More news on the 2002 New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal.
The judge in the James Tobin trial has ordered the New Hampshire Republican party to turn over all documents relating to their internal investigation into the phone-jamming hijinks.
According to this article by the Manchester Union Leader's John DiStaso, state party has turned over some documents in the past but withheld others with various claims of privilege. Judge Philip Mangones now says he wants to see them all by June 30th and he'll determine whether the privileges asserted have merit or not.
--Josh Marshall
Grand jury investigation the Duke's house sale, says the San Diego Union-Tribune. Subpoenas served yesterday. Maybe the Duke is actually in the stir the Ethics Committee can look into it.
--Josh Marshall
According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the FBI has opened a preliminary investigation into the Randy "Duke" Cunningham case.
And there's also a bit more information about why Elizabeth Todd, the woman who set the wildly-inflated price for the home sale, might have done so: apparently she'd never sold a house before in her life. After she helped the Duke unload his first house on Mitchell Wade, Cunningham hired her to help him purchase the $2.55 million new house.
According to California records, helping the Duke buy the second house was Todd's first real estate transaction. Ever.
Commission on a $2.55 million home? Nice first commission.
--Josh Marshall
From this evening's Nelson Report ...
[There is] an increased press and Congressional focus on the so-called “Downing Street Memo”, from the then-head of Britian’s secret service to Prime Minister Blair, stating flatly that President Bush and his top advisors had determined to go to war with Iraq well in advance of playing out the UN process.Such an interpretation is, of course, arguable, as per the Bush/Blair press conference last week, about which you will have read, and will read more tomorrow, given a suddenly large push by more than 100 Hill Democrats. Our point for tonight is that this memo, really a series of memos, has had a strange life...but after a delayed reaction in this country, it seems to be leading somewhere...where, exactly, is the question.
We can report, not as a partisan, but as an observer who happened to be working for a Congressman deeply involved in the Pentagon Papers fight of 1971, that old hands note eerie similarities to the start-up process of questions raised, and the potential for Congress to become more seriously involved.
Two examples of related concerns to the “Downing Steet” memos: DOD Secretary Rumsfeld’s pre-positioning of thousands of troops and large stores of equipment, months before the final decision was made; the top-level White House involvement in the “torture memo” process that led directly to the international humiliation of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, despite internal warnings from then-Secretary of State Powell and Deputy Secretary Armitage.
Add those up, add your own examples, and you will know why you hear conversations in the past couple of days using the “impeachment” word...not as a prediction, this is way too soon and/or extreme for now...but as part of an attempt to measure historic parallels, and to think aloud on how far this process might go. Maybe nowhere? Or, maybe we’re just seeing the beginning of something. We mention it tonight because the conversation is being held less quietly than before, and politics in Washington may be about to get even worse, if you can imagine anything worse.
Passed on without <$NoAd$> comment.
--Josh Marshall
San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Logan Jenkins says: "Duke's done. One way or another, an under-the-table real-estate deal will end his long run in Congress."
--Josh Marshall
With the news today that the boat Randy "Duke" Cunningham lives on down at the yacht club really isn't 'his' yacht but rather a yacht pretty clearly bought for him by a defense contractor getting his help on the appropriations committee, you really have to wonder: How do they think they'll get away with it? And yet, until now he has.
Yeah, I know. Apparently the Duke is 'renting' the boat. But how is it exactly that Mitchell Wade's boat got named the 'Duke Stir' anyway? He's a big John Wayne fan?
In any case, this is one of the things that always surprises me about Washington. There are many members of Congress -- hopefully most, but who knows? -- who are almost comically precise in following all the various rules and regulations about who has to pay for meals or whether some little trinket gift has to be reported. And when you're literal about them the rules are pretty broad and encompassing.
Even folks who get in trouble for campaign finance stuff are often breaking technical rules which, while important, don't go to issues of personal gain for the member of Congress involved. A lot of DeLay's troubles stem from Texas laws about corporate giving in political campaigns in the state.
