Honor and Dignity in the White House. Especially Dignity

Ah. We all wondered why White House Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy Claude Allen had resigned:

Former Bush Aide Charged in Felony Theft - Claude Allen had recently resigned as White House domestic-policy adviser. By Rachel Shteir: When Claude Allen, President Bush's longtime domestic-policy adviser, resigned suddenly on Feb. 9, it baffled administration critics and fans. The White House claimed that Allen was leaving to spend more time with his family.... Allen was arrested yesterday and charged in a felony theft and a felony theft scheme. According to a department press release, Allen conducted approximately 25 fraudulent "refunds" in Target and Hecht's stores in Maryland.... You purchase an item... leave the store with it... come back to the store and pick up exactly the same [item]... take [it]... and receipt from the original purchase to the returns desk, claiming that this is the item you bought, and get a refund for it.... Professional shoplifters like refund fraud because it's relatively safe. Since you never actually steal an object from the store, no one can chase you out to the parking lot.... Allen sought refunds for more than $5,000 in the past year. Allen allegedly stole items as expensive as a Bose theater system and a photo printer. Theft of more than $500 is a felony in Maryland...

African-Americans who go to work for Jesse Helms.... You gotta figure that there's a story there, that somewhere something's a few hoppers short of a full carload. But even so, this is a real surprise.

John Podhoretz at the Corner is first out of the gate with the official spin point:

The Corner on National Review Online: CLAUDE ALLEN [John Podhoretz]I wrote a book about the Bush White House. I know the names of many people who worked in the Bush White House. I've read every story there is to read about the Bush White House. I've been a political journalist for almost a quarter century, worked in a Republican administration, and gone to many right-wing parties. So let me say this about accused thief and former White House policy bigshot Claude Allen: WHO?

Claude Allen had the southeast corner office on the second floor of the West Wing--IIRC, the office that used to be Bob Rubin's in 1993-95.

He is, according to Bush:

Washington Date Line: "a dedicated public servant and a tireless advocate for those in need. I look forward to his continued service in this new role as my domestic policy adviser," Bush said in a statement.... Allen, a former state Cabinet secretary under Gov. Jim Gilmore in Virginia, is a staunch advocate of federal spending to promote abstinence until marriage and a foe of abortion rights.... Sen. George Allen, R-Va., praised the president's choice, saying "Claude Allen has the right principles, experience in state and federal government and knowledge to serve the president and America very well." The two men are not related.

Claude Allen's selection was taken by an official of the conservative Family Research Council as "a sign the White House is interested in giving serious attention to important domestic issues." Jayd Henricks of that group said Allen's principles "seem to reflect those of the president and the values voters that came out en masse in November."

Comments

[liberal]

Hee hee hee. What a bunch of scum.

This is just a gift that will keep on giving.

Here, for example, is C. Boyden Gray in NRO, July 07, 2004
(http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/gray200407070947.asp)

"Claude Allen promises not to advance a political agenda from the federal bench he has been nominated to, but to be the type of judge who buttresses the foundation of American government — by applying the rule of law however he finds it. President Bush, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, could do much worse than Allen. By the grace of democratic principles overriding a minority in the Senate, let us hope they do not have to."

[!]

Is John Podhoretz a liar?

[Howard]

! i don't know for sure if podhoretz is a liar.

i do know for sure he's an idiot.

[david]

"These two men are not related." I wonder if George Allen insisted that be in there so as not to alienate his base.

[lessthanamused]

Bush begged him not to set off any alarms on his way out.

[ogmb]

"Allen sought refunds for more than $5,000 in the past year."

$5,000 = 0.000001 Halliburton

[liberal]

More in Saturday's _Washington Post_,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/10/AR2006031002328.html

Good summary of his "job history" in the Bush admin: "Allen, a former deputy secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, was nominated in 2003 to a federal appeals court seat. He was appointed the president's top domestic policy adviser last year at the start of Bush's second term. That made him the highest-ranking African American on the White House staff."

...

"Allen stirred controversy as Helms's campaign spokesman in 1984 by telling a reporter that then-Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. -- Helms's opponent -- was politically vulnerable because of his links to the 'queers.' He later explained that he used the word not to denigrate anyone but as a synonym for 'odd and unusual.'

"Before that, Allen worked for the Virginia state attorney general's office and as state health and human resources secretary. In that job, he earned a reputation as a staunch conservative; once he kept Medicaid funds from an impoverished rape victim who wanted an abortion."

What a despicable human.

