Anthony Weiner is considering running to be the next New York City’s mayor and I am all for it.  The former Congressman and ardent liberal should run.  You probably remember a few years ago he was pushed from Congress for tweeting his privates. Well, that was the official reason. Personally, I think if he had more friends up on the Hill, he would have had more defenders — to quote his brother, Jason, he had a certain “douchiness” that is apparently absent now.

Weiner had a way of getting under people’s skin — and I mean members of his own party who weren’t thrilled with his abrasive style and penchant for grabbing attention. His congressional tenure included a fierce liberalism and a take no prisoners approach.  If those two things aren’t included in the NYC mayor’s job description, they should be.  He would bring a tenacity to the job that is much needed in the city that never sleeps.  Plus, he has served his time in the political wilderness, it’s time to return him to public life and the public discourse.  I wrote this piece at the time — calling for him to NOT resign.

Hell, if Mark Sanford can have a political rebirth, so can Weiner.

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By Chez Pazienza:

Denis Leary used to do an amusing bit years ago where he said that one of the best things about living in New York City is that there are so many interesting ways to die. It isn’t simply a matter of the usual daily trials of living in a big city — the potential to be shot, mugged, hassled by roving gangs of brown youths of indeterminate Latin American lineage, etc. — it’s the almost unimaginable and constantly evolving urban landmines that are indigenous to New York and that present an everyday threat, whether you choose to deny their existence for the sake of your own sanity or not. You can be killed by a block of ice falling off the top of a skyscraper. You can step on an inadvertently electrified manhole cover. You can fall through a storm grate on a sidewalk.

You can get pushed in front of a subway train.

By now you’ve all seen the photo and I guarantee you have an opinion of it: a man desperately trying to scramble back onto a Times Square subway platform while an oncoming Q-train bears down on him. You’ve seen it because it ran as a full-page image on the front cover of yesterday’s New York Post, a newspaper with a reputation for a deplorable lack of class but which generally is most offensive only for its willingness to give someone like Andrea Peyser a public forum.

The man on the tracks, 58-year-old Ki Suk Han, a father from Queens, was killed when the train in the photograph plowed into him seconds after the shot was snapped. The Post, for running a photo of what’s essentially a dead man along with the tastefully subtle headline “DOOMED: Pushed on the subway tracks, this man is about to die,” is now facing a shitload of thoroughly righteous outrage. As well it should. The decision not simply to run the image but to flaunt it is, without a doubt, one of the most indefensible, luridly morbid things I’ve ever seen from a news organization — even one as traditionally hackish and worthless as the Post. If you need a clear representation, in a single, undeniable frame, of the iniquitous impact of the Rupert Murdoch culture on the free press — and the shot of a besieged Rebekah Brooks in the back of a car being whisked away from News International, James Murdoch testifying before Parliament, or the couch-of-idiots three-shot on Fox & Friends doesn’t do it for you — Tuesday’s Post cover should give you something to mull over for months. The Poynter people have probably already hung the thing on their wall as the perfect reminder of how not to be a journalist.

There’s an argument to be made that the photo of Han’s last seconds alive has news value and, while it hasn’t issued a public statement yet, at some point the Post is very likely to try to make it. Don’t be fooled: No, there isn’t any news value to the picture and the potential value of it as a news item never entered the thought processes of the Post’s editors anyway. Sure, there’s no doubt that it’s captivating, but so are crime scene photos and the press very rarely runs those unedited. While each individual news item should be evaluated on its own merits and there should rarely be an across-the-board rule about what can and can’t be published or put on-air, the good of the public always needs to be considered. The questions that should be asked when confronted with an image like that of a man trying futilely to save his own life on a subway track include: Is this of immediate importance to public safety? Is the person in the photo a “public figure” or an average citizen? Does the public right-to-know trump the pain that’s going to be caused to the innocent family of the victim? (Yes, this may seem like a dicey one to journalistic purists, but screw that: you have to be human as well as a professional and when you’re not you forfeit the right to question why people think of you and your ilk as nothing but soulless vultures.)

Like the aforementioned Leary bit, there are some who will say that the picture conveys the indiscriminate and omnipresent danger of living in New York City. It confirms everyone’s worst fear, certainly the fear of anyone who’s ever spent a good portion of his or her life standing on the edge of a subway platform — that he or she can be the victim of some nutjob who was ranting to himself in the moments before he decided that you needed to be knocked into the path of an oncoming train. But that’s fear-mongering and nothing more. The photo, its prominent placement and the ghoulish headline all exist in their current state for one reason and one reason only: to create the kind of sensationalism which subsequently turns a profit. There may have been a way to handle the story that actually did serve the public good. This wasn’t it.

Then there’s the man facing as much criticism as — if not more than — the New York Post. I’m talking about the freelance photographer who shot the picture, R. Umar Abbasi. For the record, while Abbasi is making the “I’m Not a Monster” rounds on morning TV today, it has to be noted up front that when he was first approached by CNN, the network claims that Abbasi demanded money in exchange for an interview. Apparently, coming to the conclusion that half the city he lives in now wants to see him pushed in front of a subway train, he realized it was in his best interest to go on TV and seem as devastated and haunted as possible.

I’m not going to suggest that it was Abbasi’s responsibility to save the life of Ki Suk Han, but it’s tough to argue that he couldn’t and shouldn’t have done something other than to begin taking pictures. His allegation that he attempted to use his flash to warn the driver is about as ridiculous as it sounds; it’s the kind of bullshit you’d expect from a bottom-feeding tabloid photographer and it’s somewhat comical that Abbasi expects anyone to believe it. I wasn’t there so I obviously don’t know exactly what happened, nor do I know the timeline of events. I’m also absolutely willing to concede that no one can predict how an average citizen will react to a moment of madness. But while it can be claimed that a photographer’s first instinct is to grab his or her camera and start shooting, it doesn’t make that person any less of a piece of shit for doing so when he or she is in a position to potentially help someone who’s about to die. Sorry, but “I’m a journalist, it’s my job” doesn’t cut it. The only people in a big city whose job it is to save lives are police and firefighters — it doesn’t mean everyone else gets to look the other way when there aren’t any of those handy and somebody’s about to be killed.

