"Kennedy’s power lives on through former staff members" by Matt Viser, Globe Staff November 16, 2014
WASHINGTON — William J. Lynn III is the embodiment of a Washington power broker, with a hand in hundreds of billions of dollars in defense spending throughout a decades-long career.
He has been a Senate staffer who recommended how Pentagon money was spent. He’s been the chief lobbyist for Waltham-based Raytheon, helping to secure many contracts, including a Navy destroyer the Pentagon didn’t want. The Pentagon didn’t hold it against him: Two years later, he oversaw the military budget as deputy defense secretary.
Related: Raytheon’s $50m will help start UMass Lowell campus in Kuwait
As he sat on a recent day inside an office with a sweeping view of the nation’s capital, one clue revealed a key to his extraordinary career: an inscribed photo of him with his mentor, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, at the Hyannis Port compound, commemorating their friendship.
Similar portraits and paintings from Kennedy decorate offices throughout Washington, from President Obama’s private dining room to the lobbyist corridor on K Street, potent symbols of the ongoing influence of the longtime senior senator from Massachusetts who died five years ago.
A Boston Globe review of thousands of lobbying records and interviews with two dozen former aides reveals an informal network that is almost unrivaled in the nation’s capital, both in size and quiet clout. Some among them, who have gathered regularly over a good meal to kibitz, recall, and strategize, call themselves the T-birds — T for Teddy.
I understand the positive spin on this since the Globe is written of and for the elite of Bo$ton, and the reporter have even shown the internalization of his ma$ter's values with the choice of the word kibitz.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy had more than 1,100 aides during his 47 years in the US Senate. Many of them have become important power brokers who have remained, risen, and currently occupy positions of great influence, five years after their former boss died.
It is a remarkable flock. Kennedy molded some 1,100 staffers over the course of nearly five decades, a list that includes Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, superlawyers such as Kenneth R. Feinberg and Gregory B. Craig, and US Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez.
Related: New York Times Appraises GM Settlement Process
Feinberg is also the guardian of secrets at the JFK library, too.
More staffers who worked for Kennedy went on to become lobbyists and other influencers than the staffers of anyone aside from Hillary Clinton, according to a list compiled and maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics.
The stories of many of them are little known but, taken together, provide a revealing portrait of Kennedy power that continues to reach deep into Washington and Massachusetts. It is a corps of well-placed Washington players who say they still hear the echo of the late senator’s booming baritone in their ears and are still moved by his priorities, even as they have followed the well-worn track of many former Congressional staffers, parlaying inside connections into lucrative lobbying careers.
The corruption of the once great House of Kennedy.
Many of the former Kennedy aides are highly influential, working for firms that pull in millions of dollars annually in lobbying and other fees. A Kennedy deputy chief of staff now lobbies on behalf of some of the country’s biggest health insurance companies. Others continue to pull down a government salary but have out-sized influence. The 22-year-old who used to answer the phones at the front desk in Kennedy’s office is now President Obama’s head speechwriter.
“It is this kind of gold standard for lobbying,” said Scott M. Ferson, a Kennedy press secretary in the 1990s who founded Liberty Square Group, a Boston-based lobbying and communications firm flush with former Kennedy aides.
“A lot of business development is done amongst the network,” he said.
Bringing funding to Massachusetts
Defense spending in Massachusetts nearly tripled, from $5.7 billion in 1996 to $16.6 billion in 2009, a rate that was higher than the national average.....
Billions for the Big Dig....
Getting things done for regional interests now increasingly requires tapping a different sort of power grid, one that relies on deft and well-situated insiders who know how the city works —finding the middle ground in health care.
Putting a positive spin on pork and this corrupt $y$tem of wealth transferral is really more than one can take at this point.
*********
Earmarks and lobbying
If Tracy Spicer’s career had a linear path — from Kennedy to the K Street lobbying corridor — Bill Lynn’s took him through the revolving door, time and again. In and out of government, in and out of consulting.
That's the problem with this government.
It all started when he arrived in Kennedy’s office as a 33-year-old graduate of Dartmouth College, Cornell Law School, and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.
It was 1987, and Democrats had just won the Senate majority. Kennedy took over an Armed Services subcommittee that had oversight of shipbuilding.