And then you've got Duke Cunningham who appears to be more or less owned by a defense contractor with business before his committee. I mean, when you add up all we know, it seems like Mitchell Wade basically bought or heavily contributed to buying the Duke luxury homes (albeit, one waterborne) in the district and in Washington. And apparently no one noticed.
It's right out of the 19th century.
--Josh Marshall
Living large, free of charge.
Ever since the story broke Sunday about Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and his uncanny real estate prowess, there've been questions bubbling about just how he affords other aspects of his lavish lifestyle. One question that's popped up again and again was how he can afford to have a 40+ foot yacht as his DC residence.
While in Washington, you see, the Duke resides on the "Duke Stir", a 42-foot, 34-ton yacht docked at the Capital Yacht Club down on the Potomac River.
Well, it turns out that the "Duke Stir" is owned by Mitchell Wade.
In reply to William Finn Bennett, who has the story in this morning's North County Times, Cunningham's office sent an email in which the Duke said: "I am putting information and records together so that you will know how much I pay to stay there, and you will see that everything we've done is appropriate."
I think we're pretty much at checkmate now, aren't we?
--Josh Marshall
Tomorrow on page A9 in the Post: Republicans fumble and quarrel over how to find an exit strategy on Social Security. Moderates say pull out the troops; wingers say keep pushing till the job gets done.
--Josh Marshall
Hasty Hastert Rebukes Duke!
From the AP ...
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., told reporters Wednesday he'd seen the allegations and that's why the committee was needed. "We need to get the ethics committee up and running," he said.
It seems we may be in free-fall mode right now. But in case the Duke flames out before the Ethics Committee can get the shutters open, there's always Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH).
--Josh Marshall
Uh-boy. I don't know why or how. But MZM, Inc. (the defense contracting company owned by Randy "Duke" Cunningham's real estate sugar daddy Mitchell Wade) is awful deep into Rep. Virgil Goode (R) of Virginia.
Earlier we told you about MZM's outsized giving to Goode in the 2004 election cycle.
But check out their giving so far this year. In the 2006 election cycle MZM employees have made a total of 23 contributions for a total of $34,625.
Every dollar went to Rep. Goode.
What's up with that?
Late Update: This blog says the stats I was looking at missed a bunch of other contributions from the wives of MZM execs.
Even Later Update: Just a note to be clear on Rep. Goode. By the standards that prevail in Washington today, nothing I've seen says he's done anything wrong. And I want to be clear that the stats and contribution numbers I've highlighted tonight don't prove or even really suggest that he has (again, by the rather frail ethical strictures that prevail in Washington today). What I am noting is that MZM Inc. seems to have a real problem playing by the rules. And because of that, the members of Congress who they're heavily courting (like Goode) probably bear a real close look.
It Just Don't Get Later Than This Update: We hear that MZM's interest in Rep. Goode probably stems from the fact that the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center is located in his district. Our attention is directed to the recently-released Base Realignment and Closure Report for more insight on what's up.
--Josh Marshall
I realize I may have been a bit hasty in assuming that Randy "Duke" Cunningham's real estate escapades weren't necessarily tied to statecraft.
It seems that twice last year the Duke visited the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on the dime of Ziyad Abduljawad.
Abduljawad is the founder and chairman of PLC Land Company, what The Hill calls, "a multi-million dollar real estate company in Cunningham’s district."
--Josh Marshall
That's interesting.
This blog points out that MZM, Inc. defense-contractor-cum-real-estate-agency throws a decent amount of money around. And not just to Randy "Duke" Cunningham. A decent amount of it goes to Rep. Virgil Goode (R) of Virginia.
In fact, when you look at this chart at OpenSecrets, you'll see that the employees of MZM, Inc. gave Goode $48,551 in the last election cycle.
That's a helluva lot of money for one member of Congress from one small company. The next runner-up was McDermott International. And they gave only about a quarter of that amount ($12,750). When I first found this out I figured that Goode must also be on Defense Appropriations, like the Duke.
