November 2003 Archives

TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt analyzes some new criticism of the USA PATRIOT Act and its use by the Bush Administration to justify indefinite detention of enemy combatants.

Who is this dissenter? Viet Dinh, a former top aide to Attorney General John Ashcroft and one of the PATRIOT Act's authors.

How are the Bush tax cuts affecting people in your state? How do the benefits of the tax cuts compare to the immense increase in the national debt under this Administration?

Citizens for Tax Justice has prepared issue briefs for each state. It is worth a look.

(Thanks to OMB Watch for the link.)

Jim Hoagland writes today about how constant complaints about government institutions and bureaucracies is harming our Republic and impeding our response to potential terrorist attacks. Hoagland writes:

The relentless and prolonged assault by politicians and the public on the competence and motives of their government bureaucracies is slowly but surely undermining democracy in the Americas and Europe.

That is the provocative thesis of an important new book, "Dismantling Democratic States," just published by Princeton University Press. Professor Ezra Suleiman shows that the phenomenon of bureaucracy-bashing perfected by recent U.S. presidents of both parties is rapidly spreading into European societies that once revered "neutral" civil servants as the guarantors of the nation-state's legitimacy.

We are told vague and mostly unsubstantiated stories about fraud, waste, and abuse. They argue about the need to cut government and run it like a business.

I am really quite tired of these politically based attacks on our government institutions. I do not have much respect for those politicians (virtually all of whom are Republicans) who seek office in order to tear down the government they seek to join.

Worse, besides what in the bigger picture is my mostly irrelevant annoyance, this government bashing could have potentially dangerous results. As Hoagland observes:

Not enough is being done to correct the returning erosion of support for government in this time of war. Not enough is being done to fund and organize public health and security institutions to which we will all turn if and when the terrorists strike again here. Not nearly enough, in fact.

University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Economics Professor Austan Goolsbee explains why recent unemployment and economic reports are more optimistic than reality.

The Fresno, Calif., sheriff's office apparently equates peace activists with terrorists. They also do not plan to follow new surveillance guidelines released by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

The next time a Republican starts preaching about the free market, ask him or her why the GOP's leadership keeps passing bills including an obscene amount of corporate welfare goodies.

Republicans spend a great deal of time in their hypocritical efforts to proclaim themselves the party of family values.

But, as Robert Novak reports, when it came down to buying votes on the floor for the monstrous Medicare bill, GOP leaders devolved into the use of many unsavory tactics, including threatening the future of one member's son.

During 14 years in the Michigan Legislature and 11 years in Congress, Rep. Nick Smith had never experienced anything like it. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, in the wee hours last Saturday morning, pressed him to vote for the Medicare bill. But Smith refused. Then things got personal.

Smith, self term-limited, is leaving Congress. His lawyer son Brad is one of five Republicans seeking to replace him from a GOP district in Michigan's southern tier. On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.

E.J. Dionne endorses some sensible reforms that would update the public financing system for presidential campaigns.

These reforms would make the system of partial public campaign financing relevant again, and make it less likely that candidates would opt-out of it. But, as he notes:

Here's betting that congressional leaders won't even let this sensible bill come to a vote. Opponents of reform know that if the system stays outmoded, it will wither away.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank offers this excellent analysis of President George W. Bush's trip to Baghdad yesterday:

Three images tell the story of George W. Bush's presidency.

The first, of Bush and bullhorn atop the rubble at New York's Ground Zero on Sept. 14, 2001, came to symbolize his transformation into a powerful wartime president. The second, of Bush in flight suit with "Mission Accomplished" banner aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, became the symbol of Bush's unrealized optimism about the U.S. military's victory in Iraq.

Yesterday, Nov. 27, 2003, brought an equally vivid but more complex image of Bush. His stealthy landing in Baghdad on Thanksgiving Day portrayed a leader well aware of the chaotic and dangerous situation in Iraq but determined to assure the Iraqi people that the United States will not, as he has put it, "cut and run."

While the troops cheered the moment, it is too soon to know whether the image of Bush in his Army jacket yesterday will become a symbol of strong leadership or a symbol of unwarranted bravado.

