Macho Nachos

You Know You're Drawing Blood When

The trolls start treating you like this. It appears that Brian Maloney is the new celebrity of the "Reality Based Community," who, as usual, have apparently been taking debating points from my four-year-old son. Except, he's more decent than they are, and funnier, and also generally has a wider vocabulary.

This probably also explains why I spent half an hour today deleting dozens of spam trackback pings to nonsensical verbal porn. I really wish I had saved some of them now, they were truly priceless. This is, of course, is typical behavior for the "Reality Based Community," who are so grounded in reality that they don't need to bother themselves with actual arguments, when there's dirty names to throw around.

In any event, in a relatively new development in the story, Brian links to this from Foxnews, which is apparently the newest statement from Air America about the whole mess:

An Air America spokesman says, "We're committed to paying this money and the terms are being worked out... We are awaiting direction from the investigation into how to proceed."

I guess that answers the question about whether the money has been actually repaid or not, over a year after Piquant LLC took control of Air America from Progress Media - who are, of course, the same people.

It is, of course, instructive that the loss of $480,000 that was destined for a pet program of the left is no big deal at all. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

UPDATE: 08-01-05 14:36 CDT - Michelle Malkin has all the latest.

Kelo and Other Judicial Nonsense

John Edwards is apparently trying to channel the spirit of Howard Dean, in yet another lame-brained attempt to pin Kelo and likeminded judicial nonsense on conservatives:

Edwards sounded troubled by what he has seen of Roberts's record and said his former colleagues should press the nominee to explain his philosophy in greater detail. "Does Judge Roberts still hold today the views he promoted earlier in his career?" he asked, according to his prepared text. "Is Judge Roberts committed to implementing the radical 'protect-the-powerful' jurisprudence or does he recognize the claims of the powerless as well as the powerful?"

If we lived in a rational world, John Edwards would be asking John Roberts whether he intended to protect the unborn. In the world we actually live in, of course, Edwards was asking about decisions like Kelo. Which liberals gave us. This is Orwellian in a scary sort of way, as opposed to Orwellian in the humorous way.

Hugh Hewitt wants to know about some significant judicial questions that were suspiciously missing from Schumer's list of questions:

Senator Schumer's long list of questions also did not ask the nominee about the Massachusetts Supreme Court's decision in Goodrich v. Department of Health, which decreed that same sex marriage would be the law in that state, or the implications of of Goodrich for the federal Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA"), evem though DOMA is being contested in the federal courts as a violation of the Constitution's Full Faith and Credit clause and the guarantee of Equal Protection.

Of course Edwards, Schumer and other voices of the left in the debate over the courts don't want to call attention to the decisions that deeply offend a large majority of Americans.

Too right, Hugh. Never make the mistake of believing that Democrats are acting on principle, instead of politics.

Why Won't He Shut Up?

Mark Coffey wonders the same thing I do about Jimmy Carter:

Carter also criticized the U.S.-led war in Iraq as "unnecessary and unjust."

"I think what's going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A.," he told a news conference at the Baptist World Alliance's centenary conference in Birmingham, England. "I wouldn't say it's the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts."

All I ask is that someone would tell me that we're not going to be hearing this crap from John Kerry 24 years after HE lost, too.

Are the Liberals Happy?

We stood up to the goonocracy in Uzbekistan, to the point that we actually airlifted out a number of refugees, and in response, and in response, the Uzbeki government has evicted us from the K2 airbase that we used to stage much of the Afghanistan war from.

Josh Trevino explains why this is not as important as it once was:

The United States is being evicted from the K2 airbase in Uzbekistan. From the beginning of the Afghan war, K2 was a vital staging area for American and Allied forces. This was particularly so in fall 2001, when the Northern Alliance held only its thin strip of territory in the far north of Afghanistan. K2 has been useful since then -- in the few Afghan missions I've been tangentially involved with, we always staged out of there -- but its strategic importantance is considerably less since the occupation of Bagram. The United States also has use of airfields at Quetta in Pakistan and Manas in Kyrgyzstan. The latter is a significant staging area and will probably, along with Bagram in-country, pick up the missions that were previously staged out of K2. Following Chinese-inspired threats of eviction from Manas, Secretary Rumsfeld just returned from Central Asia, where he secured assurances of Allied use of Manas for the foreseeable future.