But it turns out he's not. He's on the Ag subcommittee, which makes sense for his district, but wouldn't seem to have much appeal to a defense contractor. But he's also on the Subcommittee on Science, State, Justice and Commerce. And that must be what makes him such a favored fellow.
As long-time readers know, Goode's a good guy on Social Security. But MZM, Inc. sounds like an operation that plays fast and loose. And it really sounds like Virgil Goode's their friend.
(ed.note: We hear some employees from MZM, Inc. are already starting to talk. So we may well know a lot more about this story quite soon. And one other thing, does prima facie evidence of a bribe in exchange for favorable treatment on contracting assignments get you a day before the Ethics Committee? Just asking.)
--Josh Marshall
Many of you will already have noticed the story in the LA Times about the bonanza Sen. Stevens (R) pulled off in his own real estate deal. Says the lede of the Times piece: "Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) made $822,000 last year from the sale of a controversial real estate investment with an Anchorage developer who had obtained a huge federal contract with his help."
This and the CunningScam story led one TPM Reader to suggest that it may not be low interest rates so much as high-rolling Republican members of Congress who are responsible for the nation's real estate boom.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader BL helpfully sends in this list of what other members of Congress failed real estate speculator Mitchell Wade gave money to.
I guess in the case of Mr. Wade we should make clear that the aforementioned list is of political contributions rather than personal cash gifts.
Just wanted to be clear ...
(ed.note: Scanning the list, looks like all Republicans from the House. But there is that $2,000 contribtion to "Rockefeller, Jay". Hmmm.)
--Josh Marshall
TPM scoops local paper on CunningScam story!
In this morning's paper, The San Diego Union-Tribune reports what TPM reported last night -- that the broker (and her family) who arranged for defense contractor Mitchell Wade to buy Rep. Cunningham's house for that inflated price has been a Cunningham campaign contributor to the tune of $11,500.
That said, the Union-Tribune story by Marcus Stern -- who broke the story on Sunday -- is excellent and nails down pretty much all the remaining loose ends which might have given any doubt what sort of 'transaction' this really was.
On the key point, was there any reason to believe that the Cunningham house had a fair market value of $1,675,000?
Stern: "A Copley News Service review of the comps for Cunningham's neighborhood during the approximate time of the sale show an array of houses of vastly different sizes and views selling for $700,000 to $1.7 million. This indicates that Todd might have set the price at the high end of the range when she set it at $1,675,000. However, the eight months it languished on the market and its subsequent sale for $975,000 during a seller's market suggest a value closer to the low end, according to real estate professionals interviewed for this article."
I'd say that passage makes Stern almost as generous as our man Mitchell Wade.
Remember, Todd set the value at $25,000 under what was apparently the highest priced home in Cunningham's entire neighborhood. And that was from a list of houses "of vastly different sizes and views." So Todd, it seems, actually went to some lengths to come in just under the laugh test mark. But even then, not really.
Another point to keep in mind, as many readers have reminded us over the last few days, is that the San Diego real estate market has been positively on fire in the last couple years. Indeed, Stern quotes another realtor saying that residential real estate properties were going up about 20% a year at the time this whole scam went down.
So even though the house eventually sold for $975,000 close to a year later, it seems likely that its fair market value at the time Cunningham sold it was well below that.
And one final point from the Stern article in the San Diego paper. As we've noted, real estate agent and Cunningham campaign contributor Elizabeth Todd put together this list of comps to justify the inflated price. As Stern notes, the "next step in a normal arms-length transaction would have been [for the purchasor, i.e., Wade] to have a Realtor or appraiser drive by the houses to see if the house being purchased was more like houses at the upper end of the range or more like houses at the lower end of the range."
But apparently Wade made no effort whatsoever to ascertain if the price he was paying for the house had any relation to its actual value. No other real estate agent, no appraiser, nothing. He went ahead on bought it -- apparently, for cash.
This story leaves little doubt that this thing was all a set-up: Mr. Wade gave Rep. Cunningham an unreported gift of upwards of a million dollars, a transaction to which Elizabeth Todd was almost certainly the knowing, shall we say, handmaiden.
Read Stern's story and see if there's any other way to interpret the facts.
Next, question: what other businesses are the Todds involved in?
--Josh Marshall
More on Elizabeth Todd, the San Diego real estate broker who set the wildly-inflated price which defense contractor Mitchell Wade paid for the then-home of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R).
A local paper -- the North County Times -- confirms a detail we've been trying to nail down for much of the day.
As earlier reports have noted, Todd was paid nothing to set that inflated price. But that isn't the end of the story.
Todd was also the agent of record and bagged a nice commission when Wade later resold the house for $975,000 -- a $700,000 loss. More importantly, she was also the agent for the new house that the Cunninghams turned around and bought with the $1,675,000 Wade paid them for their old house. And the new place went for a cool $2,550,000.
Now, I don't know just what sort of commission Todd would have gotten for sales like that. But I figure it would be a tidy sum. And it sounds like a decent incentive to make sure the whole three-way transaction went off without a hitch.
--Josh Marshall
If you've been following the brouhaha over Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's amazingly fortunate recent experiences in the residential real estate market you'll know that a real estate broker named Elizabeth Todd was the one who arranged the transaction between Cunningham and defense contractor Mitchell Wade. And, most importantly, she's the one who chose the highly-questionable price for the sale.
In his statement to the press yesterday, in referring to Todd's role in the matter, Cunningham claimed that Wade had "received comparables from an independent source establishing the value of the home."
But how 'independent' was Todd?
As we told you this morning, Roll Call reported that Todd had contributed $3000 to Cunningham's campaign ("Friends of Duke Cunningham") in the 2001-2 cycle.
But after our own review of the records that seems to seriously understate the level of the Todd family's giving.
From July 1997 to May of 2004, the Todd family gave $11,500 in campaign contributions to the Duke's campaigns.
When I say 'family', I'm referring to Elizabeth, her husband Whitney Todd and someone named "Richard B. Todd" who we'll go out on a limb and say is related to them since he lists the same PO Box and is a 'consultant' for the Todds' company.
More to follow.
--Josh Marshall & Kate Cambor
Cunningham Home-gate story takes dramatic turn!
DeLay vouches for Cunningham's integrity at afternoon presser!
--Josh Marshall
Canned for falsifying data about global warming? Or just reporting back to central command after an assignment in the field?
The lede from AP: "A former White House official and one-time oil industry lobbyist whose editing of government reports on climate change prompted criticism from environmentalists will join Exxon Mobil Corp., the oil company said Tuesday."
--Josh Marshall
Did these three grafs really appear in the Times? (emphasis added)
Social Security now takes in considerably more money than it pays out in benefits. But as legions of baby boomers retire and begin to collect benefits, instead of paying for them, the retirement system will move toward a deficit. Some actuaries have projected that there will be more money going out than coming in by 2017, although full benefits will be payable for some time because of the surplus being accumulated now. But in 2041, Mr. Bush said, the system will be "bankrupt."Actually, beginning around 2041 the system would be able to pay about three-fourths of the benefits due retirees, assuming there are no changes in the formula before then. Critics of Mr. Bush's proposals have said there are enough ways, and enough time, to fix the system without a drastic change like a shift to private accounts.
The president drew a laugh when, in arguing that big changes are needed, he spoke disparagingly of "the paper i.o.u.'s in a file cabinet in West Virginia" that make up the $1.7 trillion Social Security trust fund. He did not point out those i.o.u.'s are Treasury securities backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, and that the government has never defaulted on its obligations.
Credit where credit is due: David Stout in today's paper. <$NoAd$>Lucky for him Okrent's not around anymore.
--Josh Marshall
Still no real pick up of the Randy "Duke" Cunningham home sale of a lifetime story. But when cruising through Google News we did notice that the Duke has this OpEd in today's USAToday supporting the flag burning amendment.
ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero has more on the flag burning amendment today at TPMCafe's Table for One and how close it apparently is to passage in Congress.
Yes, I know, a Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- TPMCafe guest-blog harmonic convergence. But, hey, what can we do.
