"Who the hell is Ronnie Earle" Excellent Esquire Article

[thefloyd]

He's a Texas lawman. Next question: Then why are House majority leader Tom Delay,the Republican party, and some of the biggest corporations in the country so afraid of him?
Today started with lawyers for a big-shot Washington fundraiser and a couple of large corporations who showed up in court for a quick legal version of whining and moaning, asking for a continuance until...well, never would be good.

Then he had three quick staff meetings to plot his strategy for climbing the ladder of evidence to Tom DeLay, the most powerful and vindictive man in Congress.

Now an assistant comes in with a computer printout and Ronnie Earle leans forward to study it. He grins. "Oh, man, that's great." He dials the number for The New York Times. "Kate, this is Ronnie Earle in Austin. I'd like to add a couple of paragraphs if it's not too late." He's tinkering with an op-ed about political corruption and the social fabric of democracy, one of his favorite subjects. "The rules you apply to yourself are the true test of your moral values," it reads. He likes that.
http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2005/050928_mfe_earle_1.html

[skids]

1. Good article. Very interesting.

Only one nitpick. The part about "cocaine cartels" hypothetically coming in and financing legislators to get cocaine legalized.

Sigh. People persist in operating under this contorted logic -- cocaine cartels prefer cocaine illegal. The law is what makes it worth more than a banana.

[necso]

2. A good piece.

Now visualize these corporate tentacles reaching into government everywhere (here and in other countries), conspiring to turn the whole of government to their ends (looting the commons, gouging consumers, overturning regulations, etc).

And visualize the men who act as enablers, expediters, functionaries and defenders of this conspiracy, using whatever practices or pretenses that serve to achieve their ends.

And you have the neocons.

To quote Edward Bernays: "We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."

And therein is the tie-in between marketing/mass-media and the neocons and their corporatist masters: marketing techniques provide the tools to create and sell the neocon-corporatist propaganda -- and the media not only does the selling, it also overwhelms and/or discredits other "viewpoints", like that of the truth -- with corporatists furnishing the money -- and neocons the thuggery.

[beingthere]

3. Terrific article. Don't miss reading whole thing.

Earle for pres

[susu369]

4. Thanks for posting

very informative.

[Momof1]

5. GREAT ARTICLE !!!!!!

I signed on this morning to post it. I figured some one beat me to it.

Ronnie sounds like a Sheriff from the old west, and the shit that Rove did with that Hutchinson case...of course!

I hope they all end up in jail!!

[Dover]

6. GREAT ARTICLE! Thanks for the post.

I'm a Texan and have loved Earle for some time, but still learned a lot about him from this article. QUICK..CLONE HIM! He's a rare breed and an endangered species. Probably only a handful like him left in the world.

[Momof1]

7. COME ON GUYS ! Vote this thread up, it has all the ammo we

need.

[MADem]

10. Yes, you are right, the issues are laid out in very plain and readable

fashion!

[emulatorloo]

8. Excellent Article -- kick and nominated

Thanks for posting it. . .

[Coexist]

9. Wow - very long - and I wish it was longer

great article.

[ourbluenation]

11. does anyone else love that his name is Ronnie Earle?????

makes me giggle

[stevedeshazer]

12. Very interesting piece. Loved this snip...

'Earle started comparing the case to a circus act—every time he looked at the Volkswagen, another clown came out.'

:)

[Momof1]

13. I like this part:

Snip:

And there was nothing Earle could do. When the judge ordered Hammond to produce his records, Hammond asked the Court of Appeals to overrule him. When the Court of Appeals refused, he went to the Court of Criminal Appeals, which also refused. At one point, Earle got so frustrated he got up in court to try to cut through to the essence of the thing. History was repeating itself, he told the judge. Once before, huge corporate interests used their wealth to take over state legislatures and Congress and even the Supreme Court. They were called the robber barons and they had more money and power than the government itself and they changed the laws so they could put their hand in the public's pocket—and the only thing that stopped them was the reform movement that gave Texas the Corrupt Practices Act of 1905, the same law he was trying to enforce now. Because once again the big money powers were trying to stifle the right of the public to know who was buying their politicians—and once again, the fate of democracy rested on the free and independent spirit of Texas. "If we can't tell who is behind these elections," he said, "why do we have elections? Why don't we just let the Texas Association of Business appoint our officials?"

[IndyOp]

14. What's wrong with that idea?

"Why don't we just let the Texas Association of Business appoint our officials?"

The business model (free-market capitalism) bring us all of the good things there are to experience in a human life, so why not let the Business Associations nationwide appoint the officials!

:patriot:

====================================

End :sarcasm:

The major problem with my sarcastic post is that 80% of the students in the school of business at my college (in a red, red state) believe that my post is not sarcasm - just a smart, perfectly obvious idea.

[dooner]

15. Gee Whiz, you mean the guy isn't a crackpot? n/t