Even though Kennedy opposed most wars, he was one of the Senate’s biggest cheerleaders for the defense industry — especially if the spending was going to take place in Massachusetts.
I guess Ted read the brain splatter and decided he wouldn't put himself at risk like his brothers.
He helped stave off base closures, and he fought for big contracts that defense companies wanted, even if the Pentagon itself advised against it. Working by Kennedy’s side for six years, Lynn saw, time and again, how the senator built on and deployed his influence.
Oh, Ted was into the wasteful military-industrial complex and enabled it all along.
Even thought the legend of the man was shattered for me long ago, this rank hypocri$y coming from that thundering gas bag is really the limit. All this imagery and illusion of politics is sickening.
“I think Ted Kennedy may well have invented the earmark,” Greg Craig, the Kennedy aide who offered Lynn a job with the senator, said of a budgetary tool used to secure federal money for home-state projects. “So we were alert to the various interests Massachusetts had in the defense budget. We certainly were aware of Raytheon and GE engines.”
Thanks, Ted.
Lynn left Kennedy’s office in 1993 to work in the Defense Department, where he eventually became comptroller and had oversight of a budget bigger than the GDP of some countries.
By 2002, he had accumulated a perfect resume for a defense industry giant like Raytheon, where he would become the chief lobbyist during a period when military spending increased as the Iraq War escalated.
Of course, Ted was against the war and voted against the war -- something I once respected him for. Now I realize it was nothing but a cynical move for political image purposes. It's easy to oppose something when you know it is going to pass.
Then, in July 2008, Lynn and Kennedy confronted a shared crisis.
The Navy alerted Congress that it was going to scrap a $20 billion DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyer program — which involved huge contracts for Raytheon — once two ships already paid for were completed.
Kennedy, the champion of regional interests, led a counteroffensive, organizing other senators and threatening to cut off funds for shipbuilding projects the Pentagon badly wanted. Raytheon executives began publicly touting the program’s importance, with Lynn playing a crucial role, personally lobbying members of Congress and their aides.
Within about a month, the Pentagon reversed course and stuck to its original plan of purchasing another ship in 2009. That year, the project was the largest of Raytheon’s 15,000 contracts, according to the company’s annual report. Some called funding the Zumwalt a boondoggle, a waste of taxpayer funds, but for Raytheon, Lynn, and Kennedy, it was a sweet victory.
I $uppo$e I shouldn't be $urprised to see that a war-promoting paper feels that way.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that Raytheon has benefited from its close relationship with Senator Kennedy and the ability to tap his former defense staffers,” said Loren B. Thompson, a defense industry consultant at the Lexington Institute who advises some of Raytheon’s competitors.
In early January 2009, Lynn went through the revolving door once again. Obama announced Lynn’s nomination as deputy Secretary of Defense. But there was a problem: Obama had pledged not to hire anyone who had lobbied within the previous two years. Lynn would need a waiver.
The Kennedy connection helped smooth the way....
Such a $ucce$$ story, huh?
After two and a half years overseeing day-to-day operations at the Pentagon and controlling major budgetary decisions, Lynn retired from his job in the Obama administration.
I bet he will be getting a good taxpayer-funded pension, too!
Once again, he swung back through the revolving door and is now chief executive of DRS Technologies, a large defense contractor.
Throughout it all, the Kennedy network has been an ever-present factor....
Isn't that great?
Channeling Kennedy’s words, Keeping the network thriving, Helping out their own, Preserving a Senate legacy, On a spit of land on Dorchester’s Columbia Point, next to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate is rising.
How much tax loot did that us?
--more--"
So much for the myth surrounding the man.
Trying to fill the shoes, 'er, slippers:
"Elizabeth Warren’s new post will be her albatross" by Scot Lehigh, Globe Columnist November 19, 2014
I may be one of the few, but I believe the senator when she says she doesn’t have presidential ambitions; certainly little coming from her camp suggests the contrary. And even if she does harbor secret aspirations, recent history doesn’t suggest this country is thirsty for the chance to vote for a(nother) Massachusetts liberal for the job.
Warren does have the potential to become a truly significant senator, however. Her knowledge about the financial industry and the plight of the middle class leads her to ask the right questions. Her intellect gives her the confidence to speak her mind. One doesn’t have to agree with her on everything to see her as a force to be reckoned with — and a healthy counterweight to big money’s oversized influence in politics.