By the way, the Middle Eastern media is taking notice of the U.S./British stance:

Britain and the United States have been outspoken Critics of Uzbekistan’s response to a May uprising in the eastern city of Andijan. Uzbekistan, a former republic in the Soviet Union, is a Russian ally.

Uzbek authorities say 176 people died and deny that government troops fired on unarmed civilians, but rights activists say as many as 750 may have been killed.

US Ambassador Anne Patterson said the United States would continue to raise the issue of the asylum seekers who fled Uzbekistan after the crackdown.

Jumping on the Bandwagon

Let's face it, Republican spending has gotten out of control, and it's time for social conservatives to get just as angry about it as fiscal conservatives. From Adam at RedState:

On Friday, the Senate passed a slew of major bills. Looking specificially at the Transportation Bill and Energy Bill it is clear that despite the well-earned reputation of fiscal conservatism, Republicans seem determined to match or surpass the 1960-1980s Democrats on pork barrel politics. In the Senate, the Transportation Bill and the Energy Bill passed by lopsided votes of 91-4 and 76-24. The only silver lining, if it can be called that, is that Democrats generally joined in on the pork barreling thus giving up the chance of winning over good government, anti-pork moderates that put Republicans in power in the 1994 revolution.

In this sad reflection on why Republicans have turned their backs on their original Contract With America to embrace Democratic-style porking, there are a few Republican Senators who deserve praise for putting their names down as opposed to these antics. I present for your praising:

Voted Against Both Bills:
Gregg (NH)
Kyl (AZ)
McCain (AZ)

Voted Against Transportation Pork Only:
Cornyn (TX)

Voted Against Energy Pork Only:
Martinez (FL)
Sununu (NH)
Chafee (RI)

First of all, congratulations to Arizona for elected two principled fiscal conservatives and New Hampshire for being a close second. Second, Chafee's vote is most likely do to the same reason 17 Dems voted against the bill rather than a love of fiscal conservatism.

John COle puts it a little more succinctly:

Long story short, we massaged/bent/broke the rules to get the vote we wanted on an unrelated bill, and then spent billions of taxpayer money to grease the wheels.

Somehow, the argument that I should vote Republican because ‘the Democrats are worse’ is becoming less palatable by the minute.

It's natural for social conservatives to be more concerned about the portions of their agenda than the fiscal portions of the Republican agenda, but I think it's time we realized that when guys like Adam and John are expressing this kind of frustration, the carefully constructed coalition that has won us multiple consecutive elections is in danger, and there's simply not enough social conservatives to win elections all by ourselves.

If we're prepared to bolt the party if our agenda isn't pursued, we should be surprised that the fiscal conservatives show the same willingness. It's time for us to use our pull within the party to hold the Republicans accountable for things that are important to the fiscal conservatives, too.

Tracking their Investments

Hugh Hewitt takes a look at whether the "loan" Gloria Wise gave to Progress Media (Air America) was in line with their normal business practices:

It appears that --in the year ending June 30, 2003, the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club had little investment income --$21,596-- which makes it odd indeed that the group would make a huge "investment" the following year. It also appears that in the year covered by the 990, the group got $3,774,920 from government gants, and only $529,740 from the public in the form of contributions. (It also earned $562,095 from services which people paid for.)

Note Line 54 --the Club had no investments this year. None.

This is strange indeed. If contributions from the public remained relatively constant from this year to next, the Club would have been "investing" almost all of their non-government funding in Air America. Every government grant I have ever seen specifically addresses the purposes for which it must be used, and I have never seen one that authroizes investments in rickety politicla start-ups.

Wow, and wow again. Where is Elliot Spitzer. What did Al Franken know and when did he know it?

In other words, in case you still had doubts about the investment being legit in the first place (nevermind Progress Media's ability to repay), those ought to be vanishing into the ether by now. The deal was crooked from the get go.

Which is even more condemnatory on any of the board members who stayed to form Piquant LLC. Which, so far as we know, is all of them, less Cohen and Rosen.

In other news, the media finally catches wind of this story. We eagerly await a stern response from Eliot Spitzer.

Wizbang also notes that perhaps we should be more surprised to find the owners of Piquant LLC NOT engaged in fraud. This is gonna get uglier before it gets prettier.

