May 2008 Archives

Darn -- James Fallows mentions what would have been my entry in this contest to improve Homeland Security.

(People who look closely will note that the category for this post is not the icky "Homeland Security" but "Domestic Security.")

I have to admit that I was expecting the Obama campaign to be ready to reach the magic number to clinch the nomination regardless of what happens at the Democratic National Committee's rules and bylaws committee meeting on May 31. The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reports:

To prepare for that eventuality, the Obama campaign has, for the first time, really, begun to bank delegates. Sources close to the campaign estimate that as many as three dozen Democratic superdelegates have privately pledged to announce their support for Obama on June 4 or 5. The campaign is determined that Obama not end the first week in June without securing the support of delegates numbering 2026 -- or 2210, as the case may be.

My only comment, if it is true that this is really the first time the Obama campaign has banked delegates, is to wonder what took it so long.

Federal budget expert Stan Collender rightly wonders what happened to $15 billion in Iraq -- money for which the Bush Administration cannot account:

But this story from Friday's Washington Post, which talks about $15 billion in spending on Iraq that can't be accounted for properly, or in some cases at all, shows that the other stage of federal budgeting -- implementation -- is similarly broken, not working properly, and...well...you certainly get this picture as well.

In fact, it appears as if virtually every procedure and law designed to prevent just this type of malfeasance was circumvented.

This spending was done in the midst of a national emergency and some of the usual safeguards couldn't be followed in the interest of national security and getting the job done quickly, right?

Nonsense. The Pentagon's own inspector general confirmed that this lack of concern for procedural safeguards was blatant and commonplace. That makes it hard to come to any conclusion other than that they were ignored rather than expedited or poorly executed.

It's also hard to come to any conclusion other than that the spending of taxpayer funds in Iraq bordered on, or actually was, simple and straightforward corruption.

Given the magnitude of the spending involved, Iraq may be the Bush administration's contribution to the biggest public corruption scandals of all time like Boss Tweed in New York, James Michael Curley in Boston, and Teapot Dome.

Yes, these are the people who believe they have a monopoly on preaching about fiscal responsibility.

It is time for some real investigations. For some people to be prosecuted. No more excuses.

War profiteering is not a meaningless crime. War corruption is not a meaningless crime. These kinds of actions can cost the lives of our brave soldiers in the field.

For how long must we tolerate such criminality?

It appears that the rest of the world is beginning to retaliate for our national madness when it comes to visa applications. Over at the Washington Note, Scott Paul recounts a few examples of the picture we are presenting to the world:

No big surprise, but it turns out that many countries really don't like having to jump through so many hoops in order to apply for a U.S. visa. In 2003, a consular officer in Moscow told me that when the Russian duo t.A.T.u. applied for a visa, they were asked to sing for the staff to verify their identities.

Another consular officer recounted a story about a national champion youth martial arts team applying for visas to go to the U.S. to compete in an international tournament. The officer cleared out the room and forced the team to perform in order to demonstrate that they were who they said they were. One child, who had broken his leg in the national competition, couldn't participate in the demonstration. His visa application was denied, the consular officer told me proudly.

Yes, I'm sure this made our nation so much safer.

Really, can we please elect a group of people who will not go out of their way to destroy government institutions?

What has happened to our nation and our Constitutional order that allows such a question to be asked and deserve, no, require a response and analysis?

Over at Firedoglake, David Neiwert does an excellent job of describing the situation after a massive immigration raid in Iowa -- a raid that focused on the workers, while leaving the huge business that hired them alone.

More political leaders should be inspiring young Americans -- and all Americans -- to seek a cause greater than themselves. Like James Fallows, I was impressed with Sen. Barack Obama's speech yesterday at Wesleyan University.

Each of you will have the chance to make your own discovery in the years to come. And I say “chance” because you won’t have to take it. There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy. You can choose to narrow your concerns and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s.

But I hope you don’t. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, though you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, though you do have that debt.

It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story

Why does our president believe our military servicemen and servicewomen do not deserve an extra 0.5 percent in pay? How can he possibly feel it is "unnecessary" when we are stretching our military to the breaking point thanks to his ill-advised decision to occupy Iraq 1,850 days after he declared that we had prevailed in the Battle of Iraq?

Of course, only the president and his party support our troops. So, how dare people like me bring up this subject.

It's short, and it may not be what you think.

It's been 1,850 days since President George W. Bush stood under a Mission Accomplished banner and declared that "In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

Atrios points to a Wall Street Journal story that will come as no real surprise to people who have been monitoring peak oil trends and the arguments Matthew Simmons and others have been making.

The world's premier energy monitor is preparing a sharp downward revision of its oil-supply forecast, a shift that reflects deepening pessimism over whether oil companies can keep abreast of booming demand.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency is in the middle of its first attempt to comprehensively assess the condition of the world's top 400 oil fields. Its findings won't be released until November, but the bottom line is already clear: Future crude supplies could be far tighter than previously thought.

