Posts Tagged ‘Watergate’
“By gold all good faith has been banished; by gold our rights are abused; the law itself is influenced by gold, and soon there will be an end of every modest restraint.”*…
Timely etymology from Dan Lewis…
If you follow politics (or, more likely, a politics-themed TV sitcom or drama) you’ve probably heard the term “slush fund” — and usually, it’s tied to something shady. A slush fund is money set aside for unofficial, often unethical, and sometimes illegal uses. It’s the kind of fund that no one really wants to talk about, and if they do, they don’t want to explain too much about it. If someone has a slush fund, you could say that there’s something fishy going on.
And you’d be right — literally speaking.
The word “slush” dates back to at least the mid-1600s, referring to the cold, wet muck that is formed when snow begins to melt. It’s unpleasant texture must have made an impression of the people of the day because a century or two later, “slush” took on a new, second meaning — at least, if you were on a boat.
Salt pork — salted (for preservative reasons) pieces of pork belly — was a staple on fishing and whaling ships of the early-to-mid 1800s. Crews aboard those ships spent a lot of a time at sea, and salt pork was a good, long-lasting protein source in an era before refrigeration. Salt pork was typically fried, and as the ship’s voyage continued onward, fat, grease, and other waste products would build up in the cooking vats. This residue became known as “slush,” likely because of its similarities to the melted snow seen back on land.
But this pig-created slush wasn’t just thrown overboard as waste — it turned out to be useful; as One Word a Day notes, “sailors used it as a lubricant and to waterproof the rigging and sails on their ships.” So they kept it around, and when their whaling or fishing expeditions ended, they typically still had a large amount of slush left over. And it turned out, there was a market for the stuff. Other ships could also use it to help their sailing efforts (before they started cooking up their own salt pork). As The Straight Dope notes, it could also be used by candle and soap makers. Once back on land, there were plenty of people who would gladly buy the slush off the ship’s cooks or other sailors.
That turned out to be a boon for the crew. Because the slush was a byproduct of the efforts to feed the crew, ship owners rarely, if ever, cared about the value of the slush itself — to them, it was waste created by the cost of doing business, not an asset. So when the sailors sold off the slush, they kept the money for themselves and their crewmates. Per Merriam-Webster, “The money from the sale of slush was reserved for the crew of the ship, and would be used to purchase items, such as musical instruments or books, which were not considered necessary enough that a country’s navy, or a ship’s owner, had to provide them for a crew.”
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, as a result of this usage, the phrase “slush fund” first appeared in our collective lexicon in 1839. It would take a generation or two before it gained its current, negative connotation often implying bribery. And with that came another term for financial shenanigans, which also comes from the use of salt pork byproducts to fund sailors whims: “greasing,” meaning “bribing.” The Etymology Dictionary explains “The extended meaning ‘money collected for bribes and to buy influence’ is first recorded 1874, no doubt with suggestions of ‘greasing’ palms.”
The term “slush fund” didn’t originally imply anything untoward — the association with bribery came later, as noted above. And the same is likely true for the word “bribe” itself. Per the Online Etymology Dictionary, “bribe” comes from the Old French term of the 14th century of the same spelling meaning “a gift,” and specifically, “bit, piece, hunk; morsel of bread given to beggars.” It took 200 or so years before the modern, sketchy meaning developed, and it’s unclear why…
“The Original Slush Fund” It was greasy. Literally. @nowiknow.com
(Image above: source)
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As we lament lawlessness, we might recall that it was on this date in 1972 that an 18-1/2-minute gap appears in the tape recording of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex.
Still, the tapes were damming. The White House released the subpoenaed tapes on August 5. One tape, later known as the “Smoking Gun” tape, documented the initial stages of the Watergate coverup. On it, Nixon and Haldeman are heard formulating a plan to block investigations by having the CIA falsely claim to the FBI that national security was involved.
It’s a measure of how different those times were from ours that, once the “Smoking Gun” transcript was made public, Nixon’s political support practically vanished: the ten Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who had voted against impeachment in committee announced that they would now vote for impeachment once the matter reached the House floor.
“When the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers”*…
… So, the estimable Rana Foroohar suggests, American business leaders should be careful what they wish for…
For months now, I’ve been watching with alarm how many top business leaders in the US are buying the line that Donald Trump II would somehow be just like the last time around — loud, but laissez-faire. It was so depressing to see some of America’s top CEOs giggling as the former president joked at his recent Business Roundtable event in Washington. Trump said that he’d polled waitresses and caddies (presumably at Mar-a-Lago) about removing taxes on tips and they were in favour. Sure, there were reports of some grumbling about hardline tariff talk, Trump’s inability to stay on point and his general blow-hardness. But for the most part, tax cuts, deregulation and an utter lack of imagination about political risk seems to be driving business sentiment around him.
It’s not just American business that has the blinders on. I did a Lunch with the FT [gift link] with Lloyd’s of London chief executive John Neal, and I was amazed that when I asked him to think about his top US political risks, he spoke first about Joe Biden’s money printing — rather than the risk to, say, the rule of law under Trump. When I pressed him on the Trump risk, his biggest worry seemed to be the differing policies of the two candidates around things like electric vehicle production, and the decision risk that this might introduce for companies.
Really folks? Let’s have a refresher course on Trumpian economics.
In 2016, Trump talked tough about Made in America and helping working people, but most of his economic policies (aside from tariffs on China) were basically business as usual. He rolled back regulation and lowered taxes on big corporations. Much of the money went to stock buybacks, not Main Street investment. That buoyed short-term stock prices, which were also helped along by low interest rates.
But, it’s VERY unlikely we would see the same phenomenon in a second Trump administration. His tenure marked the apex of financialised growth, which is now largely tapped out. As the Federal Reserve’s End of an Era paper from June 2023 laid out, more than 40 per cent of real corporate profit growth between 1989 and 2019 came from the secular fall in interest rates, and corporate tax rates being cut. That’s what has propelled so much growth in equities in recent years.
Today, the S&P is by some measures more overvalued than it was when the housing bubble burst. In this environment, it’s difficult to see equities rising even if the Fed were to begin cutting rates in the face of a recession. It’s much more likely they’d fall, despite any new Trump tax cuts. And that is the more benign scenario. A more likely possibility is that we’d get a harder-edged, even more insular, xenophobic and paranoid version of Trump this time around.
For starters, few of the more moderate business types that served with him the first time would be willing to come into a second administration given the January 6 2021 Capitol riots and Trump’s ongoing election-loss denial. Some smart people in the business community have concerns about his propensity for fiscal profligacy at a time when rising US deficit levels are worrying investors. It’s fascinating to me that people think about Biden when they think about debt, rather than Trump. Biden’s White House has made record fiscal investment, sure, but it is investing in the real economy, while Trump’s legacy was a classic Republican formula of boosting asset markets with financialisation.
Add to that the prospects of a 10 per cent tariff on imports across the board, and 60 per cent levy on China. This goes to what has been one of the biggest problems with Trump’s trade and economic strategies from the beginning — a tendency to blame China and employ tariffs as a standalone solution to the big, complex problem of slower secular growth and growing inequality in the US. Not that Trump seems to think in such nuanced terms. The fact is that America’s economic and political problems are only partly about the failings of globalisation and the neoliberal trading system in particular. They are also about a lack of investment at home, in basic infrastructure, skills and education, as well as core research and development.
I haven’t seen anything yet that makes me think that Trump or anyone in his orbit has a plan for a multipolar world, or any sense of how to manage complex supply chain de-risking or the politics of friendshoring. And yet, 10 or 60 per cent tariffs depending on the locale would require some kind of reshoring approach. None of that will square with an asset boom, but rather quite the opposite…
A warning to business leaders supporting Trump, from @RanaForoohar @FT.
(Image above: source)
* Oscar Wilde
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As we study self-interest, we might recall that it was on this date in 1972 that an 18-1/2-minute gap appears in the tape recording of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex.
Still, the tapes were damming. The White House released the subpoenaed tapes on August 5. One tape, later known as the “Smoking Gun” tape, documented the initial stages of the Watergate coverup. On it, Nixon and Haldeman are heard formulating a plan to block investigations by having the CIA falsely claim to the FBI that national security was involved.
It’s a measure of how different those times were from ours that, once the “Smoking Gun” transcript was made public, Nixon’s political support practically vanished: the ten Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who had voted against impeachment in committee announced that they would now vote for impeachment once the matter reached the House floor.
“If all else fails, there’s always print or web zines”*…
Gabriela Riccardi, with a history of– and an homage to– the zine…
After Martin Luther furiously (supposedly) hammered his 95 Theses to a local church door in the 16th century, chroniclers of history saw his act as plenty of things: a righteous rally against Catholic excess, a call to arms for renewed values, a firing shot for one ripper of a Reformation.
Others, though, saw it as the world’s first zine.
The zine — that unruly riff on the glossy magazine, often handmade and always self-published — has long been associated with revolution. DIY dabblers and political thought guerrillas, superfan scenesters and couriers of counterculture have all found a home in the humble zine.
Maybe that’s because a zine’s proposition — permission self-granted, gates unkept — is a boon companion to those who operate outside of the mainstream. Or maybe it’s just because they’re a lot of fun to make.
In any case, these exuberant little publications have something big to say: Small presses, indeed, can turn over heavy pages of history….
An appreciation of handcrafted publishing: “Zines: Scan and release,” from @griccardi_ in @qz.
See also: “Zines, the Punks of Print Media: A Creative Rebellion in Branding and Design” (source of the image above)
* Rudy Rucker
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As we do it ourselves, we might recall that this date in 1972 was a milestone in (a different kind of) guerilla publishing: the New York Times begin publishing the “Pentagon Papers”…
… the 47-volume Pentagon analysis of how the U.S. commitment in Southeast Asia grew over a period of three decades. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst who had become an antiwar activist, had stolen the documents. After unsuccessfully offering the documents to prominent opponents of the war in the U.S. Senate, Ellsberg gave them to the Times.
Officially called The History of the U.S. Decision Making Process on Vietnam, the “Pentagon Papers” disclosed closely guarded communiques, recommendations, and decisions concerning the U.S. military role in Vietnam during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, along with the diplomatic phase in the Eisenhower years. The publication of the papers created a nationwide furor, with congressional and diplomatic reverberations as all branches of the government debated over what constituted “classified” material and how much should be made public.
The publication of the documents precipitated a crucial legal battle over “the people’s right to know,” and led to an extraordinary session of the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the issue. Although the documents were from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, President Richard Nixon opposed their publication, both to protect the sources in highly classified appendices, and to prevent further erosion of public support for the war. On June 30, the Supreme Court ruled that the Times had the right to publish the material.
The publication of the “Pentagon Papers,” along with previous suspected disclosures of classified information to the press, led to the creation of a White House unit to plug information leaks to journalists. The illegal activities of the unit, known as the “Plumbers,” and their subsequent cover-up, became known collectively as the Watergate scandal, which resulted in President Nixon’s resignation in August 1974…
“Thou art a monument without a tomb, / And art alive still while thy book doth live / And we have wits to read and praise to give”*…
400 years ago this month, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, his friends John Heminge and Henry Condell published The First Folio, containing 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, (an endeavor which they financed with a bequest that he had left them).
Although 19 of Shakespeare’s plays had been published in quarto before 1623, the First Folio is arguably the only reliable text for about 20 of the plays, and a valuable source text for many of those previously published. Eighteen of the plays in the First Folio, including The Tempest, Twelfth Night, and Measure for Measure among others, are not known to have been previously printed.
It is considered one of the most influential books ever published. Of perhaps 750 copies printed, 235 are known to remain, most of which are kept in either public archives or private collections. More than one third of the extant copies are housed at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which is home to a total of 82 First Folios.
It is also, as Alicia Andrzejewski and Carole Levin explain, one of the most stolen…
Late at night on July 13th, 1972, an unknown person entered the University of Manchester’s Library and violently smashed the plate glass top of an exhibition case, stealing the contents. Inside was one of the most famous, most valuable books in existence: the library’s near-perfect edition of one of Shakespeare’s First Folios. This theft is the most mysterious of all the stolen First Folios. More than fifty years have passed, and this First Folio—one of the 750 printed in 1623 and of the estimated 232 known copies across the globe today—is still missing.
This year, 2023, marks the 400th year anniversary of the printing of Shakespeare’s First Folio, deemed one of the most significant books in the English language, “a coveted treasure,” to quote Eric Rasmussen, an expert on the First Folios and author of The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios. Without the First Folio, we would not have many of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, the half that were not printed in his lifetime, including The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest. In collecting and printing these plays, Shakespeare’s two close friends and fellow actors, John Heminge and Henry Condell, validated that plays are more than entertainment—they have literary value.
The First Folios still in existence are mainly housed in public institutions—their significance is underscored by their rarity, as copies are almost never available for sale, and the most recent one sold in 2020 for almost ten-million dollars. Even in the seventeenth century, when the First Folios were first printed, they were only available to elite members of society: earls, lords, knights, admirals, and the occasional lawyer. To this day, ownership is limited to, and a fetish among, the super wealthy. Because of their elite status, Rasmussen speculates that, of the copies that cannot be located, most “have probably been stolen.”
For some, as Rasmussen suggests, the First Folio is coveted because of its monetary value, an object to steal and eventually attempt to sell. Three First Folios were stolen in the 20th century alone, including the Manchester Library’s copy, and the thieves in the latter two cases are characters as strange as some of those in Shakespeare’s plays, the heists as thrilling as some of his plots. The thefts we describe, and the desires that inspire them, speak to Shakespeare’s foothold in Western civilization—the reverence and awe so many people have for him, that imbue the First Folio with an almost religious power…
Some of the most brazen heists of a historic volume: “Shakespeare’s First Folio has been Stolen Many, Many Times,” in @CrimeReads.
* Ben Jonson, “To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare” (in the First Folio)
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As we linger on literary larceny, we might recall that it was on this date fifty years ago that then-President Richard Nixon made his famous declaration of character:
On Nov. 17, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon held a news conference before Associated Press managing editors in Orlando, Fla., in which he defended himself against a number of allegations. Most of the questions related to the Watergate break-in, which had become even more of a scandal a month earlier with the “Saturday Night Massacre.” Other questions focused on reports that he had cheated on his tax returns.
The Nov. 18 New York Times outlined President Nixon’s many assertions, concluding that the president had acquitted himself well: “The president seemed composed and on top of the subject throughout the session, faltering perceptibly only during the discussion of his taxes. In contrast with some of his recent appearances he did not berate his critics or his political enemies.”
The best-remembered part of the news conference came as the president defended himself against claims that he had illicitly profited from his years in public service. “I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service — I earned every cent,” he said. “And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got.”
The news conference did little to end questions over Mr. Nixon’s honesty. His declaration “I’m not a crook” was used against him — and the line would forever be associated with the Watergate era.
In April 1974, the Internal Revenue Service ordered that the president pay more than $400,000 in back taxes for making improper deductions. And the Watergate investigation continued to uncover misconduct. In August 1974, with the House Judiciary Committee having recommended impeachment and the release of a “smoking gun” tape showing that he had approved a cover-up, the president resigned…
“Nixon Declares ‘I Am Not a Crook’”
“Knowledge of means without knowledge of ends is animal training”*…
According to a March 1967 report entitled “Views on Trained Cats [Redacted] for [Redacted] Use,” the CIA stuffed a real, live cat with electronic spying equipment and attempted to train it to spy on America’s Cold War rivals. The report states that Acoustic Kitty (as the project is commonly known) was a “remarkable scientific achievement.” Unfortunately, the report also states that the continued use of live cats as eavesdropping devices “would not be practical.”
According to Victor Marchetti [an ex-Deputy Director of the CIA]: “A lot of money was spent. They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that. Finally they’re ready. They took it out to a park and pointed it at a park bench and said, ‘Listen to those two guys…’ They put him out of the van, and a taxi comes and runs him over. There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead!”…
For more on animal training adventures in the security services, see “The CIA’s Most Highly-Trained Spies Weren’t Even Human.”
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As we study subterfuge, we might recall that it was on this date in 1974 that transcripts of the audiotaped White House conversations between President Richard Nixon and Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman were released to the public. Considered at the time a “smoking gun,” the transcripts confirmed Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate cover-up– and precipitated Nixon’s resignation three days later.
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