Getting my goat

Yoo skates through.

2010-02-26T17:40:00.000-08:00

The Obama administration has decided that this and future administrations that engage in human rights abuses and war crimes should not fear punishment. They implemented this decision by using a reliable Department of Justice career veteran, David Margolis, to quash the recommendation by the Office of Professional Responsibility that Bush administration lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee not face possible disbarment for approving the use of torture. (If we're all scared, it's okay, right?)

Now comes the news that many of Yoo's email messages while at DOJ have mysteriously gone missing. So much for restoring confidence in the integrity of the U.S. government at home and abroad.

Dear President Obama,

2010-01-23T11:58:00.000-08:00

My assumptions about Washington have been more than borne out by the past year: The Republican leadership and nearly all Republican members of Congress only care about one thing: defeating and punishing Democrats. They don’t have an altruistic bone in their bodies and they have no interest in bipartisanship. Their game plan is like that of any other grueling sport where time is a factor. They want you to lose badly, for anything you accomplish to take as long as possible so that you will achieve as little as possible, and for controversies surrounding your unfinished agenda to get carried into the next federal elections.

I said a year ago that in your first months in the White House you should be very decisive and take advantage of your mandate to get a lot done. Any delay caused by bi-partisan efforts would simply be exploited by the Republicans to propagandize against your agenda, whip unsophisticated voters into a frenzy and scare them to death. This would slow down the process and prevent you from accomplishing much. Was I right?

The message the voters sent you in Massachusetts was not that they hate your health care plan, although Brown did exploit fears that the state was not getting a fair deal. The message was that they don’t want you and Congress to spend anymore time on this. They want you to fix the economy!

You should threaten to pour boiling oil on reluctant Democrats in the House, get them to pass the Senate health care bill, and sign it! If you don’t get substantial reform done, you will lose your base. Some tea partiers will get over their hysteria once they see that previously uninsurable people they care about can get insurance, but only if you get a bill signed in time for this take effect before elections in November.

You need to get health care off the table ASAP and move on so that 90% percent of your time and your messages to the voters are about fixing the economy. People want you to kick the banks hard. You have to stop the perception that you are in the pocket of Wall Street. Be swift and decisive with regulation to avoid dragging out stock market reactions. The sooner you get this done, the sooner the markets will recover. You don’t want to cause any major downturns less than six months before the mid-term elections.

Your message to the voters, passionately delivered several times a week, should be hope. Just like FDR. You know how to do that well. You should continually paint the Republicans as only interested in obstruction and protecting big business at the expense of the people. If you don’t do this you may lose Congress in the fall.

It’s not going to get any better for you with Congress. Your majorities in Congress will only get smaller. You may have just this year to get anything significant done in your time in the White House. Think of this as your last chance. Unlike the Republicans in Congress, I want you to succeed.

Blackwater's crusade.

2009-12-16T17:18:00.000-08:00

According to a disturbing interview on the NPR program Fresh Air today, it seems that the U.S. now has the largest mercenary army in our history -- and in the world -- with its own intelligence service and air force. There are more U.S.military contractors in Afghanistan today than U.S. troops.

Blackwater, renamed Xe, is the largest contractor and is run by Erik Prince, who according to sworn affidavits of former employees, "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

Blackwater is entirely funded by U.S. tax dollars, yet is accountable to no one. It's doubtful that its employees could be prosecuted for rape or murder since Dick Cheney and others made sure they were exempt from U.S. law, and the laws of the nations we invaded. According to the author of the articles cited above (and others who've reported on this) Blackwater employees are making some targeting decisions instead of U.S. troops.

But whether or not it's a good idea for the U.S. be on a crusade to wipe out Islam is immaterial at this point. We've made sure Erik Prince has a strong profit motive to get the job done.

A mere 16 years ago, our greatest national fear was about private domestic militias dedicated to bringing down our government. Perhaps in our paranoia about external terrorists, we've already forgotten our own recent history.

Coopting cooperation.

2009-11-30T15:27:00.000-08:00

A recent NY Times article collects a wide range of interesting facts about cooperation, but having read many articles by journalist Nicholas Wade I am dismayed about the incorrect impressions it conveys. I have not read Michael Tomasello’s new book Why We Cooperate, cited throughout, but anyone who has read more than one of Frans de Waal’s books knows that cooperation is definitely not what distinguishes humans from animals. Some of the ways that we cooperate are more elaborate, but anyone who asserts that “shared intentionality” makes us different from chimps must be unaware of de Waal’s seminal study Chimpanzee Politics written more than 25 years ago.

As for the strength of the urge to cooperate, it does not correlate with a species’ intelligence, and is not a measure, as this article implies, to infer that one species is superior to another. To give just one example, the highest level of cooperation measured in one classic experimental design came from a species known for its murderous inclinations: the spotted hyena. Hyenas are the only mammals that are both matriarchal and regularly murder adults of their own kind. In cooperation, they blow chimpanzees off the chart. Does that make them a better example of our nature? (Some have speculated that this hyena study was suppressed for 15 years because it upended the notion that cooperation tracked with intelligence and evolutionary sophistication.)

Rooting out torture.

2009-07-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

In considering whether to appoint a prosecutor to investigate torture, Obama is deciding whether to dip a toe into the cesspool that Bush administration created with its torture and detainment policies. Cleaning up this mess could is the most important legacy President Obama will leave. A generation or two or more later, if the US goes down such a dark path again, people will ask why Obama failed to reinstill a national ethos that humane treatment and due process are the bedrock on which out nation stands or falls. (See my previous post.)

Subprime mortgages rejected by Calfornia voters.

2009-05-20T23:34:00.000-07:00

The day after their defeat in a California special election, it’s clear that most voters viewed Props 1A-E like a subprime mortgages. I’ve used this analogy in a previous post about Bush’s unsustainable tax cuts, and it fits equally well here. In trying to solve an unprecedented financial challenge, these propositions offered voters a quick fix based on completely unrealistic revenue projections.

If Props 1A-E passed, voters were smart enough to realize that in a few short years they would be just like homeowners with subprime mortgages: unable to pay the bills and wondering how they got bamboozled into creating debts they couldn’t repay.

Subprime “victims” were told they could refinance their homes when their debt payments ballooned or bought into a fantasy that the ballooning economy would trickle down higher salaries to them that would cover their debt. Voters in yesterday's election were told that when the state’s income needs would further balloon in a couple of years – in large part because of the elaborate borrowing against future revenues orchestrated by these propositions – that either a huge economic recovery or the “rainy day fund” created by Prop 1-A would cover the gap. (Never mind that it might take decades, if ever, for the fund to grow large enough to keep voters from getting soaked.)

Another sad truth has been reinforced by the election: if the private sector figures out a way to fleece unsophisticated consumers, after politicians denounce the hucksters for their immoral greed those same politicians sometimes have the gall to try to fleece voters in a similar way. The focus on today at the expense of planning for tomorrow that has famously plagued American industry since the 1980's also has deeply infected politics and public policy. In California, with term limits forcing every newly elected public official to immediately set his or her sights on the race for the next office, it’s a miracle the ship of state didn’t sink years before yesterday.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts some long standing issues that must be fixed as part of raising the wreck, such the requirement that any bill with fiscal impact pass by a two-thirds vote. Hopefully this will all play out like a disaster movie formula, and we’ll be rescued in time. My additional hope is that the Governator will make good on his promise to leave politics forever, and that future entertainers who assume that public office is just another venue that would draw on their existing skill set will study the careers of Arnold and Jesse and try stand up comedy instead.

Is that a gun in your pocket or do you just want to rape me?

2009-05-19T20:52:00.000-07:00

I’m feeling violated by Obama’s signature on a bill demonstrating that no matter who sits in the Oval Office, the National Rifle Association packs the biggest pistol in Washington. One of the main reasons I’ve preferred to visit, camp, climb, backpack, and volunteer to work in National Parks is because I’m much less likely to run into visitors or “campers” with pistols. Sorry this decades old policy banning weapons in the parks is inconvenient for those too fearful to leave home without a gun at the ready, but getting away from some of the more insane aspects of our society for a weekend is fundamental to my wilderness experience.

Our National Park System (NPS) is perhaps the most important cultural and environmental contribution the United States has made to the world. Jazz is the only positive thing that even comes close. (Feel free to educate me with a comment, if you disagree.) Few Americans realize this, but the no other nation had a federalized park system before we created one well over a hundred years ago. The idea of preserving areas of great scenic beauty or ecological importance with a commitment that would endure as long as the nation that contained them was the most important catalyst of the modern environmental movement.

In his campaign for President, Mr. Obama brought hope to hundreds of millions around the world that the terrible vectors in our national policy that acquired so much traction after 9/11 would be drastically altered. Obama sought to reestablish the notion that the U.S. had earned its place as the leader of the free world through its values and its deeds. We’re more than just a posse of drunken cowboys presumptively in charge only because we have more rifles than anyone else. Perhaps no one outside the U.S. will care that we’ve just shot some holes in our greatest contribution to world culture. But I worry it’s symbolic that our efforts at self-rehabilitation – and the change many so fervently fought for – are one step closer to being scattered to the ill winds of political expediency.

