Newsweek: Better vetting is exactly what the Dean campaign needs....

[blm]

Newsweek article just out gives an overview why Dems should be a bit more cautious in setting full sail with Dean.

In fairness and in all honesty, I think Dean may have been set up by the Koch brothers on the Vermont Yankee sale. They are BFEE loyalists who turned on McCain, too, putting a million dollars into anti McCain ads, after initially supporting his first campaign.

If Dean doesn't open those files, you can be sure that the Koch brothers will reveal the copies of the Entergy paperwork in a more damning way.


http://www.msnbc.com/news/1002289.asp?vts=12920031446

>>>>>>>
Better vetting is exactly what the Dean campaign needs as it surges in New Hampshire. Now that Dean has put 30 points between himself and onetime front runner John Kerry, his candidacy is coming under intense scrutiny—from the media, the GOP and his Democratic rivals. In an election stacked with early primaries, the season of good will toward men is rapidly giving way to the season of attack politics, opposition research and detective work.
>>>>>>

Among the papers under lock and key, NEWSWEEK has learned, are the records of Dean’s meetings with utility executives about the controversial sale of a Vermont nuclear plant to Entergy Corp. Dean’s lawyers refused to release the papers to an environmental group last year, citing “executive privilege”—an echo of Vice President Dick Cheney’s defense of his energy-task-force meetings. “His sealing the records makes Cheney look accessible,” says one aide to a rival.

        Whatever his foes dig up, Dean faces far more formidable opposition if he wins the nomination. The biggest professional research team is based inside the Republican National Committee in Washington, where some 40 media and research staff have spent 10 months compiling extensive records on the Democratic hopefuls.

        Long before Weblogs and campaign jets, political hacks understood what separates the winners from the losers. Robert Penn Warren’s old-style oppo researcher in “All the King’s Men” knew it only too well: “For nothing is lost, nothing is ever lost,” he says. “There is always the clue, the cancelled check, the smear of lipstick, the footprint in the canna bed... ” Whether or not Dean has locked up his checks, he’d better learn to live with the detectives on his doorstep.

[bleedingheart]

1. How about this strategy...Dean releases records when Bush I, Bush II and

Reagan release theirs...

[blm]

3. Sure. But when was the media ever fair and balanced?

And it might not matter, because Koch bros. likely have what they need from their end.

This follows exactly what BushInc. has done in the past. Figure out who plans to run in the next election and go after them before they even realize they are being gone after. Atwater first went after Clinton in 1989, days after Poppy took office.

[Scott Lee]

8. So turn your back on the guy with the gun. Good plan.

[blm]

10. Uh...who am I turning my back on?

I always look ahead and around corners when it comes to the BFEE. You'd have to be an idiot to discount what they do.

Does Gov. Schwarzenegger ring a bell?

[KittyWampus]

20. Definately, They Knew Dean Was Power Hungry-Dean Went Shopping

for possible support in the last primary and Gore managed to nip it in the bud... And Dean had to cover his ass with Vermont voters who were upset he wasn't spending enough time at home taking care of business- especially in his last year....

This was reported in the NYTimes today.

[blm]

23. Huh? Do you have a link for that?

I'd like to see it because I think this Entergy thing is a BIGGER deal since it involves the Koch brothers who are TRUE BFEE.

[polpilot]

21. How about this strategy...Dean & Trippi continue to do it their way.

Dean '04...

[HFishbine]

2. Clinton Sealed his Gubenatorial Records?

Also from the article:

In 1988, Lee Atwater tasked a bright young man named James Pinkerton to delve into the Massachusetts records of Michael Dukakis. “Pink” discovered, among other things, that the state gave prison furloughs, now and then, to convicted murderers—one of whom was Willie Horton. Three years later, Bill Clinton made sure many of his files were in the protective custody of his former chief of staff in downtown Little Rock, Ark.

[blm]

12. Yeah, I didn't know he did it so informally, though.

Is putting the files with your chief of staff the same as sealing them? Maybe Isikoff was trying to make it sound worse?

[Octafish]

4. BFEE ties in with major DEMs through Jackson Stephens.

Jackson Stephens is the Arkansas billionaire who gave Sam Walton seed money to start up Walmart. He also invests in politicians, like George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush. In between, he supported the campaign of Bill Clinton. Stephens also introduced the people behind BCCI to Jimmy Carter, Bert Lance and Clark Clifford — along with the well-heeled in the Reagan-Bush cabal. The Koch family and Stephens seem to have crossed paths, too, through Indonesia, of all places.

Clinton's Indonesian connection

By Bill Vann

WHEN THE Republican-led Congress reconvenes next month, it is certain to initiate investigations into the connections between the Clinton administration and the Lippo Group, the multibillion dollar Indonesian-based holding company headed by Mochtar Riady.

