And so begins a term of dirty tricks: a brief history

House Republicans (unethically?) vote to prohibit ethics investigators from communicating with the public

As you may have heard, House Republicans voted in a secret ballot Monday night to severely restrict the investigative powers and independence of the Office of Congressional Ethics, a semi-independent non-partisan government agency tasked with receiving and looking into allegations of unethical behavior by Congresspeople or their staffers.

Specifically, OCE won’t be allowed to communicate with the public or actual law enforcement agencies, or investigate anonymous claims. Speaker Paul Ryan is apparently against the maneuver, which was apparently so surprising that OCE’s full “renewal” was written up as a sure thing by Bloomberg BNA last week.

The aspect of OCE being forbidden to communicate with the public—indeed, the reworking approved by Republicans would bar the agency from hiring “for a position involving communications with the public”—shows that Republicans truly understand where its power lies. A 2014 Public Citizen report identified that the precense of OCE (and its public reports) had essentially forced the House Ethics Committee—famously lenient towards (white) representatives’ misdeeds—to take action at a much-heightened rate.

If you can stretch your memory all the way back to early 2008 (I know I can’t), you’ll rememebr that OCE was created for a very good reason: Along with a sitting House member and a couple White House officials, superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, known for being played by Kevin Spacey in a bad movie, had just pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion for attempting to rip off various Native American tribes to the tune of $85 million, bribing many an elected official on the way. Truth is, the office has never been particularly popular with either party. The editorial boards of the Times and Washington Post seem to think of it mostly as a schoolmarm, and good-governance and Beltway types bickered over its true effectiveness. There is something to be said, though, for an agency that investigated Michele Bachmann (until she resigned).

If this feels to you like just the beginning of two-plus years of dirty tricks courtesy of Trump and his merry band of enablers, you’re probably correct. As with the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision to gut the Voting Rights Act, allowing (former Confederate) states to make changes to voting procedures and pave the way toward mass voter disenfranchisement, this is likely just the opening salvo.

↩︎ posted Jan. 3, 2017

Any other way to monkey wrench it? Anything RN can do.

Tucked away in the notes of Nixon aide H.R. Halderman is somewhat damning proof of a very dirty trick indeed: As president-elect, Nixon worked hard to scuttle peace talks between the US and Vietnamese forces, which he thought would help his opponent.

↩︎ The New York Times, posted Jan. 3, 2017

Of course, one of the many things tying the dirty tricks of yesteryear—the sneaking around and the Get Smart pen-cameras, or whatever they had—and those of today is Roger Stone, confidant to Nixon and Trump alike. “He knew what populism was in reverse. He thought like a Democrat and dressed like a plutocrat. He once said to me, ‘Are you black? Are you Hispanic? Are you gay?’ When I said no, he said, ‘Then why the fuck are you a Democrat? You should be with us,’” a Democratic political consultant told Jeffrey Toobin in a otherwise rather watery 2008 profile of Stone. Of the tattoo, Stone told Toobin, “Women love it.”

↩︎ posted Jan. 3, 2017

Drinking beer straight from the pitcher, sweat pouring down his face, Atwater apologizes for going home so early, but the St. Patrick’s Day Parade is just seven hours away and he is the grand marshal.

A 1989 profile of Lee Atwater, then at the height of his power as RNC Chairman, revels in the Good Ol’ Boy/Bad Boy routine put on by Strom Thurmond and Richard Nixon’s favorite attack dog.

↩︎ The New York Times Magazine, posted Jan. 3, 2017

So did the “Chicago Machine” Mayor Richard J. Daley employ “Chicago politics” and steal the 1960 election for JFK out from Nixon’s nose? No, but Roger Stone seems/claims to still think so.

↩︎ posted Jan. 3, 2017