Don’t Blame The Democrats…Yet

I have been both encouraged and appalled by the recent public outcry advocating a meaningful compromise to end the latest Spaghetti Western standoff in Washington.

Never mind that raising the debt ceiling has nothing to do with this year’s budget, but rather is simply a means for allowing the federal government to pay off the debt that the idiots in Washington had previously voted to incur.

Never mind that the crisis never should have been a crisis, but for the arrogance and stupidity of some of the newer Tea members of congress and the GOP in general, who have a real problem with a Democrat, especially a black Democrat, telling them what is right for the country.

Never mind that these folks, who are not qualified to manage their local sanitation districts have been elevated to national prominence by some pretty darned reckless, heartless, and ruthless billionaires, corporations and ideologues, who I will refer to herein as bastards.

Never mind that the blitzkrieg of proposals conceived by said bastards and advocated by those improvidently elevated nincompoops would cost jobs, increase the cost of living, and decrease the quality of life for most Americans, with the singular intent of widening the chasm between the obscenely rich and the rest of us.

Never mind that that GOP gerrymandering has created so many safe congressional districts that said nincompoops need only to play to their ultra right-wing base, in order to get reelected and therefore have no incentive whatsoever, to actually act in the best interests of the country.

Never mind that the Tea/GOP has been mounting efforts to disenfranchise the young, the old, minorities, and the working class in general, because they tend to vote Democratic.

But my title implies that I want to talk about the Democrats. I do and I will; right now.

Although not to blame for thinking up this latest cluster %&#@, occasionally Progressives/Democrats have been known to succumb to various comically embarrassing human frailties, without any poking or prodding (sorry, I couldn’t help it) from the other side.

Aside from those occasional acts of Wienerism/Clintonism, they are generally just too darned trusting of their opponents and also have a really obnoxious tendency to turn the other cheek before they have been slapped. To Progressives, Democrats especially, the words compromise and capitulate seem to be synonymous.

As an example, I once thought that President Obama had agreed to extend tax breaks for the wealthy a few months ago, not just to keep precious dollars in the hands of the middle class and the poor as well, but as a bargaining chip to be used later in budget negotiations with the nincompoops.

It had all the makings of a perfect political strategy. The nincompoops had insisted that lower taxes on the rich and super-rich were necessary to create jobs. Since the time we allowed the wealthy and corps to keep their extra cash, 2.9 million jobs were lost in the U.S., while U.S. corporations created 2.4 million jobs…overseas. I am pretty sure that the rest of us were thinking that they meant the creation of actual U.S. jobs, in the U.S.A. Okay, our bad. We didn’t specify.

But anyway, I thought that the President and the Progressives were going to pounce on the whole lack ‘o quid pro quo thingy when it came time to divide the pie, but instead, they allowed the bastards and the nincompoops to turn a routine and otherwise unrelated rise in the debt ceiling into an international financial crisis. One wonders which on-watch genius in the Progressive caucus was hugging a tree while this huge pile of dog poo was being dumped on the House floor.

Were the Progressives too busy responding to distractions such as two unfunded wars, a bloated  prescription drug program, massive unemployment, the stock market crash, the bank bailout, the largest recession since 1927, the BP oil disaster, rampant anti-unionism, wide spread voter disenfranchisement, anti-choice guerrillas, white supremacists, radical Islamist congressional subcommittees, etc?

Okay, I will give them a pass on the natural disasters and the other disasters allowed by lax government oversight institutionalized during the Dark Ages (IYL 2000-2008), but, in 2010, the Tea/GOP made it their top (and it appears their only) goal to make Obama a one-term President. In furtherance of that goal they have squelched every single piece of people-friendly legislation that came down the pike. Shouldn’t that have tipped at least one big-D person that they were up to no good? Time to rally the troops? No?

The Tea/GOP folks passed either meaningless or downright hateful legislation and the Progressives/Democrats responded with weak-kneed rants and raves and appearances on  Rachel Maddow. Progressives were so busy wringing their hands over inane crap that had no chance of passing in the Senate, (much less becoming law) that the bastards and the nincompoops insidiously took over several states and are now smacking their lips at the prospect of blowing up the country in the name of an ideological purity heretofore worthy only of Dr. Strangelove.

And what is the present Progressive/Democratic response to this patently obvious, unbridled power play for corporate hegemony?Oh, let's just give them what they want…again. We’ll get em next time!

No, dudes. Not next time. Now. Get a friggin spine and stand up to these insane thugs.

The American people are the nerds on the school playground and you are all the protection that we’ve got. Most of us understand the possible repercussions and are willing to get a little bruised and bloody. We can take it. We have taken it since 1980. The real question is, can you?

Don’t turn the other cheek. Hit back. Now. And hit them hard. Otherwise it is all on you.  

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Lying Witnesses: Justice Subverted In A Court Of Law

I just read some absolutely shocking, shocking news on the front page of the Denver Post and it had nothing to do with Casey, or Anthony, or Whitey, or even O.J.

Cops Testify Amid Doubt, was the headline. Wow, like, after 22 years of daily in-court work as a Deputy Colorado State Public Defender, I was formerly unaware that cops lie and cheat at work; about personnel issues, about not following police procedure, about unlawful arrests, about hiding exculpatory evidence, about beating citizens into unconsciousness for no good reason; and even when they lie and cheat and beat so often that their superiors are forced to reprimand them on their permanent record, defense attorneys still don’t get the memo.

