Feinstein and Brown Fuel Drug Corruption

There are many forms of political corruption, and some are worse than others. Ordinary corruption might be when an office holder, in return for some consideration, awards a government contract to a specific contractor. Or when a legislator includes a line or two of text in a bill that creates a tax break or regulatory loophole for a supporter's business.

Then there is systemic corruption, where the law itself is corrupted by a corrupt society, as in the racist laws the Democratic Party wrote and upheld from the time of its founding by Andrew Jackson until the laws were finally changed in the late 1960s.

Money from black market profiteering has an ancient role in corrupting governments. In the last century the key black market has been in illegal drugs. A vast framework of corrupt police and politicians have been fueled by drug money, including here in California.

You can tell which politicians are corrupt by their stands on efforts to legalize these drugs. We supposedly live in a democracy. People want drugs for fun, for energy, for relief from pain. Sure people injure themselves with meth and heroin and other drugs, but it is highly obvious that the bans on these drugs just make them highly profitable.

Most drug-associated crime is because the drugs are artificially expensive because of the costs of running a black market, evading law enforcement and fighting other groups for business. So besides the criminal enterprises that manufacturer and distribute the drugs, the main beneficiaries are political machines like the Democratic Party and Republican Party.

When a politician is against legalizing marijuana, he or she is just protecting the black market rackets of their racketeer friends, and their own "juice."

Lately the top two political figures in the State of California, Governor Jerry Brown and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, have spoken against legalizing marijuana (beyond the current legal status of "medical" marijuana.) Governor Brown asked "How many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation?" The kind of nation that can topple 3rd world governments at will, keep the wages for most workers artificially low, and make sure that every poor boy and girl can look forward to a life of selling illegal narcotics.

Diane Feinstein has been politically bullet-proof since most women in California decided to vote for Democratic Party female candidates without looking beyond the issue of reproductive rights. She recently came to Brown's rescue, saying "I saw a lot of where people began with marijuana and went on to hard drugs." Some people start as relatively harmless city council members and go on to become Senators, but does that mean we should abolish city councils?

The depths of Feinstein's corruption and misgovernance are difficult for the average Californian voter to fathom. Unfortunately, the corrupt two-party system in California means her only serious electoral opposition has been from Republican Senatorial candidates who are also anti-drug.

What distinguishes Feinstein is she has a voting record in Congress. She apparently hates animals. She was the co-sponsor in the Senate of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which makes anyone protesting cruelty to animals a terrorist.

She hates Palestinians, as shown by her constant, vocal support for U.S. taxpayer subsidies for Israeli ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Many California Democrats who think the U.S. wastes a lot of money on war would be surprised at how Feinstein has consistently supported inflating the homeland security and "defense" budgets.

Senator Feinstein's husband is Richard C. Blum, a capitalist, investment banker, and real-estate tycoon (he owns much of San Francisco). There we have at least the appearance of ordinary corruption. One of Blum's many holdings EG&G won a $600 million contract from the U.S. military. Because he is so wealthy he also controls or helps control a number of prestigious non-for-profit (but run by profiteers) groups, notably The Wilderness Society.

There is probably nothing to be done about Senator Feinstein except to wait for her to die from old age. However, California voters will likely have a chance to legalize marijuana in a future referendum.

Illegal drugs generate vast sums of money that corrupt society and our political structure. Because of black-market drugs sales in the U.S., Mexico has become a drug lord's playground. Did no one learn any lessons from the U.S. experiment with alcohol Prohibition?

When you hear a politician tell you marijuana should be illegal, remember they are on the take. When they ask to be re-elected, just say no.

Disclosure: I don't smoke marijuana (but I did when I was younger).

Chaos in California: Brown Vetoes Democratic Budget

It almost defies parody. It is like trying to do a parody of a nuclear disaster or of a mass murder.

The Democratic Party members in the California State Senate and Assembly put together a budget without Republican help. The Republicans wanted to help by pitching welfare babies in the street and closing the public school systems. Or maybe charging tuition to attend.