(Other essays bring different perspectives to mixing guns and parks, including the fact that pepper spray protects people from large animals much better than guns.)

U.S. productivity miracle a statistical illusion.

2009-04-19T12:49:00.000-07:00

Paul Krugman's blog questions whether the boom in the U.S. financial industry actually increased the productivity of the economy, and speculates that the “the apparent US productivity miracle, a miracle not shared by Europe, was a statistical illusion created by our bloated finance industry,” as its recent collapse demonstrated.

Krugman cites a paper showing that standard of living, the best measure of economic productivity, has increased more in Europe than in the U.S. in the past thirty years.

The paper took into account a number of measurements that track tradeoffs a nation makes in allocating resources for short term consumption at the expense of long-term growth, such as living on debt and not saving. Another important factor taken into consideration was adjusting for decreases in the balance of trade. Larger trade deficits translate into increases in the standard of living – as the U.S. has seen though buying cheap goods from China – but are not sustainable in the long term because the imbalance must eventually decrease and thus erase the standard of living gains. The paper also uses net domestic product instead of gross domestic product so resources that go simply to replace deteriorating capital equipment and infrastructure do not count toward economic growth.

So much for the notion that the U.S. version of unrestrained free markets and absence of a social safety net is superior to the European brand of regulation and more socialist human services programs.

No brains in California May Propositions

2009-04-17T14:50:00.000-07:00

“No brainer” is the tag line for the campaign urging voters to approve the latest smoke and mirrors referendums put forward by California’s dysfunctional state legislature and Governator. “No brain” is a better description of the opinion the “leaders” behind these referendums have of voters. There has been very little public discussion of these six propositions, which will be on the ballot on May 19. I believe that the supporters do not want voters to know much about the details and are hoping to fly them through under the radar.

These propositions are a train wreck resulting from the inability of the legislature to agree on a budget year after year. The Democrats won’t reduce spending the Republicans won’t raise taxes. In good economic times, they stumble all over themselves to reduce taxes to make voters happy, knowing full well that the in bad times they won’t have the courage to raise taxes in order to keep the state out of the red. The requirement for a two-thirds vote to pass a budget gets us a worsening series of accounting tricks, of which these propositions are the latest.

We’re told that this is the best deal we’re going to get, and that failure to pass these six propositions will plunge the state back into uncertainty. We should not buy into to these scare tactics. The plan is already fatally flawed because it is based on unrealistic revenue projections. Even if these propositions pass, the latest estimate is that the state will still be facing an additional eight billion dollar deficit this year that they do not address.

1A continues the tax increases recently approved for four years instead of two. Rather than hiking the gas tax and encouraging people to get fuel efficient vehicles or drive less, one Republican legislator whose vote was needed to pass the budget insisted on a sales tax increase instead, which is the most regressive form of taxation (hurts the poor the most). To take the heat off the legislature and get voters to swallow this bitter medicine themselves, 1A sets up an automatic rainy day fund. The problem with this is that revenue only flows into the fund when the State actually spends the amount of money on education mandated by Prop 98, which never happens (see 1B below). Given how many prior propositions are being eviscerated by the May 19th “gang of six” (see below), it’s hard to believe much about how all of this will work in the future.

1B would give schools and colleges 9.3 billion dollars starting in 2010-2012 they think they should have been paid under Prop 98 and that they think the Governator screwed them out of. Is the only way to solve this dispute is via another proposition? What are the odds various government entities will be fighting about this new one in 2010 and beyond? Where is the 9.3 billion dollars going to come from?

1C is an end run around Props 58 and 98 and is one the worst accounting tricks. It borrows money from future lottery revenue that is supposed to go to education to help close today’s budget deficit. This whole Madoff-like Ponzi scheme depends on the economy roaring back in 2010 so there will be money for the payments mandated by 1B. Oh, and it removes competitive bidding requirements from some lottery operations.

1D is an end run around Prop 10 that allows the state to take tobacco litigation money that is supposed to go to "First Five" early childhood development programs and instead spent it on other human services programs. Many First Five programs will end. Just to be consistent with the name of the programs it will kill, 1D will steal that money for five years.

1E allows the state to take money that voters said in Prop 63 should go to mental health programs for children and instead use it to pay for federally mandated Medicaid programs. Cutting and reducing funding for mental health programs will hurt people who need the help the most and cost taxpayers more in the long run, as failing to treat mental health problems always does. Its annual savings are less than half of one percent of the deficit.

1F is a Trojan Horse built to fool voters into thinking that elected officials are sacrificing something in this package. All it does it prevent salary increases for public officials during deficit years. It does nothing to prevent foregone increases from being made up later when times are good. This sort of faux pain for politicians is often used to bait voters into supporting propositions containing bad public policy.

Where is the proposition to lower the votes in the legislature to pass a budget or raise taxes from two-thirds to something more sensible like sixty percent, or God forbid, the simple majority used in Congress and most state legislatures? Vote no on the May 19th gang of six.

We're not in Kansas anymore, are we?

2009-01-13T23:17:00.000-08:00

A report from the inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department, says The NY Times, found that a former senior official at the Justice Department, Bradley Schlozman, "selected conservative lawyers for prime assignments and transferred three lawyers out of the Civil Rights Division because they were seen as liberals who were opposed to his political agenda. All three later brought federal discrimination claims and returned to the division after Mr. Schlozman left. The transfers, the report found, violated federal civil service law and 'constituted misconduct.'

"The investigation found that among people hired by Mr. Schlozman, 63 of 65 were considered Republican or conservative, but that when he was not involved, 'the results were more balanced,' with conservatives and liberals split about evenly.

"In a 2003 voice-mail message to a colleague, Mr. Schlozman said experience in civil rights law was not needed to work for the division. 'I just want to make sure we don’t start confining ourselves to, you know, Politburo members because they happen to be a member of some, you know, psychopathic left-wing organization designed to overthrow the government,' he said." (It's amazing how conservatives embrace affirmative action if it applies only to conservatives - see my previous post.)

"The investigators for the inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that Mr. Schlozman’s repeated denials to the Senate in 2007 that he had used ideological considerations in his personnel decisions constituted a 'false statement,' and they referred the matter to prosecutors for criminal prosecution last year."

The United States Attorney’s Office, headed by a Bush appointee, declined to prosecute. Mr. Schlozman is happily practicing law in his native Kansas.

No credit? No problem if you're dealing with the Bush administration.

2009-01-04T23:10:00.000-08:00

A sly college student activist recently was able to disrupt a fire sale of oil and gas leases announced by the Bush administration on election day by bidding up the prices at auction and buying leases at high prices other bidders could not afford. The truly astounding thing about this sting is that it could only be accomplished because the Bush administration is still blind to the lessons from the mortgage crisis. They were so eager to sell off government assets on the cheap that they didn't do a credit check on the buyers. The student had no money to complete his purchases and the auction can't be repeated until after Obama, who has vowed to stop it, takes office.

Save your confederate money, boys.

2008-12-27T23:51:00.001-08:00

The South, I mean the Republican Party, shall rise again. The latest debate in the GOP is over whether the song, “Barack the Magic Negro” is an appropriate holiday gift to the party from a candidate for new party leader. Tough call. Decide for yourself.

We have too many well educated voters.

2008-12-27T19:34:00.000-08:00

And it costs too much to educate them, says a conservative's op-ed in The NY Times. Having been stung by the results of this problem in the most recent election, conservatives are fighting back. Reset our national goals so that we channel most students wanting a post high school education into vocational schools and we solve two problems. Cut government spending, and ensure that there will be fewer voters in the future capable of dissecting big public policy issues. This should help candidates such as Sarah Palin climb right to the top down the road. As the op-ed points out, most people aren't really deep thinkers anyway, so why try to force them to study a range of subjects that will just frustrate them?

HerMcCain Sarah.

2008-09-04T21:23:00.000-07:00

May turn out to be the most powerful storm of the season. Will Pentecostal Palin ultimately sink McCain the way Katrina sank Bush, or help him? Will voters be turned off by Palin's literal interpretation of the Bible in light of Bush's deeply flawed character trait of "religious certainty about his decision making?"

Obama's two short years in the US Senate.

2008-09-03T21:34:00.001-07:00

One of the things that Republican speakers are now saying (incorrectly) is that Obama has only been in the US Senate for two years. It's four! That's a big difference in a position in which it takes a year just to get your bearings. The attempt, of course, is to bring Obama down to Palin's level. People should call Republicans on this lie everytime they say it - as TV interviewers are failing to do, except on the Daily Show.

McCain will win the election by saying Obama will lose the war.