[Bruce Moomaw]

Nice to have a domestic policy advisor (and almost a federal judge, if the Dems hadn't blocked a vote on him) who never failed to ask himself that most important of all questions: what would Jesus shoplift?

[save_the_rustbelt]

He was doing field research on business security, right?

Now I know how to finance my new toaster.

[Captain Button]

"Ah. We all wondered why White House Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy Claude Allen had resigned:"

And here I was hoping for some sort of riff on "The Prisoner" updated from the Cold War to the War on Terror.

(grumbles)

[Tad Brennan]

"especially dignity"--Gene Kelly from Singing in the Rain?

[a different chris]

>Why is it a foregone conclusion that Claude Allen is guilty?

Not a bad point, but I think I can answer it:

Because there are petty crimes like shoplifing and speeding where arrests pretty much run 100% accurate. Target and your local traffic officer have cameras, other gizmos, and a heck of a lot of experience in this type of things, the error rate is miniscule.

He was observed by a detective, he was accosted at the counter, and you bet he has more film footage in the can than George Clooney courtesy of Target security.

[konopelli]

No presumption of guilt involved...
that requires a jury.

however, the hypocritical shitheel was:

Caught red-handed...
leaving the store...
with stolen merchandise...

i figger he'll play the race card?

[mark safransk]

"Hee hee hee. What a bunch of scum."

Yeah, you'd never see this kind of tawdry shenanigans from any of the staffers in the Clinton White House...

Next thing you know these Bush guys'll be caught stuffing classified documents in their socks.

Every WH staff from either party is large enough to have a number of ppl who will do really stupid things over the course of any administration.

[tom f]

NPR Weekend Edition top of the hour headlines reported the story thusly:

(paraphrasing) "Bush said he was shocked to hear a former White House..."

Ahh the the sycophantic habits of mainstream media. The story is "Former Bush Aide Charged in Felony Theft" or even ("Man Bush Called Dedicated Public Servant Arrested") not "President Demonstrates Moral Fiber in Being 'Shocked' Over Arrest".

Whyfore the impulse to filter, at some point, virtually every story of national significance through a White House press release or Bush quote.

By my definition, it's the opposite of news. Information that does not inform, has no relevance, and exists merely to shape the public image of powerful people and thereby diminish the line that separates appearance from reality.

And don't say it doesn't matter. If it didn't matter, every major political media outlet wouldn't reflexively engage in such "journalism".

[auto]

for a repub scumbag running a scam, this one's pretty trivial. returning for credit shoplifted items worth as little as $2.50? is he fucking retarded? this is the sort of scam impoverished college students do -- and have their lives ruined when they get caught.

i love the details. the stores have video footage of him going back to last fall. he didn't resign from the WH until early january.

meaning last fall, he would leave his office at the WH after a hard day. on his way home, he'd stop off at Target to scam them out of a few bucks he'd use to buy himself a sandwich at subway.

god, how fucking pathetic.

makes you wonder -- he is just a natural born criminal who found a congenial home in rightwing politics? or someone with a deep- seated psychopathology that merits a few years on an analysts's couch?

either way, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

[PaulC]

I'm astonished by the weak response out of the White House. You mean executive privilege doesn't extend to shoplifting by underlings? It seems to cover everything else.

[liberal]

mark safransk wrote, "Yeah, you'd never see this kind of tawdry shenanigans from any of the staffers in the Clinton White House..."

You can't read, can you. The point isn't just the theft; it's the entire constellation of this man's bizarre actions and beliefs. To summarize:
* He's an African-American who worked for Jessie Helms.
* He has a sick obsession with controlling other people's sexuality.

[liberal]

DuckedApe wrote, "which used to mean (in the U.S.A.) he was still innocent until proven guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. Now it seems lynching is the favorite national passtime..."

Bullcrap, and please don't play the race card.

You're conflating "guilty before the law" and "guilty before public opinion."

Reading up on his past history, the guy was clearly scum even before this happened.

To repeat what "auto" wrote above, he clearly harbors deep-seated mental problems.

[PaulC]

"makes you wonder -- he is just a natural born criminal who found a congenial home in rightwing politics? or someone with a deep- seated psychopathology that merits a few years on an analysts's couch?"

He sounds like a garden-variety kleptomaniac. Maybe he started doing it as an "impoverished college student." I assume that he gets paid enough that it makes no sense in terms of risk and reward. At this point, it's probably just some kind of compulsion.

The weekend news revelations are just getting weird. Vice President shoots somebody? Adviser arrested for shoplifting? What's next? Karl Rove running an illegal numbers racket with Bill Bennett as a frequent customer? Nope, whatever I can come up with, reality is going to trump it.