Years ago, when I still lived in New York City, I was walking at night along the Upper West Side and came upon an accident involving a bus and a pedestrian. I used my press pass to get behind the police line and asked one of the cops on the scene what had happened. He smirked, squatted down and shined his Maglite under the stopped bus. I leaned over and took a look for myself. There, laying on the ground, was a woman’s severed leg. “Jesus,” I winced. “Nice, huh?” he returned. “She was wearing an iPod and tried to cross against traffic — didn’t even hear the thing coming.” While gruesome and certainly a potential object lesson, I chalked it up to just another one of those dangers of living in the city. People get killed all the time in so many interesting ways. At this point, it’s not even news anymore — even if it is caught on camera.

As always, the analysis of the New York Times’s David Carr is spot-on. His view of this incident and the Post’s treatment of it is required reading.

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Occupy Wall St movement has largely disappeared from the public’s eye, not because it has diminished in ambition or desire to spark a social revolution, but because it has been working on the next phase of it’s agenda – taking the economy back from Wall St and giving to the people. In a fascinating new project that could deliver some serious results if it catches on, “The Rolling Jubilee,” Occupy Wall Street-affiliated operatives at Strike Debt have been coordinating with the IRS, and debt-brokers world to buy up distressed debt from lenders at rock bottom prices in order to forgive it. From their site:

A bailout of the people by the people.

We buy debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, we abolish it. We cannot buy specific individuals’ debt – instead, we help liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal.

---

The Jubilee begins November 15
with “The People’s Bailout,” a variety show and telethon in NYC.
All proceeds will go directly to buying people’s debt and cancelling it.

Here’s their official video explaining the concept and process in greater detail:

It’s important that projects like this gain mass support, otherwise Wall St will find a way to smash it to pieces. The financial industry makes billions of dollars buying and trading debt – there’s a fortune to be made hiking interest rates on poor people and forcing them into a life time of loan repayments and abject poverty, and they won’t give up the market without a fight. So please raise awareness about this project in the hope that it captures the public’s imagination and takes off.

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By Mark Ames and Yasha Levine: Adam Davidson graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA in religion, and began his public radio career selling airtime and doing sponsor outreach. He then became an on-air radio personality, filing pro-Iraq War dispatches as Marketplace’s Middle East correspondent, and recently transformed himself into an effective propagandist for the banking industry. Over the years, Davidson has whitewashed the occupation of Iraq, praised sweatshop labor, attacked the idea of regulating Wall Street and argued for “squeezing the middle class”–all while taking undisclosed money from banking interests. No wonder Davidson shamelessly credited Wall Street for providing “just about anything that makes you happy.”