SNIP...

(Bill Clinton) first came into contact with James Riady, the eldest son of Lippo's founder, in 1977. Clinton, then 30, was the Arkansas attorney general and preparing his first run for governor. Riady had been sent by his father to work in Little Rock with Jackson Stephens, who ran the largest investment firm outside of WallStreet. The latter played a major role in financing Clinton's Arkansas campaigns.

It is not known to what extent the Riadys aided Clinton's political career in Arkansas, but by the time he decided to run for the presidency in 1991, the Indonesian billionaires had already become significant financial backers. Between his first presidential campaign and the most recent, the family and its agents funneled more than 1 million dollars into Clinton's election funds. Other money went to help finance the campaigns of more than two dozen congressional candidates, most of them Democrats.

SNIP...

The record also reveals calls to Entergy Corp., a US company which served as a partner with Lippo in a $1 billion dollar power plant contract with the Chinese government. Brown and the Commerce Department strongly pushed Beijing to accept the deal.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/public_html/prioriss/iwb12-16/riady.htm

[blm]

5. I want to make it clear that I do not think Dean is corrupt

unlike those who spread the lie that Kerry is corrupt. If anything, I think the Koch brothers may have set up an 'appearance' problem issue. I don't know, I just know how BFEE operates and part of that is compromising anyone you think may challenge you in the future. SOP.

[Eloriel]

6. That's good of you

I really mean it. Very pleased by your fair comment.

I don't think $$ is important to Dean except he famously likes to pinch it. So, IMO his decision to simply let a judge decide what gets released a brilliant one. If it bites him, he'll have to deal with it. My guess is it won't, but we'll see.

[flpoljunkie]

15. My question on having judge pour thru files, this will take a long time..

Won't it? Certainly, until after the initial Democratic primaries. Dean could release the files today, if he chose to do so without endangering the personal privacy of any of his constituents.

This reminds me of the outing by the White House of Joe Wilson's wife, Valery Plame, as a CIA operative. Bush could demand that everyone in the White House, including Cheney and his crowd, sign a statement that they did not leak Plame's name to Novak.

Instead, he lets the Justice Department conduct, what appears, to be a neverending investigation.

[blm]

17. That's exactly what I see. The TOO LATE scenario....

whereas Dean becomes the nominee and this all hits the fan and used to mute criticisms of Bush and Cheney and bring all the tickets down in competitive districts.

[Octafish]

13. Absolutely.

The sophisticated members of the BFEE hijack ideology more than airliners. The brothers Koch started the Cato Institute that helps spread a poisoning of the mind that is neo-fascism. People under its thrall may not even know how it influences their lives or even recognize its existence — especially when having to live with the consequences of all the other poisons put out by American neo-fascists.

BTW: Just as the American people, most politicians are innocent, yet unaware. They should discover what treason members of the monied class are capable of doing, from the attempted coup against FDR to benefitting from the criminal largesse of Reagan and Bush 41 and 43 through the looting of the US Treasury and penuring the American middle class.

[blm]

14. Thanks, Octafish. I knew you would see the difference.

They trap pols into things that may appear more innocent to them on the surface until the result is putting their career and reputation on the line.

Poppy had a rep for ensnaring members of his own party even in compromising deals and situations and wrangled votes for Nixon's legislation that way.

[How DU U DU]

7. Better vetting should be required of our current white house inhabitant

No one really vetted him in 2000 and look what it got us.. All the press seemed flattered that he took the time to nickname them, and somehow they forgot that it was their JOB to find out what they could about him..

These people are applying for the most important job in the world, and we apparently are content with a half filled out application and no references.. Would you hire someone who presented to you with such documentation??

There are a few really important things that we need unequivocal answers from the people who would be president.. We are stuck with them for 4 years and we can certainly see how much long term damage can be done by a determined idiot.

[newyawker99]

9. Hi DU U DU!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[blm]

11. That's what I've ben saying for months.

It's extraordinary that so many Dean supporters that I encounter are missing so much information about him.

When I posted some articles from 2002 I had one Deanie tell me that it couldn't have been Dean because he wasn't governor at the time. HEHEH. He swore he left office Jan.2002. Most don't believe that Dean was DLC while governor. Amazing and appalling at the same time.

[Terwilliger]

22. I like your nick

but it reminds me a lot of calculus :D

[NewYorkerfromMass]

16. Dean should say: "Bring it on"

yet he runs and hides his records.

[AP]

18. I guess some Entergy execs admitted they were gay in those letters.

No?

[mitchum]

24. HAHAHAHA!

nice one

[Hep]

19. If true, you have a point.

The sooner this is over, the sooner we can move on.