for payment to the Contractor, and ultimately the County. These instances of over billing resulted in an overpayment by the County in excess of $1,000,000." (June 10, 1998)

Church and Tower is a division of the corporate interests of the family of the late Jorge Mas Canosa, founder of the Cuban American National Foundation. Mas Canosa's son, Jorge Mas, was another signer of the Mesa Rodunda letter. Another was Sergio Pino, listed as president of Century Plumbing. Plumbing, in this case, is a metaphor of its own. Slightly more than a year later, The Miami Herald would amplify:

"Miami International Airport, rated among America's worst for passengers, is being used by Miami-Dade politicians as a billion-dollar piggy bank to enrich their friends and campaign contributors. They manipulate rules so favored firms get airport deals. ... Key findings: Virtually all major deals at MIA go to companies that give political contributions and employ lobbyists who are key fund-raisers and advisors for county politicians. ("The airport mess: Miami's tourism industry is threatened by politicians", Miami Herald, October 17, 1999)

The Herald continues, "If passengers aren't winning at MIA, who is? Often, it's a small group of political insiders who reap millions in airport spoils without ever showing up for work, investing significant cash or bringing industry experience to the table. Developer Sergio Pino is one of the main fund-raisers for Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas and has contributed to at least 11 of the 13 commissioners. Last year, at Penelas' request, he hosted a $238,000 fund-raiser for Commissioner Miriam Alonso."

"In 1998, Miami-Dade Commissioner Miriam Alonso penned an editorial bemoaning the plague of corruption scandals then afflicting the county, and lashing out at "the venality of certain corrupt officials." On Thursday, some eight years later, Alonso's own venality was finally laid bare: She pleaded guilty to 20 felonies for looting campaign accounts in 1998 and 1999 and trying to cover up the crimes. ("Alonso pleads guilty, says she is sorry", Miami Herald, Oct. 27, 2006)

In "Airport Mess", the Herald noted, "One of South Florida's biggest builders, Pino owns a waterfront home and a 54-foot yacht and has a net worth of at least $19 million. Yet in 1995, he was cut into the airport's duty-free shops as a "disadvantaged businessman'' to meet airport rules requiring minority partners. With his business interests now pulling in more than $32 million a year, Pino no longer qualifies as a minority entrepreneur, but he has kept his place in the duty-free deal: The county decided he could stay in under a grandfather clause. Pino readily acknowledges his political ties, but said his team won because it offered the best return. His inclusion as a disadvantaged businessman? “I didn't make the rules,'' he said. “I played by the law. . . . To me, it was a business opportunity.”

Back in 1998, Pino's key business colleagues were in the midst of a pitched battle on the no-bid 99 year lease they had secured from the county commission, before the US military had even decided how to dispose of the property, for the former Homestead Air Force Base: Greenberg Traurig attorney Miguel De Grandy was the principal lawyer representing HABDI; a newly formed company constituted from board members of the Latin Builders Association. Ramon Rasco, now chairman of US Century Bank that Pino founded in 2002, was a principal organizer of the HABDI fiasco.

Caesar Alvarez, managing partner of Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation’s largest law firms, was another signer of the Mesa Roduna letter. Today, Alvarez is chairman of the charitable John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The foundation, a premier institution defending independent journalism, failed to censure one of its grantees in 2008—the Miami International Film Festival—when last year, at the last minute, the festival director refused to air a documentary highly critical of Dominican Republic sugar operations owned by Miami’s billionaire Fanjul family interests.

Another signatory of the Mesa Rodunda letter, US Century board member Jose Cancela, a lobbyist to move the Urban Development Boundary in Miami-Dade for development projects that are partly owned by other US Century board members including Rodney Barreto (Gov. Bush’s appointee, now chairman, of the Florida Wildlife Commission), Armando Guerra and the Herran brothers.

In 1998, political corruption was seemingly everywhere. Miami City Commissioner Humberto Hernandez did time in the Big House. Former state senator Al Gutman was indicted in 1999, along with his wife and 23 others, on charges of Medicaid fraud and conspiracy despite allegations swirling around his successful re-election bid a year earlier, supported by the panoply of Florida business campaign contributors. Gutman, who was chairman of the Florida Senate Health Care Committee, pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy charges that he helped set up home health care companies that never did any legitimate business, got names of purported patients from voter lists, and received over $800,000 in Medicare payments. He resigned from the Florida Senate as part of the plea bargain and was sentenced in 2000 to five years in prison.

Pino, in 2006, turned up in a federal probe of Miami Dade County Commissioner Jose "Pepe" Diaz. The investigation resulted in no charges. It centered on a fishing trip that Diaz took to Cancun aboard Pino's private jet. Carlos de Cespedes was the other passenger on the trip (“Pepe Diaz Cancun Visit is Probed”, Miami Herald, June 10, 2006). A few months after the trip, Diaz and the rest of the commission voted for a Pino development project called Grand Bay. The Herald political blog noted, "Miami-Dade Commissioner Jose ''Pepe'' Diaz received $20,000 in 2004 from what federal prosecutors describe as a shell company used to conceal fraudulent proceeds from a hospital kickback scheme -- a payment the commissioner says was a legitimate bonus. The company, Kaufman Medical Products, was cited in a document filed in federal court Tuesday about healthcare fraud charges against Carlos and Jorge de Céspedes, owners of the bankrupt Doral medical-supply firm Pharmed. Diaz listed on his 2004 public disclosure form that he had received $19,795 from Kaufman. Diaz said Wednesday the money was a bonus for work performed for the de Céspedes brothers' venture capital firm, Astri Group." ('Naked Politics', Miami Herald, July 24, 2008)

"In a separate matter, the Miami Daily Business Review reported last week that it had obtained corporate bank records showing that Pino's companies may have reimbursed $29.500 to 59 contributors to Governor Jeb Bush's 2002 re-election campaign. It is a violation of Florida election law for a person to make a donation in another person's name." ('Crist ally cuts ties amid grand jury investigation', St. Pete Times, July 27, 2006) Pino was a Bush-Cheney "Ranger" for having raised at least $200,000 for the president's 2004 re-election campaign and, according to the St. Pete Times, "is a major donor to Gov. Bush's non-profit educational foundation."

1998 was a key year in the building and housing asset bubble: the politics of laissez faire "libertarianism" in service of the free market were angling to meet up with the lowest interest rates in US history (at that time); the response to the crashing dot.com bubble and the 9/11 event. Nothing could go wrong as long as free enterprise was allowed to reign. Think about what happened in Florida the decade after Cespedes put his name to the letter against corruption in Miami.

The business leaders who put their name to a letter in 1998 against corruption were about to be propelled into the boom in housing and construction that turned single digit millionaires into centi-millionaires. Pull the threads from platted subdivisions in West Miami, to infrastructure like Miami International Airport or Miami road paving contracts and the fabric of the US economy unravels straight up to the executive suites of Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Indymac, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for example. Between 1999 and 2003 in Florida, the US Army Corps of Engineers approved more than 12,000 wetlands permits and rejected one. During the same period, 84,000 acres of wetlands vanished. ("They won't say no", St. Pete Times, May 22, 2005)

"All we are looking to do is find a balance between residential needs and environmental needs," Commissioner Pepe Diaz told Time Magazine in reference to moving the Urban Development Boundary last year. ('Lowe's eyes the Everglades', Time Magazine, April 28, 2008) This notion of balance between the environment and economy is a multi-generational Ponzi scheme of its own; using later adopters to mask the shifting baselines that had been sold to an earlier generation of compromise. Put another way, it is all one mesa rotonda, forcing politics to reside a centimeter of the edge of the law while, those close to the edge blur the edge so that centimeter becomes a matter of continuous, revolving dispute; a banner crop pre-fertilized with campaign contributions for harvesting by engineering firms, consultants, and big law firms.

Again, the environment provides a clear example in Florida. In 1994, the State of Florida incorporated the settlement agreement with the federal government related to its failure to enforce against pollution of the Everglades by mandating a phosphorous standard of 10 parts per billion. The measure was to be in effect by 2006. By 2003, Gov. Bush agreed to modify the hard and fast standard with an amendment to Florida law allowing for mixing zones and numerical calculations that decimated the agreement between the state and feds. The sugar industry flooded the state capital so that as the bill was being heard in the Senate, there were more lobbyists than legislators in the halls. Bush sent his chief environmental lieutenant, environmental secretary David Struhs, to the Miami courthouse steps to falsely claim that federal agencies were in agreement. In July 2008, a federal court issued a stinging rebuke against the Florida law and said the US EPA had turned a "blind eye" to the state's blurred standard. ('Judge: Glades cleanup ignored', Miami Herald, July 30, 2008)

By extension, if reasonable people can't agree on protecting wetlands from too much fertilizer, or only agree that the line of pollution should be blurred by jimmying the scales with arithmetic averages and mixing zones, why should anyone care about bond credit ratings or risk analyses that allow insiders to fleece the nation's financial institutions while getting paid billions and a Grade A report card for doing it? Few in public office cared while so much money was flowing outside and inside the edges of the law and into political campaigns. In key respects, this behavior is still reinforced by a permanent incumbency, insulated by gerrymandered districts, and a fading media.

So here is the point: in the first months of the Obama administration, one trillion dollars of fiscal stimulus will pour from taxpayer obligations to the states. Since everything that can go wrong in financial markets—misplaced risk, horrendous analyses by men judged to be too brilliant to fail, matched up to greed and ingenuity in the evasion of regulations and ethics; then it is not only possible but even likely to predict the worst result of the trillion dollar fiscal stimulus.

The first consideration, then, of the Obama administration should be to acknowledge the likely consequences. We have experienced—in financial markets—the radical and unexpected. So President-elect Obama must admit that the fiscal stimulus plan will put American taxpayers at even greater risk to white collar bankers who have contrived their way into the US treasury.

Not a single red cent should be appropriated by Congress for a fiscal stimulus until audit controls, checks, and balances are in place to flush fraud and systematic corruption from the distribution of government funds to private industry. That is a tall order. Making sure that the tsunami of taxpayer dollars will not end up in the pockets of the same interests who created the crisis, papering purchase orders, contracts, and further political IOU’s requires more than ethics classes. And it better get done properly or there will be strong potential for social unrest. Gov. Jeb Bush wanted to empty Tallahassee of regulators: in important respects he got what he wanted.

As a result of allowing the regulatory capacity of government to wither, we will need to quickly build from the ground-up, a civil service and accountability that rewards success and penalizes failure. New federal laws and budgets for enforcement must give teeth to public corruption investigations and prosecutions. To this I would add, “to keep democracy safe”. It shouldn't be an after-thought, but the way things are going who can deny what we value as gold has been sold for pennies?

Alan Farago, who writes on the environment and politics from Coral Gables, Florida, and can be reached at alanfarago@yahoo.com

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