The Recovered History of Adam Davidson

• Davidson began working in public radio in 1992, doing “underwriting sales” for Chicago Public Radio, a position described by one public radio station as “equivalent to that of a sales manager at private stations. This person must go out into the community and establish rapport with local businesses in order to sell airtime to them. The underwriting representative is then responsible for developing a direct . . . and informational message to put on the air for the client.”
• Adam Davidson spent the early 2000s as Middle East correspondent for Public Radio International’s Marketplace. In the lead up to the Iraq War, Davidson filed a number of pieces promoting the invasion of Iraq; after the invasion, Davidson moved to Baghdad and filed numerous radio items whitewashing the occupation catastrophe.
• In December 2002, Davidson positively profiled an Israeli right-wing conspiracy theory site Debka.com in order to promote the invasion of Iraq. Despite the fact that Debka.com was long ago discredited in Israel, where “not a single Israeli official…sees the site as a reliable source”–and despite Debka.com’s ties to rightwing conspiracy theory site WorldNet Daily, nevertheless Davidson presented Debka’s claims that Saddam had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction–including chemical, biological and nuclear–as credible. Davidson staked his own credibility defending Debka, telling NPR listeners: “There’s really no way to confirm what they’re reporting right now, but I’ve been reading the site for years, and it’s common to think they’re nuts, then to wait a few weeks and see the same information in The New York Times.” As it turned out, Saddam did not possess weapons of mass destructions of any kind. In 2007, Davidson’s beloved Debka.com created a panic in New York City after publishing false rumors of an impending Al Qaeda dirty bomb attack.
• In February 2003, just a few weeks before the U.S. invaded Iraq, Davidson found a couple of Iraqi merchants living in Jordan who were in favor of the coming invasion, telling Davidson’s listeners that the invasion would do wonders for Iraq’s economy. “Mohammed,” one of the merchants, told Davidson: “I’m very optimistic about the economy of Iraq.” The war decimated Iraq’s economy, destroyed its infrastructure and was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.
• Davidson then moved to Baghdad and went to work whitewashing the brutality and violence of the war and occupation. In a 2004 Los Angeles Times op-ed, Adam Davison claimed that American military violence played no part in Iraqi anger at the occupation, and suggested that Americans hadn’t committed serious violence of any sort. Instead, Davidson argued that the reason the U.S. wasn’t winning the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi people was because America had not successfully rooted out Saddam-era corruption. “It’s common to hear Iraqis say the U.S. regime is just like Hussein’s. At first, I found this bizarre. The U.S. is not hacking the ears off of innocent people. The U.S. isn’t massacring entire villages. But I learned that when Iraqis make the Hussein comparison, they’re talking, in large part, about corruption.” By focusing on Saddam-era corruption, Davidson made it seem as though the problem in Iraq was that Iraq wasn’t Americanized enough, rather than the violence of the American invasion and occupation.
• After living in Baghdad for a year, Davidson had to suddenly flee the country in 2004, fearing for his life after being accused of working for the CIA. Later, Davidson admitted that he had a tight and undisclosed relationship with occupation officials, who regularly visited his Baghdad home and revealed to Davidson that the situation was much worse than was being reported. Rather than telling his listeners as a journalist should, Davidson protected the occupation authorities: “The ones I liked I’d invite over to the house. I mean, I genuinely liked them, but also we’d get them a little drunk on wine. We’d tell them, hey, tonight everything’s off the record. And we’d get real information...we’d get these people over to our house, they’d have some wine, and they’d be like, ‘oh, it’s so much worse than you know.’”
• In 2006, now working at NPR as a business reporter, Davidson criticized the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, legislation passed in the wake of Enron to tighten corporate financial accountability and make top executives criminally liable for fraud happening under their watch. “The U.S. has a bunch of crazy rules that came out of a time of hysteria in the U.S. They don’t make any sense,” Davidson told listeners. This was part of a larger push by Wall Street and corporate interests to gut Sarbanes-Oxley. Among those pushing the same PR line against Sarbanes-Oxley as Davidson were Americans for Prosperity, Heritage Foundation and even Charles Koch himself. [ 1 ]
• In 2007, Davidson boosted for the Honduran sweatshop industry, and promoted sweatshop labor in general, which he said was a great opportunity offering women upward mobility. Making socks in a sweatshop is “the only way she can improve her life,” Davidson said of one Honduran young woman he profiled for NPR’s “All Things Considered.” He did not mention that Honduran sweatshop workers routinely develop incapacitating back and spinal injuries working 12-hour shifts with little or no breaks, face workplace abuse and intimidation, and earn about 65 cents per hour. Meanwhile the CEO of Gildan, a Canadian garment company doing business in Honduras that Davidson praised in his program, took home $11 million in compensation in 2009.
• In 2012, Davidson promoted an even more extreme version of the Honduran sweatshop: special extra-judicial sweatshop zones legally beyond Honduran constitutional and labor laws, where multinationals could tap cheap labor, and use their own police force and judicial systems. The extra-judicial business zones, the brainchild of University of Chicago-trained economist Paul Romer, have been denounced as “neo-colonial” and have attracted the interest of Milton Friedman’s libertarian grandson, Patri Friedman, along with other libertarians hostile to labor rights. Davidson dismissed critics of the Honduras extra-judicial sweatshop zones: “It’s easy to criticize experimenting with the livelihoods of the poor,” Davidson wrote. “We have to try some new things, probably many new things. And we have to accept that some of them won’t work.”
• In 2008, Davidson helped produce an episode of This American Life about the implosion of subprime lending that let Wall Street off the hook for its role in rampant mortgage fraud and predatory lending. “This was a crisis that was caused by willing participation of every single person. Nobody was coerced,” said Davidson’s co-producer Alex Blumberg. “And there was fraud. But that was not what caused the crisis. What caused the crisis was something bigger and more systemic that required the involvement of everybody at every step.” This evasion-by-exaggerating-the-complexity strategy is one that Davidson and Planet Money have deployed often to whitewash and deflect the role of criminality in the housing crisis. Among the show’s fans was Treasury Secretary and former New York Federal Reserve Bank chief Timothy Geithner: “Yeah, they did a good job.”
• In September 2008, Davidson falsely claimed that the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act played no role whatsoever in the financial collapse: “Every economist I’ve spoken with says, simply, that it was a bad law but that it and its repeal are not really to blame for what is happening now.” Many key figures involved in Glass-Steagall’s repeal, including former Citigroup chief Sandy Weill, have contradicted Davidson’s false claim.
• In early 2009, NPR announced that Planet Money secured Ally Bank as the show’s exclusive sponsor. It was an unusual set up for NPR, as it meant that a financial institution was the sole funder of a news program about finance. At the time, Planet Money was the only NPR program underwritten by a single exclusive sponsor. Even Ad Age, the advertising industry’s trade publication, was surprised by the sponsorship arrangement and the “close alignment of message and news program.” (At the time of this writing, Ally is still Planet Money’s exclusive sponsor.)
• Ally Bank is a subsidiary of Ally Financial, formerly known as GMAC. The bank is one of the biggest mortgage servicers in the country, and has been one of the very worst offenders in foreclosure fraud and subprime fraud. It received more than $17 billion taxpayer bailout funds and has been investigated across the country for foreclosure fraud, robo-signing and student loan fraud. As of August 1, 2012, 74% of Ally Financial was still owned by the U.S. Government. [ 2 ]
• Planet Money’s relationship with Ally is a textbook example of “conflict of interest.” The bank had a clear and demonstrable interest in Planet Money’s coverage of the financial industry, especially issues that affected the bank’s bottom line. As Planet Money’s sole sponsor at a time when NPR funds were falling, Ally obviously wielded considerable power. Following months of complaints from readers pointing to the conflict-of-interest and the way Planet Money’s segments dovetailed with the banking lobby’s own propaganda, NPR’s Ombudsman was forced to look into the Ally-Planet Money relationship. The NPR Ombudsman ultimately dismissed listeners’ concerns as “cynical” and implied they did not know what they were talking about. Despite Davidson’s experience in public radio underwriting, he claimed ignorance about the nature of Planet Money’s arrangement with its sole sponsor, Ally Bank: “I have nothing to do with the underwriting stuff. We don’t pay any attention to the fact that they are a sponsor. We wouldn’t for a second give them any special treatment — positive or negative.”
• In 2009, while Ally Financial (then still known as GMAC) was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against the Financial Consumer Protection Agency Act of 2009, Davidson aired a number of segments critical of the legislation. He questioned the need to regulate consumer financial products like mortgages and credit cards in order to protect people against bank fraud. “Will it work at all?” he wondered on air, and asked: “is this just one more layer of regulation in a regulatory system that fundamentally broke down?” [ 3 ]