President George W. Bush's surprise trip to Baghdad today was, on balance, an excellent idea.

Our soldiers in the area deserved a nice surprise, and a visit by the Commander-in-Chief is a special occasion. Especially in a combat zone.

I am not surprised by the negative reaction to the trip expressed by some people with whom I normally agree on Iraq-related issues.

Was it a photo-op? Yes. Should we be angry with footage of this trip ends up in a 2004 political ad? Of course.

But the presidency is larger than one man. A president should go to a war zone and see the troops he has placed in harm's way.

If this buys a few days or weeks of better morale for our troops, it was worth every penny spent.

The fundamental problems facing this Administration's Iraq policy were not suddenly erased. But sometimes a holiday surprise should remain just that. The troops were excited. Given what they are facing, that is enough for me.

At least for today.

Reuters' Yousuf Azimy reports from Afghanistan:

A senior U.S. general said on Friday that al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden had "taken himself out of the picture" and that his capture was not essential to winning the "war on terror."

Catching bin Laden remains essential. It is quite pathetic that our government now seeks to redefine this failure into something that does not matter.

By the way, as George Paine reminds us, it has been 796 days since President George W. Bush promised to capture bin Laden "dead or alive."

Former Senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.) is blasting President Bush. Eric Boehlert writes:

Today, though, Cleland has emerged as one of the president's harshest critics, especially about the war he voted to authorize. Today, he says, it's a move he deeply regrets, scanning the headlines from Baghdad. "I feel like I have been duped, I don't mind telling you," Cleland admits. "Everybody in the administration was selling this used car. The problem is all the wheels have fallen off the car and we've got a lemon." Meanwhile, as one of 10 commissioners serving on the independent panel created by Congress to investigate the 9/11 attacks, Cleland bemoans the administration's "Nixonian" love of secrecy and its attempt to "slow-walk" the commission into irrelevancy.

Which is far more than I can say about the Republicans around the nation who questioned his patriotism. Cleland, after all, is a man who left three limbs on a Vietnamese battlefield that most of today's Republican leaders avoided because, as Vice President Dick Cheney explained, they had other priorities.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) has announced that he will support the GOP's horrific and corporate-goodie-filled energy bill.

Why? Must be that six billion in pork for producers of ethanol.

Now, no one can expect a Democrat to weigh that against, say, the bill's voiding of a major lawsuit filed by the state of New Hampshire against MTBE producers or the inclusion of $20 billion in corporate tax breaks.

If Sen. Daschle ever wonders why he is the Senate Minority Leader, he can look no further than mistakes and sell-outs like this one to find an answer.

Everyone knows that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) had to bring in his own team. Quickly.

Who knew, however, that his Administration would go about the deed in such a classless way? Gary Delsohn writes:

Governors always bring their own people with them when they assume power, but the way Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's staff is getting rid of some top officials is rattling nerves at the Capitol.

The state's motor vehicle director was called on his cell phone a few hours after Schwarzenegger was sworn in Monday and told to immediately clear out his desk.

Steven Gourley had been showing a Sacramento Bee reporter around a branch office at the time and was more than a little flustered when ordered to pack up.

Nothing in this state is so urgent that the Schwarzenegger team could not have waited until Gourley had returned to the office to hear his fate.

Is this really the tone the new governor wishes to create in Sacramento?

Here's a pretty good back-of-the-envelope analysis of what Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R-Calif.) policies could do. The Contra Costa Times' Daniel Borenstein and Andrew LaMar write:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recovery plan will require slashing at least 18 percent from the state's budget for programs such as higher education, social services, welfare and corrections, according to a Times analysis.

After three days in office, Schwarzenegger has provided few details about where he plans to cut. But his comments and proposals so far suggest drastic reductions in almost every state-funded agency except kindergarten through twelfth grade and community college education.

Of course not. Fact is, many Republican officeholders would not accept that plan either.

This is what happens when campaign promises and campaign math meet reality.