2008-08-21T13:06:00.000-07:00

Obama may lose the election because McCain has changed the conversation about the war. Obama’s huge strength as a candidate is that he had the courage to oppose the worst U.S. foreign policy mistake of the past fifty years, and possibly of all time. Yet, McCain paints Obama as naïve and inexperienced in foreign policy and military affairs. McCain keeps saying that Obama wants to let the U.S. lose the war in Iraq, but Obama is not really answering this charge, except to defend his patriotism and repeat that he will impose a timetable.

What Obama needs to repeat with all is oratory skill is that the war was never really designed to protect American interests. It was a blind spasm by a misguided President, a Wag-the-Dog diversion erected by his neo-con Vice-President who was determined to simultaneously subvert the constitution and destroy many of the noble values for which this country has stood. It has given a blank check to military contractors to whom the Republican Party is beholden, and to an unstable and dependent government in Iraq that will never step up and unless we are serious about stepping out. We financed the entire multi-trillion dollar war on credit and we can't fix our economy until we stop pouring money into this sinkhole. The only way to preserve American dignity, our stature in the world and our national treasury is to get on a timetable. Unlike Bush and McCain, Obama can show that as a leader, he has the discipline to get us out of the mess.

The public tolerated the war for a long time, even as facts mounted that the evidence for it was rigged, because people assumed the war was really about ensuring reliable and affordable fixes for our addiction to oil. Stratospheric gas prices exploded that myth.

Obama has already said these things, but in his quest to be seen as a uniter, he now seems afraid to offend any potential supporter. But unless he steps up, he risks losing the enthusiastic support of those who were passionate about his courage to lead, and worse, being unable to shake McCain’s tagging him as a weak leader. Today, he seems to have moved far away from his bold criticisms in 2002:

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

Tortured logic.

2008-07-22T23:32:00.000-07:00

A number of journalists, as well as witnesses at recent U.S. Senate hearings, have described how the U.S. came to adopt torture as a so called "weapon" in the war on terror. After 9/11, the military reverse engineered techniques that had been intended to harden U.S. military personnel against interrogation methods North Korea used in the early 1950's to elicit false confessions.

The problem is that most professional intelligence officers don't believe that torture is the best way to get reliable information from a suspect. Persons being tortured often will say whatever they think their torturers want to hear. This is the reason U.S. courts do not allow the admission of confessions obtained by torture in criminal trials. It's not about compassion for the tortured - it's about ensuring that the criminal justice system is based on truth. If there is one place where we need facts rather than fiction, it's in fighting terrorism.

A determined criminal facing life in prison or death from a military tribunal knows he only worsens his situation by confessing while being tortured. He gets nothing in return other than a certain conviction. He is more likely to cooperate if he gets something of long term value in return, such as better food, reading material, a cell with a view, a shorter sentence, life rather than execution, etc. Indeed, that is exactly how the CIA "broke" the alleged mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

What about the "24" scenario? Some believe the Hollywood scripted nightmare that the U.S. might capture a terrorist who knew the location of a nuclear bomb set to explode in a few hours inspired the adoption of torture after 9/11. With no time for tried and true psychological interrogation methods, desperate officers might attempt the Jack Bauer approach. Even Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has said that no one would convict a torturer of a crime in such a scenario. We don't need a national policy permitting and encouraging torture in order to deal with this extremely unlikely situation.

As is clear from Jane Mayer's book, The Dark Side, a few powerful people in the Bush Administration made the decision to use torture without a careful analysis of its potential effectiveness for eliciting true information. The sudden adoption of torture might have been because Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted false confessions from alleged terrorists in order to justify the invasion of Iraq and the civil rights of U.S. citizens. Indeed, a false confession about an imaginary link between Al Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein was a key element in the case the administration made for the invasion of Iraq.

Now come calls for a general amnesty or pardons for those who illegally justified the use of torture and did the torturing. One of the arguments made for amnesty is that it is the only way to learn whether torture in obtained accurate information about terror plots. Finding out whether torture provided any useful information is pointless because there are more effective methods to obtain the truth that rely on psychology alone.

No other single proposal could be more damaging to the health of our democracy and our credibility in the world. We need to ensure that this cancer is rooted out of our institutions, and that we send an unmistakable message that systematic torture and abuse of prisoners will never be tolerated again. Otherwise, we risk again being dragged into a war abroad or at home on false pretenses, and being forever compromised in our ability to end human rights abuses by our post 9/11 image as hypocritical fascist nation. Oh yes, and we would have no standing to demand that our soldiers not be tortured if captured by an enemy. We and the rest of the world deserve much better from our democracy.

Conservatives favor affirmative action for conservatives.

2008-06-24T22:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, the proof is in. The report of the Justice Department Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility concludes that for at least five years, two Bush appointed Attorneys General illegally applied ideological and political litmus tests to civil service hiring for intern and career attorney positions. Applications to the Justice Department's Honors Program, which seeks the best talent from top law schools, were scrutinized for telltale signs of liberal affiliation, such as "buzzwords" like "social justice," or volunteer work for organizations perceived to have liberal goals.

In spite of the fact that the purpose of the civil service system is to keep politics out of the hiring process, a former spokesperson for Attorney General John Ashcroft. quoted on NPR, justified the illegal practice as a long overdue attempt to create ideological diversity in the Justice Department! Given that candidates with perceived liberal affiliations or leanings were rejected at three times the rate of those believed to be conservative, that means that standards were lowered in order to accommodate a particular subset of applicants- just as conservatives bitterly complained affirmative action programs did in the sixties and seventies. This seems to be a tacit admission by the Bush Justice Department that conservatives are not as bright and academically accomplished as liberals. A former justice department official said the policy meant that Justice was hiring from the B list instead of the A list.

Is it any surprise that during this time the Justice Department did not seek racial and ethnic diversity in its hiring? Not a single black lawyer was hired in the Civil Rights Division between 2003 and 2007.

Update: The Justice Department’s inspector general and its internal ethics office issued a report concluding that aides to Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales illegally used partisan and ideological criteria to select less-qualified applicants for nonpolitical senior career positions, including immigration judges, assistant United States attorneys and counterterrorism positions. This discrimination slowed the hiring process at critical times and damaged the department’s credibility. Applicants' views on "God, guns and gays" were a key part of the screening.

Bush's tax cuts are like a subprime mortgage.

2008-05-12T23:28:00.000-07:00

More people are waking up to the fact that the Bush tax cuts cannot be sustained without slowing the growth of the economy, and the tax cuts eventually will have to be scaled back. On top of this, in order to pay the interest on the national debt created by the Bush tax cut, there will have to be a permanent tax increase of at least five percent (see my previous post). This forever tax probably will be even higher, depending on how long the current tax cuts last and whether there is consensus to pay down any of the enormous debt they've created. If you were a twenty year old who got a twenty percent tax decrease for ten years while your income was low, you may not be happy that as a thirty year old you'll face a five, six or seven percent tax increase for the rest of your life when your income is higher. In the end, you'll lose money on this "tax break." Come to think of it, this tax deal is structured like a subprime mortgage. You get a teaser payment upfront, and then get hit with high payments you can't afford later.

Are Republicans victims of battered person syndome?

2008-05-11T12:19:00.000-07:00

Here and elsewhere, the long sad story of how the Bush Administration has abused the average U.S. citizen has been well documented and publicized.

The disastrous war in Iraq is now understood to have been continuously marketed on false pretenses since Bush first proposed it. Opposition to continuing the lie and war is widespread - even among moderate Republicans (except those who are getting rich as private contractors in Iraq). Citizens will pay trillions of their tax dollars and sacrifice the blood of many of the nation's young people for this horrific mistake.
Even teenagers understand that for the rest of their lives they likely will be paying off Bush's unprecedented, gigantic federal deficits - so far increasing the national debt by more than a four trillion dollars and nearly doubling it. The "free" money people get from Bush's tax cuts and rebates is not free (see my previous post). Today, nearly a tenth of taxes go just toward paying the interest on the national debt, with Bush's deficits responsible for half of that. (Many voters remember that Bill Clinton's fiscal discipline created four years of surpluses. Fewer realize that under Republican Presidents since 1948 we have been subjected to average annual increases in the national debt three times higher than under Democrats.) (Here's an even scarier analysis by a conservative economist.)
Nearly everyone, except determined hermits, realizes that the Bush promise of getting government out of our lives was a lie regarding civil liberties. Sadly, it was true concerning protecting most of us from the consequences of natural disasters such as hurricanes and global climate change, and from greed and exploitation (a prime example being the subprime mortgage meltdown).

Yet many Republican voters support that party's nominee in 2008, John McCain, who promises very little change from present policies (see my previous post). Could they be suffering from battered person syndrome? A victim of this condition:

becomes depressed and unable to take any independent action that would allow him or her to escape the abuse. The condition explains why abused people often do not seek assistance from others, fight their abuser, or leave the abusive situation. Sufferers have low self-esteem, and often believe that the abuse is their fault. Such persons usually refuse to press criminal charges against their abuser, and refuse all offers of help, often becoming aggressive or abusive to others who attempt to offer assistance. Often sufferers will even seek out their very abuser for comfort shortly after an incident of abuse.