• In May 2009, Davidson launched a bizarre personal attack while interviewing Elizabeth Warren, the chief architect of the financial consumer protection bill. Davidson surprised Warren and his own listeners with uncharacteristic personal smears, trying to portray her as a clueless, power-hungry ideologue: “The view that the American family, that you hold very powerfully, is fully under assault . . . that is not accepted broad wisdom. . . . I literally don’t know who else I can talk to support that view. I literally don’t know anyone other than you who has that view, and you are the person [snicker] who went to Congress to oversee it and you are presenting a very, very narrow view to the American people.” The Columbia Journalism Review described the interview as a “disaster” and “really cringeworthy stuff from Davidson,” who was so rude and unprofessional that NPR’s Ombudsman had to step in and apologize for his behavior. Davidson’s excuse: he had been traveling for a NPR fundraiser and was “very, very tired.” [ 4 ] [ 5 ]
• Listen to Davidson’s full interview with Warren here:
• Adam Davidson does not disclose that he does paid speaking gigs at events funded by banks and financial companies, including J.P. Morgan, Well Fargo, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs–the same companies he covers as a journalist. Davidson is frequently the only journalist/reporter booked to speak at these events; other speakers are usually work in finance. (See top of left sidebar for detailed info on Davidson’s recent speaking engagements.)
• In 2011, Davidson expanded his media presence with a weekly financial column in the New York Times Magazine. His first column argued that government can’t create jobs, and so politicians shouldn’t try to come up with “job plans”–a demonstrably false position that also happens to be shared by Koch-funded libertarian Cato Institute. In his second column, Davidson pushed for harsh austerity measures against the majority of Americans in order to benefit the financial sector: “It really stinks, but the only way to fix the economy is to squeeze the middle class.“
• In 2012, Davidson argued that everyone should grovel before Wall Street, without which, he argued, America would be much poorer. Davidson’s pro-Wall Street propaganda was so crude that even fellow neoliberal Matthew Yglesias stepped in to criticize Davidson: “I’m generally an Adam Davidson fan, but his recent New York Times Magazine article in defense of Wall Street is pretty unconvincing. The big problem is right up there in the lede where he says ‘Perhaps the best way to really appreciate what Wall Street does is to imagine life without it.’”
• On May 1 2012, Davidson published a flattering profile of Edward Conard, Mitt Romney’s former business partner at Bain Capital, as a way of promoting more worship of the rich: “Conard . . . has laid out tightly argued case for just how much consumers actually benefit from the wealthy,” Davidson wrote, as he uncritically reported Conard’s claim that inequality “is a sign that our economy is working. And if we had a little more of it, then everyone, particularly the 99 percent, would be better off.” Yves Smith, of Naked Capitalism, described the article as “chock full of blatant falsehoods” among which were Davidson’s claim that penicillin was made possible by investment capital from hedge fund managers like Conard. In fact penicillin research was funded by the British and U.S. governments.
• Two weeks later, on May 16, Davidson spoke at the 27th Annual Conference for the Treasury & Finance Professional. Bank of America, BlackRock, BNY Mellon, Bloomberg, Citibank, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Well Fargo and about a dozen of the most powerful financial companies in the world sponsored the event.

Undisclosed Income

Adam Davidson’s career is currently being funded by bailed out banks. On top of Ally Bank’s exclusive sponsorship of Planet Money, Davidson receives lucrative speaking fees for appearing at events funded by the same banks and financial companies he covers as a journalist. Davidson has yet to disclose his corporate clients and how much they pay him, but here is a partial list of Davidson’s gigs from the last two years compiled from various publicly available sources:

• In April 2011, Davidson was the headlining speaker at the 9th Annual “Women’s World Banking” Microfinance and the Capital Markets Conference. The conference was hosted by J.P. Morgan, but the organization itself is funded by the world’s biggest banks and corporations, including BP, Morgan Stanley, Pfizer, Barclays Capital, VISA, ExxonMobil–just to name a few.
• In 2011, Davidson spoke at another microfinance conference, this once was also funded by Morgan Stanley, Citi, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and CapitalOne.
• In 2012, Davidson spoke at the 27th Annual Conference for the Treasury & Finance Professional. Sponsors of the event included Bank of America, BlackRock, BNY Mellon, Bloomberg, Citibank, Findelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Well Fargo and about a dozen of the most powerful financial the largest financial companies in the world.

Chicago Public Media, which co-owns “Planet Money” through its ownership of “This American Life”, explicitly bars conflicts-of-interest: “WBEZ journalists must uphold the trust of the public by not overlapping individual interests with professional responsibilities. WBEZ journalists may not accept any form of compensation from the individuals, institutions or organizations they cover.”

Note: Neither NPR nor This American Life have responded to S.H.A.M.E.’s requests for comment about Davidson’s conflicts of interest.

Planet Money’s Ally Problem

Ally Bank has been Planet Money’s exclusive sponsor since 2009, a relationship that provides a textbook example of conflict of interest. Below are two screenshots of Ally Bank advertisements running on Planet Money’s website:

Davidson’s Shame Quotes

I feel like the voice of business journalism is sort of, it’s an authoritative voice of God.

–Davidson in a 2009 interview with Nieman Journalism Lab

The last time I interacted with University of Chicago faculty in an extended way, they were my professors. Sitting on a stage as their ‘peer,’ I felt like a kid who had borrowed his dad’s suit.

–Davidson describes his reaction to being invited to talk about the “unintended consequences” of financial regulation at Chicago University’s 58th Annual Management Conference in April 2010

Raising [corporate taxes], or even maintaining them, might satisfy the anti-corporate angst of protesters and populists, but it won’t come anywhere near paying off our debt. Most people who study the issue agree that the top federal corporate tax rate (35 percent of profits) is simply too high. The cardinal rule of taxation is that whatever you put a levy on, you’ll inevitably get less of.

–Davidson’s “It’s Not Just About the Millionaires”; New York Times Magazine; November 2011

Davidson’s PR Strategies

Every economist I’ve spoken with says, simply, that it was a bad law but that it and its repeal are not really to blame for what is happening now.

–Davidson’s NPR segment “Can We Blame Or Praise Glass-Steagall?”

Most people who study the issue agree that the top federal corporate tax rate (35 percent of profits) is simply too high.

–Davidson on why U.S. should lower corporate taxes

I talk to a lot a lot a lot of left, right, center, neutral economists [and] you are the only person I’ve talked to in a year of covering this crisis who has a view that we have two equally acute crises: a financial crisis and a household debt crisis that is equally acute in the same kind of way.

–Davidson during his attack on Elizabeth Warren

Notes:

1. Malcolm Gladwell made a similar claim in a 2007 New Yorker article that defended Enron. Read Gladwell’s S.H.A.M.E. Report for more info. [↩]
2. See Naked Capitalism’s coverage of GMAC/Ally’s mortgage fraud. [↩]
3. GMAC’s total lobbying on finance-related bills in 2009 added up to $1.2 mil. See GMAC’s page on OpenSecrets.org for more information. [↩]
4. NPR did not respond to S.H.A.M.E.’s requests for comment about Davidson’s conflicts of interest. [↩]
5. Read Corrente’s transcript of Davidson’s Elizabeth Warren interview. [↩]

This article was originally published on The Exiled

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What comes first: The public or Weiner's ego? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Ben Cohen: On most issues, I agree with former Congressman Anthony Weiner. His unashamed liberalism has always been refreshing and he was a force for good in a political system that rarely produces anything to write home about. But Weiner let himself and his side down with his indefensible personal behavior that not only wrecked his career, but revealed a darker motivation on his part that should make people wary of his intentions should he decided to get back into politics. And it has been reported that a frustrated Weiner is ‘seriously considering’ a mayoral run in NYC next year. From the NYPost:

The disgraced former congressman — who’s sitting on a $4.5 million campaign war chest — is mulling a bid for citywide office next year and “seriously considering” a mayoral run, multiple sources told The Post.