Despite having been recently been treated to the stylized rantings of certain legal pundits, you probably still remember that a person who has been accused of a crime is entitled to challenge the testimony of her accusers in open court. Secret witnesses are not allowed, no matter what Nancy Grace envisions in her little fantasy world where all prosecutors are appointed by God to rid the world of evildoers and are therefore entitled to a pass at trial on actual proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

An accused human is also entitled under both Colorado law and the U.S. Constitutional to challenge the credibility of all witnesses called to testify against her. If the witness is known to be a liar or a thief, or has a habit of lying about or cheating on similar cases, or has a demonstrated bias against one side or the other in a particular case, then the jury is supposed to get to hear about it and then give this information whatever weight they think it deserves in their deliberations. The jury alone decides whether to believe all, some, or none of what any witness has to say on the stand.

There is no state law or constitutional exception that allows cops to lie and cheat, especially in court. A cop is simply a witness, just like any other. In fact, a U. S. Supreme Court case called Brady v. Maryland specifically requires prosecutors to disclose all evidence, which might prove beneficial to the defense, including evidence affecting the credibility of any prosecution witness. Yet some prosecutors and even a few judges sometimes act as if Brady had been decided on some other planet, when it becomes inconvenient. Please let me give you an actual case in point:

I had a client who was accused of selling a small amount of drugs to an under-cover informant. The informant (who I will refer to affectionately as the snitch herein) claimed to have been the only alleged eyewitness as he was the alleged under cover buyer. The snitch, also a drug dealer, had decided to…uh…cooperate with the police just after he had been arrested on his 8^th and 9^th felony drug cases and was rotting in a local jail, unable to make bail.

And so, in my pretrial motions hearing in front of the judge, I made what a thought was a reasonable demand for discovery as to the parameters of the cooperator’s deal with the cops and prosecutors in exchange for an otherwise inexplicable desire to aid their efforts in the war on drugs.

At the motions hearing, the prosecutor and the North Metro Task Force detective said, on the record, right to the judge’s face, that there had been no deals express or implied with said snitch.

So I asked the judge if he ever heard of a crack dealer, with nine convictions, still breathing free air, without a deal from the prosecution. I pointed out that this guy had two pending felonies that should have sent him back to the joint on habitual counts for the rest of his life. No deals? Are you serious?

Okay, then how did the snitch send word out from his jail cell? Homing pigeon? Where are the police reports about the contact? How did he get out of jail on his own recognizance, (get out of jail free card) during pending felonies 8 and 9 without a deal? Surly the lead North Metro Task Force detective had a dossier on this snitch or at least record of the facts and circumstances surrounding their developing relationship. I knew that North Metro routinely required their snitches to perform at least three undercover operations, per deal. What other “work” had he done on other cases? Was he one of their itinerant or professional snitches?

Nothing. The prosecutor told the judge that there was nothing; the North Metro cop told the judge that there was nothing. And the judge, who you would think would be all over these guys about them hiding exculpatory evidence, instead just chuckled, until I suggested that there might be a credibility issue with the badged, Brooks Brothers guys on the other side of the room and then he yelled at me. And I got nothing.

At trial, the snitch swore under penalty of perjury and before the jury that he contacted the authorities, after being inspired by God to turn his life around and that there was no relationship between his current probationary status (upon his 9^th  felony conviction) and the volunteer work he did for North Metro. Then the cop took the stand and said that there had been neither any effort by the authorities get the snitch out of jail nor deals made to keep him from returning to prison, in exchange for his services.

After a 20 page, 25-year criminal history dating back to age 12, he just had a religious epiphany, that’s all. That is all the jury got to hear. And every time I would try to cross examine the snitch about the unlikely nature of said epiphany, the judge would shut me down, while the cop and the prosecutor just sat there smirking.

Needless to say, my client was convicted and the judge sentenced him to prison, because the His Honor felt that a drug dealer should not be allowed to walk around free in our community.

About three months after my client went to prison, a colleague asked me for some advice about how to handle a drug-snitch case. Even after I reminded her that I might not be the best one to ask, as my only trial loss in the last 10 years was on a drug-snitch case, she went ahead and showed me the discovery anyway, because she knew that her case involved the same snitch and the same cop as in my case and that both controlled-buys happened at virtually the same time.

She also suspected that the discovery on her case was a bit more complete than mine had been. An inexperienced prosecutor had obeyed the law and turned over an extensive dossier on the snitch, complete with a letter, written by the snitch from his jail cell to the cops, virtually promising to sell his mother to keep from going back to prison where he felt certain he would be murdered, him being a snitch and all.

Her discovery also contained a records from two different counties, showing that two different prosecutors had asked two presiding judges for two different P.R. bonds on behalf of this 7-time loser and a preliminary discussion by the authorities with said dude about possibly keeping him out of prison, in exchange for setting up a to-be-determined number of his old buddies and truthful testimony leading to their convictions. My client was of course, one of those old buddies.

I just hope that anyone reading this is not naive enough to believe that the example above was a rare exception. Unfortunately, various versions of the same scenario happened to my clients in court with frightening regularity. It was the kind of frustrating subversion of justice that made me curse a lot and feel helpless and made me work even harder.