Protecting whistleblowers from the agency that's supposed to protect them.

2008-05-06T20:48:00.000-07:00

Today marked the latest, sad episode demonstrating the Bush Administration's complete contempt for notion that the work of Federal agencies should be shielded from political interference. The FBI, one of the few agencies not completely overrun with political operatives (see my previous post), raided and temporarily shut-down the Office of Special Counsel. According to the N.Y. Times, the "counsel’s office, which answers to the White House, is charged with protecting federal employees from reprisals for whistle-blowing and with investigating accusations of political interference in their work." Critics charge that the office has instead focused on promoting conservative social causes and retaliated "against whistle-blowers in its own ranks." So, the good news is that FBI is finally doing something about the misuse of this office. The bad news is that they waited so long.

Update: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is calling for Congress to abolish the Office of Special Counsel.
President Bush ignored a staff request that he fire the Special Counsel Scott Bloch.

Those who forget their inequality are doomed to repeat it.

2008-04-28T23:45:00.000-07:00

On the day the first of Bush’s "economic stimulus" tax rebates hit some citizens’ bank accounts, it should be noted that this is the first federal tax rebate in history in a Presidential election year. No one in Washington previously has had the nerve to so openly pander for votes with money. Many economists believe that this will do little to jump start a recession economy, because any boost in consumer discretionary spending will be so short lived. In these tough times, much of this "free" money will simply go to pay off debt or be eaten up in higher prices for groceries and gasoline. (See update.) As a result of increasing the deficit, the government will then have to borrow the rebate money back from rich investors.

Rather than being motivated to use tax cuts and rebates to revive the economy, Bush and his party have a history of using them to pander. In spite of Republican mythology about the 2001 Bush tax cut, it was not about reviving the economy. It was conceived in 1999, when the economy was booming, as a way of getting votes in the 2000 election.

The main reason we have the 2008 rebates is that Republican are hoping lower income people – who have been economically the worst off during the Bush years – will mostly remember the rebate checks they got in July when they go to the polls in November. This sort of appeal worked for California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger when he unseated the Democratic incumbent in the 2003 recall election. Schwarzenegger promised to roll back a vehicle licensing tax that had been raised due to the state's poor fiscal health. The tax of up to a few hundred dollars per vehicle hit low income people the hardest. Many minority voters chose a Republican for the first time in their lives.

So why did the Democratic Congress go along with this scam? Because, what could else could they do? Once the President proposed and promoted the rebate, opposing it would have resulted in Republicans campaigning against Democrats on the issue in the Fall. Too bad the Democrats did not have the fortitude to just say no.

A Princeton professor of politics recently described his study of the national economic priorities of the two parties over the past sixty years. Under Democratic Presidents, the actual incomes of the middle-class rose more than twice as fast as they did when Republicans owned the White House. The real incomes of the working-poor increased six times as fast during Democratic administrations! The affluent fared equally well with both parties. If Democrats had held the Presidency continuously since 1948, "incomes would be more equal now" than during even the most egalitarian era of the 1950's. The professor notes that "Every Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower presided over increasing economic inequality, while only one Democrat — Jimmy Carter — did so."

Why do many middle class and working poor voters not reward Democrats for their superior economic stewardship? The professor believes that Republican Presidents’ use of their new mandates to cut inflation and social spending – hurting the least well off – wear off after three years, producing a perceived boost in the next election year for those that have suffered the most. Democrats’ policies helping the poor and middle-class also run their course after three years, creating a perceived decline that coincides with the next election cycle. As Republicans know so well, the public has a short memory.

Subprime meets nonprosecution.

2008-04-08T23:24:00.000-07:00

Neatly tying together my previous posts about the Bush Justice Department's use of deferred prosecution agreements (nonprosecution) and the subprime mortgage crisis comes speculation that a Republican controlled Justice Department would not prosecute companies accused of wrongdoing in the subprime scandal. In fact, the existence of this corporate diversion program may have fueled the subprime crisis by encouraging bad corporate actors to believe they would not be held accountable for wrongdoing, says the NY Times.

Not a Gramm of change in credit market regulation expected under McCain

2008-04-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

Now that an unprecedented 81% of Americans believe the country is on the wrong path, it’s easy to believe that both political parties will deliver change in the upcoming election.

An amazing interview with former Commodity Futures Trading Commission member Michael Greenberger on the NPR show Fresh Air yesterday described how former Senator Phil Gramm from Texas bears significant responsibility for the subprime mortgage and credit market crises and financial meltdown we now face. He cosponsored the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, passed quickly and quietly in the waning hours of the 2000 Congress as rider on a huge appropriation bill, when everyone’s attention was still on the ill fated election. This and other Graham sponsored legislation deregulated much of the financial sector and hastened the growth of risky new markets based entirely on gambling on how other markets will fare.

Wikipedia describes another role Gramm played in the meltdown of financial markets (also detailed here):

Gramm was partly caught up in the Enron scandal when it emerged that his wife Wendy had part written an exemption for Enron from federal oversight while she was serving on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. She then accepted a directorship at Enron. Gramm was personally involved further when it came to light that he had helped to turn the exemption into law as well as push through the deregulation of energy markets that led in part to the Enron scandal. During this period Enron was a major contributor to his campaigns.

Gramm started out as a Democrat, but realized it would be more profitable to be become Republican after Reagan was elected in 1981. Operating as a spy for the Republicans until the Democrats cast him out, he resigned his House seat and then was reelected as a Republican in a special election. He beat Ron Paul in the Republican senatorial primary in 1984.

Soon to be Republican Presidential nominee John McCain admits he doesn’t know much about economics. His economics advisor is none other than Phil Gramm, now a vice chairman of Swiss Bank UBS, which lost 19 billion dollars in U.S. credit markets and real estate in just the first quarter of 2008! Gramm is rumored to be McCain’s likely choice for Treasury Secretary. Don't expect much change from Bush's economic policy from that ticket.

Update: Michael D. Donovan, a former S.E.C. lawyer, says, "Phil Gramm is the single most important reason for the current financial crisis." Gramm responded by blaming the crisis on "predatory borrowers" - those without the means to pay their subprime mortgages.

Serving government's customers.

2008-04-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

One of the most obscene notions perpetuated by the Reagan legacy is that greater government regulation leads to increased corruption and waste. This mantra is part of the Ron Paul libertarian Kool-Aid® that many have drunk. Just get rid of government, and tranquility and efficiency will reign.

This has become a self-fulfilling prophesy for Republican administrations. In order to service their business constituency, they just fill government regulatory agencies with incompetent or corrupt cronies who believe that government serves no useful purpose higher than their personal gain. (See my previous post.) In short order the resulting corruption and waste proves the "truth" of bad big government. The most recent example is the scandal at the FAA over pressure from the top on inspectors to ignore aircraft maintenance violations. Having gone beyond any notion that it serves the people, the FAA refers to the airlines as its "customers." (See my previous FAA post.)

One has only to look at Europe to see the fallacy of this argument. In Germany, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries, businesses and banking are more regulated than in the U.S. and there is relatively little corruption. Their economies are leaving ours in the dust. The Euro, Franc, and Krona are strong in part because people have justifiable confidence in their financial markets and in the products they produce. The greatest risk facing these nations is their investments in the U.S. The British, with a more deregulated banking system, are paying the consequences.

Targeted government regulation can increase consumer safety and confidence and create a stronger economy. The extent of corruption and waste is all about the leadership voters choose to implement regulation.

More corruption in Bush's "Justice" Department.

2008-03-12T09:01:00.001-07:00

Lost in the news about N.Y. Governor Spitzer's prostitution scandal was the Congressional hearing about how the Bush Justice Department lets corporations avoid criminal convictions for corruption or for violations of safety, financial or environmental regulations. In short, big companies that already have a very cozy relationship with the Republican Party can buy their way out by paying friends of the administration to monitor their future conduct. The arrangements have been made by U.S. Attorneys using no guidelines and under no bid contracts. Doesn't this sound like something you'd hear about in Russia or some corrupt developing nation?

One of the largest recipients of one of these deals was none other than former Attorney General John Ashcroft. He is being paid between 28 and 52 million dollars to monitor a medical supply company accused of engaging in kickbacks to increase its sales. You may remember Ashcroft as the chief supporter of the Patriot Act, which contained an unnoticed clause that was at the heart of the U.S. Attorney firings scandal. The government official who set up the no bid monitoring contract for Ashcroft? His former subordinate, Christopher J. Christie, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey and a top fund raiser for George Bush in 2000. Christie is now being criticized for awarding a number of these monitoring deals to his friends and political allies.

There were three dozen of these deals done nationally last year. The day before Ashcroft's Congressional testimony, the Justice Department finally announced that it would that require these contracts (euphemistically called "nonprosecution") be approved by the Deputy Attorney General in the future. Now we can all sleep better.