The cocky pol is also open to the post of public advocate as a backup plan, said sources, who described the Queens Democrat as “desperate” to get back into politics.

Weiner, 47, has even spoken to former staffers about going back to work for him, according to another source.

Weiner has every right to run for public office, and there are no legal reasons why he cannot throw his hat into the ring. But given his personal transgressions, voters should think twice before giving him access to power.

Generally speaking, I do not believe the personal lives of politicians is anyone’s business. I don’t care if the President, congressman, senator etc etc cheats on his or her spouse. I don’t care if they’ve taken drugs, go to strip clubs or engage in homosexual activity. It’s their business and as long as it doesn’t affect the job they are doing, it’s off limits as far as I am concerned.

But there is something unsettling about Anthony Weiner, profiled The New York Times as a demanding and volatile boss, who’s sex scandal pointed to some very worrying psychological traits that would, I believe, negatively affect his ability to serve the public interest. For the uninitiated, the married Congressman was caught sending pictures of his genitals to a 21 year old college women over Twitter (and while his wife was pregnant). When caught, Weiner denied he sent the photos until the overwhelming evidence forced him to admit to that and other illicit tweets and photos to other women over the years. Reading the transcript of his correspondence with these women is enlightening to say the least. What emerges is a picture of a serious narcissist concerned only with his public persona, power and attractiveness. Here’s an exchange with a woman he messaged for over a year on facebook with:

Anthony Weiner: hello lisa
Lisa: hi baby! sent you a message the other day, but i think it went on instant chat for some odd reasonA
Anthony Weiner: i missed it. sorry sweetie
Lisa: no prob…i was so psyched to see u on colbert! you were so funny
Anthony Weiner: you watch it naked?
Lisa: haha! of course! u need to let me know when your are going to be on tv! i keep missing you
Anthony Weiner: you don’t get my twitter feed?
<= feelings hurt
Lisa: i do! and I’m still waiting 4 ur barmitva pics! but I don’t get on twitter everyday, so i don’t always get to catch your hot face on all your shows
ah i ran the bar mitzvah pics btw
ooohhh..i can’t wait to see it! I will go there before bed! you are sooo awesome when you yell at those fox news f***s! that clip was awesome
Anthony Weiner: i’m glad you like

Politicians are a strange breed of creatures, many of whom are playing out their serious insecurities and psychological hangups in the public arena. To put yourself up for routine public flogging via the modern media requires a degree of narcissism bordering on the insane. There must be a certain element of self loathing involved too – a pleasure derived from public vitriol and humiliation that most normal people would find completely unthinkable. Most public figures manage to keep a lid on these personality traits, but politicians like John Edwards and Anthony Weiner are so insecure and egotistical that they insist on playing roulette with their personal lives on a daily basis.

I am not arguing that Weiner didn’t accomplish anything while in office – on the contrary, he is regarded as having been a good Congressman dedicated to his city and progressive politics. Weiner had great, great potential and could have been a major force for good in US politics. But what is clear is that Weiner is not in command of his own behavior – his complex makeup means he constantly requires attention and power (hence his desperation to get back into public office), and he will forever fly by the seat of his pants to ensure his appetite for excitement and danger is met. Bullying staff, sexting and sending photos of his genitalia to women he never met are all signs of a serious megalomaniac, and for that reason, he should probably stay away from public office in the future.

Former governor of New York Eliot Spitzer is a similar type of character who disgraced himself and his office with illicit sexual activities that were so brazen it was incredible he got away with it for so long. But Spitzer, to his credit, seems has come to terms with his own psychological irregularities and has carved out a new career for himself as a host on a news and opinion show on Current TV.

Weiner’s voice is an important one – he stands for progressive politics and is unafraid to challenge Republicans who for too long have bullied Democrats afraid of stating their beliefs. The political game seems to bring out the very best and worst of Anthony Weiner and it seems it is not a balancing act he can manage very well. I could be wrong of course, and Weiner may well have changed his ways. But I suspect that if he had, he wouldn’t really want to get back into politics and would be content following Spitzer’s lead and using his voice in other less dangerous careers.

I still respect Weiner and think he can do a lot of good. But just not in politics.

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john Stossel: Works hard to be disliked (Photo credit: Mr. Wright)

By Chez Pazienza: This will be quick and appropriately dirty.

A couple of weeks back, Bob Cesca and I each put together a list of the people in cable news we disliked the most, then ran down our respective choices on our subscription-only podcast After Party. A couple of the names we both came up with were obvious — the O’Reillys and Hannitys of the world — but we did actually try to stay away from easy political targets and were for the most part successful. Topping my list of the most loathsome was of course Nancy Grace; anybody who’s read me long enough knows that I consider her a dangerous, amoral monster who peddles sickening prurience in the disguise of righteous indignation, all in the name of nothing more noble than her own self-interest. Bob, meanwhile, seems to have a pretty deep-seated distaste for Fox News ultra-smug prick Greg Gutfeld. Either way, it was a fun little exercise in venting our frustration with the cable press minus actually having to do anything strenuous to effect change like chaining ourselves to a lamp pole in Midtown Manhattan or literally painting our faces blue and taking up arms.

A couple of days ago, though, I was reminded of a huge oversight on my personal list of the worst of the worst on cable news. It happened when I watched a video clip that featured John Stossel pushing the latest installment in a series he’s been doing for Fox Business News called “Freeloaders.” In the clip, Stossel was explaining to the crew of slobbering idiots on Fox & Friends how he made quite a bit of money dressing up as a homeless guy and panhandling on New York City’s streets, the point seeming to be that you shouldn’t give money to panhandlers since they’re untrustworthy and could very well be douchey Fox Business News reporters out to trick you. If you can make sense of that circular reasoning, you win a prize — and if you’re lucky it’s the opportunity to slap the shit out of John Stossel.

Now make no mistake: John Stossel is an asshole. He’s a self-described libertarian, which these days is really just a fancy catch-all word for an asshole who’s pompously aligned him or herself with an impressive-sounding but entirely BS political movement in an effort to lend legitimacy to and to outright excuse selfish, asshole-ish behavior. Stossel’s willingness to carry the torch and wrap himself in the protective cloak of libertarianism explains why he can do a story that essentially targets the least fortunate among the American population, painting them with a broad brush as alcoholic parasites out to prey on the generosity of fine upstanding contributors to society, without putting his head in his hands and crying while pleading for forgiveness for being such a shitty human being the entire time. If Stossel has a heart somewhere beneath that 70s porn moustache — and for the unfamiliar, he’s in every way a poor man’s Geraldo, who himself is in every way a poor man’s dog turd on the end of a stick — it’s long since become little more than a dessicated husk.