Some might try to spin this report as good news since the figure ended up about three billion less than projected by economists:

The government began its 2004 budget year in the red, producing a deficit of $69.5 billion in October, a larger shortfall than that registered for the same month last year, the Treasury Department reported Monday.

The National Debt surpassed $6.9 trillion for the first time yesterday.

This travesty was done on our behalf, fellow citizens of the United States:

A Canadian citizen deported to Syria last year by the United States spoke publicly about his ordeal for the first time Tuesday, detailing beatings he received in Syrian custody and calling for a public inquiry.

Maher Arar of Ottawa, who spent a year in Syrian custody after being detained while traveling through New York's Kennedy airport in September 2002, choked up several times while describing the torture and solitary confinement.

"This is an unconscionable error in judgment. The people who made the decision to send Arar -- who was traveling on a Canadian passport -- to Syria must be dismissed. If Arar needed deporting, then he should have been sent to his home: Canada."

I stand by those words. Perhaps we did not want him in our country. But Canada is an ally. We should have sent him there -- and not to a country where his torture was virtually assured.

The Republican Party hates welfare, except when its target is the corporations run by its close allies and major campaign contributors. As David Cay Johnston reports:

Policy analysts across the political spectrum yesterday denounced the energy bill that Republicans in Congress hope to push to approval this week, saying it represented micromanagement of the economy and would open vast new opportunities for tax cheating.

Many experts said they were taken aback by the size of the proposed breaks, estimated by Capitol Hill staff members at $25.7 billion over 10 years. That is more than three times the $8 billion in tax incentives that the Bush administration said last year in a letter to Congress that it wanted for energy producers.

Remember, moreover, that given the deficits these Republicans insist upon, these corporate goodies are going to be paid for by your children and future generations.

Fiscal conservatism, indeed.

This Sacramento Bee editorial does an admirable job explaining how big a policy setback Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's first official act -- lowering the vehicle license fee -- proved to be.

But as an act of governance, his move Monday to roll back the vehicle license fee is indefensible. The car tax, though collected by the state, is a source of revenue for cities and counties. It goes largely to support law enforcement and fire protection.

It is, in fact, the money that pays for the firefighters whom Schwarzenegger praised in his inaugural address for their "bravery" and "determination." Yet after praising them, the new governor put their jobs in jeopardy.

During the boom years, when the car tax was briefly reduced, the state had the money to backfill the loss of local VLF revenue out of state dollars. But that's no longer a responsible option. As the governor's own new finance director, Donna Arduin, reported over the weekend, California has a "staggering" fiscal challenge ahead, including the prospect of running out a cash in the months ahead if action isn't taken to close the hole in the budget, some $10 billion annually, that's been papered over with borrowing and gimmicks.

The vehicle license fee money belongs to cities and counties. The people of California, moreover, voted to reserve this money for them when they passed Proposition 47 in 1986. As the California Constitution now says:

ARTICLE 11 LOCAL GOVERNMENT

SEC. 15. (a) All revenues from taxes imposed pursuant to the Vehicle License Fee Law, or its successor, other than fees on trailer coaches and mobilehomes, over and above the costs of collection and any refunds authorized by law, shall be allocated to counties and cities according to statute.

No new taxes today, that is. Given that the Republicans want a $15 billion bond to refinance the state's debt, the GOP here is showing that it is just as willing as its national party colleagues to increase the debt tax on our children and future generations.

David Broder surveys the budget situations facing the states and discovers most state capitals preparing for another round of major fiscal crises.

Justene Adamec, the author of CalBlog, has a marketedly different view of California and national politics than I do.

Her blog is, however, a great read. One you should add to your blogroll.

I point this all out because Adamec has been sued by a company over comments others wrote in response to one of her posts.

Here is a link to the website of the company that has chosen to sue her.

Given that Adamec is a lawyer, and the blogosphere rallies in response to such nonsense, I think she will do fine defending herself. But I know that I will not patronize a company that chooses to react in such a fashion.

Governor-Elect Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R-Calif.) auditor released her report on the state of California's budget. It warns of large structural deficits.