But that’s just another reason why she won’t gain any elevation from a rinky-dink Senate leadership post. Particularly not when you consider that sharp-elbowed, publicity-hungry New York Senator Charles Schumer leads the Senate Democrats’ policy and communications center. Given Schumer’s cozy relationship with Wall Street, it’s hard to envision Warren’s skepticism of Wall Street becoming the Senate Democrats’ manifesto. On the other hand, it’s easy to imagine her populist message morphing into a vague muddle, leading to accusations that she’s lowered her voice or tempered her critique because of her new post.
Warren would do better to take her lead from Ted Kennedy. Early in his career, Kennedy tried to climb the Senate leadership ladder, only to have Robert Byrd oust him from the majority whip’s post in 1971. Once his own presidential hopes died, Kennedy settled down, dug in, and made himself a political nonpareil in the Senate.
He was, by seasons, a feisty partisan pushing progressive policies and a deal-maker ready to roll up his sleeves and work across the aisle. Part of Kennedy’s success was due to the celebrity his name lent him, but only part. What made him extraordinary was his hard work, his policy mastery, his big, generous personality — and his brave recognition that compromise is a legitimate part of any political process.
She going to champion certain causes?
So far, we’ve seen some of the same qualities in Warren. Whether she can become a senator with similar deal-making inclinations and abilities — something particularly difficult in today’s hyper-partisan era — remains to be seen. (One revealing clue will be the relationship she does or doesn’t forge with Charlie Baker, the moderate Republican who just defeated her favored candidate for governor.)
But either way, following Kennedy’s path is a better course for her than joining Harry Reid’s tired leadership team.
--more--"
I've had my grimes with her in the past, mostly because despite the rhetoric she is nothing but a party hack, but this next item makes you realize she is no different than anyone else down there:
"In 1st tour as senator, Elizabeth Warren visits Israel, Jordan; Expected to meet with US troops, government officials, and UN agencies in troubled region" by Matt Viser, Globe Staff November 23, 2014
WASHINGTON — Senator Elizabeth Warren arrived Saturday in Tel Aviv, planning to visit Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan as the Massachusetts Democrat makes her first trip abroad as senator.
And she chose to go to the war criminal state of Israel!
Warren is expected to meet with government officials as well as military troops from Massachusetts who are serving in the region. A Warren aide, who confirmed the senator’s travels, could not say specifically with whom she will meet, but said it involved Israeli and Jordanian government officials, as well as representatives from the Palestinian Authority.
Warren also planned to meet with representatives of two United Nations organizations that work with Palestinian refugees, as well as the US Agency for International Development.
AID = CIA
“She is visiting the Middle East because the United States has an important interest in the region,” Warren spokeswoman Lacey Rose said.
In the Senate, Warren has largely focused on domestic issues, rarely choosing to wade into foreign policy. The trip appears mostly designed to allow her a chance to familiarize herself with Israel, one of America’s closest allies and the biggest recipient of foreign aid. It also allows her to travel to some of the safer areas of the Middle East and accomplish a basic duty as senator: to see firsthand the areas where US Senate votes have an impact.
Warren had been among only a handful of senators who have not traveled abroad.
Although the trip may reignite speculation of a 2016 presidential run, Warren has been planning to travel to Israel for months. Aides said in August she planned to take such a trip following a busy schedule of campaigning during the midterm elections.
Rose did not say when Warren would return.
The trip was organized by the State Department and the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. But Warren is the only senator on the trip. She is traveling with her legislative director, Jon Donenberg.
“Government officials would be very interested in meeting with her,” said Herb Keinon, the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Post. “This is a country that likes to keep an eye on who could have a big impact on our lives.”
I guess that is one spinning way of describing the chokehold Zionist Israel has on this government.
Keinon said Warren probably would meet with the country’s top officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Her visit comes at a time when the country is consumed by news about whether a US-led deal will be struck with Iran over its nuclear weapons.
“His number-one priority is Iran,” Keinon said. “I imagine any conversation with him, the top priority would be Iran.”
Well, he must have missed the fact that the talks have been extended:
Israel pushes hard line with Iran
My government dutifully responds and even implicates China even as Iran helps us against ISIS.
Iran formally charges US reporter
I'm sure he's a spy in one form or another; otherwise, he doesn't make the agenda-pushing paper.