Think about it for a minute. At the very beginning of his pitch on Fox & Friends, Stossel admits that it’s the very wealthy who do most of the “freeloading” in this country, through corporate welfare, farm subsidies, etc. But of course, rather than attacking the powerful — the ones whose crimes against average, hard-working Americans would have to be infinitely more profound and damaging than those of a guy begging for loose change — Stossel instinctively eschews the precept that muckraking journalism should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable and kicks the people at the very bottom of the pyramid scheme in the nuts just for the hell of it. Sure there are panhandlers who rip you off, who buy drugs and alcohol with the money you give them; sure there are people on welfare who game the system and who simply refuse to work. But it takes a staggering lack of compassion to lump everyone accepting some form of assistance into the category of deadbeats who just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and stop taking what isn’t theirs — whose primary day-to-day goal shouldn’t be survival but should instead be getting “off the dole.” This, of course, seems to be the modern Republican line of thinking, which dovetails perfectly into the libertarian worldview: It’s almost always the victim’s fault that he or she is a victim and success is its own state of grace which buys you forgiveness for your sins, whatever they happen to be.

It’s the way assholes think.

It’s the way John Stossel thinks.

Can’t believe I left him off my list.

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Parking meters: Less money for NYC, more for private equity (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Matt Taibbi blasts Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his short term money grab from selling off NYC’s parking meters:

Hizzoner Michael Bloomberg in New York has decided to do his own version of the Chicago infrastructure bake sale; the city announced that it is putting up nearly 90,000 parking meters for lease. They’re expecting to get over $11 billion in upfront money from the deal, which is great news if you’re Mike Bloomberg, who gets to use that money to patch current budget holes instead of making tough cuts or raising taxes. The news is less awesome for the next half-dozen New York City mayors, or for the citizens of New York, who now will get to spend most of the 21^stcentury grappling with its increasingly monstrous deficits with a major tributary from the city’s revenue stream shut off.

Taibbi wrote about the Chicago deal in his book ‘Griftopia’, blowing apart the notion that the deal was somehow good for the city. His recap:

In Chicago’s case, Mayor Richard Daley sold 75 years of meter revenue – worth an estimated $5 billion – for $1.2 billion. So he gets 20 cents on the dollar for the city’s parking meters in 2008, and then in 2009 the city still has a budget problem that’s now worse, because there’s no parking meter revenue anymore, ever. Meanwhile, a bunch of private investors rounded up by Morgan Stanley – these bankers go on road shows here at home and abroad to places like Geneva and the UAE to hawk discount American infrastructure to foreign billionaires and sovereign wealth funds – get to enjoy the fruits of raised rates. In some Chicago neighborhoods, the meter rates went from .25 cents an hour to $1 an hour in the first year of the deal, and then to $1.20 after that.

This really is a case of socializing risk and privatizing profit – in both NYC and Chicago, tax payers money went in to building and setting up the parking meter system, then received benefit from the revenue as it went straight back to the city. Now, private investors can get in on the incredibly lucrative business without the worry of investing in infrastructure or giving a better service to customers. It’s not as if the parking meter business has to worry about competitors either – as long as people live in NYC or Chicago, they will need to park. Heaven forbid the major cities raise taxes on the wealthy in order to close their budget deficits – instead, they’re screwing regular people by jacking up meter rates and starving the city of funds for future generations.

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The environment: An unknowable economic resource (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you haven’t read E.O Wilson, you really should. The eminent biologist is a brilliant thinker and wonderful writer who draws from many different disciplines and manages to make complicated subjects extremely easy to understand. I dug up a fascinating interview with him on the future of life with earthwatch.org, and was struck by this extraordinary statement on our continued destruction of the world’s eco systems:

We will see diminishment in ecosystem services, which have been estimated to be equivalent to the world gross domestic product, roughly $30 trillion. We get these services scot-free. We’ll see a reduction over time, so that we’ll have to invest more and more of our gross domestic product into replacing those services. The classic example is a choice that was made by New York City between a billion-dollar-level filtration plant to keep water it was getting from the Catskills pure, versus a much smaller amount of money put into preserving the Catskills watershed. They wisely chose the latter. So we will see a lot of that going on. Choices made, and bad choices taken, that will diminish what we are already getting scot-free.

There will also be opportunity costs: so many species we can learn from, new products derived, wisdom obtained through scientific study, will be lost forever. That’s a huge opportunity cost that’s beyond measure.

It’s amazing that economists can go through an entire education without learning a thing about the environment, as if consumption and production had no effects on the world’s resources. Traditional economics is based on the principle that resources are infinite, whereas every scientist knows they are not.

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By Chez Pazienza: Let’s start with the obvious: HBO’s new series Girls isn’t for me. What I mean by that is that I’m not its target audience. I’m not a millennial; I’m not female; I’m not a Brooklyn hipster who’s perpetually drowning in his or her own insufferable ennui; I don’t recognize even a hint of myself or my life in any of the dingbat characters or torturous scenarios the show traffics in. I’m sure Lena Dunham is a nice enough person, but there’s nothing about her that makes me think she’s someone I really need to take seriously as a creative talent, let alone the supposed voice of her generation (God help them all).

Granted, I lived in New York City for quite a while and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t familiar with the kind of “girls” Dunham and her cast try to represent for the TV audience; the city is crawling with them. I just don’t think they’re interesting enough to merit the representation. On the contrary, my reaction to any encounter with them typically lies somewhere between cringing painfully and going full-on Inspector Dreyfus whenever somebody mentioned Clouseau’s name.

With that in mind, though, I think that the criticism Lena Dunham’s been on the receiving end of from some in the black and Hispanic community is unfair. In case you haven’t been following — and for your own sake, I hope you actually have better things to do than concern yourself with this kind of “controversy” — a host of socially conscious journalists of color, many of them female, have complained that Dunham’s show is too “white,” that none of the titular girls on Girls are black or brown. The argument is a little dumb at face value, simply because Dunham herself is white and it’s not like that’s something she can change — and while New York City, both real and the depressing hellhole depicted on the show, is indeed a melting pot, let’s be honest and admit that it’s not exactly unlikely that people like Dunham’s character on the show and her small cadre of friends would all be the same shade of white.