Bill Frist, RIP

Today at RedState, speaking for a lot of social conservatives, Augustine went postal on Bill Frist for deciding to switch sides on federally-funded embryonic stem cell research.

Now, it so happens that I agree with Augustine's position on this. But let's suppose for a moment that I didn't. I'd still consider Frist's candidacy dead in the water at this point. The reason, quite simply, is that Frists's decision today showed a real lack of moral character and fiber, qualities that are critically essential for a Commander in Chief.

First, it's important to notice that this is not just a flip-flop. It's a flip-flop-flip. And what becomes increasingly apparent as you work through the Carpetbagger's post (he is for the latest flip) is that Frist's stance on a relatively important issue has basically been subject to tiniest shifts in the political wind of the day. A person of this Clintonian temperment has no business being chief executive, or the head of the Republican party.

In a Republic, we don't elect issues. We elect people. And that is why it is often more important to consider what kind of person you are electing rather than what they say about the issues. Becuase, as we've seen all to many times before, people who say all the right things about our favorite issues have a disturbing tendency to abandon those issues if they are not fortified by the personal resolve to stand true to those issues in the face of intense criticism. And if there's anything the job of the Presidency provides (especially for a Republican), it's intense criticism - criticism at a level that even the Senate Majority Leader cannot fathom.

If Frist is caving now, he would be an absolute disaster during his first "Abu Ghraib" moment. He must be kept away from the White House at all costs, and he should also be stripped of his status as Majority Leader in the Senate (for this, among other things), and replaced by a politician with Character. If any remain.

Anyone Have Ten Dollars?

I've been hearing from a lot of folks that Progressive Media and Piquant LLC aren't as disconnected as they'd have you to believe. Remember, the essential defense of Piquant LLC through this story has been, "Don't blame us, blame the company that ran the show before us." The more information we dig up, the more it looks like the New Company is just the same as the Old Company.

First, Streiff at RedState dug this old Professor Bainbride article (June 30, 2004)out, which says, in part:

The assets of Air America are reported to be sold to a new corporate entity, leaving creditors of its existing corporate parents, Progress Media and Radio Free America, high and dry. According to the Chicago Tribune article, the new owner will be an outfit called Piquant, LLC, controlled by the original founders of the mini-net, Sheldon and Anita Drobney. Supposedly, millions are owed by the current corporate parents

Further, a check of the always-handy Wikipedia yields this:

As part of a reorganization, investors in Progress Media bought the assets of that company, creating its current owner, Piquant LLC.

Professor Bainbridge seems to be saying here that this legal two-step served to shield the new owners of Piquant LLC (the old owners of Progressive Media) from debts incurred by Progressive Media - and further that the corporate entity Piquant LLC was specifically formed to screw the creditors of Progressive Media. One of which, we now know, was the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club.

It might be legal, but it's certainly slimy as heck. And the statement by Piquant LLC that "this all happened before we got here," is looking more and more suspect by the minute.

A commenter here suggested that the board of Piquant LLC was the exact same roster as Progressive Media's, minus Cohen and Rosen. An enterprising person could verify this information with about ten minutes and ten bucks, and then share that information with the rest of us. I think it would be interesting.

Air America Made Easier/More Interesting

I've been getting a lot of email from a lot of different people about some of the legal analysis provided by my "lawyer-in-the-know". I'm sorry to say that I've confused Paul from Wizbang, and so it's probably time to boil it down with a little more simplicity.

Let's just say that Company X is a very shady company, very much like, say, Progressive Media. Let's say further, in this hypothetical, that the CEO of this Company X also happens to be on the board of a charitable organization that we'll call, hypothetically, Gloria Wise Boys and Girls club. And in this hypothetical, said CEO (we'll ascribe a random name to him, like "Cohen") bilks about $500,000 from his charity into the treasury of Company X.

Now, in this hypothetical, instead of paying the salary of Al Franken and buying a bunch of radio equipment, they use that $500,000 to build a local Subway Restaurants franchise. Later, MachoNachos comes along and buys said Subway Restaurants franchise from Company X (for a legitimate price). When it later comes to light that the Subway Restaurants franchise in question was bought and established through fraudulent means, the government can't now come after me for the $500,000. And I think that's pretty much fair.