More later on the Duke's adventures in real estate.
--Josh Marshall
Yet another Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) update ...
San Diego's North County Times has a follow-up on Cunningham's response to the article which appeared over the weekend regarding the questionable sale of his home.
Apparently neither Cunningham or his staff would take calls. But his office did release a statement. And in that statement he cuts to what has to be the central issue: Was $1.675 million a reasonable market value for the house or not?
The fact that it sold again for well under a million dollars less than a year later points strongly to the conclusion that the price was inflated. But was there an appraisal at the <$Ad$>time? And what were the comps?
In his statement Cunningham says: "Mr. Wade was interested in purchasing our home. He received comparables from an independent source establishing the value of the home. He made an offer based on that evaluation. Nancy and I accepted that offer. I have no reason to believe the value of the house was inflated then, and I have no reason to think so today. (emphasis added)"
But other news accounts seem to suggest that the 'independent source' was Elizabeth Todd, who happens to be a major campaign contributor to Cunningham.
Now, just because she gave Cunningham large campaign contributions in the past doesn't mean the comps she assembled weren't legit. And it is probably fair to say that major real estate operators are often contributors to their local member of Congress.
But her independence is certainly open to question.
As far as I know, none of the reports on this question that I've seen have had a look at the actual comps Todd assembled, which suported the $1.675 million purchase price.
Isn't that the next obvious place to go in this story?
--Josh Marshall
We learn today from the Carpetbagger Report that Roll Call has now followed up (sub.required) on the story of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) and the apparent 3/4 million dollar favor he got from a defense contractor with business before two of his committees.
We've been doing some of our own reporting on this. And Roll Call reports one detail we were working: the real estate agent who arranged the deal, though handled it as a non-listed private transaction, also happens to be a major campaign contributor to Cunningham. In the 2001-2 cycle, Elizabeth Todd and her husband donated $3000 to Cunningham's campaign.
And we think there's more still to be told.
--Josh Marshall
Given the central role of Ahmed Chalabi in 'unearthing' documents which triggered the UN oil-for-food scandal, can someone tell me why the New York Times still has Judith Miller covering the story?
I know Judy Miller-bashing is a full-time employment for many media critics and bloggers. But this isn't just a swipe at Miller or a throwaway smack at the paper of record. It's a pretty practical point: I'd actually like to follow what's happening in these investigations.
But if you know any of the history of the last five years it's simply impossible to read Miller's articles on this subject and have any confidence that what you're reading is anything that, by any measure, can be considered the straight story.
You're forced to discount all of it.
--Josh Marshall
This may seem like a totally off-topic post for this site. But twice over the last year I asked readers for advice and suggestions about Tablet PCs, which they liked or didn't like, whether they found them useful, etc. I got a slew of very candid and helpful emails, in which many of you shared your experience and so forth. So I wanted to take a moment to report back on my experience to repay the favor.
If this isn't a subject that interests you, by all means, hope down to the next post for more of the standard TPM fare.
For those of you who aren't familiar with what I'm talking about, a Tablet PC is basically a laptop that is only a screen -- no keyboard. Instead of using a keyboard to input commands and text, you use a special pen that 'writes' on the screen. The computer then interprets your handwriting and converts it into text or simply stores it as your handwriting. In the later case it's pretty much like using a paper tablet. The screen has a virtual lined piece of paper and there you have all your words and doodles and all the rest.
I wanted to get one for two reasons. The main one had to do with how I keep notes. When I was more of a full-time reporter back in the earlier part of this decade I had a whole system in place for how I took my reporting notes. I typed them all into Word documents as I did the reporting. Any other system I found unworkable since it's critical to be able to do searches back through what are often copious notes.
But I would still find myself writing a lot of my notes out in longhand on real paper tablets. And more and more so in recent years. The problem was that after a few days all that information was pretty much lost to me because there was no ready way to access it.
So for that and related reasons I wanted to see if there was some way for me to take longhand notes -- in a way that really felt and functioned like taking notes on a scratch pad or tablet -- that I could save and later access electronically.