Hell, the show wouldn’t be what it is — cloying and insipid — without the pervading stench of white privilege and the ability for characters to mumble complaints about the kind of shit only privileged white kids have the luxury of complaining about. It’s been a common refrain among critics of Girls, but it’s a show about white people problems — and like everyone else, I say that as derogatorily as possible — and trying to shoehorn a demographic into the equation which undoubtedly brings a different set of concerns to the table would be a ham-fisted nod to political correctness and little more. There wouldn’t be anything the least bit honest about Dunham taking that tack — and anyone willing to admit to the world that she’s this tiresome, irritating and unsympathetic is honest if nothing else.

Please understand that I’m certainly not saying that women of color don’t occasionally obsess over some of the same trivialities that a show like Girls attempts to address; everybody has his or her own version of navel-gazing. It’s unfortunate that there isn’t a larger forum for shows that either catered specifically to black and Hispanic female audiences or were able to draw the parallels between all women without trying to force the issue in an effort to ward off exactly the kind of criticism that’s been leveled at Dunham. Those upset about the show’s lack of color, so to speak, have a point when they argue that a series like Girls with an all-black or all-Hispanic cast would very likely never be given the cachet of a time slot on HBO — but again, it’s not like that’s Lena Dunham’s fault, and again, it’s not as if she should be required to adjust her vision for the show simply to satisfy the PC police.

It’s a show about a Lena Dunham-type character and the people she interacts with. And if you’re not included among those people, trust me, you shouldn’t be complaining. You’re a hell of a lot better off.

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By Robert Parry: If you relied on one signpost for where not to go, it might be the columns of New York Times star Thomas L. Friedman: If he’s pointing in one direction, like some humorless Cheshire Cat, it’s usually a safe bet that you should go the other way.

Sure, he’s not always wrong. Sometimes, he does recognize the obvious. I suppose the world has gotten “flatter.”

But Friedman has been grievously wrong many other times at great cost to America and the world – and his newest election scheme of pushing a “centrist” alternative for President could be just his latest catastrophic idea. It’s also not the first time he helped mess up the selection of a new President.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Photo by David Shankbone)

In December 2000, Friedman praised Republican suppression of vote-counting in Florida because he put George W. Bush’s fragile “legitimacy,” as a popular-vote loser being made President, above determining the actual will of the voters.

Then, in 2003, Friedman waved the United States into the unprovoked invasion of Iraq. It was time, he said, to “give war a chance.” As the ill-fated war dragged on, he kept insisting that the nation wait intervals of “six months” before judging the bloody mission to be a failure.

More recently, Friedman helped create the crisis with Iran by disparaging a Brazilian-Turkish breakthrough in 2010 that would have had Tehran’s swap much of its low-enriched uranium for medical isotopes, a plan that is finally back on the table after two years of escalating tensions and higher-than-necessary gas prices.

Indeed, it’s hard sometimes to comprehend the conscienceless egotism of Friedman who can be so wrong so often – leaving hundreds of thousands dead and wasting trillions of dollars – but who still pontificates about what Americans should do next.

Friedman’s latest reckless scheme is to have some third-party candidate (his choice is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg) compete in this fall’s presidential election as a way to “give our two-party system the shock it needs.”

By taking this stance, Friedman gets to position himself as champion of the trendy disdain for the two major parties. But Friedman’s idea is really just another dodge to avoid making the tough assessment about the truly serious political threat facing the nation, the reality of today’s Republican extremism.

The ‘Liberal’ Label

You see the key thing for Friedman – and other “centrist” journalists – is to avoid ever being pigeonholed as “liberal.” For Friedman, his status as an “independent” thinker is also crucial to his lucrative career as a best-selling author. To maintain this valuable financial perch in the middle, Friedman and other “centrists” routinely make “smart plays” for themselves even if they end up aiding and abetting many right-wing positions.

It was “smart” for Friedman to embrace Bush’s “legitimacy” in 2000, cheer the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and posture as a tough-guy on Iran now. And, it’s the “smart play” to take this stance on Election 2012, issuing a “plague on both your houses” commentary without having to confront the rabid elephant in the room, quite literally.

If Friedman had written a column about how the American voters must break the back of GOP extremism before any of the country’s pressing issues can be seriously addressed, he would have been denounced by the powerful right-wing attack machine as a Democratic “partisan,” not good for his next book tour.

So, instead of taking on right-wing extremism, which has taken over the Republican Party, Friedman pretends that the U.S. political crisis is just the lack of a reasonable person in the middle willing to debate the nation’s complex problems.

Thus, Friedman wants to see Mike Bloomberg starring in the presidential debates and raising the “hard choices.” Except that this scheme more likely would mean splitting the “responsible” vote, undercutting President Barack Obama and clearing the way for a victory by Republican Mitt Romney – and the right-wing forces most opposed to what Friedman purports to want.

Losing Cellphone Service

Friedman starts off his Wednesday column complaining about the collapsing American infrastructure – the “roller-coaster” asphalt around Washington’s Union Station and the shortcomings of Amtrak’s rail service to New York, even as he rode the more expensive, faster Acela train.

“I had so many dropped calls on my cellphone that you’d have thought I was on a remote desert island, not traveling from Washington to New York City,” Friedman wrote. He also complained that when he got back to DC, the Union Station escalator was broken.

“Maybe you’ve gotten used to all this and have stopped noticing,” Friedman told his readers. “I haven’t. Our country needs a renewal. And that is why I still hope Michael Bloomberg will reconsider running for president as an independent candidate.”

Friedman did acknowledge that “President Obama has significant achievements to his record. He has done a solid job stemming the economic crisis he inherited and a good job managing national security and initiating important reforms – from health care to auto mileage standards.

“But with Europe in peril, China and America wobbling, the Arab world in turmoil, energy prices spiraling and the climate changing, we are facing some real storms ahead. We need to weather-proof our American house – and fast – in order to ensure that America remains a rock of stability for the world.”

You might stop here and remember that the nation’s predicament might have been a lot less severe if Friedman had lent his influential voice in December 2000 to demanding that all the votes in Florida be counted rather than worrying about Bush’s “legitimacy” as Bush moved to steal the election. Back then, after Bush won some lower state court rulings blocking the recounts, Friedman expressed the view of many mainstream journalists, welcoming the likely declaration of Bush as the “winner.”

“Slowly but surely, in their own ways, the different courts seem to be building a foundation of legitimacy for Governor George W. Bush’s narrow victory,” Friedman wrote. “That is hugely important. Our democracy has taken a hit here, and both Democrats and Republicans must think about how they can start shoring it up.”

Of course, it didn’t strike Friedman or his “centrist” colleagues that the best way for Bush or any other politician to have “legitimacy” would be to allow all the votes to be counted and declare the candidate with the most to be the winner.

Al Gore surely had faults but he was a serious public servant who had spent a career addressing the “big, hard decisions” that Friedman is now wringing his hands over. For example, Gore was deeply interested in global warming, alternative energy, a modern infrastructure, including mass transit like high-speed rail.

However, when Gore’s election victory was being reversed by Bush and the Republicans in December 2000, Friedman was all atwitter about the harm to the nation if Bush’s “election” wasn’t viewed as “legitimate.” [For details, see Neck Deep.]

The Bush Disaster

The ensuing eight years were a disaster for addressing those “big, hard decisions.” By giving massive tax cuts to the rich, Bush turned a record budget surplus into a record deficit. He squandered a trillion dollars or more on wars, including an unprovoked invasion of Iraq. Bush disdained the science on global warming and took no action on that front. He encouraged Americans to buy gas-guzzling vehicles and to keep on spending as their personal debt exploded.

By further deregulating the financial industry, Bush positioned the U.S. economy on a giant bubble in the housing market. When the bubble burst, millions of Americans were thrown out of work and the world’s economy was destabilized. At the end of Bush’s eight years, problems, which might have been manageable if Gore had been allowed to become president, were now unmanageable.

One might think that Friedman would pause and express some self-criticism for his failure to understand the risks of a Bush presidency or the destructiveness of Bush’s wars. But no. Friedman simply moves on as if it would be impolite of him to note the havoc that he has left in his wake.

During the run-up to war in Iraq, for instance, Friedman was smitten by British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s glib oratory about forcibly planting seeds of “democracy” in Iraq. Friedman went so far as to dub himself a pro-war “Tony Blair Democrat.” He also made the witty observation that it was time to “give war a chance” in Iraq.

Today, it might seem obvious that anyone foolish enough to call himself “a Tony Blair Democrat” – after Blair has gone down in history as “Bush’s poodle” or to twist John Lennon’s advice to “give peace a chance” into its opposite – should have the decency to just hang it up as a pundit. Instead, Friedman moves from one reckless point of view to the next.

His latest positioning on Election 2012 is another self-serving scheme as he strikes a “both-sides-are-equally-wrong” pose, sparing him the career risk of putting the blame where it primarily belongs, on Republican extremism.

If Friedman had any journalistic integrity, he would have declared that today’s extremist Republican Party has become the chief threat to the nation’s wellbeing – and indeed the planet’s survival. He would say that only the decisive defeat of this Ayn Rand radicalism offers a pathway to the future. However, to do that would put his cherished (and profitable) status as a “centrist” in danger. So, he undertakes his “evenhanded” denunciation of both sides.

‘Hard Choices’

Friedman wrote: “This election has to be about those hard choices, smart investments and shared sacrifices — how we set our economy on a clear-cut path of near-term, job-growing improvements in infrastructure and education and on a long-term pathway to serious fiscal, tax and entitlement reform. The next president has to have a mandate to do all of this.

“But, today, neither party is generating that mandate — talking seriously enough about the taxes that will have to be raised or the entitlement spending that will have to be cut to put us on sustainable footing, let alone offering an inspired vision of American renewal that might motivate such sacrifice. …

“Mitt Romney can’t do that because of his ludicrous opposition to any tax hikes. President Obama, who has a plan to cut, tax and invest — albeit insufficiently — could lead, but, for now, he seems preoccupied with some rather uninspiring small ball, preferring proposals like ‘the Buffett tax’ over comprehensive tax reform that would lower all rates, eliminate deductions and raise more revenue.”

So, Friedman’s electoral scheme – also being promoted by other “radical centrists” like Matt Miller in the Washington Post – proposes that Bloomberg jump into the race to push these supposedly courageous ideas.

(You might note that President Obama has spent months advocating for much of what Friedman is describing, including a major jobs program that would invest substantially in modernizing American infrastructure. Last year, Obama also pushed unsuccessfully for a “grand bargain” with Republicans that would have raised taxes and cut entitlement spending.)

But Friedman can’t be honest because it would endanger his “centrist” positioning. He also doesn’t think through what the likely outcome would be – if Bloomberg entered the race and siphoned off enough “responsible” votes to elect Romney.

Instead, Friedman wrote: “Bloomberg doesn’t have to win to succeed — or even stay in the race to the very end. Simply by running, participating in the debates and doing respectably in the polls — 15 to 20 percent — he could change the dynamic of the election and, most importantly, the course of the next administration, no matter who heads it.

“By running on important issues and offering sensible programs for addressing them — and showing that he had the support of the growing number of Americans who describe themselves as independents — he would compel the two candidates to gravitate toward some of his positions as Election Day neared.”

Sophomoric Thinking

This dreamy analysis might be understandable for, say, some freshman in a political science class, but it is dangerously sophomoric for one of the nation’s most prominent columnists. The more likely result would be that Bloomberg – whether he quits the race after the debates or not – would draw substantial votes away from the candidate closest to his positions, i.e. President Obama.

That would probably ensure the election of Romney, who has committed himself to seeking further tax cuts favoring the rich, repealing regulations on the banks, adopting a more aggressive foreign policy that would include boosting military spending, and savaging domestic programs (including money for Friedman’s beloved infrastructure).

Surely, under a Romney administration – especially with continued Republican dominance of Congress – there would be even less money to even out those bumpy roads around Washington’s Union Station or upgrade cellphone reception on Amtrak – or for that matter, build new high-speed rail, invest in the nation’s crumbling infrastructure or confront existential issues like global warming, which Republican extremists don’t even think is real.

Friedman’s pitch for his “radical centrist” option is just another of his harebrained, self-serving – and dangerous – opinion pieces. We already have seen the dark places where some of his earlier ideas have taken the nation.

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