It's amazing where you find the best people sometimes, L.W.M. They often wind up doing the same things we do for a living, and for the same reasons -- love of the work, desperation, accident, serendipity, an unanticipated talent, the need to take care of an aging parent, you name it. I've even met a few in public office.

Generalizations can be useful, but generally they're odious even when they are useful. ;-)

Don't worry WT. We've still got checks and balances sometimes. All that's needed are . . . competing lobbyists.

Steve Clemons:
http://thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000587.php

Friday, May 6, 2005

This just came to me from a reliable source who knew Freedman two decades ago:

Steve,

Your penultimate post (on Matthew Freedman) triggered long-stored memories.

It was the reference to "rice patties in the Philippines" that triggered my recollection that, during the final years of the Marcos regime, Black Manafort had the Marcos lobbying account.

Matt was one of three guys servicing the account in the field.

US policy was undergoing a dramatic shift at the time. Secretary of State George Shultz had quietly persuaded Ronald Reagan that it was time to ditch the Marcos family -- and the Black Manafort retainer from the Marcos family had been hugely increased in an effort to turn this around.

The USG was discreetly funding the Marcos opposition (including the more sedate opposition group led by Cardinal Jaime Sin and the more radical NAMFREL).

One of Matt's tasks was to attempt to document these connections in hopes that they could be used to drive a wedge into Hill support for the administration policy shift.

It was a time of "battling flacks". Cory Aquino, widow of the opposition leader Benigno Aquino who had been murdered by a Marcos thug earlier that year, had retained none other than Mark Malloch Brown as her Washington lobbyist.

Mark and Matt were frequently in and out of the Philippines in those days, each developing sources and feeding material into the SFRC and the HFAC.

Dick Lugar proved central to this story. Shultz won Lugar's support for dropping the Marcos connection. . .

- - Steve Clemons (quoting an anonymous source)

Hilzoy:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/05/judge-him-by-th.html

May 13, 2008
Judge Him By The Company He Keeps: 1
by hilzoy

In my experience, Steve Clemons' anonymous sources are usually quite reliable. Note that "Black Manafort" is Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly, a previous version of BKSH & Associates.

[...]

Ferdinand Marcos was President of the Philippines from 1965 until 1986. He declared martial law in 1972, after which he ruled as a dictator. He was fantastically corrupt: Transparency International put him second on its list of most corrupt leaders, which is pretty impressive, given the competition. His human rights record was dreadful: one historian puts the number of extrajudicial killings under Marcos at 3,257, and the number of people tortured at 35,000; he was successfully sued for "the tortures and killings of nearly 10,000 Filipinos."

- - Hilzoy, May 13, 2008

http://countrystudies.us/philippines/83.htm

If Marcos had been merely corrupt, his legacy would have been bad enough, but he broke the spell of democracy. The long evolution of democratic institutions, unsatisfactory though it may have been in some ways, was interrupted. The political culture of democracy was violated. Ordinary Filipinos knew fear in the night. An entire generation came of age never once witnessing a genuine election or reading a free newspaper. Classes that graduated from the Philippine Military Academy were contemptuous of civilians and anticipated opportunities for influence and perhaps even wealth. Marcos's worst nightmare came true when Corazon Aquino used the power of popular opinion to bring him down.

- - http://countrystudies.us/philippines/83.htm

Lectures and paces the floor wearing bunny slippers. He sips a screwdriver with a dozen olives in the glass.

For snacks,

after the math class is finished, yippee.

everyone is cordially served blue cheese.

A pi radius square theory is incomprehensible.

Jebbie has a Rhubarb Pie for lunch and dinner.

Dear sysprog?

Where is the recipe for a smelly dead groundhog?

The farm dogs are getting angry and act vicious.

Mike Sultzer. Renzo is enjoyable to read. I bet that commenter is not from Boco Raton, Florida.

The pesky bugs go away, and come again after swishing down the fake powdered orange tangerine juice.

A horse has a swishing tale to swat a horse fly bug. A bug always returns like a "off-topic" and nuisance flea.

Oy! `a shimmy.

Oh, `"off-topic"... It's got to where the show, "Meet The Press" can make a ape, a kangaroo, or a pink flamingo act so "silly"... Where I'm headed the petro-oil cost $6-bucks a gallon. It be wise to ride a cute rhinoceros?

Meet you in a comic strip?

okay. But it's best to wear clothes unless your a monkey, a donkey, a mule, a hippy, or a big nosed alligator who bites the toes. No get up on the back of a elephant though. 'um blow the nose at you when you least anticipate it.

'Um may swat you with a nasty mean tail.

I always felt the argument that the private sector attracted all "the best people" away from public service and politics because of the money was crap. Politics doesn't appeal to the best people, regardless of how much you pay them. Same with the private sector.

;-)

Jimmy can add, subtract and multiply, but dislikes division.

I think he was talking about politics, not math. The politics of division is one thing. When you start subtracting, that's genocide.

Yes, but it all can be done with two input NAND gates. So what? Higher level logical processes are necessary to streamline mental activity.

-- Mike Sulzer

Power is all it takes to make authoritarians of us all. -- L.W.M.

That's the human tendency, yes. An individual can resist the impulse, but it's much more difficult when the stakes are high. Who hasn't, when rushing to meet a deadline, shown a callous impatience with people who aren't moving fast enough. Who hasn't, when faced with the prospect of losing a war, shot deserters, or bombed the enemy's children, all in pursuit of the greater good, of course.

That's why it's always been a good idea to put structural impediments in the way of the authoritarian impulse. Labor unions are set against capitalists who believe that labor is a commodity to be obtained at the lowest price, and bosses who want their employees to mine coal without proper shoring of tunnels, or proper ventilation for toxic gasses. A Constitution puts Congress between the resources of the state and the military powers of a President who believes that war is the solution to every problem, foreign and domestic.

Sometimes these structural impediments fail, but that doesn't make them a bad idea.