Although most government officials will be well aware of the senior senator from Massachusetts, Keinon said, “if she walks down the street and shouts at the top of her lungs, ‘I’m Elizabeth Warren!’ no one will know who she is.”
In general, Warren’s foreign policy views seem to be anti-interventionist, with a skeptical eye to any US military action. In February, delivering her only major speech on foreign policy since she took office, she warned of using military might without considering the implications.
“When military action is on the table, do we fully and honestly debate the risk that while our actions would wipe out existing terrorists or other threats, they also might produce new ones?” she said in a speech at Georgetown University.
She also warned against harming civilians and risking inciting insurgents.
“The failure to make civilian casualties a full and robust part of our national conversation over the use of force is dangerous — dangerous because of the impression that it gives the world about our country and dangerous because of how it affects the decisions that we make as a country,” Warren said.
What, that "we" don't care about millions of foreign -- mostly brown-skinned -- people that have been murdered over an altar of lies put forward by this government and it's ma$$ media whores?
Warren was pressed on her support of Israel and her votes to send money to support its fight against Hamas, during an August meeting with constituents in Barnstable.
You may not want to look at the end.
Warren said Israel was being attacked “indiscriminately” and had a right to fight back even though civilian casualties were the “last thing Israel wants.”
“But when Hamas puts its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools, they’re using their civilian population to protect their military assets,” Warren said, according to the Cape Cod Times. “And I believe Israel has a right, at that point, to defend itself.”
In other words, she repeated the Israeli government's position.
--more--"
How odd that there was never any follow-up by the Globe.
So WHERE are the U.S. POLITICIANS that will SPEAK OUT AGAINST ISRAEL, huh?
"Group gathers to commemorate death of JFK" by Melissa Hanson, Globe Correspondent November 22, 2014
This is the only junk the Globe gives us this year regarding his killing. I was sure to look and note it for I do every year.
A small group of students, locals, and tourists gathered this afternoon at the Brookline birthplace of John F. Kennedy to share memories of the former president on the 51st anniversary of his assassination.
The ceremony took a slightly different turn when the wreath arrived late. Instead of the wreath laying launching the event, it marked the end.
“It was a nice punctuation for the end of the ceremony,” said Myra Harrison, a National Park Service superintendent. “Maybe it will start a new tradition.”
Nothing new about the censorship:
Students from history classes at Medford High School were offered extra credit if they attended the Kennedy commemoration, according to Calvin Lambert, a sophomore.
When I think of the "history" I've been taught -- nothing more than a politically-correct take on the world through the prism of Zionist dogma -- I shudder at what these kids are likely being told these days. I'm decades removed, and the Zionist grip of inculcation and indoctrination in AmeriKa has only grown in strength (starting to lose it now, though).
"I liked his ideas about racial equality and his initiative to go to the moon," said Lambert, 15. "We've kind of lost sight of that dream."
Another student from the school, Jennifer Zuluaga, a junior, said she would have come back even if extra credit had not been promised.
"I like finding different historic sites around where I live," she said.
Please tell me the Globe scrubbed those paragraphs that appear in print because the kids are ignorant and stupid, not because of all the questions surrounding his killing.
--more--"
That is one of the true tragedies of our times, folks; the fact that what really happened long ago is constantly being covered up and revised to promote a certain narrative of history. Those who control the present control the past.
The narrative of JFK on a white horse and America as a Camelot is used to promote the nation by the same people that killed him. They usurped his legend and used it for themselves.
It may seem contradictory for me to say this, but JFK was also a knight on the white horse. He was far from a perfect human being, but in looking back now you realize he was the last good president we ever had, the last one who truly showed humanity and who actually believed in the office.
That would lead us to the other brother:
"Years after pact to open RFK files, gaps remain; CIA and military remove papers pending review" by Bryan Bender, Globe Staff December 02, 2014
WASHINGTON — In a secret meeting held in late 1963, a top US diplomat was “particularly interested” in Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s views about implementing another blockade of communist Cuba, which new intelligence suggested may have shipped arms to guerrillas in Venezuela.
Kennedy, who was still mourning the assassination a few weeks earlier of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, was not present for the session of the so-called “Special Group” that he chaired to coordinate covert operations. The sensitive discussion was recounted to him in a confidential memo from a top aide.
“What measures are we capable of taking and what measures should we take?” Justice Department official John Nolan asked Robert Kennedy in the Dec. 9, 1963 memo, which remained classified until an appeal for its release filed by the Globe was recently granted.
But how exactly — or even whether — Kennedy responded to the query is not revealed.
Despite steps by the National Archives and Kennedy’s heirs to make public dozens of boxes of the attorney general’s “confidential” and “classified” files, numerous memos, reports, and other correspondence have been removed pending review by the CIA and military branches, according to researchers and government archivists. They cited the need to protect national security.
That has included some files about the Special Group’s deliberations between September and December 1963, a highly sensitive period before and after President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, when concerns were highest that a foreign power or CIA-backed Cuban exiles might have been involved or had knowledge about the assassination.
For decades the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Dorchester, which is part of the National Archives, and the Kennedy family wrangled with historians and journalists who were anxious to glean new insights from some 60 boxes of unopened RFK files covering his term as the nation’s top law enforcement officer from 1961 to 1964.
That time frame covers a critical period of the Cold War in which the younger Kennedy played an influential role as confidant to the president and overseer of covert plots, including attempts to overthrow Cuba’s president, Fidel Castro.
The controversy over the files appeared to have been settled in 2012 and 2013, when the boxes were opened so “the public will benefit from exploring these documents,” as the chief archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, put it at the time.
Maybe, except I no longer believe documents produced by this government at such a late date.
But as the yearlong effort by the Globe to win the release of a relatively innocuous two-page memo illustrates, many files are still withheld, which has frustrated researchers and specialists on the government classification system.
“This document contains not a single substantive secret — no names of CIA agents; no sources and methods, no cryptonyms of actual covert operations — nothing that would warrant it being withdrawn and withheld from the file to begin with,” said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst and head of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, after reviewing the newly released Nolan memo to Kennedy.
He added: “The fact that the document was withheld in its entirety is an indication of how flawed and arbitrary the secrecy system remains.”
The Kennedy Library, where the former attorney general’s files have resided for more than four decades, was required by a 1973 agreement to get permission from Robert Kennedy’s heirs before making the documents available.
That permission was granted in 2012. But many files contained secret government documents and the national security agencies that originally classified the information retained the ultimate authority to release them.
The JFK Library has not estimated how many files in Robert Kennedy’s attorney general papers are being withheld, according to director Tom Putnam. But he acknowledged that a “good number” of documents have been withdrawn.
Putnam said in an e-mail that the library has “opened as many documents as possible in order to open the material to researchers. . . . Other documents that could not be declassified by our in-house staff have been sent to the various agencies that have equity in the documents.”
The CIA, which has purview over many of the withheld files, did not respond to a request for comment.
One category contained the agenda and minutes of the so-called Special Group — its formal name was Special Group (CI), for “counter insurgency” — during the last quarter of 1963.
The Special Group, headed by Robert Kennedy, had purview over covert operations targeting communist infiltrators around the world. As the Nolan memo recounted, on any given day topics ranged from “terrorist operations in Latin America” to new arms being acquired by Viet Cong guerrillas in Vietnam.
Some historians have raised questions about whether withheld documents about the Special Group in late 1963 might contain sensitive new details of anti-Cuba operations and other deliberations taking place around the time of the president’s assassination.
Some key documents from that period were withheld even though most of the Special Group’s agendas and meeting minutes between 1962 and 1964 were opened.
Kornbluh, co-author of the new book “Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana,” was critical of the lack of disclosure.
“The Special Group was in charge of covert operation and the CIA still wants to hide covert operations that happened over 50 years ago from the American public,” he said.
What they want to do is keep blaming Bobby for all their nefarious deeds.
--more--"
All I can say now is when you see Bobby splayed out on the floor of the Los Angeles hotel, you realize that is the moment when the chance for this world to be a decent and sane place to live was gone. Just thinking about it makes me well up in tears.
It's not because Bobby was a saint, and he probably was a ruthless little son of a bitch; however, he was the LAST DECENT MEMBER of the ELITE RULING CLASS who wasn't a mass-murdering psychopath. He was the last one who believed in the peace "we" preach.
As we see from the beginning of this post, Ted read the brain splatter on the wall and quickly toed the line. And now we have Liz Warren.