In my business, experienced defenders know to expect many cops to make up stuff or hide stuff and at certain percentage of the local prosecutors to wink, nod, and look the other way. That getting a fair trial before a fair judge is sometimes less than guaranteed is generally the bane of every defender’s existence. The judge in my case had formerly been a prosecutor in that same county and is very smart man. He knew better and he just gave them a green light to screw my client. And the second-hardest part of it all was that I had really wanted to believe that the judge was a much better man than that.

Why do cops feel free to lie over and over and over again on the job and under oath in court? Because they can, of course, but also because some folks in positions of authority whom you would never think to suspect, tacitly accept if not encourage their misconduct.

Do not hold your breath for some newspaper articles and a few firings to change a systemic problem. As I said, I am absolutely shocked that it is still happening. Shocked.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Colorado Health Exchange: Interlocking Directorates On Steroids

Among only a handful of scholarly pearls of wisdom I managed to retain from the last century, during my tenure as an undergrad at C.U. Boulder, was the concept of interlocking directorates, which is just an unnecessarily fancy name for the time-honored tradition of mutual job-swapping between private corporations and the government agencies that are supposed to keep them honest. The rationale for occasional swappage went like this:

A banker, who ostensibly gained institutional knowledge of her industry during a stint at Morgan Chase, might later, as a government regulator, be in a better position to recognize and prosecute those who engaged in say, bank fraud.

A government bank regulator, who ostensibly gained institutional knowledge of say, bank fraud, might later as a banker, be in a better position to appreciate the virtues of confining her bank’s activities in conformation with the applicable law.

A certain small amount of this necessary evil was duly noted by learned professorial types, taught like an Aristotelian apology to a whole bunch of budding economists and political scientists like myself and then largely ignored for thirty years or so, as the puerile practice spread like a virus throughout the land.

Nowadays, the selfless public servants who swapped private for public jobs insist that they are NOT giving sweetheart deals to their former business buddies, and are definitely NOT otherwise looking the other way, when their former bosses are thumbing their noses at government rules and regulations. It must be hard for an under-funded government agency to go up against a corporation full of hired guns, especially when most of them are personal friends. How can you prosecute the guy you play golf with; the woman who manages your portfolio?

The entrepreneurially-inclined, who swapped public for private, insist that their brand new multi-million dollar salaries are justified and that they are scrupulously adhering to the no-lobby clause which they had agreed upon as a condition of working for the government.

If a newly-minted private swappee just happen to be on Capitol Hill when a juicy government contract or profitable rule-change is being considered for her new BFL’s, and she just happen to wine and dine, snort and snog with a politician on the deciding committee, this fortuitous co-mingling, which to the rest of us would constitute an unethical and shameless act of whoring, is known by those in private industry as nothing more than a fortuitous informational session. No lobbying going on here! Conflict of interest? Whaaa?

Job-swappers at both ends also insist that they have fully and irrevocably traded one hat for the other, even when they swap jobs (and hats) several times during their careers. They get all mopey and indignant when you point out to them that exactly zero banking/insurance CEO’s were prosecuted by government regulators the last time bankers almost destroyed our economy.

Job swapping has now become the norm, the continuation of which is assured, as the practical effect of this Ozarkian relationship is that both the private movers/shakers and the gummint rule-makers are making out like bandits (the operative word being bandits, not making out).

For those of you who are afraid of the havoc potentially wrought upon the Dow Jones Industrial Average by an outright prohibition against business/government incest, please keep in mind that the very/super/corporate rich own over 80% of all the stocks on the market today. Every time you get all warm and fuzzy as the Dow tops 12,000, you can rest assured that your tax dollars are paying the dues for members of a highly exclusive club which you will never be asked to join.

You steal an iPod, you go to jail. They steal billions; they get a promotion or at worst, a multi-million dollar retirement package in the Cayman Islands. That’s how it works. La Familia Governmentia protects their own, because they are bought and paid for by their malefactor/kinfolk.

So the rest of us have to swallow hard and pretend that those who have swapped-public have genuinely also swapped hats (and Manolos and Armanis and Versaces and jock straps, etc.). We are basically forced to trust that these government officials du jour are actually doing the job we pay them to do. We have to trust that they are working to protect those of us who toil beneath the clouds, even thought they treated us like chattel, while they were sucking down ambrosia on Mt. Olympus. So it goes. Waddaya gunna do? Fuggetaboudit.

Regarding the new Colorado Health-Insurance–Exchange-Board, the ever-innovative Hon. Governor John Hickenlooper has taken government-business incest to the next level. In fact, The Hon. Gov. Hick has completely dispensed with pesky gummint intervention by allowing the mega-medical business to wear both hats at once. They get to regulate themselves. No more duplicitous, burdensome job swapping or even the pretense of conflict-free decision making for this board!

According the Governor’s press release this June:

"This will be a Colorado-based health exchange that is created by Coloradans, for Coloradans. The exchange represents a broad collaborative effort between businesses, consumers, providers, the insurer community and the state legislature. The Colorado Health Exchange will be an independent public entity not affiliated with an existing state agency or department and initially funded by gifts, grants and donations. The exchange will be governed by nine board members of whom the majority will be individuals and business representatives who are not directly affiliated with the insurance industry. The board will hire the exchange’s executive director."  Emphasis added.