Regulatory corruption and 9/11

2007-12-29T13:02:00.000-08:00

There has been much written about how our civil liberties have been irrationally eroded after 9/11, and how burdensome air travel has become. What seems to have been forgotten is that a significant factor in 9/11 was our corrupt regulatory system. The FAA had become another federal agency largely unable to regulate because of industry lobbying. The airlines resisted pre-9/11 FAA proposals to strengthen cockpit doors, for example. Failing to require those doors be strengthened was one of nine fatal mistakes made by the government that could have prevented the tragedy, according to the 9/11 Commission.

The industry also was not following passenger screening rules, and the FAA was not holding airlines accountable for this. Some of the hijackers paid for tickets in cash at the airport just before their flights, which should have triggered additional screening. What's more, the hijackers did this several times before 9/11 as a test, and none were subjected to additional checks. If regulations had been followed, the hijackers might have been caught, since some were already on watch lists and the FBI was trying to find them.

Our safety has gotten worse, not better, since 9/11, because in the name of security, we vote for politicians who simultaneously promise more security and preach that we'd all be better off if government just left business alone. In contrast to the some of the overreaction in airline security, regulation abdication by government has made us less safe in so many other ways. For example, although we may be less likely to die in a hijacked airplane, our kids and our pets are more likely to die from tainted food or dangerous toys.

Ron Paul & George Bush: separated at birth?

2007-12-17T21:45:00.000-08:00

Ron Paul just set a record for the most money raised on the Internet in a single day. What’s going on here? His Presidential bid has been compared to that of Howard Dean’s in 2004, but other than the outsider label, nothing about them is the same. To find the answer, I suggest you read the Newsweek Magazine story on the politics of fear, which reviews how politicians use fear to get elected.

Then compare the platforms of George Bush in 2000 with Ron Paul in 2008. As loyal Republicans, Bush and Paul both have opposed abortion, gay rights, gun control, taxes and nation building. The first three of these issues are about fear. Abortion opponents boast of their moral outrage at killing, but most of them support the death penalty and don’t bat an eye if a lot of innocent people in other nations are killed in order to eliminate a few terrorists. They also don't tend to support policies that would lower the inexcusable U.S. infant mortality rate below its present level, which is higher than virtually all of Europe. (We nose out Croatia.) If they even give lip service to the need for universal health care, they don't tend to support remedies with any teeth.

Opposition to abortion is mostly driven by fear that making abortion easily available leads to sexual promiscuity and women not assuming their proper role in society, thus destroying the social fabric. An excellent book on this subject published by Cornell University Press analyzed the history of laws in all fifty states affecting women's rights and freedoms and those affecting the protection of life. It concluded that the states with the strictest abortion laws also offer the poorest protection of women's rights and worst protection of life in all areas other than abortion, and that restricting women's rights was a much stronger motivator of anti-abortion laws than fetal protection. (The Journal of Christian Ethics described the book as a balanced prescription for a "seamless garment of love for unborn children.")

Homophobes fear that greater rights for gays would unleash the demon of sexual promiscuity. Fear of crime drives opposition to gun control. Support for strict adherence to the constitution and states rights is intended to counter court decisions supporting gun control, gays, women seeking abortions and host of other fear driven issues. Abandoning federal standards would allow states to revert back to their nineteen century policies, including on criminal justice and discrimination, which were the reason Congress and the courts intervened in the first place. In this context, the states rights movement is akin to the U.S. rendition program sending terror suspects to third world nations to be tortured, enabling the U.S. government to absolve itself of responsibility for the resulting horror.

Those who are adamant about lower taxes are mostly people who would much rather make decisions about charity themselves and who don’t want to give their hard earned money away to people they think are a bunch of lazy lowlifes. This includes lowlifes in poor countries, hence the opposition to nation building. (The story of how the opposition to nation building got perverted by fear of terrorists and an opportunity for some loyal Republican to get rich on the war has been recounted at length elsewhere.) The ridiculous rationalization that lower taxes stimulate today's economy ignores the fact that deficit spending irresponsibly shifts the burden to pay for today's government services on future generations. Not exactly family values.

I don’t see a lot of daylight between what Ron Paul is preaching and what George Bush preached in 2000. On global warming, the only other issue that’s big right now, Paul and Bush both agree that government should not do much.

Paul’s talk about abolishing the Federal Reserve, the IRS, and Social Security gives him that radical edge, but the demise of these institutions is a political impossibility and he knows it. So why is Ron Paul a phenom? Some of the right wingers disenchanted with the Republican Party establishment suddenly have found a home. Perhaps he’ll launch a third-party bid and do to the Republicans what Ralph Nader did to the Democrats in 2000 – siphon off votes. Yea!

The pollution problem.

2007-08-25T23:31:00.000-07:00

Is the quote below The Economist Magazine talking about the Republican Party in the United States, or The New York Times talking about the Communist Party in China? Click here to find out.

Reining in economic growth to alleviate pollution may seem logical, but the country’s political system is addicted to fast growth. Delivering prosperity placates the public, provides spoils for well-connected officials and forestalls demands for political change. A major slowdown could incite social unrest, alienate business interests and threaten the party’s rule.

Should the traveling TB lawyer be disbarred?

2007-05-31T21:30:00.001-07:00

It is hard to understand how a person, required by the laws governing his chosen profession to act ethically, could be as irresponsible as Andrew Speaker. This Georgia lawyer was told not to fly because he might infect others with tuberculosis (TB), a contagious and life threatening disease. His father-in-law is a tuberculosis researcher, and Speaker should have fully understood the risks he was imposing on the thousands of people he would come in contact with on his planned trip to Europe. According to the World Health Organization, each person with TB infects 10 to 15 other people on average.

Yet, Speaker got on a plane and flew to Paris. He later flew on five flights to cities in Europe, getting married in Greece. In Rome he was tracked down, and told further testing showed he had an extremely drug resistant form of TB and to await further instructions for treatment. Instead, he flew to Prague, booked a flight to Canada and drove across the U.S. border to avoid detection.

Now, he is under quarantine in a Denver hospital with "a form of TB that kills a high percentage of those infected around the world." Hundreds of his fellow airline passengers may have to be tested for TB. He faces years of treatment that "will involve risks of side effects that could damage his kidneys and liver" and may have to undergo major surgery to remove part of his lung. Anyone he infected on his honeymoon travels may face the same fate. He was reported to be "concerned about the publicity his case was receiving."

Lawyers have a public image of being greedy, selfish and unscrupulous, and the profession's reputation was dealt another blow by Speaker's reprehensible behavior. The laws of Georgia call for an attorney's disbarment for conviction of "a misdemeanor involving moral turpitude." Should Speaker be prosecuted if he violated any laws in his evasion of public health authorities? Should he be disbarred if convicted? Do the answers to these questions change if he infected anyone with TB during his trip?

The phone number for the United States Attorney's Office in Atlanta is:
404-581-6000 Fax: 404-581-6181

The State Bar phone number for reporting attorney misconduct in Georgia is:
800-334-6865 ext. 720 or 404-527-8720

If you want to contact Speaker directly, his contact information published by the State Bar Georgia is:
Mr. Andrew Harley Speaker
Speaker Law Firm
4651 Roswell Road, Suite D-302
Atlanta, GA 30342
Phone: 404-531-9868
Fax: 404-531-4835
Email: aspeaker@speakerlawfirm.com
Admit Date: 10/27/2004
Law School: University of Georgia

Slum lords and pimps.

2007-05-13T19:30:00.000-07:00

The three elected Republican administrations of my politically conscious lifetime - Nixon, Reagan/Bush and Bush II stand out for their corruption. Nixon was impeached and forced to resign for masterminding the commission of crimes while spying on his political opponents, for obstruction of justice in trying to cover them up, and for lying about that. Reagan appointed scores of crooks to cabinet and administrative positions, who set about using their power to line the pockets of friends and party loyalists or to look the other way while others did so. The Reagan administration set a still unbroken record for the number of its officials indicted or officially investigated for criminal acts – 138. The Savings and Loan scandal alone cost taxpayers $150,000,000,000.

George W. Bush started a war on false pretenses, and then set about awarding billions in no bid contracts to his friends. Now it appears that many of the Iraq infrastructure projects built by U.S. firms are crumbling and stand mostly as monuments to billions of wasted U.S. tax dollars. Iraq’s infrastructure resembles a scene from the recent dystopian satiric film Idiocracy.

The recent resignation of the head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is a typical example of the rampant corruption in George W. Bush’s administration here at home. She violated federal rules by giving internal agency documents to industry lobbyists that in some cases were used in lawsuits against the agency challenging its conservation policies. She changed the reports of agency scientists to make their findings more favorable to private and corporate interests, and in one case, her own ranch.

The conduct of the Deputy Secretary of State, director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development illustrates the administration's hypocrisy. He pushed for funding to promote abstinence at the expense of funding for condom use in AIDS prevention, but resigned last month after it was alleged that he frequented prostitutes. He also was in charge of enforcing a U.S. requirement that aid recipients swear they oppose prostitution and sex trafficking.