The other reason was specific to TPM. I still haven't really gotten around to it as much as I'd like. But I've wanted to do more on the site with posting documents -- often public records. And what's helpful is to be able to actually mark them up to highlight points of interest for readers. So again, my interest in having a way to be able to mark-up or write on electronic documents -- images, pdfs, etc.
I got hundreds of emails from readers. And from a mix of their advice and my own research I decided to get the Motion Computing 1400. Some manufacturers make Tablets with keyboards that you can swing into place when you need to use one. But Motion specializes in 'slate' tablets, that is, just a screen that you write on. No keyboard. (You can of course attach one separately.) From what I could tell, and from the majority of readers told me, when it comes to slates, Motion is really the premier designer and manufacturer.
(I bought mine from Infocater, which seems to be the best place for buying these things by mail order.)
So how did it go?
Well, in so many words, the technology more than exceeded my expectations. And that's probably both a comment on the particular hardware I bought and the state of the technology in general. Over the last four or fives months mine has become completely integrated into almost all the work I do. And I can't imagine not using one.
Having used one for more almost half a year now, I'm actually quite surprised that the technology hasn't been more widely adopted -- a factor, I suspect, of computer economics which I'll try to touch on in another post.
I don't think I'd ever want to have a Tablet PC as my only computer. When I write at length I almost always use a keyboard. I'm writing on a desktop with a keyboard right now, for instance. The simple fact is that I can write a lot faster on a keyboard than I can with pen and paper. So when I'm writing a post or working on an article I usually use the keyboard. But for taking notes on a phone conversation or while I'm reading a book or an article or for editing my own writing, I now invariably use the Tablet.
One question I had before I got one is just how well it would be able to read my handwriting. If I had to stylize my handwriting in a particular way or write super-neatly, then that would defeat the purpose. In practice, though, the handwriting recognition is almost amazingly good. I don't have the worst hand-writing in the world. But my script is certainly not neat. And it can accurately interpret pretty much everything I write -- without my making any particular effort to write slowly or legibly.
And the key thing is the computer can quite easily search through your hand-written text for a particular word or combination of words. That for me was really the key, reams of handwritten notes that my computer can search through in a split second.
Here, for instance, is an example from the notes I took for the review I wrote of David McCullough's new book 1776 in The New Yorker. This is probably neater than my normal note-taking handwriting. But stuff that's far more of a scrawl the thing can easily get through.
The other thing I find the Tablet most useful for is editing my own posts or columns. In the past I would always have to print them out and then work over them with a pen. Now I just do it all on the Tablet.
Most manufacturers sell Tablets mainly through 'vertical' markets, to sales forces, hospitals, etc. So it's actually quite difficult to find more than one of them on display on at your local computer store. Often there aren't any. And without getting your hands on one it's hard to shell out the money since you really don't know how or how well the things work. I think that's one of the main reasons they haven't taken off yet with consumer and non-specialist business purchasers.
(ed.note: I hope it goes without saying. But in case not, I paid full freight for the machine I described in this post. And I received no payment, preference or inducement to write any of the above. Strictly my candid opinion.)
--Josh Marshall
I'm really curious to see whether this story (noted below) about Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) gets much pick up or not in the press.
From the plain facts of the matter, as reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune yesterday, it seems like there's a pretty strong case that this defense contractor, Mitchell Wade, gave a congressman a personal gift of almost three-quarters of a million dollars and hid it in the form of home sale. And this was a congressman who was in a position to -- and by his own account apparently did --help the contractor secure numerous defense and intelligence contracts valued in the tens of millions of dollars.
That sounds like sort of a big deal, doesn't it?
So far Google News shows no pick ups for the story, only a reprint in a paper from just north of San Diego.
--Josh Marshall
Misleading at best ...
On our sister site yesterday, David Gelber called readers attention to a piece by Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books in which Danner writes that "Never in my experience has frank mendacity so dominated our public life."
(The piece is actually an edited version of a recent commencement address.)