Sounded promising until the names of the nine members came out. Four out of the nine members are CEOs of managed- healthcare companies or health insurance companies, who stand to make a bundle off of these insurance pools, as long as the volume of enrollee participation increases (except for sick people), the premiums are kept high, and the payout on claims are kept as low as possible in order to continue obscene profits. The fifth board member, who will presumably cast the deciding vote, is an E.R. doctor who hates the federal Affordable Health Care Act and would like to see all aspects of the plan fail, including, presumably, the health insurance exchanges.

As always, I just know that I can trust these folks to act in the best interest of my family and me.

The in-your-face hubris highlighted by Hick’s picks is jaw-dropping, but I guess allowing the foxes to enforce self-promulgated hen house rules while simultaneously committing wholesale henocide is a great way to streamline the whole process. Streamlining gummint is very popular these days.

Does anybody who is not affiliated with the health insurance industry really think that middle class folks or small business are going to get lower health insurance premiums and/or better health care under the watchful eye of this board? Obviously, this little set-up is designed to scam federal funds under the Affordable Health Care Act, while subverting any real benefits for the people it was designed to help.

Congratulations Governor, in such a short time you have graduated from merely mayoral to major-league politics. I see a future for you in Washington.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Corporate Crime: Just Another Cost Of Doing Business

As a political science major in college during the 1900’s, I was forced to sit through two survey classes in modern economic theory: Econ-101 and Econ-102. Later, as a law student, I was forced to sit through another class about corporations. Each course was taught from a Keynesian free market perspective and each propounded the conventional wisdom that laws regulating corporate greed and malfeasance were a waste of time and were in fact counterproductive, because all that was needed to keep businesses in line was the unfettered exercise of the free market.

This economic model was actually quite simple and is, not incidentally, identical to today’s Libertarian/Tea/GOP mantra. The idea is that businesses will misbehave like any other over-privileged children (read, fraud, Ponzi schemes, ripping off customers, cooking the books, tax evasion, making dangerously defective products etc.) until their misconduct simply costs too much money for them to continue. How much is too much, you say?

Economics professors love to use a fictional product called a widget to illustrate the appropriate profit-to-mayhem ratio. And so, if business-A and business-B each make widgets and business-A uses cheaper, shoddier parts, they may make more profit in the short run, but only until their shoddy widgets begin to piss off the consumer and they quit buying them. Then business-B corners the widget market and business-A is forced either to invest a bit more capital into making a better widget, or go out of business.

In the free market as applied to corporate malfeasance, if the widgets produced by business-A, are so shoddy that their use causes mass death and destruction, the resulting civil settlements may theoretically, also cause business-A to either mend their negligent, reckless, or even criminal widgets, or lose profitable market share.

Morality plays no part in this business model; so selling cars containing  exploding widgets (like say, gas tanks) is just fine, right up until the point at which the resulting cost of legal settlements and lost sales revenues exceed that of the marginal profit. Then, and only them, does business-A, spend the least amount of money possible to retrofit their cars with a non-exploding widget and, (after intentionally lengthy and protracted litigation), eventually pay off a few unusually persistent grandchildren of  ancestors who were burned to a cinder or disfigured beyond recognition in the various  auto/widget conflagrations. And all of this is usually accomplished without any admission of corporate liability or criminality.

It always bothered me that the free market ideal was offered as a replacement for other allegedly outmoded concepts like The Golden Rule, the Social Contract, and, oh, I don’t know, a sense of decency. But I was also taught that the system was foolproof, as all businesses would eventually be forced by the free market to conduct themselves in a moral fashion, even if they did not do so out of a newfound over-abundance of altruism.

Even now, I am still wondering how long these alleged free market corrections are going to take before they actually correct the recent spate of rampant mega-abuses by U.S. mega-businesses. Years? Decades? Centuries, maybe? I was in my teens, when I was first inculcated by the smart business guys in the virtues of the free market and now I am in my 50’s and am still hearing the same old tired song and dance, this time from The U. S Chamber of Commerce and politicians on the political right.

You might recall a post I wrote on May 17, 2011, highlighting a Rolling Stone story about how Goldman Sachs bought and bundled billions in worthless sub-prime mortgages, made more billions after knowingly unloading this garbage onto unsuspecting customers, insured the poison paper to make more billions when the paper eventually proved valuable only as toxic toilet paper, and then lied to congress about the whole scheme. Oh, right, and we taxpayers were forced to bail out the big banks to cover their losses.

Now, if we apply current Keynesian/Libertarian/Tea/GOP/free market principles, you would think that Goldman Sachs must have considered the cost of their bamboozlement, insofar as it might adversely affect their profit margin and thereby force them to conform their behavior to more human standards. In retrospect, it appears that they did conduct such a cost/benefit analysis, aforethought.

In the end, government lawyers were patting themselves on the back for getting Goldman to agree to a $500 million civil settlement, but it does not take a math whiz or an economist to see that Goldman still came out $12.4 billion ahead after their brilliant, convoluted, illegal, transaction of subterfuge. Just to be clear, Goldman and Sachs broke several federal laws, bilked its own customers, bilked the insurance company, lied to congress (also a federal crime) and still made $12.4 billion, in profit. And their tiny payout penalty was agreed upon after a solely civil ceremony.

Why no criminal charges were brought against the upper management of Goldman Sachs, will ever remain a mystery; like who built Stonehenge, or what ever happen to the Anisazi, or which animal remnant sits atop The Donald’s noggin.

