Books read in 2019

Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2019.

• Graham T. Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?
• Ross Anderson, Security Engineering (3rd edition, draft chapters)
• Herbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld
• Heidi Blake, From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin's Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin's Secret War on the West
• Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
• Oliver Bullough, Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World
• Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration
• C.J. Chivers, The Fighters: Americans in Combat
• Sefton Delmer, Black Boomerang
• Nina J. Easton, Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade (bio of Bill Kristol, Ralph Reed, Clint Bolick, Grover Norquist, and David McIntosh)
• Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
• Ronan Farrow, War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence
• Ian Frisch, Magic is Dead: My Journey into the World's Most Secretive Society of Magicians
• Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
• Reba Wells Grandrud, Sunnyslope (Images of America series)
• Andy Greenberg, Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers
• Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
• Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq
• Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
• Jonathan Lusthaus, Industry of Anonymity: Inside the Business of Cybercrime
• Ben MacIntyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
• Joseph Menn, Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World
• Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power
• Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA
• Sarah T. Roberts, Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media
• Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
• Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City
• Alexander Stille, The Sack of Rome: Media + Money + Celebrity = Power = Silvio Berlusconi
• Jamie Susskind, Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech
• Erik Van De Sandt, Deviant Security: The Technical Computer Security Practices of Cyber Criminals (Ph.D. thesis)
• Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
• Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

Top for 2019: Bullough, Farrow (Catch and Kill), Wu, Chivers, Rosling, Greenberg, Blake, Allison, Caplan and Weinersmith, Kinzer, Delmer.

I started the following books I expect to finish in early 2020:

Myke Cole, Legion versus Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World
Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (2nd edition)
Brad Smith and Carol Anne Browne, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age
Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History

Two books I preordered and look forward to reading in 2020:

Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley: A Memoir (due out January 14)
Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (due out April 21)

(Previously: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.)

Republican states lead in divorce, teen pregnancy, and porn subscriptions

Charles Blow has an op-ed piece in yesterday's The New York Times commenting on the spate of recent Republican sex scandals which contains this infographic (an aptly named "blowchart") ranking the states based on divorce rates, teen pregnancy rates, and subscriptions to online porn sites as a percentage of broadband subscribers.

Blow suggests that conservatives address this hypocrisy by becoming more concerned about what goes on in their own bedrooms than in everyone else's. It also highlights the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only sex education.

(BTW, the data for the third column comes from the work of Ben Edelman (PDF), who I've cited here before for his excellent work on spyware and adware, and on the ineffectiveness of TRUSTe.)

UPDATE (June 30, 2009): There's at least one error in this chart, in that Tennessee should be red, not blue, near the bottom of the broadband porn column.

Mark Sanford wants me to join him...

Talk about great timing--a few minutes ago, I received an email from "Governor Sanford" with the subject "Join Me." I thought perhaps it might be an invitation to travel to Buenos Aires. But no, it's an appeal from the Goldwater Institute to join, signed by Mark Sanford, the Republican Governor of South Carolina who is in the news today for confessing that his recent week-long disappearance was to visit a woman in Argentina that he's been having an affair with.

I suppose they can be sure the recipients are more likely to open such an email today, though I'm not sure how much Sanford's name will result in people giving them money.

BTW, Fox News ran a caption on Sanford's confession press conference identifying him as a Democrat, just like they did with Republican Rep. Mark Foley of Florida back in 2006.

Goldwater Institute hires investigative journalist

As newspapers decline and die, it's good to see other opportunities opening up to support investigative journalism. Along with wire services, which are beefing up their staffs and seeing growing profits as their content is syndicated to more and more places including websites and broadcast media, think tanks are also getting into the business. (There are also other nonprofits that support investigative journalism, such as the Center for Public Integrity.)

The Goldwater Institute has hired investigative reporter Mark Flatten from the Tribune to investigate and report on cases of government corruption, abuse, and waste. Flatten is an award-winning reporter who has covered state government for nearly 20 years in Arizona, including covering the impeachment of former Gov. Evan Mecham, the AzScam corruption scandal, and the alternative fuels fiasco.

Flatten is the only reporter who has ever been banned from the floor of the state legislature, which occurred at the order of former Arizona Speaker of the House Don Aldridge (R-Lake Havasu City) because of Flatten's reporting on links between Aldridge and Max Dunlap, who was convicted for his part in the 1976 murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles. In 1976, Aldridge was a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and he accompanied Dunlap to the law office of Neal Roberts on June 2, the day a bomb went off under Bolles' car, allegedly about a runway paving problem at the Mohave County Airport (as reported in the Kingman Daily Miner, June 28, 1976). On June 3, Roberts and Dunlap met at Durant's Restaurant to discuss raising $25,000 for the defense of Bolles' killer, John Harvey Adamson, who was at the time facing a minor criminal charge and had not yet been caught for the murder.

A May 10 NPR story describes the Goldwater Institute's job ad for this position and raises concerns about political bias infecting any stories produced. While I think that's a real concern, I think it's often better to have stories come from an advertised bias rather than pretend objectivity. In any case, Flatten's stories have gone after abuse regardless of party (Mecham was a Republican, the alternative fuels fiasco was caused by a Republican, and AzScam caught both Republicans and Democrats taking bribes).

I look forward to seeing what he will investigate and write about in this new role.

UPDATE (October 19, 2009): Flatten has published his first major investigative piece since being hired by the Goldwater Institute, and it's an account of how a federal program designed to provide business opportunities to the disadvantaged is being used by political insiders for their own benefit, including County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox. Wilcox obtained the Chili's Too franchise in Terminal 4 at Sky Harbor Airport as an Airport Concession Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (ACDBE), which requires that the owner participate in the day-to-day operation of the business, which she does not (though perhaps her co-owner does?). She also received a $450,000 loan from Host International which meant she didn't have to bring any money to the table, a loan which violated city policy (the City of Phoenix owns and operates Sky Harbor).

Flatten's "High Fliers" report may be found here.

Dirty Politician: Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)

Long-time drug warrior politician Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) turns out to be a dirty politician. As Radley Balko of The Agitator puts it:

...the chair of the House Committee that writes our tax laws didn’t know that he’d been given an interest-free loan for a luxury Caribbean Villa, didn’t know that he was getting taxable income off of rentals from said villa, and didn’t know that he had a duty to report and disclose and report the $75,000 in income from said rentals that apparently slipped his notice?

Riiii-iiiight. This would be the same guy who didn’t know how he somehow was able to accumulate four rent-controlled apartments in New York City, and didn’t know about laws against using rent-controlled apartments for purposes other than a primary residence.

Rangel’s either a corrupt liar, or he’s shockingly ignorant of laws a man with his position and responsibilities ought to know about. Either way, he should be stripped of his chairmanship.

I'd go farther than that--any corrupt politician should be removed from office and tossed into prison. It rarely happens, because nearly all of them, along with the leaders in the executive branch, are similarly corrupt.

Dirty Politician: Vito Fossella

Conservative "family values" Republican Congressman Vito Fossella (R-NY) was arrested on DUI charges on May 1, 2008, and released to the custody of retired Air Force Lt. Col. Laura Fay. He originally claimed that he had been driving to pick up his sick daughter, then revised his story the next day to claim he was going to visit a sick friend. During his press conference, he refused to deny that he had previously driven under the influence of alcohol.

In fact, he had been having an extramarital affair with Fay for years, and had fathered an illegitimate child with her, which he admitted on May 8 after days of denials. He had essentially been living a double life, with his wife in New York City and with Fay and their now 3-year-old daughter in Washington, D.C.

Fossella has a lesbian sister, with whom he cut off all contact, and refuses to attend any family events if she is present with her partner.

Some "family values."

His Wikipedia page lists several other controversies regarding the Congressman, including financial misconduct. No doubt more will be found as his record is scrutinized further.

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars and Wikipedia.)

Dirty Politician: Rick Renzi indicted

Arizona Republican Rep. Rick Renzi has finally been indicted, on 35 counts that include extortion, embezzlement, and money laundering. The investigation has been conducted by the FBI (working on priority #4, "combat public corruption at all levels"), the IRS, the U.S. Attorney's office, and the Department of Justice's Office of Public Integrity.

Dirty Politician: Don Young

How corrupt is our Congress? They're not even pretending to follow the Constitution.

Talking Points Memo reports on how Rep. Don Young (R-AK) inserted an earmark to spend $10 million on a highway interchange in Florida ("Coconut Road") to benefit real estate developer Daniel Aranoff, a few days after Aranoff raised $40,000 for Young.

The really interesting part is not an Alaskan legislator doing political favors for contributions from a Florida developer, but the fact that the earmark was not in the version of the bill that passed the House or Senate--it was added to the bill during the enrollment process, after its passage but before being signed by President Bush. This is a process which is only supposed to allow correction of typographical and technical but non-substantive errors.

Dirty Politician: Ted Stevens

Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) home was raided today by the FBI. All of Alaska's federal legislators are now under investigation for corruption, as are some Alaskan state legislators, such as Ted Stevens' son Ben Stevens, president of the Alaska State Senate.

UPDATE (August 1, 2007): George W. Bush continued his habit of supporting legislators with criminal investigation and ethics problems by hosting a White House dinner in Ted Stevens' honor back on May 23 of this year.

UPDATE (October 28, 2008): Ted Stevens was convicted yesterday on seven charges, making him the fifth sitting Senator to be convicted of a felony.

Dirty Politician: Rick Renzi

Rep. Rick Renzi (Republican, AZ-District 1) is now under investigation by the feds, for some deals involving San Pedro River water and land nearby which a friend of his made millions from.

Renzi is on CREW's list of the top 20 most corrupt Congressmen.

Dirty Politician: Rep. Jerry Lewis

House Appropriations Committee chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA), under federal investigation himself, abruptly fired 60 contract investigators working for the Appropriations Committee to identify government fraud and waste. This stalls out all of the investigations, which have been saving billions of dollars and identified numerous instances of malfeasance.

Lewis spokesman John Scofield says "there is nothing sinister going on."

Dirty Politician: Rep. Mark Foley resigns

That was quick. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida), whose emails to a former Congressional page asking him for a photograph and his birthday were made public yesterday, has offered his resignation today. It seems there were also a lot of sexually oriented instant messages from "Maf54."

This guy was chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. It looks like he may be prosecuted under laws he helped pass.

The timing of this resignation is such that the Republicans will probably not be able to replace Foley's name on the ballot. (For more details, see here.)

Another dirty Republican politician down, a bunch more to go.

Dirty Politician: William Jefferson

Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA)'s Washington office was raided last night, and the FBI has disclosed portions of recorded conversations last year between Jefferson and an informant. The informant had paid Jefferson $100,000 in $100 bills (caught on videotape by the FBI) to be delivered to an official in Nigeria. In a telephone conversation on August 1 which the FBI has partially disclosed, Jefferson and the informant spoke to each other in code about the bribe money, which was recovered from Jefferson's freezer during a police search on August 3. In that conversation, the informant asked about the status of "the package." Jefferson replied that "I gave him the African art that you gave me and he was very pleased."

Jefferson apparently had the objective of getting work in Africa for a communications company, and getting his children a cut of that deal.

Via Talking Points Memo.

Dirty Politician: The Katherine Harris campaign implosion

Apparently she had some staffers leave because she lied about whether Mitchell Wade (the briber in the Duke Cunningham scandal) had bought her a very expensive ($2,800) dinner at a fancy restaurant. She ended an interview last week when the subject came up, after saying that her campaign had "reimbursed" the restaurant (which makes no sense, since Wade paid the bill). Her spokesman called the reporter and asked that the subject not be published. The following day, her campaign released a statement saying that "I have donated to a local Florida charity $100 which will more than adequately compensate for the cost of my beverage and appetizer."

It turns out that the "local Florida charity" is Global Dominion Impact Ministries, a Charismatic Christian group run by Bishop Lewes and Pastor Sandra Jones. The group's website says:

"Pastor Sandra has an inspiring testimony of her deliverance from being sold to devils as an infant. She also shares her miraculous healing from her breast cancer as well as being raised from the dead."

Dirty Politician: John McCain

John McCain hired Terry Nelson as a senior advisor. Nelson was deeply involved in Tom DeLay's money laundering of corporate contributions scandal, but the mainstream media was lax about even asking McCain questions about this issue until after a Seattle radio show caller asked him about it:

CALLER: Thanks, I had a question for the senator. For a reformer, I'm kind of curious why he would hire a guy like Terry Nelson as a senior advisor. Here's a guy who was actually in the indictment of DeLay on his money laundering charges. When he was at the RNC, he agreed to take the corporate contributions from DeLay's PAC and then recycle them back into the Republican congressional races.

And he was also, this guy Nelson was also the supervisor of James Tobin, who was the guy convicted last year for helping jam the Democratic get-out-the-vote lines in New England a couple years ago.

So I'm curious why would you hire someone with such a shady background?

MCCAIN: None of those charges are true.

CALLER: You don't believe what was actually written in the indictment from Texas?

MCCAIN: No.

CARLSON: All right.

[nervous laughter]

MCCAIN: I will check it out. But I've never heard of such a thing. I know that he was a grassroots organizer for President Bush year 2000 and 2004, and had a very important job in the Bush campaign as late as 2004, but the other charges I will go and look and see if any of them are true, but I've never heard of them before.

If McCain had heard of this, he's a liar. If he really hadn't heard of it, he hasn't been properly backgrounding people he hires. Contrary to McCain's claim that none of the charges are true, the caller had it right (also see here).

If McCain doesn't fire Nelson, it's clear that he's a dirty politician.

Dirty Politician: John Boehner

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was named Speaker of the House to replace Tom DeLay. It's already been pointed out that he lives in a D.C. apartment that belongs to a lobbyist. The Center for Public Integrity has looked further at his record, and found that he

• has taken dozens of trips on private jets owned by corporations that have legislative interests before Congress
• has accepted scores of privately sponsored trips (often categorized as having fact-finding or educational purposes) to some of the world's premier golf spots and foreign locales
• has hosted many high-end fund-raisers to wine and dine potential donors and Republican colleagues
• has donated millions of dollars to election campaigns of fellow Republicans.

All legal, but the first two items are equivalent to receiving substantial gifts from special interests, and the second two are equivalent to passing some of them on and seeking more.

The CPI's website also has a Google Map of Boehner's trips and expenses for 2005 which includes a Scottsdale, Arizona connection--he spent thousands of dollars at the Talking Stick Golf Club at 9998 E. Indian Bend Rd:

Date	Amount
02/13/2004	$3805.13
02/13/2004	$469.13
02/13/2004	$938.26
03/07/2005	$7488.67

Dirty Politician: Rick Santorum, again

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who was previously pointed out exchanging donations to his charity for government contracts, now denies that the charity, Operation Good Neighbor, is his. Sure, he founded it, but he says (in a letter to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) that he's had nothing to do with it since then:

I do not have a personal charity. The reference was an allusion to Operation Good Neighbor, a charitable organization that I founded in 2000. Since then, I have had no control over its direction. My involvement is limited to being honorary chairman of the board -- a board that includes former Philadelphia mayor W. Wilson Goode, a prominent Democrat -- and lending my name to fund-raising events. That's it.

Attytood shows, with quotes and photos, that Santorum's a liar.

Also in today's news is that Barbara Bonfiglio, former treasurer of political action committees for the indicted Sen. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Santorum, and convicted former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA), has resigned from the D.C. law firm of Williams & Jensen and from her post as treasurer of dirty politician Rep. Rich Pombo (R-CA)'s political action committee. Her lawfirm bio says "She also advises the firm's clients on matters involving House and Senate ethics rules, as well as compliance with the Lobbying Disclosure Act." She was treasurer of Santorum's charity, Operation Good Neighbor.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Santorum lied when he said he would stop regular meetings with lobbyists:

After saying in January that he would end his regular meetings with lobbyists, Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), the third-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, has continued to meet with many of the same lobbyists at the same time and on the same day of the week.

(Via Talking Points Memo and TPM's Daily Muck.)

UPDATE: At least three lobbyists have been working at Santorum's charity--in addition to Barbara Bonfiglio, mentioned above, lobbyist Rob Bickhart, whose offices are also the home of Santorum's PAC and re-election campaign, works for the charity. And the charity is spending as much as 60% of its money on non-charitable things, like $200,000 for travel expenses and meetings. Santorum's response, when asked about this, was to deny that Bickhart is a lobbyist.

Dirty Politician: Conrad Burns

Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) says that Jack Abramoff never influenced him, but Abramoff says in Vanity Fair that he got everything he ever asked for from Burns:

"Every appropriation we wanted [from Burns' committee] we got. Our staffs were as close as they could be. They practically used Signatures [Abramoff's restaurant] as their cafeteria."

Burns' former staffers have also made millions from going to work for telecom and tech firms that have received funding from Burns earmarks.

Dirty Politician: "Duke" Cunningham gets 8 years, 4 months

Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) was sentenced to 8 years, 4 months in federal prison and will be required to pay $1.8 million in restitution. This is the longest sentence ever for a member of Congress. This case is just the tip of the iceberg--Congress full of similar corrupt politicians, some of whom are in similar trouble and others of whom will only be exposed later.

There's a nice collection of Cunningham data at Talking Points Memo.

Dirty Politician: Tom DeLay

Jack Abramoff paid for a 2000 DeLay junket to Scotland, see his American Express statement here. (Via Talking Points Memo.)