There was a good example of the point on the front page of yesterday's Washington Post, in an article by Dan Eggen and Julie Tate.
The upshot of the piece is fairly straightforward. In the push for the renewal of the Patriot Act, the president and other administration officials have been publicly and volubly claiming that the administration's tough anti-terrorism tactics have resulted in some 400 terrorism-related indictments, with more than half of those leading to convictions.
Only, as Eggen and Tate point out, that's not true.
The president is telling people his administration has nabbed some 400 terrorists. But actually the overwhelming majority of the cases don't involve terrorists in any way. They're people who got swept up in this or that terrorist investigation and then got nabbed for some immigration violation or false statement to investigators.
In the words of the Post: "Among all the people charged as a result of terrorism probes in the three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, The Post found no demonstrated connection to terrorism or terrorist groups for 180 of them." Most of the remainder had nothing to do with al Qaida but were rather narco-traffickers, Palestinians accused of armed violence against Israel, Rwandan war criminals and others.
For the details, see the piece. The point though is that the president is out on the hustings spouting what in common English we call a 'lie'. And yet the best the Post writers can do is say that the president's "numbers are misleading at best."
This isn't so much a criticism of the writers who wrote a thorough and important piece, or even the Post which placed it on A1.
But it does illustrate on aspect of Danner's point: Public mendacity, statements meant to deceive the public on matters of great import, have become so commonplace that they now barely hold any capacity to shock. And the best journalism can do is issue anemic phrases like "misleading at best."
A phrase which is, in this case, itself misleading at best.
--Josh Marshall
It's always curious how some people succeed wildly in one line of business and then fail just as miserably in another.
A fine example seems to be that of Mitchell Wade.
Wade is the owner of MZM, Inc., a defense contractor, which says on its website that it has "Offices in Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, Md.; Charlottesville, Va.; Tampa, Fla.; Martinsville, Va.; San Diego, Calif.; Seoul, South Korea; Stuttgart, Germany; and Baghdad, Iraq."
Back in November 2003, Wade was apparently looking for a house to purchase and 'flip' in the San Diego area. So he purchased the San Diego home of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R), a prominent member of the House Appropriations Committee's Defense Subcommittee, for $1,675,000.
But pretty much from the start Wade dealt himself deep in the hole because he turned around and put it right back up for sale at about the same price. As you can see, here Wade severely constrained his ability to profit from reselling the house because he was offering to sell it for the same price he'd just bought it for.
But things only got worse from there.
As this article in today's San Diego Union-Tribune explains, the house sat unbought and unoccupied for 261 days. And Wade had apparently seriously overestimated the value of the property.
When the place finally sold, it went for only $975,000, thus saddling the unfortunate Wade with a loss of some $700,000.
I guess it goes without saying that that experience probably soured Wade on the real estate game for good.
But at the same time as all this was happening, according to the article, Wade's defense contracting business started going like gang-busters. In the words of the article, "Wade, who had been suffering through a flat period in winning Pentagon contracts, was on a tear – reeling in tens of millions of dollars in defense and intelligence-related contracts."
(Cunningham is also a member of House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.)
Now, it seems some pesky government do-gooder types are asking whether something might not have been quite above board about all this. When the Union-Tribune tried to get in touch with Wade, it turned out he was "traveling without access to a telephone." But MZM official Scotty Brumett explained that -- contrary to what I had assumed -- the purchase was not part of a money-making venture but the company's effort to raise its profile in the San Diego area: "We were looking at expanding our company presence in San Diego. We looked at the property and thought it would work for us. But after we bought it, we realized that it did not meet our security or our corporate needs."
Meanwhile, Cunningham told the paper that "My whole life I've lived aboveboard. I've never even smoked a marijuana cigarette ... I feel very confident that I haven't done anything wrong."
Cunningham told the paper he couldn't discuss the contracts he'd helped MZM land because they were "very, very classified."
--Josh Marshall
There's a very apt analysis at Gadflyer of the Times piece today on life expectancy and how it affects the Social Security debate. Spot on. Disappointing work.
--Josh Marshall
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