[liberal]

a different chris wrote, "He was observed by a detective, he was accosted at the counter, and you bet he has more film footage in the can than George Clooney courtesy of Target security."

_Wash Post_ has more [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/10/AR2006031002328_2.html]:

"Detectives from the county's retail crime unit soon learned that the incident was not an isolated event, Burnett said.

"He said investigators were able to document 25 fraudulent refunds for items including a Bose home theater system, stereo equipment, clothes, a photo printer and items worth as little as $2.50."

[liberal]

PaulC wrote, "He sounds like a garden-variety kleptomaniac."

Yes, but that's not what makes the case interesting, as I pointed out above. The kleptomania, alone, would be curious but pretty unremarkable. (Cf Winona Ryder.) It's the combination of the kleptomania, the connection to Jessie Helms, and the obsession with sexuality that's bizarre.

[liberal]

gcochran wrote, "Prominent Black Democratic politicians hardly ever get into legal trouble."

Prominent black Democrats do indeed get into legal trouble. What they don't typically do is combine all of the following: (a) an odd criminal habit; (b) a political alliance with an anti-black racist; and, (c) a sick, twisted interest in other's sexuality.

[liberal]

From
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/01/claude_allen_bu.html

-------------------------------

The appointment of Claude Allen as Bush's new chief domestic policy advisor is another triumph for the Republican theocrats. A reactionary black kapo, Allen is one of the darlings of the "family values" ultra-conservative religious right led by James Dobson and his Focus on the Family.

Recruited by Karl Rove as his watchdog on then-HHS secretary Tommy Thompson (who had a much-exaggerated reputation as a "moderate"), Allen--a visceral political homophobe-- was a former top aide Sen. Jesse Helms, and in 1984 accused Helms' Democratic challenger, then-Gov. James Hunt, of having links to "queers," "radical feminists," socialists, and unions (Hunt was, in fact, a bible-quoting right-wing Dem).

As Health and Human Services Commissioner for very conservative Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, Allen bent public health priorities to the religious right's agenda and led a state-sponsored anti-safe sex crusade that he had cooked up with the abstinence-only Institute for Youth Development, whose mission is to teach children to fear rather than understand sex, and says that condoms don't work to prevent AIDS. Says Allen of condom use: "It's like telling your child, 'Don't use the car,' but then leaving the keys in the Lamborghini and saying, 'But if you do, buckle up.'" In November 2001, Thompson toed the Bush-Rove line when he put Allen in charge of supervising HHS' audit of HIV-prevention spending: Allen led an HHS witch-hunt that investigated all of the AIDS service organizations (like Gay Men's Health Crisis) whose members staged a demonstration that disrupted Tommy Thompson's speech to the international AIDS conference in Barcelona, and purged several ASO's (like San Francisco's Stop Aids Project) whose politics and science-based sex ed Allen didn't like. Allen has regularly been on POZ magazine's list of the AIDS community's top enemies (a tradition I began when I wrote a column on the politics of AIDS for the mag.)

Also in his Virginia years, Allen was notorious for his opposition to abortion--which he took to extreme lengths. As People for the American Way noted when it and other liberal and civil rights groups (including the NAACP) successfully opposed Bush's nomination of Allen for a federal judgeship, "As Secretary of Virginia’s DHHS, Claude Allen also built a long record of hostility to reproductive freedoms. In one example, Allen worked to defeat legislation that provided health insurance for children of the working poor, largely because the program covered abortion services for rape and incest victims under the age of eighteen. When the law was ultimately enacted, Allen was faulted for not enrolling children quickly enough. He admitted 'abortion was a sticking point' delaying the enrollment of children. In this episode, Allen proved himself to be so adamantly opposed to reproductive rights that he found it preferable for poor children to go without health coverage than to risk an underage sexual abuse victim having access to state-funded abortion services."

[christofay]

Work release for Claude Allen to the George Allen for Pres Committee senior domestic policy advisor please. It's sad to see the man caught for petty crime. Andrew Sullivan is a bigger better target. Let's go throw some more eggs.

[liberal]

christofay wrote, "Andrew Sullivan is a bigger better target."

Huh? Allen has deep, direct longterm connections to the Republican Party. Sullivan doesn't.

[christofay]

The Allen brothers, keep them close. At some point the way they, high faluting Republicans, work, they will do serious harm to each other. There are rich emotional rewards in bonding through hunting for example. I am sorry about his effect on our treatment of aids. Domestic policy advisor for an administration that doesn't hear advice fromt he help; he's a caricature.