Just today we learned that JPMorgan also agreed to cough up a whopping $153.6 million, again in civil penalties, for their little part in the same scheme as Goldman’s, leaving them with a net profit last year of a mere $17.4 billion. To date, no criminal charges have been filed against anybody at JPMorgan either.

So somebody please explain to this aging Keynesian conscriptee, why the government did not at least force these charlatans give back all of their ill-gotten gains, if not plead guilty in criminal proceedings? If we follow Keynesian logic, the government did nothing to adversely affect the offender’s profit margins much less their continued liberty.

Instead we allowed Goldman and JPMorgan to simply quantify the pittance paid as just another cost of doing business and then pass on that cost to the rest of us, thereby permanently negating the only sanctions that might have kept them from doing it over again and over and over again.

Please remember to ask any candidate for whom you are thinking of voting, exactly when the free market is going to start kicking in and what efforts he or she will make in government to jumpstart this process. Let me know what they say and I’ll leave a note for my great, great, great, grand children.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo 

Denverforward Standing Still

Mayor-elect Michael Hancock got a running start (in place) yesterday, by announcing the committee heads to address the long-standing, entrenched, embarrassing, and costly policy failures in the area of public safety.

With the possible exception of Adrienne Benavidez, the Who’s Who on his list of appointees either created the present problem, allowed it to fester and grow into the abysmal situation it is today, or simply has no expertise in the area at all.

Committee To Select The New Police Chief

[Blogger’s Note: if you have a short attention span, you need not read the italicized writing, except for the blurb about Al LaCabe.]

Fidel “Butch” Montoya served under Wellington Webb as the Denver Manager of Safety and deputy mayor from 1994 to 2000. In that capacity, Butch Montoya (and Denver Police Chief Whitman, who is only now being fired) was under a constant barrage of citizen protests resulting from such police indiscretions such as illegal police no-knock home invasions and others.

As another example, Montoya hired admitted felons, drug-users, thieves, gang members, and indecent exposers onto the police and fire departments, but rejected many other recruits with clean criminal histories. The rationalizations he offered for his actions and inaction in general, were sophomoric, unbelievable and lead this long-time resident to believe that Montoya, at minimum, tacitly accepted the culture of malfeasance among his ranks.

The Police that Butch Montoya hired are the same thugs that have been propagating, continuing, and lying about the police culture of violence that has earned the Denver Police Department the dubious honor of no.1 in police violence, for a city of its size, in 2010. And Butch Montoya is heading up the committee to pick a new police chief to replace his old friend Jerry Whitman? Seriously?

According to his own website, “Doug Friednash represents clients in governmental matters and in election issues and initiatives political and issues campaigns, including the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, Coloradans for Responsible Reform, and the Colorado Preservation Doug also represents governmental entities on various matters.

In addition, Doug's practice includes representation of companies in complex commercial litigation. He has experience in appellate proceedings and alternative dispute resolution forums. He also provides advice and defense in administrative and regulatory matters. His recent litigation experience includes representation of a national taxi company, a securities broker-dealer, a national pharmaceutical benefit management company, and the largest privately-held jeweler in the United States in complex commercial litigation and trademark infringement issues.”

Mr. Friednash appears to be politically very well connected and have expertise in several different areas, none of which involves the area to which he was appointed. I do not know why he was selected to help Butch Montoya pick a new Police Chief, but I suspect that his law firm may have been a significant political donor to/fund raiser for the Mayor-elect’s campaign and also suspect that Mr. Friednash may soon be appointed as a Denver County Court Judge, as a vacancy arises.

According to her biography, former State Representative Rosemary Rosemary Marshall’s

“primary legislative focus was to enact laws governing fraud and deceptive practices in mortgage lending. In 2007 she accomplished that goal by sponsoring and passing one of the most comprehensive packages of mortgage fraud legislation in the country. Her 2008 legislative agenda included financial literacy education in public schools; affordable hearing aides for children with hearing disabilities; and requiring the criminal justice system to address and recommend solutions to reduce racial disparities in the penal system. Her work in her final session was only one example of her pride in working to champion and support legislative initiatives that seek to improve the lives of women, families, and persons with disabilities. It was for this work that she was honored as a recipient of the Dan B. Davidson Award for Excellence in Community Inclusion. Representative Marshall is certified by MIT-Harvard in Public Policy Negotiations, which has helped her view Colorado’s concerns in a national and global context.

Representative Marshall has a long history of committed political and community service to the citizens of Colorado, and has worked to promote integrity in government by her involvement in countless local and statewide campaigns. She is a member of the NAACP, a founding member of Colorado Black Women for Political Action and is a recipient of their political achievement award. She serves on the Board of the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, is Vice President of the Colorado Caucus of African American elected officials.”

I highlighted the one area in which she worked, that at least had the words “criminal justice” in it; and so again why an obviously stellar person who is so clearly qualified in so many areas other than the one to which she was appointed, was in fact appointed, is a mystery to me, but it is clear that both Friednash and Marshall will almost certainly feel compelled to defer in decision-making to one of the main architects of the present malaise in Denver public safety today.

Safety Committee.

Al LaCabe is also a former Denver Manager of Safety, who retired in 2010. Below is a list of just a few of his accomplishments on the job:

“During his time in office, LaCabe contended with some of the more volatile issues to face the Hickenlooper administration.

