Update on Don Siegelman, a curb to Presidential power? Steele for RNC head? unfazed K Street just changes the players, the MLK Brand, public teachers w/fake SSNs, local govts feeling the hurt

1)Time magazine has an update on the disturbing case of Alabama governor Don Siegelman. If you’ve not been following this story lately, it’s worth a look, as it is one of the most egregious cases of political-turned-into-criminal take downs I’ve ever seen.

Next month in Atlanta, a federal court will hear the high-profile appeal of former Alabama governor Don E. Siegelman, whose conviction on corruption charges in 2006 became one of the most publicly debated cases to emerge from eight years of controversy at the Bush Justice Department. Now new documents highlight alleged misconduct by the Bush-appointed U.S. attorney and other prosecutors in the case, including what appears to be extensive and unusual contact between the prosecution and the jury.

2) A paper in NC wonders if Presidential power, which has metastasized over the last few years, will be curbed in an Obama administration. The author sees in Emanuel’s decision to leave Congress to be Obama’s Chief of Staff confirmation that no job in Congress would compare with power in the Executive branch.

Read the rest ->

Presidential power has only further increased since [Andrew] Jackson. The need for government to act quickly in times of crisis, the centering of the president as the icon of national identity in popular culture and the executive branch’s control of information, among other factors, have vested a power in the presidency that far surpasses that of the other branches.

Thus it becomes not surprising to see one of the most powerful members of Congress [Emanuel] agree to become a White House staffer.

THE MORE SERIOUS QUESTION IS WHETHER A TRUE BALANCE OF POWER can be reconstructed. It needs to be. The Framers believed that an imbalance of power among the branches would inevitably lead to abuse and incompetence. The last eight years have proved them right. The Bush administration made constant claims to unlimited power that Congress had neither the will nor the ability to turn back. The resulting morass is history.

Whether an Obama administration will work to restore the constitutional balance is only speculation. The challenge is considerable. Checks and balances are inefficient, and ceding power to a coordinate branch is not easy, particularly when there are so many dire challenges facing the nation. But Emanuel’s choice to accept the chief of staff position rather than continue in Congress vividly demonstrates how much the need to repair the constitutional structure is in order.

I see this question as a moral one in addition to a constitutional one. I wonder if Obama will return any presidential power “to the people.” Hmmmmm.

3) Realclearpolitics has a transcript of Michael Steele announcing his bid for RNC chair. Now THAT would be interesting.

STEELE: I want the gig. I’m ready, I’m ready to lead this party. I think we’ve been kind of wandering and doubting ourselves for far too long. And I think this past election was the culmination of that self-doubt which has to end.

We have a message, I think, of empowerment and ownership and opportunity that resonates United States with Americans. We just need to get back to.

So, we could have an AA RNC chief, and AA president and de facto head of the Democratic party and ???? as DNC chief? Now that should make for some very entertaining racial politics.

4) The WaPo has a piece today about the ever-not-changing work of K Street. Apparently lobbyists see an incoming Obama administration as a reason to re-arrange the deck chairs rather than change how they do business. Out with republican head lobbyists and in with the democratic. Sigh. Oh, yeah, don’t forget the nepotism. Gotta have nepotism.

“Barack Obama campaigned on change. Well, change is good for the lobbying business,” said Ed Rogers, who was an aide to President Ronald Reagan and whose firm has represented such clients as Citigroup, Pfizer and Raytheon. “People will need the expertise and guidance more in the next year than they have in the last five.”

Many of the issues Obama has expressed an interest in tackling early, such as health-care policy, energy and taxes, have broad implications for some of the lobbying world’s most free-spending corporate clients. Patrick Von Bargen, a former chief of staff to Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and aide to William Donaldson, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he joined Quinn Gillespie this month with the expectation that his knowledge of clean energy issues would be a valued commodity.

“People who have labored in Democratic vineyards for years are familiar with the people involved, but also with the substantive issues, and how Democrats approach those issues,” he said.
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Ron Kaufman, a Republican lobbyist at Dutko Worldwide who served as a close adviser to President George H.W. Bush and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, said he cannot recall a better time to be a Democratic staff member looking for work. But he said his firm has always tried to keep both sides of the aisle covered so it does not have to panic during shifts in political control.

“The only change for us is that the Democrats are now the varsity squad, and I’ve been demoted to the junior varsity,” Kaufman joked.
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Steve Elmendorf, a former top adviser to former House minority leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), said that he understands why Obama took that approach, but that he does not believe lobbyists will be turned away. “I don’t think they’ve said ‘We’re not going to talk to lobbyists,’ ” Elmendorf said. “They are going to talk to stakeholders. The stakeholders are all going to be represented by lobbyists. It’s not going to be a black-and-white thing.”

Elmendorf is one of several who foresee a boon for the industry. A new Democratic administration and an increasing Democratic tilt in Congress means more activist government, he said. “That means businesses will have the potential for more things to happen to them. If they think that’s coming, they will be hiring people to figure out how to contend with that.”

BO has said he doesn’t want lobbyists to have unfettered access. But I think this stand is likely to quietly die a “death of 1000 cuts” as the collective power of all these lobbyists and their industries / interest groups do everything they can to preserve their influence. This could be very interesting to watch. Get out your hypocrisy-meters. And get out the hip-waders.

5) Newser has a story about the MLK family wanting its piece of the action from MLK / Obama merchandising. Now, as controllers of the MLK estate, etc, it is within the family’s rights to look after its interests. But scurrying after merchandising dollars strikes me as tacky. Of course, it is understandable that the family wants to protect its brand Of course, I don’t personally think of MLK as a BRAND, but I guess that’s a matter of perspective?

The family of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is demanding a share of the proceeds from the sudden wave of T-shirts, posters and other merchandise depicting the slain civil rights leader alongside Barack Obama.

Isaac Newton Farris Jr., King’s nephew and head of the nonprofit King Center in Atlanta, said the estate is entitled to hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees _ maybe even millions.

“Some of this is probably putting food on people’s plates. We’re not trying to stop anybody from legitimately supporting themselves,” he said, “but we cannot allow our brand to be abused.”

MLK Brand??

6) One of the justifications for “undocumented workers” has long been that those people do the jobs “American’s don’t want to do.” Does that include teaching? Perhaps so, because the Dallas public schools have been hiring people without SSNs and arbitrarily assigning one to them “until they receive a valid number.” Of course, there’s a chance those SSN numbers might be REAL to someone else. The Dallas News has the story:

Years after being advised by a state agency to stop, the Dallas Independent School District continued to provide foreign citizens with fake Social Security numbers to get them on the payroll quickly.

Some of the numbers were real Social Security numbers already assigned to people elsewhere. And in some cases, the state’s educator certification office unknowingly used the bogus numbers to run criminal background checks on the new hires, most of whom were brought in to teach bilingual classes.
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The investigative report, obtained by The News through a records request, found “that the inappropriate procedure of assigning false SSNs has been systemic for several years” within DISD’s alternative certification program, which prepares new teachers for state certification when they don’t have traditional credentials.

A call Thursday to DISD’s alternative certification office was not returned. In recent years, DISD has hired people from various countries, including Mexico and Spain, to deal with a shortage of bilingual teachers.
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In July, the district discovered that 26 of the false numbers were in use after matching DISD employee Social Security numbers with the Social Security Administration database. The numbers were already being used in Pennsylvania. DISD officials did not know Thursday whether the practice had caused problems for anyone holding the legitimate numbers.

Anyone out there having received an IRS notice of unpaid taxes on undeclared income might want to keep an eye on this story.

7) Still don’t see how the damaged economy will touch you? This article in the Christian Science Monitor should help clear THAT up somewhat.

If the states had their way, they would like Congress to give them help in four areas: help with the growing number of people applying for Medicaid, more funding for the rising unemployed, help with the growing number on food stamps, and an injection of funds to jump-start infrastructure projects that are ready to go.

In my area, the local schools have requested and gotten substantial increases each year. Since I live in a “progressive” area, increases are regularly sought for a variety of things: sidewalks (good), artwork around a remote public works building (?), community gardens (are you kidding me?), stormwater run-off infrastructure, another municipal pool (we only have 3) with glass pebbles inlaid on the floor, and more money for roads (well, . . . ) even as development in the form of housing continues unabated, with taller and taller and “greener and greener” condos going up

Oh, and we don’t allow “big box” stores in my community. They’re so, so, tacky and cheap, you know. So everyone drives over the county line to shop at Target and the brain trust here loses out on what remaining retail sales taxes are available. Even as more housing is built, property taxes increase because new housing does not pay for itself in terms of schools, sewer, water, and other city services – at least not here.
And the local university (isn’t there always one in a “progressive” town?) often buys up tracts of land, taking it off the tax rolls. So, as the university uses more services, it also cuts available tax funds to the town. And the university has a multi-billion dollar endowment. . .

Sigh.