It is also worth mentioning that Paul Wolfowitz, an architect of the Iraq war, and subsequently appointed as head of the World Bank by Bush II, insisted that the greatest problem facing the World Bank is corruption. He now will likely have to resign because of his own corruption at the bank: using his office to obtain a promotion and a hefty raise for his girlfriend.

Perhaps the best illustration of the pervasive corruption under Bush II is the fact that for the first time in history, four Inspectors General simultaneously are under investigation for corruption. These "watchdogs" are appointed by a President to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse. This follows the resignation of three other Inspectors General appointed by Bush II after they were accused of abusing their offices.

Under Bush II, good government always takes a back seat to advancing the power of the G.O.P. Part of this strategy is a widespread effort to "purify" government agencies so that staff, even those in career civil service jobs, are party loyalists. This brings two analogies to mind. The first is the McCarthy era of the 1950's, when Senators McCarthy and Nixon went on a witch hunt for suspected Communists in government. (Watch Good Night, and Good Luck if you want to learn about it.) The second was the practice, during the Communist heydays in the Soviet Union and China, of appointing political officers in every government office and military unit, even in those with as few as a dozen people. The political officer often had more authority than the director or commander, and was responsible for ensuring that policies were in line with party doctrine and that persons suspected of being anything but absolutely loyal were fired or imprisoned. (See The Hunt for Red October for an example.)

As Frank Rich says in his May 13 opinion piece in The N.Y. Times, the focus on party loyalty is the result of Bush II giving his politic strategist Karl Rove free "reign" to remake government. According to Ron Suskind, White House staff have a name to describe their mission: "strategery." This was taken from a Saturday Night Live skit about George Bush in the 2000 election, and reflects the belief that public policy is a farce and politics is all that matters. In Suskind’s January 2003 article, he quotes John DiIulio, an academic who ran the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for Bush II. "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you’ve got is everything – and I mean everything – being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis." DiIulio added that under Bush II, "policy analysis is just backfill to support a political maneuver."

DiIulio's observation has been borne out in the Iraq "reconstruction" effort. In part to bolster the party’s unholy alliance with the religious right, many of the Americans hired by both government and private contractors to rebuild Iraq were hired primarily for being G.O.P. loyalists and staunch religious conservatives, and often were otherwise unqualified for their positions. Most knew nothing about Middle Eastern culture and had never traveled outside the U.S.

The most recent exposure of Bush/Rove strategery, and how it has been implemented by political officers, comes from the story of Monica Goodling, who took the fifth amendment rather than testify before Congress about her role in the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. (See my previous post.) A 1999 graduate of a law school founded by televangelist Pat Robertson, she began as an opposition researcher (dirt finder) for the Republican National Committee in the 2000 presidential campaign. Meteorically, she rose to become deputy director of the executive office of the Justice Department, and then became liaison to the White House. She stands accused of using political criteria when interviewing applicants for civil service jobs and for the department's honors program for recent law school graduates. Posing as the anti-Clinton, she even asked some applicants if they had cheated on their spouses. At the age of 32, she received hiring and firing authority for all political appointments in Justice headquarters, including the heads of the various enforcement divisions. (Readers will be relieved to know that she is currently under investigation by the Justice Department’s Inspector General, a political appointee.)

Republican control of Congress over the past twelve years brought a level of corruption unprecedented in past seventy-five years. Ethics and their enforcement were put on hold by Gingrich, Army, DeLay and their cronies. You have to go back to the time of Warren G. Harding to find anything comparable.

Why this pattern? It’s really quite simple. When a basic tenant of your political philosophy is that government is evil and wasteful, it becomes easy to view government as nothing more than a means to power and an exploitable asset. (See Paul Krugman’s March 19 opinion piece in The N.Y. Times.) As Reagan defined it in his inaugural speech, "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem." The leaders of the Republican party have treated our government as a slum lord treats an apartment building, as a pimp treats a whore, or as a corporate raider treats an acquired subsidiary. The G.O.P. has no respect for government, except as a tool in the party’s crusades for permanent power and as a means to increase the personal wealth of its elites. This has been consistent across four decades of G.O.P. Presidencies.

Postscript: Those who argue that the Clinton administration was similarly corrupt have been getting their news from right wing talk radio. Republican Ken Starr, the special prosecutor who spent most of Clinton’s time as President investigating him, spent more than 50,000,000 tax dollars to prove nothing more damaging to the administration than that Clinton cheated on his wife and lied about it. Clinton did let some big political donors spend the night in the Lincoln bedroom, which was not illegal. Republicans castigated him for this, but in the hypocrisy that comes so easily to them, recently rewarded their big donors with seats at the official state dinner for the Queen of England.

Update: The book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, describes how conservatives have set about destroying government from within for the reasons described above.

Kurt Vonnegut

2007-04-12T23:38:00.000-07:00

I have been in an other-worldly state since hearing the news of his passing. Someone at work described me has having an unusual aura of calm on an otherwise hectic day. I guess that is my way of mourning this great man, who so affected my life. I'm not quite sure how the world will get by without him.

A Dutch friend lent me his copy of The Sirens of Titan to help me cope with my disorientation in trying to fit in at an IBM sales school in 1976.
Seeing the film adaptation of Slaughterhouse Five forever changed the way I look at films, and eventually led me to teaching how films portray law and society.
I had the unbelievable privilege to play Elliot Rosewater in a community theater production of God Bless You Mr. Rosewater in 1988. During the run, my sister met Kurt Vonnegut and he autographed a copy of the program for the show.
I love Galapagos because of Vonnegut’s cautionary interpretation of the work of my other patron saint, Charles Darwin, with whose father I share my name.
Finally, Vonnegut rightly complained that the greatest malady affecting U.S. society was the loss of the extended family. I see his concern everyday in my job as a lawyer representing children in foster care.
He will be missed...

PS. It is of no small consequence that on the day after the world learned of Vonnegut's passing, a shift in world politics was noted. An unnamed senior foreign official attending a meeting of the World Bank observed, “There is a sense that we’re finally at a moment when Bush needs the world more than the world needs Bush.” It would appear that Vonnegut's departure was the catalyst for a sort of a reverse ice-nine effect. The shock woke people up!

Prosecutor-gate: "Idiocy on the part of the administration"

2007-03-13T15:57:00.000-07:00

That’s how Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, member of the Judiciary Committee, described the Bush White House and Justice Department’s firing of eight U.S. Attorneys (see previous post). This affair is cratering around "The Architect" Karl Rove. For perhaps the first time in six years, a desire for the appearance of integrity is a stronger motivator for many Republican members of Congress than loyalty to the President. There have been some mavericks before on the war and civil liberties, but what I’m calling "Prosecutor-gate" is bringing out Republican critics in significant numbers.

Today’s news reveals how deep the elbows of the President and senior White House aides were into this putrid mess, despite their repeated earlier denials. But there is another intriguing detail. Apparently the internal rationale used to justify firing the U.S. Attorneys was that they were not pursuing voter fraud cases.

Allegations of cheating in the last two close Presidential elections break down along on party lines. Republicans claim that a significant numbers of voters actually are ineligible to vote because they are felons (in some states) or non-citizens, or because they vote more than once in an election. Although very little voter fraud has been documented, Republicans say that election officials and prosecutors just aren’t looking hard enough.

Democrats assert the bigger problem needing attention is institutional disenfranchisement of poor people more likely to vote Democratic. One tactic Republican elections officials have used is dropping voters from the rolls in heavily Democratic precincts using inaccurate lists of felons, who by law in some states lose their right to vote. Another is threatening to arrest people if they show up to vote and are improperly registered or have outstanding warrants. This scares off people who fear the police. A third method is not providing enough resources to handle demand at polling stations in poor precincts. In the past twenty years, there is far more documented evidence of institutional vote suppression (committed by both parties) that has affected far more elections than there is of fraud committed by voters. The intense scrutiny of the close elections in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 found many instances of vote suppression, with the Republican Party in charge in both states.

Republicans want more focus on voter fraud for three reasons. The first is because they believe that people desperate enough to take money to engage in voter fraud are usually felons, migrants and poor people more likely to vote for Democrats. The second reason, say Democrats, is that making voter fraud the villain draws attention away from the Republicans' use of institutional disenfranchisement. The third reason is that threats to prosecute voter fraud are themselves a form of vote suppression, and Republican election strategy relies on intimidating indigent and poorly educated voters to stay away from the polls.

What Republican leaders want are some voter fraud prosecutions, especially in states where Democrats are in power. This is where the fired U.S. Attorneys come in. (Never mind that the U.S. Attorneys are supposed to be protecting us from organized crime and terrorists and that local law enforcement is much better suited to going after individual fraudulent voters – if they exist.) Senator Pete Domenici and Congresswoman Heather Wilson, both Republicans from New Mexico – a state with a large number of poor immigrants – have admitted asking the now fired U.S. Attorney to begin a voter fraud prosecution before the last election. Wilson is the ranking Republican member of the House Ethics Committee and should have known better. (By the way, the fired U.S. Attorney in New Mexico was the Navy prosecutor portrayed by Tom Cruise in the film A Few Good Men.)

