SURE, IT'S BORING AS HELL AND NO ONE GIVES A CRAP, BUT FUCK IT

We are going to discuss some history 19th, 20th century, contemporary and some geo-politics today. Not because we don't want to discuss O.J. Simpson, but because we don't care enough to have bothered reading about it. Knowing how verbose and arcane and tedious this post will be, I have added the treat of a very cool political song "Bullet And A Target" by a worthy artist many of you might not know, CITIZEN COPE.

The first subject is graft. Be very, very suspicious of the reformer bent upon "cleaning up" the political culture. One of the most corrupt politicians in recent memory, Newt Gingrich, built his whole Contract With America on that crap and all that happened was that a couple of small-time thieves, Rostenkowski and Wright, got dislodged and nothing changed except that Rostenkowski and Wright actually did some good for their districts and their country after having lined their pockets, of course, while everything about Gingrich was a giant tits-up. More graft but nothing coming back to the people save the antecedents of today's lovely state of affairs. In that sense, graft is kind of like taxes, a certainty like death and a public cost but acceptable if something comes back to the people for their trouble. Even Halliburton wouldn't be so bad if Cheney had a social conscience equal to his greed. But he, like a Gingrich writ velly, velly large is not only greedy, he's mean in both senses of the word.

Kelso's kind of fond of the revisionist history of NYC's Tammany Hall, headquarters of the State Democratic Party in the mid-late 1800s. The excesses of William Marcy "Boss" Tweed, "Honest" John Kelly and George Washington Plunkitt are legendary. They stole everything that wasn't nailed down as ably depicted by the cartoon's of Thomas Nast in Harper's. What those guys did was what the revisionists call "honest graft." When they got their pockets and bellies full, they took care of the poor of the City Of New York. Urban renewal before it was called that. All the Christmas turkeys and hand-outs to the ward heelers and all that. They probably did more for the poor of the city than anyone before or since with the possible exception of Mayor John Lindsay. Contrast that with the storied and beloved Robert Moses who was no less corrupt but saw no problem in displacing 100,000s of people for his grandiose projects. The interested student will read Jane Jacobs on the subject.

Contrast the Tammany Bosses with Elliot "The Dragon Slayer" Spitzer. Big reputation as the uncorruptible saint of Wall Street as attorney general, except that it was all bullshit. Using the power of his office, he shook down fund managers for campaign contributions knowing that whoever didn't contribute risked his wrath. Meanwhile, he didn't sweet fuck-all to end the real corruption on Wall Street -- public access to the good IPOs, the kind of insider-trading that happens in dribs and drabs that not only freezes the average investor out but also maintains market inefficiencies. All the while he distracted everybody by making a villain out of Richard Grasso who was no saint by any means but hardly the criminal he was made out to be and hardly the cause of anyone's problems. Business as usual with no change to the underlying problems and nothing back to anybody outside a small circle. Not graft on Spitzer's part exactly, but...

...what was his raison d'etre? A month in advance of Spitzer's coronation, the Daily News ran a series of pieces suggesting something rather different. It was suggested that Spitzer's entree into big time NYS politics had a wholly self-intersted goal: getting his father and partners a piece of the pending privatization of the New York Racing Association, which operates Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga racetracks and owns vast tracts of prime real estate as a non-profit corporation and a public trust. The racetracks themselves are cash-cows and figured to be even bigger ones once Spitzer could sign a slot machine bill into law, but the real estate is valuable beyond all measure: 1000s of acres in Jamaica, Queens, Elmont, L.I., and Saratoga Springs. In order to do this, Spitzer had to find a new Richard Grasso to perform this okey-doke. He found his man, alright, one of the truly good-guys in the business world, Barry K. Schwartz, co-founder of Calvin Klein who selflessly served as NYRA's board chairman for the princely sum of $1/year and by all accounts was a good friend to every constituency of the thoroughbred racing community in New York from the wealthiest of owners down to the players and the fair worker's comp rules which satisfied owners and employees alike. What had Schwartz done exactly? Some mutuel clerks committed penny-ante tax fraud and Schwartz was forced out in favor of a Spitzer toady named Hayward.

The story gained no traction whatsoever and Spitzer was elected governor handily. Upon election, there was talk of a national future AS A REFORMER for Spitzer. The next-big-thing after Obama, of course. Spitzer's father at this point HAD to give up the ghost on the NYRA deal. Better to keep powder dry for an even bigger payday later. Spitzer-pere et fils perhaps should have stayed with the NYRA scheme. Apparently, Spitzer run into his own minor scandals back home and his future doesn't look quite so bright as it did a year ago. Oh, remember another "uncorruptible" reformer from NY. He goes by the name of Rudy Giuliani or America's Mayor if you like him, The-Lisping-Fascist if you don't. We don't. So much for reformers. Come back Tammany! All is forgiven.

We go on to more recent history of the Americas with the common thread being DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE. We'll start with Hugo Chavez and work our way back around to him and other issue of -- yes -- importance to you and importance in having a mature, sophisticated handle on geo-political issues. To read the American press, one would think that Hugo Chavez is Josef Stalin -- communist dictator, hater of "the west".
Aside from the fact that Venezuela is IN THE WEST and Venezuela is a capitalist country, and Chavez has won fair elections by 60/40 counts, you are not getting the truth about this from the MSM. The David Broders and Thomas Friedmans of the world scream blue murder about "nationalization" as if Chavez were seizing banks at gunpoint. No, Kelso's sorry to burst any bubbles but nationalization doesn't work that way. The governement must pay for that which it nationalizes without resorting to seignorage (printing money). If you are a holder of Venezuelan bank stock you are in a pretty good position right now. The worst you're going to get is 1 1-2 times the market price. Yeah, but Chavez via CITGO gives home heating oil away to the poor in the United States and is not unfriendly with the Cuban regime so who cares? He's worse than Hitler and Stalin combined! The Tissue Of Lies told me so when it cheerled the CIA-backed failed coup against Chavez. Condoleeza Rice in all her radiant, brain-dead glory, beat the drums for war against Venezuela, as well, calling the state a force for destabilization in the region and of course demonizing Chavez in the process. Why is Chavez worse than Hitler? Because, like Saddam Hussein did, he's got control of an awful lot of crude oil. Kelso lives about 300 miles as the crow flies from Venezuela and he's no to afraid of Venezuela destablizing anything. He is, however, afraid of an overt US attack. That would pretty much destory the value of Kelso's Equatorial Assets currently in trust for Kelso Jr.

But, so far, so good. Iraq and Iran seem to be taking precedence over Venezuela, except that in service of the "war on drugs" Bush's ally, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe had been fighting a proxy war on the U.S.'s behalf along the Northern border. Right-Wing Colombian paramilitaries versus the Venezuelan military. And then a funny thing happened this week. Uribe and Chavez got together and made a truce and a pact to exchange POWs from these skirmishes. That's right. The far-left Bush hater Chavez and the far-right Bush lover Uribe. Why?

Colombian realpolitik, my brothers and sisters, plain and simple. Uribe likes being President and to be fair to him he's had some success in containing a lot of the truly insane violence there between the far-right paramilitaries and the far-left FARC guerillas. The Colombian economy is not way strong but the budget is in balance and the Peso has kicked the everloving tar out of the U.S. Dollar. Colombia, as loony as it is, happens to be a first world nation of 65,000,000 or so highly educated people. It's major cities -- Bogota, Medellin, Cali and Barranquilla are big and sophisticated albeit as loony as Moscow. For better or worse, in Colombia it's all about the drugs and who controls them. There is potential there but let's digress a minute because we've seen a smaller version of this movie before.

It was the 1970s. The country was Jamaica, the issues were marijuana and bauxite and the players were the U.S.-backed Seaga and his Socialist rival Manley. A cold-war proxy sure as Venezuela v Colombia is a "war on terror" proxy. Seaga was happy with US aid, Manley with Soviet aid. Sadly, the violence was devastating, served no purpose and eventually spilled over into New York where former Seaga backers fought former Manley backers over the crack trade in Jamaica and St. Alban's, Queens. The Jamaican problems did, however, also bring a vibrant political culture to Brooklyn and Queens and we'll see what one of the inheritors, Una Clarke, will do in the U.S. House Of Representatives. Did it work out? Who the fuck knows? Jamaica's still dirt poor, it's people are malnourished and and it's marijuana isn't worth anything. Bauxite market will be good so long as worldwide housing market is good.

Colombia is a whole different story, so we end where we began with honest graft. The country is on the way back. It has an educated populace and a political culture. But the Uribe v Gaviria battles bear a striking resemblence to Jamaica in the 1970s with some striking differences, too. Up until last week, the US was four-square behind Uribe assuming that Uribe would cut the CIA into the drug action and fight Chavez. Gaviria's left-wing coalition -- sorry Holy Joe Lieberman and Holy Joe Klein -- depends upon students, city folk, and yes the Jewish and Arab Colombian narco-traficates and lavadores (money-launderers). So we kind of have "honest" graft on both sides. Uribe's taking care of the campesinos with his cut. Gaviria's taking care of the urban poor and his own campesinos with his cut. Uribe steadfastly denies involvement with paramilitaris. Right. And water's dry. Gaviria denies involvement with FARC. Right, ths sky is green. It is all about the coca and will always be so. Getting rid of U.S. involvement would go a long way to allowing Colombia to find itself. It will. And who's the Nixon-In-China here? One guess and the first don't count and it's not Gaviria. Alvaro fucking Uribe. Peacemaker. Who'd have thunk it?

Kelso would love to hear from ANY of the Democratic candidates about any of this because it does affect the region and could create a next immigrant wave crisis if these situations are not resolved. Uribe ought to be encouraged on this and the "war on drugs" should not only not be conflated with the "war on terror" which should also end, the "war on drugs" should be abandoned yesterday. It better happen because if Lou Dobbs is worried about Mexicans, he's just gonna love Colombians. Shorter, darker-skinned Russians is all. Smart and crazy and mad tough. They're not going to want to wash dishes or blow leaves or clean baby shit. They're going to want to go to Rutgers and work at CNN.

Go fucking ask Obama. Kelso will lay a solid 5/1 he hasn't even heard of either Uribe or Gaviria and is no fan of Chavez, awkward debate answers notwithstanding. Obama knows Oprah pretty good though. Kelso will also lay a solid 5/1 that Hillary Clinton already knows way more about any of this than Kelso does.

Oh, quite off topic. There is a new rule. THE MALE POPULATION OF LEFT BLOGOVIA HAS TO STOP APOLOGIZING FOR LIKING SPORTS. As in being a fan of Pro and College sports, not like fucking hiking or racquetball. This rule will be enforced with extreme prejudice. The next man who does, loses his KELSO'S NUTS (tm) privileges for an indefinite period of time. If he does it again he's off again and he has to petition KELSO SENIOR for a return of the privileges and KELSO is a lovable little angel compared to KELSO SENIOR.

Kelso's Nuts love you