Hickenlooper named LaCabe as safety manager weeks after the July 3, 2003, fatal shooting by Officer James Turney of Paul Childs, 15, who was developmentally disabled and armed with a knife.

That case and the July 11, 2004, fatal shooting by Officer Ranjan Ford Jr. of the unarmed, 64-year-old Frank Lobato in his bed ignited an uproar shortly after Hickenlooper took office.

LaCabe disciplined both officers, over the protest of union officials. He overruled Police Chief Gerry Whitman's recommendation of a 20-day suspension for Turney and instead suspended the officer for 10 months. He suspended Ford for 90 days before agreeing to a 50-day suspension to settle an appeal.

The Turney discipline decision was a harbinger of a pattern that saw LaCabe overrule recommendations from police commanders. LaCabe has said such clashes will dissipate under the new discipline system, which will eliminate inconsistencies and confusion.

During LaCabe's tenure, new training procedures also were instituted for police. They included arrest procedures, "decisional shooting" and how to deal with those who are mentally ill. The department also bought more nonlethal weapons and hired a minority-recruitment officer.”

Okey dokey. Does anyone who read a newspaper during that period of time remember any homicidal cops actually being fired? Did anyone who read a newspaper recently notice any new discipline system or new training procedures, until Charles Garcia was hired a few months ago (as a temp) by interim Mayor Vidal? Is the city not still paying out millions in claims for violent misconduct to which LaCabe responded with veritable slaps on the wrist? And now that Al LaCabe is picking the new members of the Safety Committee, does anyone really expect the new discipline instituted by Mr. Garcia to continue?

According to his bio: Since moving to Denver in 1992 from Washington, D.C., Josh Hanfling has been a nonprofit coordinator, contributor, volunteer and more with multiple organizations. An Entrepreneurial Studies graduate from Babson College in Massachusetts, he maintains a hands-on philosophy of community involvement. In addition to the many organizations he has revitalized, Josh has gained notoriety for several successful business ventures

VOLUNTEER AFFILIATIONS
Chairman, Denver Justice Council
Founder and Chairman, Friends of the Denver Fire Department (FDFD)
Board Member, The Denver Hospice
Corporate Co-Chair, Concerts for Kids
Development Board Member, National Jewish Hospital
Board Member, The American Transplant Foundation”

So Josh appears to be a lobbyist, restaurateur, has sat on a billion committees, and is good buddies with the same Denver Fire Department that faces a severe budget shortfall this year and is fighting those cuts. Great pick, Mr. Mayor-elect.

According to his website, former Denver City Attorney, David Fein’s “practice focuses on three main areas: civil litigation (representing businesses, individuals, non-profits and governmental entities in civil disputes, including cases involving constitutional issues), employment litigation (federal discrimination and state law based claims) and counseling (advice regarding executive contracts, non-compete agreements and severance agreements) and election/political law (advice and litigation concerning elections, campaign finance, initiatives and redistricting).”

Again, a politically well connected, very smart, great guy, with apparently no experience in this area, (except maybe as city attorney, negotiating large payout claims to citizens who were brutalized by cops hired by Montoya and kept on by La Cabe). And again, I foresee a future on the Denver Bench for Mr. Fein.

According to her bio, Former Head of Denver’s Public Safety Review Commission Adrienne Benavidez “was appointed as Director of the Division of Finance and

Procurement in March 2007. Prior to her current appointment,

Adrienne served as the Executive Director of the Color of Justice,

Inc., a non-profit, non-partisan organization that provided legal

and policy advocacy for communities of color in the Metro Denver

area.

Ms. Benavidez earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science

and a Juris Doctorate Degree, along with completion of the Special Emphasis in Tax

Certification Program from the University of Colorado. Adrienne has been a practicing

attorney since 1991 and previously practiced in the areas of commercial litigation and

bankruptcy and provided pro bono legal service to community based organizations.

Ms. Benavidez also completed the ten month long Denver Community Leadership Forum

which focuses primarily on the development of collaborative leadership skills and coop-

erative problem solving.

Adrienne has worked with several community groups and has served as a member of the

Board of Directors of several organizations including the Colorado Hispanic Bar

Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, Servicios De La Raza, Harrison Memorial

Animal Hospital, and public radio station KUVO. Adrienne’s community service included

working on civilian oversight of police issues and she was a member of the Denver Civil Service Commission and past Chair of the Denver Public Safety Review Commission.”

Ms. Benavidez is the only one of the seven appointees, who has actually worked hard to effectuate real change in Denver’s abysmal public safety culture of corruption. She  began her service on the Commission in the 90’s under the Wellington Web Administration. Perhaps she was largely unsuccessful in her efforts because of the entrenched good-ole-boy system instituted under Butch Montoya and continued under Al LaCabe. Unfortunately, in her present appointment, Ms. Benavidez is sure to be outnumbered again by those same folks who ignored her before.

Not an auspicious beginning for the new Administration.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Hey Dude, Where's My Job?

Jobs, jobs, JOBS! Apparently, buoyed by their success in the 2010 midterm elections and undaunted by the reality that they have taken exactly zero measures to remedy the situation since then, the Tea/GOP is again prepared to make 2012 political hay out of the abysmal jobs situation in the U. S. today. The pundits all say that a 9% unemployment rate during 2012 will be the death knell to the Progressive cause and the Obama reelection campaign. Unemployment is at around 9% right now. Imagine that.