Still this catches it well, "You gotta figure that there's a story there, that somewhere something's a few hoppers short of a full carload."

Sullivan has a pretty good soapbox in the
States; he's an expert brought in from across the pond. Sophist Sully gets taken seriously and is part of the effort to give George Bush and George Allen cover.

[RonK, Seattle]

Gene Kelly, Singing In The Rain: "Dignity, always dignity".

Was this guy in charge of John DiIulio's old portfolio?

[andres]

"... that somewhere something's a few hoppers short of a full carload." [On Claude Allen]

Brad, that's an interesting turn of phrase, one that I haven't read before. Any chance you could patent it? In addition to research papers, you'd get a lot more attention in the profession if you came up regularly with some good DeLongisms other than the ritual impeach them now and Stupidest Man Alive incantations. Best,

[sm]

Life at the White House.

This is the guy who, in real life, held the job that Josh Lymond held in West Wing.

And then in today's WP:

"Bush spoke in the Roosevelt Room at the White House after receiving a briefing about the remote-controlled, homemade bombs that Iraqi insurgents conceal in cars or set off along roads. The devices are the leading killer of U.S. troops in Iraq."

If humanity survives another century, this will be too weird even for comedy.

Speculative comparison to another imperial democracy: Maybe Aristophanes' plays are reportage?

[sm]

More from the United States of Delusion, Washington Post Opinion page divison:

"President Vladimir Putin must understand he cannot enjoy a partnership with the West as long as his policies look less like those of a modern European statesman than of a czar."

Don't these people know that 9/11 changed everything?

[saturn]

Kleptomania is a common disease, even among celebrities (remember the famous case of Wynona Ryder). It requires serious treatment as a psychological disorder. But the poor usually get thrown in jail, while the rich more often get the wink from the cops.

That’s of course not an excuse for this political scumbag.

However, race always matters, even in this case. The crucial test: look to see whether his erstwhile henchmen in the Repug Party come to his rescue as they usually do with their fellow whites (compare Scooter Libby versus Armstrong Williams).

[John Emerson]

Oh, damn. Just when my Winona Ryder obsession had faded away.

I still think that she'd look trremendously cute in handcuffs.

Not this guy, though.

[cm]

PaulC: The human mind still can work in wondrous ways. For example, even with a big bank account, many people will still go for the buy-one-get-one-free or $1-off bargain on an item you buy once per quarter just for the kicks, not well-reasoned financial effect.

In the case at hand, I'm sure it's not about saving $2.50, but the "principle" of "cleverly" tricking your way to a "bargain". I imagine he got a good kick and sense of achievement out of this every time.

But it sure illustrates something about the Repblican everybody-owns-their-own-fate and success-from-hard-work rhetoric.

[liberal]

cm wrote, "For example, even with a big bank account, many people will still go for the buy-one-get-one-free or $1-off bargain on an item you buy once per quarter just for the kicks, not well-reasoned financial effect."

I've tried making a _homo economicus_ point to my wife about this---that she spends more time dealing with coupons for the grocery store than it can possibly be worth, given how much money she makes at work, the scarcity of her leisure time, etc.

But, consistent with your point, she _likes_ saving money this way...so it's economically rational for her to do so.

[liberal]

saturn wrote, "The crucial test: look to see whether his erstwhile henchmen in the Repug Party come to his rescue as they usually do with their fellow whites (compare Scooter Libby versus Armstrong Williams)."

But there's a difference there---the threat to Scooter really is a direct threat to Dick Cheney and the rest of them.

[John]

I thought it was a good story. I used it to get the idea of "fungible" across to my wife, and it worked.

PS. She does not approve of the crime!

John

[saturn]

“But there's a difference there …” (liberal)

Yes, difference granted, and for the reason you noted about Scooter’s position in the hierarchy. But Allen had his own position and value in the hierarchy too, and probably knows well where some of Rove's bodies are buried.

If there is no racial bias, it should only be a difference of scale, i.e. relative weight among equals, hence a difference in the amount of support and rewards received from erstwhile henchmen and collaborators.

As the reward for his transgressions, Scooter is being gilded with huge financial support for his legal defense and a lucrative post in DC think-tank circles.

Let’s see if Allen gets proportionate favorable treatment or discarded like a dirty Kleenex tissue.

['As You Know' Bob]

The man who gives George Bush advice on his domestic agenda is a thief.

Are there people who did not realize this until the man was arrested? 'Theft' has been at the root of all of Bush's policies.

[apo lorazepam]

hi