Now, given this fact, Schwarzenegger faces a big dilemma. If he embraces Donna Arduin's (his auditor and incoming finance director) penchant for destroying social problems, Schwarzenegger would be declaring war on the Democratic-controlled state legislature.

Given that fact, would one of your first actions as governor be to make the problem $4 billion worse? This is, as I noted yesterday, precisely what Schwarzenegger and his Republican allies are proposing to do by lowering the vehicle license fee that funds local government programs, including vital police and fire protection services.

As the old adage advises, the first step one needs to take to get out of a hole is to stop digging. On Monday we'll learn how big a shovel Schwarzenegger intends to use.

Oh-oh. It looks like there are some tough choices ahead for Governor-Elect Schwarzenegger as he seeks to square his budget rhetoric and promises with the state's fiscal reality. The Contra Costa Times' Andrew LaMar reports:

The Legislature's leading nonpartisan analyst cast a dark cloud over Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget plans Friday, saying that increasing the state's massive borrowing would not solve its underlying problems.

California faces a deficit exceeding $10 billion next year because of an imbalance between revenues and spending, higher-than-expected expenses and a court decision invalidating $1.8 billion in borrowing, Elizabeth Hill said in a report on the state's fiscal outlook.

Then again, perhaps Schwarzenegger learned the wrong lessons from his national Republican counterparts during his recent visit to Washington, D.C.

Since I spent so much energy bashing Governor-Elect Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R-Calif.) selection of the Club for Growth's Stephen Moore to a panel that will review the audit of California's state finances, I should now be fair and praise a particularly excellent appointment he has made.

Schwarzenegger has tapped Sunne Wright McPeak as his Secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing. She is an inspired choice. A former Supervisor in my adopted Contra Costa County, I know from experience that she brings a wealth of expertise and sound judgment to this important job.

For this choice, the Governor-Elect gets my compliments. My question, however, is whether he will choose to govern like the man who chose to involve in California's government Stephen Moore or someone like Sunne Wright McPeak.

We begin finding out the answer to that important question on Monday.

The Center for Governmental Studies has released its latest study of a public campaign finance system. This report focuses on Tucson, Ariz., and finds that its system:

is a major success and can serve as a model for small- and medium-sized cites throughout the United States. Tucson's law, the oldest local government public financing law currently administered in the nation, serves as strong evidence that, given sufficient time, public financing can become an integral part of a jurisdiction's political culture.

Kos has reprinted from the New York Times an:

Excerpt of a letter from Army Pfc. Jesse A. Givens, 34, of Springfield, Mo. Private Givens was killed May 1 when his tank fell into the Euphrates River after the bank on which he was parked gave way. This letter was written to be delivered to his family if he died. Melissa is his wife, Dakota his 6-year-old stepson and Bean the name he used for his son, Carson, who was born May 29.

Afterwards I would not blame you if you wondered why our president has yet to attend a funeral for one of our brave troops who has died in Iraq.

Because I do.

If you do not receive Charlie Cook's free weekly e-mail newsletter, you should click here and subscribe because it is not available for free on the web.

In this week's e-mail, Cook gets to the bottom of the problems facing Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.). Cook believes that the troubles were not caused by former Campaign Manager Jim Jordan, who was fired yesterday.

Cook argues that Kerry would likely be the frontrunner today had he voted against the Iraq use of force resolution. He writes:

Think about Kerry's career. He came back from combat duty in Vietnam, testified against the war before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and later became a leader in Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Once elected to the Senate, Kerry seemed to get himself into virtually every liberal cause that came through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If there were three Democrats in the Senate that one might guess would be opposed to the war in Iraq, Kerry would be one of them. In voting for Iraq resolution, Kerry voted against everything he had ever represented and effectively cut himself off from his own base.

The Iraq force authorization vote called out for leadership. Instead too many took what they thought was the politically safe path.

Thanks to Russ Kirk's invaluable Memoryhole web site, now you can see the Defense Department's web site seeking people willing to serve on local draft boareds that was deleted from the web after it started receiving media attention.

Happy Veterans Day.