Over at the Big Picture, Barry Ritholtz highlights a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania which makes an important finding:

The research team essentially found that Core Inflation is an erroneous way to measure ongoing price increases. Both of the main rationales offered for policymakers€™ for their focus on core measures of inflation do not survive close scrutiny, argues a group of researchers.

Excluding food and energy prices from our official inflation measures has always seemed like a horrible trick -- and now there is a report that debunks the reasons politicians have used to justify this awful decision.

ThinkProgress looks at Congressional testimony at which we learn that "water treatment" is apparently different from "waterboarding."

Murat Kurnaz, “freed from Guantanamo in 2006 after a personal plea from German Chancellor Angela Merkel,” detailed the gross abuses he underwent in U.S. custody yesterday. Kurnaz said he was subjected to “water treatment” which involved a “strong punch” that forced him to inhale water. Asked if this was waterboarding, Kurnaz said “water treatment” is different:

ROHRABACHER: You suggest that you were waterboarded in your captivity. Is that correct?

KURNAZ: No, it’s not waterboarding. It’s called “water treatment.” There was a bucket of water.

ROHRABACHER: Was a cloth put over your face and you were put on a board?

KURNAZ: There was a bucket of water. And they stick my head in it and at the same time, punch me into my stomach.

Rohrabacher responded: “The CIA is claiming that only three people have been waterboarded. And this may be a loophole that they’re suggesting that’s not ‘waterboarding.’”

Either way, our nation should be horribly ashamed at what the Bush Administration has done in our name.

One of the reasons I like Air America and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow so much is that she is one of the few political analysts who understands that sometimes the easiest way to figure out someone's motivations is to actually listen to what they say.

In a post today, Maddow listens to what Senator Hillary Clinton has been saying and outlines Clinton's case for taking the nomination fight to the Democratic National Convention.

After the primary calendar has ended, Clinton's campaign can only justify or explain her staying in the race if she makes the case that the Democratic Party still has not chosen a nominee conclusively. Clinton needs an argument that the game should go into extra innings. Overtime. Bonus round. Detention. Whatever. Clinton has now found that argument -- she says she will not stop campaigning until the issue of the Florida and Michigan delegates is settled to her satisfaction.

The Florida/Michigan issue get settled, of course, by the Democrats' Rules and Bylaws Committee... unless of course that committee's decision gets appealed to the Credentials Committee... unless of course that decision, too, gets appealed... to the floor of the convention.

Do you see where this is going? If there is an open, unresolved procedural issue involving the Florida and Michigan delegations, Senator Clinton will be able to cite that as her justification for staying in the race until the convention even though she is not ahead in the nomination contest at the end of the primary calendar.

If she can ensure that the Florida and Michigan issue stays unresolved until the convention (and by appealing it every step of the way, I don't see how that can be avoided), then Clinton stays in the race until the convention. Staying in until the convention buys her three more months of campaign time, three more months to make her case to the party and the country, three more months for some potential political unfortunateness to befall Senator Obama.

And it keeps the race for the Democratic nomination open, at least theoretically, for Senator Clinton to win instead of Senator Obama.

As Maddow explains, the Clinton campaign may be banking that an extremely slim chance of winning on the Convention floor is better than no chance of winning.

If Democrats want to avoid this outcome, they should take Maddow's advice and stop assuming that everything is going to work out just fine after June 3rd.

I hope that some people in Congress will remember that they serve in a coequal branch of our federal government and take a close look at these reports compiled by ThinkProgress:

According to a senior government official…”There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” … One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

This is a doozy of a mistake, Mr. Kristol. Are you even trying? Glenn Greenwald has the details about the fact-free zone Kristol is creating on the New York Times op-ed page.

One wonders just how long the New York Times is going to allow itself to be associated with someone who cannot even look at this year's election returns before making a patently stupid statement.

You would think that the proper response to such a headline is "duh," but apparently this observation requires instead a debate among our presidential candidates. How bizarre a political world.

Over at Crooks and Liars, Steve Benen goes through the details, noting the difference between what Republicans like Senator John McCain say and the reality of the situation.

Benen helpfully notes the difference between Iran and the USSR, pointing to observations made by Josh Marshall and Fareed Zakaria.

Marshall: the USSR was "the world's greatest land military power, with a massive strategic nuclear capacity that carried on a multi-decade ideological struggle with the US."

Zakaria on Iran: "Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century…. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?"

One of these countries is not like the other.

I also realize that it is considered rude for me to note that before President George W. Bush's ill-advised war, Iraq was not an ally of Iran. Now they are. Yet you are supposed to feel safer. Uh-huh.

Iran is not the Soviet Union. It's not even close. It is okay to talk--talking does not equal appeasement. Even Ronald Reagan understood that when he faced the Soviet Union. (I'll be nice and not mention in detail just what Reagan did with Iran and the Contras. That would probably also be rude.)

Crossposted on the Lamorinda Democratic Club's blog and website.

Members of the Lamorinda Democratic Club at its May 16 meeting had the opportunity to consider state spending and revenue policy options just days after Governor Schwarzenegger released his May Revised Budget. The club welcomed the Palo Alto-based nonprofit organization Next 10 to lead us in their innovative California Budget Challenge, which is based on the organization's popular web site.

Next 10 gave LDC club members an instant-response keypad to vote on the various spending and revenue options. These options are modeled on those under consideration by our elected officials in Sacramento. The Contra Costa Times' Lisa Vorderbrueggen attended the meeting and reported on how the challenge worked:

In an interesting twist, Next 10 imposed a two-thirds voting requirement on the Lamorinda Democrat Club audience Friday in an effort to more closely mimic the state's budget process.

The Legislature mandates a two-thirds approval for the budget, which means the Republicans can block it until Democrats meet their demands.

Moving to a simple majority rule would have transformed the club's budget from a $6.9 billion deficit to a $3.7 million surplus.

Some of the areas where club members couldn't meet the two-thirds threshold included subsidies for the use of fuel-efficient cars, an extension of unemployment jobless benefits or how to pay for ballooning public employee retirement health care costs.

But the biggest split came over the imposition of a tax on carbon emissions to raise money for the general fund, which would have erased the deficit and created a surplus.

As I noted in remarks at the end of the program, the fact that the two-thirds vote requirement increased the deficit at the end of the challenge unfortunately reflects reality. Despite the rhetoric, the two-thirds vote requirement does not lower deficits or spending. As the 1996 California Constitution Review Commission explained:

In theory a two-thirds vote should force a compromise between the majority and minority parties. For a number of years, the system worked in this manner. Recently, however, it has permitted those who have specific interests, which may or may not be related to the budget, to delay passage of the budget by leveraging their issue into the budget debate. The Citizens Budget Commission found that long budget delays, where a small group of legislators were able to stall budget adoption, caused higher levels of spending. The Commission agreed with that finding. Although conventional wisdom indicates otherwise, the two-thirds vote requirement does not seem to limit higher levels of spending. In practice, it encourages it.(emphasis added)

This is one of the reasons our local legislators are seeking, as Senator Tom Torlakson explained in an April 2008 commentary on the California Progress Report, "to return democracy to the California budget process." Our local Assemblymembers, Loni Hancock and Mark DeSaulnier, are co-authoring Torlakson's SCA 22, an effort to allow California to join the other 47 states with majority-vote budget rules.

The two-thirds vote requirement means that even if Democratic legislators vote unanimously for a budget, they need two Republicans in the Senate and six Republicans in the Assembly to vote with them. With 46 of the 47 Republican members of the Legislature having signed Grover Norquist's "no taxes pledge," the two-thirds vote requirement gives these Republicans the power to block sane budget solutions balanced between spending cuts and revenue increases. If the budget is late, pressure could grow on the Democrats to cut a deal--even one focused only on spending cuts.

This summer our legislators need our support--personally and in the media--to fight back against the devastating education and health and human services cuts proposed by the Governor. Will we have a balanced solution to this budget crisis? Will we confront the $12 billion a year in tax cuts the California Budget Project estimates have been implemented since 1993-94--a major factor in the state's chronic budget problems? Or will Republicans get their way and leave program cuts as the only solution?

Do you know someone, a family member or friend, who lives in a Republican-held Assembly or Senate district? Then please consider getting in touch with them. Have you made your feelings known to the Governor? Have you written to the editor of your local newspaper about the impact of these proposed cuts?

If you could not attend the May meeting, please take the Next 10 California Budget Challenge by clicking here. Then be ready to take action--our children and vulnerable residents need our help as the budget process moves forward.

Disclosure: In addition to being the president of the Lamorinda Democratic Club, I serve on Senator Torlakson's staff. The opinions expressed in this post are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employers or the entire Lamorinda Democratic Club.

Our so-called liberal media remains hard at work repeating White House spin that the president was not referring to Sen. Barack Obama last week when he made his unacceptable remarks about appeasers.

Except, as John over at Americablog reminds us, there were several contemporary reports where White House staff members told reporters that the president was absolutely talking about Obama and the Democratic Party. Click here for the gory details.

Thanks to Rep. Tom Allen's (D-Maine) campaign for posting this news clip through his Tom Allen for Senate in 2008 Facebook group.

As a former Mainer (one who is looking forward to his trip back at the end of the month) who is watching this race closely, the issue of Sen. Collins' failure to provide Congressional oversight over military contractors during her tenure as chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is a top priority issue.

Sen. Collins tries to pretend that oversight hearings are about little more than "partisan political theatre". Actually, Senator, such oversight is actually an important part of Congressional action when the legislative branch is actually living up to its Constitutional responsibilities to be a co-equal branch of our government.

As Harry S. Truman proved so well, oversight during wartime can save money, ensure our troops get better support, and save lives. As the United States Senate's own web site describes:

During the three years of Truman's chairmanship, the committee held hundreds of hearings, traveled thousands of miles to conduct field inspections, and saved millions of dollars in cost overruns. Earning nearly universal respect for his thoroughness and determination, Truman erased his earlier public image as an errand-runner for Kansas City politicos. Along the way, he developed working experience with business, labor, agriculture, and executive branch agencies that would serve him well in later years. In 1944, when Democratic party leaders sought a replacement for controversial Vice President Henry Wallace, they settled on Truman, thereby setting his course directly to the White House.

That's right: Truman went from Prendergast-machine tarnished backbencher to the Vice Presidency -- and ultimately the Presidency -- because of his diligent and patriotic efforts.

That would have been a far better model for Senator Collins to follow.

Probably unnecessary disclosure: Like Tom Allen, I am a graduate of Bowdoin College -- another reason I am watching this race. But ties to a former state of residence and an alma mater are not nearly as important to me as Allen's positions and the need to put this seat in the Democratic column.

Josh Marshall adds an important comment to an analysis of President Bush's offensive and historically inaccurate remarks about Sen. Obama and appeasement written by one of the Talking Points Memo readers:

On balance I'd say that each time President Bush shames his office by transgressing the unwritten rules of the American polity, it's incumbent on everyone to rebuke him. As a political matter, though, it doesn't amount to that much. Every time the president does something like this, the Democratic nominee needs to point out again that President Bush bungled the country into a disastrous war that has damaged America, failed to find Osama bin Laden, funded it all but driving us further into debt to China and various Gulf sheikdoms. And McCain supports it all 100%.

Always stay on the offensive.

That is excellent advice.

Somehow I just do not feel all that much safer after reading this story, highlighted today by Atrios.

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.

Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

Ah, that's quite a public face we are showing to the rest of the world. Now Ms. Cooper, as the Times so properly puts it, is looking to move to Italy after what happened to her boyfriend.

These are just the stories we know. One wonders what we may find out under a new administration or a Congress that fully embraces its vital and Constitutionally necessary oversight role.

Yes, Senator Specter. This is the most important thing you could be doing with your seat in the United States Senate. None of that pesky oversight of the executive branch when you held a gavel -- no, let's investigate sports.

Really, people of Pennsylvania, it is well past time to send Senator Specter into retirement, where he can live his life commenting on this story on ESPN.

You might even believe these government inflation statistics if you have not purchased food or gasoline recently -- or like purchasing bridges that link Manhattan to other NYC boroughs.

As for why the BLS offers economic statistics that do not reflect reality, please read Kevin Phillips' Harpers article that explores why we have government economic statistics designed to hide bad economic news.

And former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich is appropriately unimpressed:

In case you’ve missed it, we now have a president who doesn’t care what most economists think. George W. Bush doesn’t even care what scientists think. He rejects all experts who disagree with his politics. This has led to some extraordinarily stupid policies.

I’m not saying HRC is George Bush. And I'm not suggesting economists have all the answers. But when economists tell a president or a presidential candidate that his or her idea is dumb – and when all respectable economists around America agree that it’s a dumb idea – it’s probably wise for the president or presidential candidate to listen. When the president or candidate doesn’t, and proudly defends the policy by saying she's "not going to put my lot in with economists,” we’ve got a problem, folks.

Even though the summer gas tax holiday is pure hokum, it polls well, which is why HRC and John McCain are pushing it. That Barack Obama is not in favor of it despite its positive polling numbers speaks volumes about the kind of president he’ll be – and the kind of president we’d otherwise get from McCain and HRC.

Haven’t we had enough of politicians who reject facts in favor of short-term poll-driven politics?

I know I have.

Isn't it great what those self-proclaimed super patriots bring to the table?

ThinkProgress has a story about another Pentagon contractor that uses shell companies around the world to avoid paying U.S. income and Social Security taxes.

But, hey, I'm sure all the corporate leaders at the Virginia-based MPRI wear American flag lapel pins, so I am wrong to think that they are profit driven scoundrels who place collecting currency above service to the nation.

Your latest story from the madness that is our airline security "system" -- those air marshals who are supposed to be on board to protect us from terrorists? Some of them cannot make their flights because they are false positives on the no-fly list.

Can the Bush Administration do anything right?

Actually, we should not be surprised. This is what you get when you elect people who hate government into office so they can ensure our government does not work.

Bruce Schneier has the gory details here.