Now, there are a couple of scenarios in which that changes - if, for example, I bought the Subway Restauarants franchise for, say, $20, then a prosecutor could make a pretty ironclad case that Company X was in reality diverting assets to avoid having to pay back the money, and they'd probably go ahead and confiscate the franchise from me to make the payment. However, if they determine that I did, in fact, pay full value of what the assets were worth, then it becomes a legitimate transaction and the government leaves me alone. Again, this seems fair.

Now, what is less clear (to me) is what the legal ramifications are if I had full knowledge before the transaction that the franchise in question was paid for with fraudulent funds. Lawyer-in-the-know says that this "could raise fraudulent transfer or abuse of the corporate form issues."

Of course, we have no way of knowing at this time whether Piquant LLC had any knolwedge of Cohen's previous activity, but they certainly got on the ball quickly with the B&GC promo, which took place about a month after the transfer of the company. Given that (I'm assuming) these things take some time to put together, it certainly seems that the new ownership was aware posthaste about the matter, if not prior to the sale of the company itself. These are questions that still need to be answered.

UPDATE (07-29-05 13:55:00 CDT): Paul wasn't confused. He was being lazy. My bad. :-)

Air America clears it All Up!

Well, not exactly. Thanks primarily to the efforts of Michelle Malkin and Brian Maloney, they have been pressured, at least, into publicly dealing with this, and releasing another statement, which Brian has in full (with his commentary) here.

Brian has got a lot of good questions that are definitely worth asking, but I have a few additional points that should be made about this whole mess.

First of all, it's important to remember in this whole mess, that the group that is actually accused of diverting public funds is Gloria Wise, not Air America. They are, so far as we can tell, at least as ethically culpable here as Progress Media, being that they were the entity that "signed the money away" so to speak.

This has relevance when examining Air America's response to this fiasco. Brian already raises the point that agreeing "months ago" from now to repay the loan is a bit tardy in this case. Also, it raises the question as to whether money has been actually repaid or whether just repaid in agreement. I think the company holding my car note would agree that's a very significant distinction.

But I'd like to focus on a couple of other things in the statement that are downright fishy. In seeking to offer evidence that they tried to make this right as soon as they possibly could, they defend themselves thusly:

We at Air America Radio strongly believe in the mission of Boys and Girls Clubs to provide a safe and nurturing place for young people to learn and grow. As a result, we recently allowed the same club, Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club, to use our name in a fundraising effort for a summer camp for children in their community.

Okay, so - the company switched hands in May of 2004 - presumably, someone at Piquant learned that they had taken a half million in funds from Gloria Wise, and so to make it right, they acted speedily in June and started promoting this Camp Air America. That's a rather nice gesture. The only problem with it is this:

The funding for Camp Air America was raised and collected entirely by the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club, and Air America promoted the camp on air and urged support for it.

So, in order to make amends for taking money from Gloria Wise, they sponsored a camp at one of their locations which Gloria Wise paid for? Jeez, that's awfully big of them, I guess. Plus, there's the rather obvious question (at least, it's obvious to me) of why anyone would trust an organization that they knew to be crooked in the first place to handle the fundraising for their "Let's make it right" campaign.

There are a couple of other rather large glaring holes in this statement. If Gloria Wise went under, was that due to the fact that they were short about half a million in cash? If so, it more or less leads you to believe that the money has not been "actually repaid" but is still in "agreed to be repaid" land.

Second, given that Gloria Wise is now closed, how will the money now be repaid? Isn't this a handy loophole for Air America to jump through? "Gosh, we'd really like to repay them - in fact, we agreed to repay them, but due to some unforseen circumstance, they went under. Weird. Oh well, nothing to be done now."

Unless I am missing something in this statement, that is exactly the position Air America is currently taking: we agreed to repay this months ago, but Gloria Wise doesn't exist anymore. They then offer in the last paragraph an offer to repay, but careful readers will notice that it is not an offer to repay the half million misappropriated from Gloria Wise funds:

We have offered any individuals who contributed to the camp as a result of Air America's promotion the option of a refund paid for by Air America Radio and the Club offered the alternative option of having their donation redirected to Kip's Bay Boys and Girls Club.

In other words, if you contributed to the club through us, we'll give your money back. Give the half million back to some other Boys and Girls Club? Who said anything about that?

UPDATE: Welcome again, Michelle Malkin readers!