For all of those who are serving our nation in the military today -- or have served in the past -- I thank you for your efforts and sacrifices on our behalf.

You can learn more about Veterans Day by going to the Department of Veterans Affairs web site.

Here are some Department of Defense statistics about our Veterans upon which some reflection is worthwhile. You can find them on page 17 of this pdf Veterans Day Teachers' Guide.

Center for American Progress Fellow Gene Sperling provides some needed perspective about Friday's better-than-expected jobs report.

Slate's Daniel Benjamin warns us about a growing airline danger:

Given the growing intensity of the combat in Iraq, the downing of two helicopters and the resulting deaths of 22 soldiers in the last week comes as little surprise. The destruction of a Black Hawk today, reportedly by a rocket-propelled grenade, and a Chinook on Sunday by a shoulder-fired missile were all but statistical inevitabilities in a country with a deepening insurgence and 600,000 or more tons of largely unsecured armaments.

But the attacks should also send a shudder through anyone who flies, even if they never board anything but commercial wide-body airliners and never venture within 5,000 miles of Iraq. By removing the locks from Iraq's enormous stores of armaments, including "vast, unknown" quantities of anti-aircraft weapons, as Air Force Gen. John Handy, commander of U.S. Transportation Command, put it several months ago, the fighting in Iraq has virtually ensured that some of these arms will wind up in the hands of terrorists who will want to use them outside the current war zone. (emphasis added)

We could also spend some time discussing how the Bush Administration's failure to plan for the aftermath of war has increased the chances of such a result by creating a perfect weapons proliferation center. As Benjamin writes:

The Transportation Safety Administration is evaluating different countermeasures for possible installation on commercial jets, but it could take five years and something in the vicinity of $10 billion to make that happen. Undoubtedly, senior policymakers have recognized that even a single unsuccessful attempt to target a commercial plane in American airspace—say the missile misses the aircraft by 25 meters—would probably result in air traffic being grounded across much or all of the country. Who, after all, will fly if they suspect there may be more missiles out there? Who would OK the resumption of flying without knowing that it was safe? The economic consequences could be staggering.

The administration's efforts, while right-minded, pale next to the specter of jihadists streaming into Iraq and, in yet another unintended consequence of the occupation, creating a supply pipeline to al-Qaida. In the Washington Post last October, I wrote, "Even with U.S. special forces combing the country, the collapse of the Iraqi regime could prove to be the greatest proliferation disaster in history." I was thinking about chemical or biological weapons materials—back then everyone was sure they were present—that I thought might be "privatized" by unhappy former security service colonels. Now the same may be true of conventional weapons. While a MANPADS attack would lack the special horror of one with WMD, the damage could be comparable or greater.

Which, I suppose, makes up for having wasted over two years of potential preparation time in the minds of some conservative tax cutters.

Governor-Elect Arnold Schwarzenegger has named the Club for Growth's Stephen Moore to a panel that will review the ongoing audit of California's state budget.

This is bad news. Moore is not known, after all, for his balanced budget analysis. He is, in fact, one of the high priests and leading enforcers of the conservative Republicans' irresponsible tax-cuts-only policy agenda.

But you need not just take my word for it. Moore is happy to admit his agenda. As the Ventura Star's Timm Herdt writes:

Moore calls his group the "enforcer" of Republican opposition to taxes and once told a reporter that the Club for Growth's goal is "to get the word out to even the lowest grass-roots level that if you're a Republican you aren't allowed to vote for taxes."

Worse, when Moore is not busy making inexcusable mathematical errors, he spends his time airing advertisements that equate dissent with being anti-American.

This is a choice that does not reflect well upon the Governor-Elect. There are numerous conservative budgeteers out there who would have been far better choices for this assignment.

Eric Alterman writes:

Amazing but true, the far-right media machine has successfully held CBS entertainment to a higher standard of truth regarding the docudrama, “The Reagans” than the news media manages to hold the Bush administration regarding the war in Iraq.

The nerve.

Oh, as Alterman also explains, the spiked production may not have been completely accurate (name one such docudrama that is), but its tone did hit quite close to the mark.

Which is why the right worked so hard to keep it off the air.

Joshua Micah Marshall earlier today announced the winner of his imminent threat contest.

The contest was begun in response to the rise of conservative talking points that lamely attempted to argue that this White House never argued that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat.

Except, of course, when officials did.

The winner of Marshall's contest quoted not Richard Perle, or even a staffer. The winner quoted the President of the United States. Click the link to see for yourself.

Well, I guess the Bush Administration's tendency to abuse power knows no bounds. Dana Milbank reports:

The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution: It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers.

The decision -- one that Democrats and scholars said is highly unusual -- was announced in an e-mail sent Wednesday to the staff of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. House committee Democrats had just asked for information about how much the White House spent making and installing the "Mission Accomplished" banner for President Bush's May 1 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

The director of the White House Office of Administration, Timothy A. Campen, sent an e-mail titled "congressional questions" to majority and minority staff on the House and Senate Appropriations panels. Expressing "the need to add a bit of structure to the Q&A process," he wrote: "Given the increase in the number and types of requests we are beginning to receive from the House and Senate, and in deference to the various committee chairmen and our desire to better coordinate these requests, I am asking that all requests for information and materials be coordinated through the committee chairmen and be put in writing from the committee."

How convenient.

Given the Bush-Cheney team's long pattern of attempting to stifle debate or to label as unpatriotic any who dare dissent, this is just an extension of an already outrageous behavior. Just how long will be tolerate it?

Remember how the Republicans were so offended by President Clinton's "what the meaning of the word is, is" statement? How they demanded straight talk?

Hmm...I guess those feelings are no longer operative.

After all, conservatives are falling over themselves to argue that President Bush and his Administration never argued that Iraq posed an imminent threat.

Really. You must have dreamed those speeches and news stories.

Anyway, Joshua Micah Marshall does an excellent job of debunking this new Republican spin in his latest column printed in The Hill. He writes:

“No member of the administration,” conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan recently wrote, “used the term ‘imminent threat’ to describe Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. No one. … [Wesley] Clark is repeating a lie that has been thoroughly exposed on the Internet and elsewhere, a lie that even The New York Times has stopped repeating.”

Could this possibly be true? Could all our memories be so faulty?

In a word, no.

We remember what the Bush Administration argued. Some of us doubted the White House then.

I understand why conservatives are so eager to try to muddy the issue now. And I also understand how vital it is for us to make sure they don't get away with these verbal tricks and silly word games.

This is, remember, supposed to be the personal responsibility era.

Let's see. There were seven men on the stage for the bill signing.

Yes, this photograph's symbolism should not be lost on anyone. (Link via Atrios.)

Remember how we were told that the PATRIOT Act was needed for the war on terrorism? How we could trust federal government agencies not to abuse these new powers.

Oops.

The Los Vegas Review-Journal's J.M. Kalil and Steve Tetreault write:

The investigation of strip club owner Michael Galardi and numerous politicians appears to be the first time federal authorities have used the Patriot Act in a public corruption probe.

At some point we are going to stop being so gullible when it comes to the Bush Administration's lack of candor, right?

Byron Auguste and Mark Strama want the presidential candidates to start talking about the debt tax:

When the Democratic presidential candidates convene here on Tuesday to engage a skeptical generation of younger voters at the Rock the Vote debate, we ask them to address the debt tax as the most important issue affecting young Americans today. American taxpayers paid $332.5 billion in interest last year on the national debt. This huge payment, equal to 11 percent of the total federal budget, does not improve education, enhance homeland security, or rebuild Iraq. It merely services the $6.6 trillion (and growing) national debt. These interest payments are a "debt tax" -- a tax that drains income without producing any material benefits for taxpayers.

Joshua Micah Marshall reveals an instance where the White House modified a transcript of President Bush's remarks, changing the meaning of the president's statement in a significant way.

Perhaps now that Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie has lead a successful effort to knock the Reagans miniseries off network television, he could turn his truth squad on the White House.

I know. How naive of me even to consider that possibility...