Since Wall Street is now booming and the Fortune 500 guys have never been more flush with cash, you might wonder where the jobs have gone and why they are not returning along with the fortunes of Goldman Sachs, BofA, and AIG (that changed their name to AIU, but that sounded too much like IOU, so then changed it again to Chartis).

Oh God, is Brandeis going to bore us to tears again, with yet another unendingly long diatribe in a dreary series of unendingly long diatribes on this and related subjects?

No, I am not. Yes, I have researched and written over 22 (okay, 33 actually) posts in this area and will list them at the bottom, but I’m going to keep this one simple, so that you may have a handy, short answer when some moron tells you that Obama killed the jobs and that the only way to bring them back is to elect more Tea/GOP charlatans.

There are two main reasons why the jobs numbers suck in the U.S. right now, and President Obama is not to blame. The big business folks (who are bank-rolling the Tea/GOP) are to blame, and I’ll tell you why:

1. American companies have shipped jobs overseas. Why? So megabiz can make more money for their wealthy stockholders, that’s why. Opening a plant, firm, or customer service center in a foreign country does not carry the burden of:

1. Taxes
2. Following Child labor laws
3. Insuring safe working conditions
4. Paying workers a decent wage
5. Providing job security for workers
6. Providing pensions for workers
7. Providing health insurance for workers

2. Instead of creating U.S. jobs, big business is either hoarding their cash or using it to acquire other businesses.. Profits are through the roof, yet they claim that they are too “insecure” to create jobs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that they are waiting for four things to happen before they will allow their members to create new jobs:

1. The government lifts recent regulations on banks/insurance companies that were enacted to prevent the Ponzi scheme-type activities (actually worse, but I promised to keep this short) that almost caused another Great Depression.
2. The government lifts recent environmental protection rules that were enacted to help prevent another BP Oil catastrophe.
3. The government dismantles the New Affordable Health Care legislation, and replaces it with the old health insurance industry system that you  came to know and love all those decades, if you lived through it.
4. The government lowers taxes on corporations, but they still get to keep the same loopholes.

Maybe the Tea/GOP is correct in the sense that the Obama Administration has worked to protect the middle class and the working poor from the ravages of the heretofore unfettered, Machiavellian business quest for hegemony. But anyone who actually believes that returning to the former status quo will create jobs has been on LSD since the Clinton Administration. Again, in the interest of brevity, I will not elaborate.

That’s it. I’m done. For those of you who may have the stomach for further reading, I will list below, the other stuff that I have written on this and related subjects, which stem from the finest data that I shamelessly lifted from actual journalists.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Just Can’t Watch The “Debate” Tonight, 6/13/11

John Hickenlooper v. Rick Scott: Not Even Close, 6/2/11

ConocoPhillips CEO Latest To Flirt With Extortion, 5/17/11

Highlights From Rolling Stone, 5/17/11

Questions Every American Should Be Asking, 5/17/11

ConocoPhillips CEO Latest To Flirt With Extortion, 5/17/11

Questions Every American Should Be Asking, 5/17/11

ConocoPhillips CEO Latest To Flirt With Extortion, 5/13/11

Questions Every American Should Be Asking, 5/13/11

U. S. Violates Human Rights of Citizens, 5/5/11

Welfare Queen Exxon Mobil Profits Up 69%, 4/29/11

llegal Immigrants 1,000,000 - Immigration-Bigots Zero, 4/23/11

My Own Skewed View, 4/21/11

Lies, Damned Lies & Opinions, 4/15/11

You Might Be A Hypocrite, If…, 4/13/11

In Defense of Christianity, 4/7/11

A Matter of Perspective, 4/6/11

Can’t Be a Progressive Anymore, 4/5/11

Faux Emergencies In America, 3/11/11

State Workers "Share In The Sacrifice" Every Day., 2/28/11

Google The Koch Brothers...Just Once!, 2/22/11

If We Did This, We’d Be Fired., 1/21/11

House Oversight Committee Refuses to Oversee The House, 1/17/11

Does The Health Care Bill Really Kill Jobs?, 1/12/11

The Job-Killing What, 1/12/11

John Boehner Cancels Legislative Business, 1/10/11

Fear Sells, 1/9/11

What To Do About The Lying Charlatans?, 1/7/11

More Fun Facts About Health Care in The U.S., 1/6/11

Repeal and Replace This!, 1/5/11

My Other Brother Darrell, 1/4/11

Stock Market Rebound, 1/1/11

If We Were Any Dumber..., 12/31/10

Just Can’t Watch The “Debate” Tonight

I just can’t watch the Tea/GOP “debate” tonight, between the various candidates, quasi-candidates, maybe candidates, no-one-else-is-stupid-enough-to-run candidates, my-book-fees-go-through-the-roof-if-I-say-I-am-a candidates, and all-my-rich-friends-and-other-drunks-say-I-should-run candidates.

Since former New Mexico Governor and serious candidate Gary Johnson was shut out of the debate by CNN, the remaining field will bend over backwards and grab their ankles to:

1. Blame President Obama for everything from the forest fires in Arizona to global warming (which does not exist, but, if it does, it is Obama’s fault.)

2. What they say will be complete pandering garbage, but the underlying message to donors and to the Tea Party will be more important and I can’t watch that either. They will prescribe various cost cutting remedies designed to chart a course toward fiscal health, but no plan will involve inconveniencing their wealthy donors in any way, so:

1. No tax increases on the wealthiest 2% of the population. Why not? Because Pater needs a third  vacation home in the Cayman Islands!