It’s no surprise that of the eight U.S. Attorneys fired in Prosecutor-gate, seven are from states in the South or West with significant migrant farm worker populations. Seven are from states with administrations controlled by Democrats, or in the case of California, from a state where the Governor is a Republican in name only and the Attorney General is Democrat Jerry Brown. In other words, the fired prosecutors came from states where Republicans have a strong interest in bringing voter fraud prosecutions for partisan political ends.

That's how badly Karl Rove and the Republican party leadership want to win elections.

(See N.Y.Times Editorial published March 16, arguing that "the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people," and that the eight U.S. Attorneys were fired for not using "their offices to help Republicans win elections.")

Rove's latest dirty trick: The Patriot Act prosecutor switch

2007-02-26T14:10:00.000-08:00

Just when you may have thought there might be nothing more to know about the extraordinary malfeasance by the Bush administration, come more sickening details. A little-known provision of the "Patriot" Act apparently was designed for no other purpose than to allow Karl Rove to create more Republican pseudo prosecutors to run for Congress. The plan, as described in a N.Y. Times Op-ed, kills two birds with one stone. It lets Bush axe some particularly effective prosecutors of corrupt Republicans and replace them with inexperienced novices who will then use their new title of U.S. Attorney as a tough-on-crime credential to win a seat in the 2008 election. Diabolical. The change in the Patriot Act allows the newbies to serve indefinitely as interim U.S. Attorneys without ever having to face the embarrassment of rejection by the Senate.

As with so many of these political dirty tricks and abuses of power, Democrats will not have enough guile to use them if they get the White House back, so there is very little downside for the Republicans. Public outcry (and maybe some sense of the integrity that is critical to public trust in the inherent power of the U.S. Attorney post) probably will motivate Democrats to close this wormhole if they get the chance to overhaul the Patriot Act. But who knows? The bar has been set so low it may never get raised back to where it was before Bush came to town. (See followup story.)

George and Dick imagined as "Thelma and Louise"

2007-02-18T13:09:00.000-08:00

See Thelma and Louise Imperialism: Over the Cliff with George and Dick? by Tom Engelhardt. (imdb link)

Script idea: "Thank You for Spitting"

2007-02-13T16:02:00.000-08:00

News accounts of the life of a Georgia Congressman who died today from lung and liver cancer seem too over the top to be real, perhaps a case of life imitating art in the manner of Robert Duval’s spoof of a dying southern conservative in Thank You for Smoking. But he was real, and his life and political career explain a lot about the mess the country is in today with the war, climate change and eroded civil liberties.

According to the Associated Press, tobacco-chewing dentist Charles Norwood, Jr. was first elected to Congress during the Republican Revolution of 1994 and was famous for his infrequent use of diplomatic language. One of his proudest accomplishments was cutting a swath through red tape so that a constituent could bring home a stuffed polar bear killed in a hunt in Canada. Last year, Norwood was one of only 33 House members who voted against renewing the Voting Rights Act. A life-long gun rights advocate, as a teenager he shot and killed a close friend at a private boarding school during a quick-draw contest with what they believed were empty guns. If voters are going to continue to re-elect men like this, the least someone could do is make a comedy about it. Otherwise, our future would seem too bleak.

Democratic blunder on Iraq.

2007-01-24T20:36:00.000-08:00

There's been lots of cheering, applause and praise for Senator Webb's speech for the Democrats last night, responding to Bush's State of the Union speech, but I was dumbfounded at the sheer stupidity of the ending. The final mental image that lingers in viewers' minds is key to the success of any important speech and Webb sent exactly the wrong message. I'll lay out the dots and then connect them as I saw it.

It's become politically fashionable of late to use the words and actions of the other side's heroes to make big points, a trend that seems to grow more prevalent as the national discourse has become further partisan and polarized. Republicans cite FDR and Democrats cite Reagan, which they imagine makes them sound more reasonable. So, some genius speechwriter decided that Webb should refer to Teddy Roosevelt and Ike Eisenhower. He ended his speech by reminding us that Ike quickly ended the Korean War because it had become a "bloody stalemate."

The main justification Bush gave in 2002 and 2003 for the invasion of Iraq was that some crazy dictator in a country with a culture Americans don't understand was about to get nuclear weapons and use them against the U.S. As Condi Rice said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Of course, the nuclear weapons and WMD claims weren't true. Now, most people believe that the Bush administration cooked the intelligence information to get public support for the war, but the WMD fear is still there. We've heard a lot in the past two years about the nuclear ambitions of Iran, Iraq's neighbor and likely participant in the Iraq civil war meltdown that could follow if the U.S. were to withdraw from Iraq.

So what do people think of when they think of the legacy of the Korean War? Most likely, it is North Korea, a nation with a culture Americans don't understand, ruled by a crazy dictator who has nuclear weapons and missiles that he may use against the U.S. If Jim Webb and the Democrats want to convince the American public that we should get out of Iraq, I can't think of a worse example to use than the Korean War.

If any of the New York Times reading, latte drinking, sushi eating liberals that Webb surely consulted for his speech had bothered to see Team America: World Police, they would have realized what a blunder it would be to end a pullout-from-Iraq speech with a reference to Korea. If the Democrats want to lead us out of Iraq, they'll have to be a lot smarter in making their case.

Bush spins himself as a stunned onlooker of events in Iraq.

2007-01-16T17:07:00.000-08:00

Today President Bush added his own voice to the chorus seeking to increase public perception of the administration’s distance from the policies of Iraq government. (See earlier posts 1 & 2) His verbal imagery took me back to a scene from my own past. I crashed a hang glider I was piloting into a parking lot full of cars. By the time onlookers could get over to the me, I had already unhooked myself from the craft and was standing up– although very dazed. As curious people arrived, I simply blended into the crowd–too numb to accept the role of either perpetrator or victim.

That’s what Bush seems to be doing with Iraq. He’s now pretending to be just one of the crowd of stunned on lookers at a crash scene. On the PBS News Hour, he said, "If you were to take it and put me in an opinion poll and said ‘Do I approve of Iraq’ I’d be one of those that said, ‘No, I don’t approve of what’s taking place in Iraq."’ Bush also criticized the Iraq government’s execution of the Saddam–the man the U.S. handed over to Iraq to be hung and that Bush has called the man who "tried to kill my father." (See earlier posts 3 & 4) Ironically, given his personal issues with Saddam, Bush said the hanging "looked like it was kind of a revenge killing."

Eventually, someone will remind Bush that he’s been piloting the ship of state.

Children of Men

2007-01-13T23:55:00.000-08:00

Children of Men, currently in theaters, uses many cliches of the action/adventure drama about the reluctant hero and his eventual passionate engagement in the mission forced upon him, but the social commentary and powerful imagery will leave you pondering scenes in this film long after you leave the theater.

The film is set in Britain in 2027. Heavily armed Homeland Security forces are perpetually rounding up illegal immigrants and putting them in camps. Their processing is portrayed as cross between post 9/11 airport security and entry into a Nazi concentration camp. A large chunk of the film takes place in lawless urban wasteland that has a number of parallels to present-day Iraqi cities outside the Green Zone, and harkens back to British occupation of Northern Ireland. The British forces try to keep order amongst an intimidated non-British population living in squalor, whilst also battling terrorists and heavily-armed sectarian groups. I worry that the portrayal of security forces here is much like the vision present day Iraqis have of occupying coalition armies. One U.S government poll found that 90 percent of young Iraqis view the U.S. "as an occupying force." If so, our enterprise there is doomed.

Iraq is Bush's pet goat

2007-01-08T15:02:00.000-08:00

Iraq is now like the exotic pet a kid begs for that he doesn't have the maturity and commitment to care for. Seemed like a great idea at the time, but he has neither the patience to learn how to take care of it, nor the discipline to provide all the cleaning, feeding and exercise that the pet requires. Eventually, the kid may blame the pet rather than face his own responsibilities. So, the pet dies, wanders off, or his parents find it a new home.

Except that this pet is not a goat, but rather a country of twenty-six million people. Its fledgling government has now become Bush's scapegoat for his failed endeavor. (See my earlier post.)

The misunderestimation of Gerald Ford.

2007-01-07T13:06:00.000-08:00

Who could have predicted, in 1977 or 1981, that in the waning days of some Republican administration in the future we'd be reminiscing about how Ford’s skills as a President were misunderestimated? (See word use in a speech.)

U.S. to Iraq: "You just can't change your evil ways..."

2007-01-06T15:43:00.000-08:00

As I said in my previous post, the Saddam execution is serving as a focal point for the Bush Administration's efforts to distance itself from the new regime it created in Iraq, so as to smooth the way for an inevitable abandonment. According to a new New York Times article, U.S. officials are saying:

The hanging reveals "how the 'new Iraq' is starting to resemble, the repressive, vengeful place it was under Mr. Hussein, albeit in a paler shade."
"The way it has come out with the hanging, we’ve substituted one dictatorship for another.”

My previous post also scoffed at U.S. claims that it was compelled to bow to Iraqi sovereignty on the timing and manner of Saddam's execution, and the New York Times article contains more U.S. spin on this. However, the article also notes that the American military fort ironically named "Camp Justice" completely encloses the Istikhbarat prison in which Saddam was executed, and where thousands of hangings occurred under Saddam's regime.
(A Carlos Santana song inspired the post title)

The light at the bottom of the gallows.

2007-01-02T21:48:00.000-08:00

Against the backdrop of recommendation by a New Jersey legislative commission that the State abolish the death penalty because it does not serve "a legitimate purpose" and "is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency," the U.S. government appears to be spinning the story that it bowed to the wishes of the sovereign nation of Iraq as to the timing of Saddam’s execution. Not turning Saddam over "would have involved riding roughshod over the Iraqi leaders’ insistence on their sovereignty in the execution," says an unnamed source in the New York Times. Balderdash – American taxpayers bought the Iraq government and are still paying for it.

It’s just a coincidence that the execution happened on the Friday evening before New Year’s weekend, 10:10 PM, Washington Time, the beginning of a non-religious holiday, when, for the next three-and-a-half days, the fewest number of people in the U.S. were reporting, reading or viewing the news. And, that the preparations for national mourning over the death of President Ford three days before were dominating what little news bandwidth there was. The White House claims that President Bush went to sleep without knowing whether the execution had been carried out, which would have been just after 9 PM Texas time, because he "knew that it was going to happen." If Iraq really is "sovereign nation," how did he "know" with such certainty?

A more likely explanation for U.S. insistence that Iraq is operating independently is that the Bush administration has now written off the whole affair as a bad investment, and wants to be in a position to wash it hands of it before the President’s term expires. The more opportunities Washington can give the Iraqi government to screw up before then, the easier it will be for Bush to blame the failure on them. Here is how the administration is using the New York Times to weave this theme:

For the past three years, the United States has attempted to lay the foundations in Iraq for a civil society and a nation under law. American officials say privately that the Maliki government, by allowing the Hussein execution to be conducted as it did, signaled more powerfully than ever before that it was unwilling or incapable of surmounting the deep sectarian divisions here.

Expect to hear "We gave them a great shot, and they blew it" repeated many times before the last American flies on the last flight out of Baghdad. Nobody in the current administration fought in Vietnam, but they surely remember the mockery of the "light at the end of the tunnel" promises when that last helicopter lifted away from the American embassy in Saigon, and they want to avoid it this time.

The mother of all renditions.

2006-12-31T23:46:00.000-08:00

The U.S. continues its post-911 practice of rendition - turning suspects over to foreign governments to be tortured or killed. The U.S. had custody of Saddam until just before his execution and handed him over to Iraq specifically so they could hang him, despite a last minute stay of execution filed in a U.S. Federal Court. True, there was a trial first, but many said that it fell far below international standards for those accused of war crimes and human rights violations. (See blog debate.) This rendition is another example of the U.S. relying on nations with lower human rights standard to do dirty work we don't want to do ourselves. The right thing to do would have been to turn Saddam over to the International Criminal Court. However, Bush hates the idea that any international body should set or enforce standards for the of conduct war - it might limit his ability to kill people or subject him to prosecution for things he has already done.

The only humor I see in all this is that if someone ever writes a musical about Saddam, Bush or Tony Blair, it would have to include a scene in which Saddam performs a rendition of the Bee Gees I've Just Got to Get a Message to You. Trying desperately to appeal for mercy to death penalty opponent Tony Blair, Saddam would sing: "Ive just got to get a message to you, hold on, hold on. One more hour and my life will be through...." Strange but true: At the time of Saddam's execution, Tony was vacationing with Bee Gee Robin Gibb in Miami.

"The Americans want Saddam to be hanged respectfully."

2006-12-29T22:18:00.000-08:00

"The Americans also want to prevent the mutilation of his corpse, as has happened to other deposed Iraqi leaders." (Associated Press story.) U.S. democracy continues to spread its influence and good will in the Middle East....

Just to further prove that the U.S. opposes strongman governments in which leaders pursue their personal vendettas against their enemies, Bush keeps Saddam's personal pistol in his private study in the White House. (See press conference in which he talks about the gun.) See my earlier post on Saddam's death sentence.

Taxation without explanation: How the refund of an illegal regressive tax makes it even more regressive.

2006-12-28T17:51:00.000-08:00

I'm not anti-tax or even anti-government or anti-IRS, but my recent exploration of the procedure for refunding the federal excise tax on telephone service left me feeling angry. Why is an administration run by a President who has such professed hatred of taxes not seizing this opportunity to proactively send out checks to taxpayers, the way he did early in his administration when he slammed record tax cuts through Congress?

The IRS is calling this the "Telephone Excise Tax Refund," or TETR for short. Perhaps the administration's Iraq policy, which is teetering on the brink of collapse, is sucking up all the planning bandwidth that otherwise might go into a phased withdrawal of treasury funds back into the pockets of consumers.

TETR applies to "long distance" service. It does not apply to the federal excise tax on local land-line telephone service. Efforts to repeal that tax continue in Congress.

TETR came about after a recent, but long, court battle that resulted in the IRS conceding that the excise tax was being illegally collected. As part of this, the IRS agreed to refund the tax for the past three-year period in which taxpayers could still legally amend their returns.

TETR is the legacy of a luxury tax that had been intended to pay for an earlier war: the Spanish-American War in 1898. (Telephones were only used by the rich at that time.) That war was back in the day when Presidents were expected to pay for wars by raising taxes. It was considered unmanly and cowardly to put the political burden of raising taxes on one's successors. (Now, such behavior is considered politically clever - a sure sign of societal moral decay.) Politics was much simpler then; before that war no one had used film as a propaganda tool.

Today, telephone service is considered a basic part of daily life and not a luxury. Particularly for poor people who live in high crime or remote areas, it can be a life-line. Yet, there are people in the U.S. who cannot afford to have a telephone - a reminder that although technological advancements grow more affordable, the economic gulf between the rich and the poor is growing larger. A tax on such a vital service particularly hurts poor people.

For small businesses, the IRS worked with accountants and the business lobby to create a formula for estimating their TETR. Businesses just have to grab a phone bill from before the tax was repealed, and compare the tax they paid to what they paid on a bill from after the repeal. The difference in the tax as a percentage of the total bill can then be multiplied by the total amount of their phone bills during the 41 month refund period for which refunds are allowed, and viola! That estimated amount comes directly off their tax bill or with creative accounting, into their coffers as a tax refund.

Consumers, on the other hand, have no such luck. They either have to take a standard refund amount of between $30 and $60, depending on the number of dependents they can claim, or have to find every single bill from the 41 month period and list the actual tax from each bill on IRS Form 8913. One estimate says that 99% of consumers having their old bills would be eligible for three times as much of a refund as the standard refund amount. Why don't consumers get a break like business does? Why can't consumers compare a bill from before the tax repeal with one after and then apply a percentage to what they paid for phone service during the 41 months? People who don't know where their phone bills are probably have a checkbook or bank records that show monthly payments to their phone and wireless providers. At least AT&T has stepped up and will provide customers online access to their old phone bills. Hopefully, other companies will follow that lead, although Verizon has already said it will not provide free access.

This completes the circle of regressive taxation. Most of the people who can least afford to pay this tax are not going to get most of it back. People who are too poor to pay taxes will only get their $30 if they take the time and trouble to file a tax return. Businesses, who have lobbyists and accountants pushing for their interests, will receive complete refunds.

There is one more infuriating wrinkle. The IRS form 8913 instructions are confusing to consumers. Much of the text is devoted to the business formula that consumers cannot use. It talks about bundled services and mentions wireless as being part of that category, but does not make it clear that cell phone users have been subject to the excise tax and can list the tax amount from their bills on the form. Millions of cell phone users probably won't realize they are entitled to more than the TETR standard refund amount. That's just anti-democratic.

Exporting democracy to Iraq: First execute the previous administration.

2006-11-06T17:53:00.000-08:00

Aside from how the timing of yesterday's news that Saddam was sentenced to die by hanging (two days before U.S. Congressional elections) was an obvious demonstration that the U.S. government directs the Iraq justice system, what is the message for fledgling democracies? What precedent was set? Should democracies hang former government leaders who used force to put down rebellions? If so, how will that choice motivate members of the current regime in Iraq a few years down the road when the U.S. is gone or nearly so and they are facing a violent rebellion or possible defeat in an election? Will they worry that they may face the same fate as Saddam if a different party were to take power? Could that motivate them to use any anti-democratic means at their disposal to stay in power?

Citizens and leaders of other democracies also might do well to ponder whether democracies ought to hang former government leaders guilty of violating domestic or international laws banning torture or killing of innocent civilians. (To see the editorial in the November 11 issue of The Economist, click here.)