I don't like to say nice things about Democratic Party politicians in the legislature. They have mainly helped bring California to the brink of disaster. Yet since I complained in the past about budgets not being passed on time, I have to say: they got it together and passed the budget on time. It is not the budget some might like, but that is the fault of the business situation in the state. Demand is low; people are not working; tax revenue is not sufficient to give folks on disability and welfare a truly middle class lifestyle. Given that a bunch of people had to agree on the budget, even if they are all Democrats, it is miraculous they forged one, and on time.

But Jerry Brown vetoed it. He wants to extend some taxes that were put in as emergency fundraising measures during the late recession. He would use those taxes to either (depending on your point of view): pay off the all-powerful public employee unions or help the kids get a better education.

Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would have signed the budget, even though he was a Republican and not a single Republican elected official voted for it.

But not Jerry Brown. This is madness. This is not what people thought they would get when they voted for the guy last November.

Despite California's still high unemployment rate, the economy has been slowly recovering from the depths of the recession. Tax revenues should be up significantly in 2011 over 2010. Throwing the government into chaos is not going to help anyone right now. Muddling through is what is needed right now. Taxes should grow in 2012, too. Eventually we might restart the construction industry. Then the revenue would roll in and a lot of public service workers could be rehired. Soon workers would be sought after, new cars would roll off the lots, and we the taxpayers could even afford to give the disability fakers another $50 a month for their drug habits. Which adds to the colorfulness of California, brings in federal dollars, and makes it a tourist mecca.

But maybe this is what Brown planned all along. Maybe he really is one of those Earth First! type environmentalists who want the economy to collapse so people abandon California and let the Redwoods grow and the salmon run again.

Recall, anyone?

Japanese Americans, Hawaii, and Democracy

The formerly independent nation of Hawaii is somewhat peripheral to my project of writing The U.S. War Against Asia. Geographically Hawaii is neither Asian nor American. Most Americans would not connect it to our wars against Asian nations if it were not for the Battle of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Hawaii also illustrates many of the issues in the War, and U.S. behavior in Hawaii prior to its annexation was closely watched by Asian nations. As I wrote in Theodore Roosevelt, Hawaii and Japan, by 1900, the ethnic Japanese population of Hawaii was 40%. Ethnic Europeans (mainly Americans) constituted only about 20% of the population. Hawaii was seized by United States citizens in 1893, but was not officially annexed by the United States until 1898, during the Spanish-American war.

I have been meaning to read some detailed history of Hawaii to clarify this issue, but in the meantime I picked up a general history of the northern Pacific Ocean, Walter A. McDougall's Let the Sea Make a Noise, which covers quite a bit of Hawaiian history. Having said that in 1882 Hawaiian plantation owners petitioned Japan to allow emigration to Hawaii because the Japanese were the best workers, on page 391 McDougall begins covering the events leading directly to annexation. Annexation was all about preventing democracy, not creating it.

American planters (mostly sons of missionaries) had already established that only white people and people who had a minimum amount of property (mostly the few native Hawaiians who had not sold out to whites) could vote in their banana Republic. In the United States at that time the Democratic Party was both openly racist and, for the most part, against imperialist adventures. In addition the party represented sugar plantation owners in Louisiana and Florida who did not want Hawaiian sugar to be inside U.S. tariff walls. So while Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, was President, the annexation of Hawaii was delayed. William McKinley, a Republican president elected in 1896, was willing to annex, but Japan stood in the way.

In 1897 the Japanese government sought to protect the independence of Hawaii after the (still independent, but wanting to be annexed white elitist) ruling junta barred Japanese immigration. Japanese Consul Shimamura protested, so Secretary of the Navy John Davis Long sent a cruiser, the Philadelphia, to Hawaii. Again in April Hawaii's President Sanford Dole (yes, like the pineapple company) formally requested annexation by the U.S. The Japanese countered by sending their own cruiser, Naniwa. How about a little democracy fellas? "If the Republic of Hawaii were forced to grant Japanese residents the vote, the Japanese would take over! McKinley now overcame his doubts and ordered the State Department to draft an annexation treaty." [page 392]

"In December 1897 the Meiji cabinet blinked, declared itself satisfied with a small indemnity, and ordered the Naniwa home."

I'll also note that the annexation of Hawaii broke previously signed treaties with the sovereign nation of Hawaii guaranteeing its eternal independence.

It is an old game. The easiest way to win at democracy is to allow only your own side to vote. The U.S. still plays that game, more recently for instance in unoccupied Palestine and in Algeria. When political parties the U.S. does not like, for instance Hamas, win elections, the U.S. simply installs someone else and teaches them how to run crooked elections. Just like in California now, where the publicized debates between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown have shown they are just two faces of the same incompetent regime. Third party candidates like Laura Wells are simply not allowed to join in public debates.

Democracy, even when truly democratic, is no guarantee of good governance. But the minimal ingredients for democracy are: allowing everyone to vote, and allowing all candidates fair access to the voters.

Citicorp Stole from Its Credit Card Customers

Citibank, or Citigroup as the parent company is known, just plain stole money from its credit card customers in California using a computerized theft system that must be the envy of hacker gangs. They have agreed with the Attorney General of California to give as-yet undetermined millions of dollars back to the victims.

This criminal adventure is just the latest in a long series of crimes committed by Citibank during its history. In many cases transactions that would be crimes were legalized by bribing elected officials to write laws to Citibank's liking. See my Citibank page for an outline of this criminal history.

According to a Press Release from the California Office of the Attorney General Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Citibank used a sophisticated computer program for the thefts, called a "credit sweep process." For a variety of reasons a credit card account might show a temporary positive balance, for instance if a customer paid their monthly bill twice, or returned a purchased item for credit. The positive balances were detected by a computer program that automatically disappeared them from the victim's statements. The program was especially designed to target consumers who were deceased, had sought bankruptcy protection, or were involved in litigation.

The release indicated that "Citi" also stole from customers in the other 49 states in the United States of America, but it appears that the settlement only affects California, and that the the governments of the other states either can't be bothered or can be bribed.

A whistleblower who discovered the fraud was fired by Citibank. A Citibank executive said "Stealing from our customers is a business decision, not a legal decision."

The California investigation was launched in 2005. The Citibank actions violated the California False Claims Act.

The settlement [See State of California ex rel Mellon v. Citigroup Final Judgment] provided for a permanent injunction against credit sweeps in California, refunds for the victims including 10% interest, a penalty of $3.5 million to be paid to the State of California, and an independent audit of the process.

While I can applaud Jerry Brown for this action, in general the astonishingly corrupt Legislature of the State of California has done a terrible job regulating credit card companies. In fact, credit cards were deregulated (I think back in the 1980's). Back in the good old days the state set maximum interest rates and late penaltied. The industry argued that if it were deregulated interest rates and penalties would drop due to competition. An even stronger argument was a flood of money to the campaign funds of politicians, Republican and Democrat alike. Of course after deregulation late penalties and interest rates jumped and never came down.

Computer programmers from corporate fraudsters like Citibank talk of all kinds of tricks used to milk the public. The simplest is sending out bills after the first of each month. Many customers pay bills once a month, coinciding with when rent is due. The credit card bill arrives after that, is put in a pile, and is not paid until the end of the month, by which time a penalty is added to it. Billions of dollars have been stolen that way.

According to consumers, banks even simply allowed physical payments to ripen in a warehouse for a week or so before processing them. Most people pay their bills barely on time, so the extra week made the payment late and added a penalty. Complaining customers were told the fault must be with the U.S. Postal Service. Another scam is having payments post the day after they are received due to arbitrary deadlines that make no sense in this computerized world [ See Why Your Credit Card Payment Posts Late].

California - and the rest of the nation - needs real banking and credit card reform. Don't expect to get it as long as you keep voting for the Democratic and Republican Party machines' candidates.