2. Repeal capital gains taxes. Pater died shtupping the maid and they need all of his dough to put into tax sheltered accounts in the Cayman Islands, where they, incidentally, have a third vacation home.

3. No tax increases on mega-corporations. Without that extra cash, how can they pay $multi-million bonuses to rich CEOs, so they can buy that third vacation home and add to their already bulging accounts in the Cayman Islands?

4. allow big businesses to continue shipping American jobs overseas. America demands cheap Nikes, and iStuff, so the former middle class will just have to learn to speak Chinese and greet customers at the WalMart. Mean while, the CEOs of these companies will be relaxing in their third vacation homes in, yes, you guessed it, the Cayman Islands.

5. Repeal recent “job killing” regulations on the Fortune 500 companies. Why should oil companies like BP and Exxon have to follow burdensome safety rules? Goldman & Sachs should again feel free to drum up another ponzi scheme and rake in billions (now sheltered in the Cayman Islands) and give us the bill, just like last time.

6. Continue financing the military-industrial complex, (not the actual soldiers) so that Halliburton, Raytheon, and Blackwater CEOs can take shelter (tax shelter, that is) from the hell that is war in their third vacation homes in the Cayman Islands.

7. Kill “ObamaCare,” to insure a return to the status quo for the mega-pharma/insurance companies. Cayman Islands. Them, not us. Get it?

However, their ideas will uniformly require the rest of us to “share in the sacrifice” and so they will include plans to:

a.    Dismantle Medicare and replace it with coupons that folks over 65 can use to try to buy 30% of a health insurance policy from a private insurer, if they can find a company that will take the risk.

b.   Dismantle Social Security and replace it with…uh…soilent green?

c.    Strip state workers rights to collective bargaining about unnecessary frills like job security, pensions, a safe work place, fair wages, no child labor, no gender, age, racial discrimination, etc.

d.   Increase taxes on the poor and the middle class though great ideas like “the flat tax,” increased sales or excise taxes, gasoline taxes, etc.

e.    Cut funding for Head Start, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, family planning clinics, and block grants for state-run social programs.

f.    No more helping companies that actually make goods in the U.S.A. and employ millions in the middle class, like GM, Chrysler, and green energy start-up ventures. Those jobs should be in Mumbai, where they belong!

As for social legislation I can’t watch because each candi..whatever, will attempt to sound more pious, and replete with family values than their opponents. The family values in questions will undoubtedly involve:

1. Abolishing abortion, contraception, and sex outside of the man-on-top-woman-on-bottom marriage bedroom, the way Jesus had intended it.  Underlying message? A child born of rape or incest could turn up to be the next American Idol or even The Bachelorette!

2. Outlawing all gay marriage, so gays will not start humping barnyard animals. Underlying message (as if the main message was not scary enough)? Just because you never heard of Jesus with a woman doesn’t mean he was gay!

3. Denying that the Founding Fathers ever provided for the separation of church and state and insisting that we acknowledge the U.S. as a Christian Nation.  Note: Mike Huckabee is currently working on this historical revision, which will also include the Midnight Ride (to warn the British) of Paul Revere, the shot Heard Round The World from Concord…New Hampshire, and how the Founding Fathers freed the slaves. All revisions will come complete with the full blessing of Jesus.

4. Sending all illegal aliens back to where ever they came from and building a wall, so they can’t get back in. Underlying message? Jesus, (in addition to not being at all gay, and Founding America) would have wanted it that way.

5. Supporting our troops (with ribbons and stuff), but not with actual money or healthcare or the GI Bill, or jobs when they get home from war. Jesus will go as far as ribbons but we have this deficit that Obama caused, so…

6. arming every American citizen with a gun, or two, or three, so that the gummint (that each candi…whatever wants to lead) can’t tell them what to do (with the exception of above items 1-4 and any other good Christian rule that might come up on Sunday in church).

7. Promoting religious tolerance, as long as the religion is Christian-based.

I also can’t watch because I cringe at how many groups of people these sort-of, kind-of, maybe candidates will piss off tonight. My general read is that there will about 15%-18% of the U.S. population who are so stupid, bigoted, and mean of spirit, that they will cheer on these heroes and therefore will remain psychologically unscathed, after the debate.

The seven whatevers will not be playing to a national audience but rather to a select group of the Tea/GOP in Iowa. Yet the “debate” will broadcast nationally and I believe that it will be recorded.

Although big business will spend billions to support whomever becomes the front-runner and to debrief the public about what the candiwhatevers said tonight, the progressives will have this debate and many, many, many more crazy-assed tasty tidbits of tripe to sound-byte a resounding response.

Are these seven wannabes hoping that they can say dangerously stupid stuff to get nominated and then do a“king’sxIdidn’tmeantosaythatitwasinresponsetoagottchaquestionwhoareyougonnabelievemeorthetapeofmespeaking?” Do they really believe that most Americans have such a short memory? Do they think that they can “advertise” their way out of it, before the general election?

I don’t have an answer to that one, but I just can’t watch the “debate” tonight. Mostly because it is not a debate, but a fashion show to see who can the most out of touch with everything I stand for. And they want to be President of my country. I’ll read the excerpts in installments tomorrow.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo