As I said before, I think the Gale Norton investigation is pretty serious stuff:
The criminal investigation centers on the Interior Department’s 2006 decision to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary. Over the years it would take to extract the oil, according to calculations from Shell and a Rand Corp. expert, the deal could net the company hundreds of billions of dollars.
The story was first reported on September 17 in the LAT and Chicago Tribune (there’s some form of joint operating agreement and they are owned by the same company). The NYT and WSJ did stories on it shortly thereafter.
It is now nearly a week later and the Washington Post has yet to mention aside from an item in one of Howie Kurtz’s blog piece, and a link to an AP piece. This may be why:
Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said he worries “that we are not well-enough informed about conservative issues. It’s particularly a problem in a town so dominated by Democrats and the Democratic point of view.”
To guard against it, he said, “I challenge our reporters and editors with great frequency to look at what is going on across the political spectrum . . . at the extremes, among the rabble-rousers, as well as among policymakers.” He said he pressed the National desk this week to provide more ACORN coverage.
I realize I’ve touched on this before, but it’s remarkable: the Post, in effect, pulled reporters off of a story involving criminal misconduct at the cabinet level involving hundreds of billions of dollars to put more reporters on a story about a gag video involving kids dressed up as pimps and hos. And now we know that the evil ACORN worker who played along with them later spoke to the police about the incident.
It’s Glenn Beck’s world, we’re just living in it.
James F. Elliott
That’s because they’re owned by the same folks.
aimai
We really, really, really need a glen beck style tv show with gongs and incense and fart jokes and conspiracy theories that simply makes hard stuff like cabinet level misconduct easy for hysterical white guys to understand. I wonder why we don’t have one? Oh, that’s right, because Murdoch doesn’t want one.
aimai
Hunter Gathers
The LAT and the Trib are owned by the same company.
DougJ
That’s because they’re owned by the same folks.
I know that. But they have joint operating agreements that even go beyond that.
dmsilev
Both papers are owned by TribCo; a lot of features and so forth get shared. One major downside is that here in Chicago we are “blessed” with Jonah Goldberg’s op/eds.
-dms
DougJ
I added a note that they are owned by the same company.
They actually didn’t consolidate everything immediately, but I see now that they share a Washington Bureau (that was one of the first to get consolidated).
Hunter Gathers
@DougJ: They print each other’s articles all the time. There’s not much difference between the two. They both use SpongeLoad DoughPants, which is why I stopped reading the Trib for anything other than sports anymore. The national stories are the same almost word for word, they use the same shitty pundits, and the editorial boards are both conservative. They are carbon copies of each other.
Hunter Gathers
Fixed.
Brian J
What’s strange is that Brauchli was from the pre-Murdoch era at The Wall Street Journal. When he was selected to lead The Post, a lot of people expected good things. Is this a sign that he’s being forced to answer to higher ups more than others?
cleek
Marcus Brauchli is a world-class idiot.
Balconesfault
If I hear the WaPo called part of the “liberal media” one more time I’m going to have to send someone the combined
workswhines of Richard Cohen.Sanka
Actually, it was several stories about several incidents of corruption at an organization that up until recently was funded with hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money over the years.
And the current president not only a generous political benefactor from said organization, but has extensive ties to this organization going back decades.
But hey, BIRTHERS!
MattF
There’s an unstated assumption in the Post that when an oil company purchases a cabinet secretary, it’s not ‘political’. It’s just patriotic Americans getting good value for their hard earned dollars…
Balconesfault
@Sanka:
Snicker.
Hunter Gathers
@MattF: And besides, the ACORN story has black people involved, which makes it more important than a billion dollar taxpayer ripoff perpetrated by a loyal Bushie (Real American).
cleek
oddly, WaPo’s archive search turns up zero articles which contain the phrase “voter outreach of america” .
an accidental oversight, i’m sure.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
Hmmm, this post is incomplete without the fine analysis of one Brick Oven Bill, resident oil shale expert.
r€nato
that’s fantastic. You know what this means, right? More false-equivalency bullshit. Why stop with the birthers? Let’s give equal time to the flat-earthers and the 9/11 truthers and the moon-landing-was-a-hoax’ers, the LaRouchies, Rev. Fred Phelps and any other nutjob with a misspelled protest sign who can scream louder than everyone else.
Let’s represent the full spectrum of opinions, you fucking tools.
General Winfield Stuck
Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said he worries “that we are not well-enough informed about conservative issues.
Makes perfect sense in the new GOP, where the Bush and his administration have been christened by wingnuts as the greatest libtard disaster since Bill Clinton.
It’s all in the packaging DougJ. The single new and improved conservative issue has to take center stage, that the Obamunist must be destroyed at all costs.
Brick Oven Bill
There are between two and six years of off-shore domestic oil reserves, and then they are gone. In contrast, there are 400 years of domestic shale oil, extractable for approximately $20/bbl. This means that we have far more liquid energy than the rest of the world, and that America will become a hyper-power.
It is good to keep these hydrocarbons protected by the dummies, until this first phase of the era of fossil fuels, and the associated extremes of liberty through which we are living, come to a close. At $50/bbl, the value of this resource is $100 trillion dollars. In the future this oil will be worth much more than $50/bbl.
So be a good Citizen, stay true to the Constitution and its Principles, and smile.
rumpole
I really hate to use ad hominems, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the post is basically run by douchebags. It’s courtier stenography that has to be decoded by an arcane set of rules, written by sanctimonious staff that actually has deluded themselves into believing that they’re performing an “important service.” Instead, what they really do report is how people in positions of power wish to have their interests advanced by the government or on the teevee. That is useful in its way as well, but I for one could live without it.
rock
@Sanka
I’m sorry, was that Halliburton you were talking about?
1) Please document that 100s of millions of taxpayer dollars went to Acorn
2) Please explain why we have not seen similar outrage over the profiteering by Halliburton which overcharged for meals by $161M and also was responsible for improper camp wiring that…you know, just never mind
3) If you can’t see a cabinet level $1T kickback for a job as a bigger story than ACORN….again, just never mind.
r€nato
@Brick Oven Bill:
oil too cheap to meter!
kay
It’s is incredible. Let’s review: former AG of Colorado, member of Bush’s Cabinet, co-founded a conservative environmental advocacy group with Grover Norquist that was a central player in the Abramoff scandal, and, this:
“But the Inspector General for the Interior Department says they rigged contracts, and engaged in illegal moonlighting, drugs, sex and gift-taking from oil company representatives, according to three reports released Wednesday.
The reports revealed startling allegations including that an employee attended a so-called “treasure hunt” in the desert with all expenses paid by an oil producer, and that a former supervisor – who bought cocaine from a colleague then boosted her performance award – had sex with subordinates, and steered government contracts to an outside business where he also worked, Attkisson reports.”
Nah. There’s nothing there.
dmsilev
@Sanka:
You will, of course, have a citation for “hundreds of millions of dollars”. Right?
And even taken at face value, that’s still three or four orders of magnitude less money than what’s involved with Gale Norton’s little gift to the oil companies.
-dms
dmsilev
@The Cat Who Would Be Tunch: Summoned, he arises from the depths.
-dms
James K. Polk, Esq.
@Sanka:
The oil is on public land, giving it away is giving away OUR money.
Polish the Guillotines
Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said he worries “that we are not well-enough informed about conservative issues. It’s particularly a problem in a town so dominated by Democrats and the Democratic point of view.”
WTF? You mean like the way they were so fucking informed about liberal issues during 8 years of Republican domination and Repubilcan point of view?
Balconesfault
@rumpole:
Apparently one of the rules being that the rules only apply when Republicans are in power.
r€nato
This corruption in the Norton-run Dept of Interior is a feature, not a bug of modern conservative philosophy.
By giving away these leases so cheaply, DoI was both ‘getting government off the back’ of these oil companies, as well as maximizing tax revenue since less taxation always leads to more revenue in the long run. Always.
By not getting more money for these leases, the government was also deprived of additional tax revenue which would only lead to bigger government. Has to be drowned in the bathtub, you know.
If there seems to be a glaring contradiction between these two paragraphs, then you must not be a right-winger.
Brachiator
I don’t know of any formal joint operating agreement between the two papers. The Tribune Company, which owns both papers, has often encouraged a “synergy” in which stories in one paper appears in the other. Locally, there was a period when LA Times reporters would appear on Tribune-owned television station KTLA and discuss stories which appeared in the paper, but this arrangement has been quietly dropped in recent months.
The Times also would regularly print stories from the Washington Post. This kind of thing has accelerated greatly as newsrooms lay off staff.
JOAs usually involve the sharing of print, marketing and distribution resources, not editorial content/resources. For example, the LA Times is going to start delivering the conservative/libertarian oriented Orange County Register.
This is insane. I really don’t understand how coverage of a potentially illegal deal has to be put through an ideological filter, or how a newspaper editor could even utter these words. In effect, Brauchli is suggesting that all criminal investigations initiated by the government are inherently political.
Did Rupert Murdoch buy the Post while I wasn’t looking?
Hunter Gathers
Shorter Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli:
Please teabaggers, don’t send us angry letters! Our fragile egos cannot handle them. We’ll do whatever you want, we’ll even drop covering a corruption scandal involving sex and drugs, as long as you be nice to us. Look over there! A shiny ACORN!
Joel
He’s a WSJ refugee. What can you expect?
The Post can’t die fast enough for my tastes.
Zifnab
I’m sure the WaPo guys will be reporting on that any minute now too. … … … *crickets*
Brick Oven Bill
I have personally gone to my government and sought leases above shale oil reserves. Perhaps I should have shown some leg, as I do not have millions in a slush fund to pay off this corrupt government. They did not want to talk to me.
The depletion of world oil deposits has a direct correlation with the creativity of the population living above them. This is why Europe is screwed.
The reason Russia is buddies with Iran and nuking up Ahmedinejad is so, after Israel vaporizes a couple Iranian cities, Putin will come in as a ‘peacekeeper’, and seize all of the Middle Eastern oil reserves. There are only three pipelines and a 22-mile wide Strait that connect the Middle East and Europe.
So once again it will be North America vs. the Russian Bear. Although I would not bet against Germany, who might be forced to go into Russia again after the oil embargo. Germany might be OK.
scav
Ah, come on, corporations are People, living the Great American Dream (TM) and should be supported, unlike all those uppity folks and welfare queens sucking at the teats of government and registering voters. Who, simply who, will think of the banks?!!
Rick Massimo
Hey, remember when, I think it was in 2003 or 2004?
Yeah, me neither.
Paul L.
You may not know this If you read the NY Times or Washington Post, But there are five videos each filmed in a different office with more to come.
Xenos
@aimai: Ever catch the Ed Schultz Show?
DougJ
But there are five videos each filmed in a different office with more to come.
That changes everything.
Zifnab
@Paul L.: Care to drop us some links, Paul?
gwangung
@Sanka:
That’s funny. Looking at both ACORN’s and the government budgets, I only get $53 million over 15 years, or $3.5 million per year.
And these incidents were more the results of training: how to handle sketchy, crazy people that come in off the street–humor them and report to the police.
gwangung
@Paul L.: Sorry, son, but I consider you a liar and a bigot.
Put up or shut up.
John S.
WOW!
And thus far, 1 out of the 5 involved someone who played along long enough to get the full BS story before going to police with it. How many of the “more to come” will turn out to be similar?
Oh that’s right, you’re Paul “Quana=Jenin” L., so don’t let pesky little things like facts get in the way of your masturbatory wingnut fantasies.
Xenos
@Paul L.: And you may not know this from watching Fox News, but they went to a number of other offices where they were promptly told to get lost.
General Winfield Stuck
@r€nato:
Yes, and it runs through the entire federal government where intersecting with the private business sector under the Bush administration. I think we can look forward to a stream of these types of cases in the years to come, especially regarding private contracting in the military arena. But also any agency whose mandates involved actions affecting the private business bottom line. It’s a cesspool of sabotage and favor giving that was run by David Addington out of Cheney’s office that largely flew under the media radar with all the war mongering, torture stuff and warrantless eavesdropping. At some point it will be impossible for WAPO or anyone to ignore.
gwangung
@Xenos: Was the Santa Barbara one, where the frat kids got counter-punked by the woman who said she killed her ex-husband (who’s still alive), considered one of those five?
Hunter Gathers
@Brick Oven Bill: And what is Putin going to use to take over said oil fields? Large gangs of elderly Russians armed with molotov cocktails traveling in 30 year old tanks? Perhaps the re-animated corpse of Lenin will lead his Army of Undead Bolsheviks to victory.
Shygetz
@Paul L.: Oooo, we’re finally gonna see Michelle Obama’s “Whitey” tape!
Oh, wait, this is something different?
Brick Oven Bill
Using highly ethical and restrictive rules of engagement, a couple hundred thousand men took over Iraq without organized resistance. Iran’s F-14s stayed in the air for less than a week after Western support services were withdrawn after the fall of the Shah. Iran cannot make its own gasoline, neither can it defend itself against the force that rolled over Georgia.
It will take less than a week.
Zifnab
@Shygetz: See, I love how he vanished like a wet fart in a stiff breeze whenever anyone asks him for any kind of backing.
It’s always hard to tell whether he’s a spoof or a full fledged troll. Spoofs are usually more dedicated than that.
Balconesfault
@Brick Oven Bill:
And that’s only because it’s so easy to slip on all those rose petals.
MK
I must say that I’ve lost track of the number of incidents of graft during the last eight years. Meanwhile, the heat continues to be cranked up on ACORN, an organization with federal funding that is a drop in the bucket compared to any one of the companies involved in the scandals. It becomes completely comical when you compare ACORN to the likes of Shell, Halliburton and others combined in the same time period.
Glenn Beck’s world, indeed. Ugh.
numbskull
@BOB:
Nah, they’ll drag it out. Gotta use up more equipment so we can order more. Gotta keep the money goin’ to the right places, BOB. C’mon, get with the program, son.
Pangloss
Is that an echo I hear?
Punchy
Why ya gotta diss on Kaplan, for? #1 in Test Prep for years.
Call and schedule your class today!
DBrown
@r€nato: BoB, the next great supply of methane that will be too cheap to meter.
Mike G
…several incidents of corruption at an organization that up until recently was funded with hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money over the years.
And the current president not only a generous political benefactor from said organization, but has extensive ties to this organization going back decades.
But enough about GW Bush and the criminal enterprise Enron.
Brick Oven Bill
Putin has no desire to be the liberator of the Muslim world, Pangloss, he just takes stuff. Turning Mookie al-Sadr into Thomas Jefferson is hard. Seizing well-heads is easy.
Spetsnaz!
Mnemosyne
@gwangung:
Small correction: that was at the San Bernardino office, not Santa Barbara.
BombIranForChrist
So here is how it works, folks:
When the Republicans are in power, there should be more Republican coverage because the Republicans are in power.
When the Democrats are in power, there should be more Republican coverage to make sure their voices are heard.
Forty years of conservative rule have turned Marcus Brauchli into one of those rats in a box that has been shocked so much, it is afraid to leave the box, even when the door is open.
anon
“It’s Glenn Beck’s world, we’re just living in it.” should be a tag
The Saff
@Joel: Michael Wolff writes an interesting piece about the Post in the October issue of Vanity Fair. Sounds like the Kaplan part of the business keeps the Post afloat.
Ash Can
@Sanka: Sanka, for crap’s sake, switch to the caffeinated stuff and wake the hell up. You’re being played.
ACORN has been around for 40 freaking years, and just now stories are flying around the media that it’s corrupt? And the accusations are all from RW sources? Doesn’t that strike you as just a little bit odd?
Here are the dots all connected for you, Ace: Your RW puppetmasters have zeroed in on ACORN for three reasons. First, it’s an organization that has been a thorn in the side of various big-business and RW political interests for decades. You think they don’t welcome an opportunity to finally take ACORN down? Second, in his community organizing days, Barack Obama worked with ACORN, as does everyone else in the network of community organizers and advocates here in Chicago. (And PS, Chicago isn’t exactly unique in this regard.) A connection to Obama? Perfect! Third — and listen up, because this is very important — ACORN is an easy mark. They’ve never had to respond to an organized, national-level RW smear campaign, and have been caught flat-footed by it. A target that can’t fight back — perfect for those brave, noble RW opinion leaders.
Put it all together, and you have a tailor-made opportunity to play race and class-division cards, take out an old enemy, and delegitimize Barack Obama’s presidency by extension. And lo and behold, they’re right. It’s working. And that’s because people like you don’t realize, or won’t admit, that you’re being played. Think about it — did you know ACORN even existed before Republicans started whining about it and Fox Current-Events Entertainment started running stories on it during the election campaign? What do you really know about ACORN and what it does?
Ash Can
On the topic at hand, Marcus Brauchli has all but pronounced the Washington Post dead and buried, hasn’t he? Damned shame. It was a pretty good paper in its day.
Skepticat
@BombIranForChrist: Spot on.
curious
@Sanka: what do you mean by “corruption”? i’m almost certainly not looking hard enough but the stories about acorn getting the most attention seem to be low(est)-level employees misbehaving, e.g., falsifying voter registration forms to earn more money and this whole undercover video thing. googling “acorn indictments” finds that those indicted were these same low-level employees or those who authorized payment to them. okay, fine. justice prevails, put stricter measures in place, et al. i’m just not seeing a scheme at all comparable to what the norton story describes. hundreds of millions and low-level =/= hundreds of billions and cabinet-level.
curious
@curious: also, to clarify, it’s quite likely that many of the on-the-ground workers in this cheesy undercover operation were just humoring these sad, bad actors. i’m sure they’ve had a lot wackier come through the doors.
gwangung
Yup. Classic mark of a bully. As organizations go, ACORN has little power, money, resources and influence. Draws out the bullies like honey for maggots.
Brachiator
@Hunter Gathers:
.
Actually, increasingly, the LA Times lacks any editorial direction at all, a problem made worse by layoffs and an ongoing game of musical chairs. Editorial is going through another change again, as the latest memo from the Times’ publisher illustrates:
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlLA/in_n_out/
In addition, so many experienced reporters and editors have been laid off that a group of them have set up their own site, not to blog, but just to post their resumes.
http://thejournalismshop.com/dnn/Default.aspx
curious — i’m just not seeing a scheme at all comparable to what the norton story describes. hundreds of millions and low-level =/= hundreds of billions and cabinet-level.
Sadly, one typical move by some conservatives is to deny any incidence of GOP corruption, no matter how large, and to immediately replace it by any liberal crime that they can find. This allows them to maintain their delusional mantra of “Conservative, good. Liberal, bad.”
Don
I really hate to rain on your little conservative persecution parade*, but that’s not remotely true. Search the Post website for “acorn prostitute” and you get 12 pieces – including a big die-ACORN-die-die-die piece from Parker in today’s oped – in the last TWO DAYS.
Go back to last week and you find clear mention of multiple videos being doled out.
(* no I don’t.)
gwangung
@Don: Research and reading doesn’t seem to be a strong point of too many right wing partisans; no room in the noggin after stuffing in all the knee jerk talking points, I guess…
demimondian
@gwangung: For what it is worth, there *are* five videos so far, and they were all filmed in different offices. However, Paul neglects to remark on the fact that one of the videos is full of the ACORN worker telling ever-more-insane lies to the two fraudsters, and that in another of the cases, the ACORN worker contacted the police and reported the two fraudsters. There’s no evidence to suggest that the other three “gotchas” weren’t equally fake; at this point, I wouldn’t want to be on the side claiming that they were real.
He also neglects to mention that there were many tens of cases where the two con-artists were politely shown off the premises, which also calls into question the legitimacy of the three alleged cases which might not be completely innocent.
slippy
@gwangung: @gwangung: Making shit up, however, is a highly-valued and well-represented skill.
I can’t believe this thread has become dominated by two idiots (or is it the SAME idiot twice?) who have basically thrown unsourced, unlinked assertions down and challenged everyone to accept them as gospel truth. I have news for Sanka and Paul L: Proof is on your heads bitches. If I were running this blog I’d have deleted your posts and banned your IP’s for crapflooding.
Of course, I have no tolerance for people who lie.
Downpuppy
One utter bullshit number in all this is $30.
No way on this planet can Shell or anybody else produce oil from shale at $30/barrel with real oil at $70.
40 years of miserable failures, trying everything from squeezing the rock to nukes (yes, underground nuclear explosions were used) hasn’t found a way to make a dime off shale (other than pocketing the subsidy, of course)
gwangung
@demimondian:
Well, the other point I was trying to make is that many workers dealing with the public are told, when dealing from an irrational person off the street, to play along with them and do what they say.
Now, we have multiple hypotheses going here, running from counter-punking the pranksters to the “play along with the crazy person” strategy to being in active cahoots of child prostitution. Which hypothesis fits the evidence? (Hint: you’re not allowed to use your pre-held prejudices to help you decide).
Jason Brzoska
Um, am I think only one noticing that the Gale Norton scandal is basically the same thing as the Teapot Dome scandal?
Nancy Irving
You don’t understand.
The Gale Norton story involves only the possibility that hundreds of billions of dollars were stolen from the taxpayers.
In the other story, ACORN allegedly ripped off the taxpayers in the amount of $4 for EACH bogus voter registration they filed.
Plus, the ACORN folks are black.
Obviously the Post had its priorities straight.
Mike
Watching that full ACORN video, the woman doesn’t come off like she was playing along. And from the statement right after that from ACORN top brass that these kids had been pulling their stunt all over the country, we know that some of the higher ups in ACORN knew there may be a sting in progress.
So a more plausible explanation for the “play along” –> “talk to cops” timeline could be that sometime between the visit by the pranksters and the call to the cops, word got around about the visit and 2 and 2 were put together and they decided to cover their asses. No?