Hullabaloo

Saturday, July 11, 2009

 
Saturday Night At The Movies


Bang-bang, shoot ‘em up, 1-2-3

By Dennis Hartley





















Come and get me, copper: Johnny Depp in Public Enemies


If you blink, you might miss the chance to revel in a delicious moment of schadenfreude in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies that decidedly contemporizes this otherwise ol’skool “gangsters vs. G-men” opus. In the midst of conducting an armed robbery, the notoriously felonious John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) notices that a bank employee has reflexively emptied his pockets of some crumpled bills and loose change onto his desk. “That’s your money, mister?” Dillinger asks. “Yes,” the frightened man replies. Dillinger gives him a bemused look and says, “We’re here for the bank’s money, not yours. Put it away.” I almost stood up and cheered…then I remembered that a) Dillinger was a murderous thug, and b) I would never even fantasize about participating in such a caper, so I thought better of it. Still, I couldn’t help but savor an opportunity for a little vicarious thrill at watching a bank getting hosed. I don’t know…it could’ve had something to with the fact that my bank recently doubled my credit card interest, even after they eagerly gobbled up the bailout money that was funded by my hard-earned tax dollars (ya think?). In fact, in the context of our current economic woes, one can watch Mann’s film and sort of grok how John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Ma Barker, Al Capone, Pretty Boy Floyd and other “public enemy” list alums gained folk hero cachet during the Great Depression.

Mann focuses his story on the last year or so of Dillinger’s short life (he was only 31 when he was fatally ambushed by FBI agents while exiting a movie screening at Chicago’s Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934). The film literally opens with a bang, with Dillinger and his gang shooting their way out of a Lima, Ohio prison in 1933 (that is, assuming that Mann is being historically accurate). While this is not the first crime thriller to open with a prison break (one of Mann’s prime influences, Jean-Pierre Melville came to mind as I watched), it is an exciting and well-mounted sequence that is bestowed with a jolting sense of immediacy and hyper-realism through Mann’s use of hi-def video. Unfortunately (with the exception of a pulse-pounding reenactment of a pre-dawn gun battle between Dillinger’s gang and FBI agents at the remote Little Bohemia Lodge) the rest of the film never quite lives up to the collar-grabbing promise of its opening salvo.

There’s only one thing a notorious bank robber wants to do as soon as he busts out of the slammer (hint: the film’s catchphrase is “I rob banks.”). OK…maybe there are two things. Rising star Marion Cotillard (who made a splash last year as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose) plays Dillinger’s French-Native American girlfriend, Billie Frechette with an earthy sexiness that spices up all her scenes with Depp (although she is not given much to do beyond playing the stalwart gangster moll). When he’s not wooing his beloved Billie, Dillinger spends most of his time robbing banks and staying one step ahead of his arch-nemesis, Melvin Purvis (a subdued Christian Bale) who was one of J. Edgar Hoover’s golden boys back in the fledgling days of the FBI (Billy Crudup hams it up as Hoover). Liverpudlian Stephen Graham appears to be having the time of his life as Dillinger’s most well-known associate, the psychotic Baby Face Nelson (I hailed Graham as a new talent to watch in my 2007 review of This is England). Look fast for Diana Krall’s cameo as a nightclub singer (crooning a smoky “Bye Bye Blackbird”). And of course there is an appearance by “the lady in red” (Branka Katic)-although apparently it was the “lady in the white blouse and orange skirt” who led the unwitting Dillinger to his doom.

It’s a good thing that the charismatic Depp is present, and that the film is stylishly executed in Mann’s fastidious manner, because, had lesser artists been involved, the rote cops and robbers story lurking at its core would be exposed. Although Mann and co-writers Ronan Bennet and Ann Biderman do recycle the narrative device that made his 1995 crime thriller Heat so compelling (i.e., blurring the line of moral demarcation by fleshing out pursuer and quarry with equal import) it all feels sort of perfunctory this time out. And, at the risk of being accused of talking apples and oranges, I felt that Bale and Depp’s Big Scene together failed to ignite sparks like Pacino and DeNiro’s faceoff did in the aforementioned film. As Mann has established himself as an auteur; I don’t think it is unfair to offer that, relative to his own usual standards, this is not his best work (although it’s still superior to most summer fare currently grinding away at the multiplex). That being said, if you are a Depp and/or Mann fan, you still may want to…er, give it a shot.

Enemies list: Dillinger (1945), Dillinger (1973), The FBI Story, The Lady in Red, Young Dillinger, Dillinger and Capone, Ma Barker's Killer Brood, Bloody Mama, Baby Face Nelson (1957 version), Pretty Boy Floyd, A Bullet for Pretty Boy, Al Capone, Capone , The Untouchables, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Bonnie and Clyde, Thieves Like Us, Manhattan Melodrama, The Roaring Twenties, The Petrified Forest, High Sierra, G Men, The Public Enemy, Each Dawn I Die, White Heat, Little Caesar, Bullets or Ballots, Angels With Dirty Faces, The Last Gangster, Key Largo , Scarface (1932 version), Dead End, Racket Busters, King of the Underworld, Rise & Fall of Legs Diamond, Murder, Inc., Miller's Crossing, Bugsy , Hoodlum, Billy Bathgate, Mobsters, Lepke, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Cotton Club, Once Upon a Time in America.

Previous posts with related themes:

Great Depression Films

Art of the Heist Film


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Dennis Hartley 7/11/2009 06:30:00 PM |

 
Holder Of The Cards

by dday

Newsweek is reporting that the Attorney General is considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to probe the Bush/Cheney torture regime.

Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision."

This comes smack dab in the middle of a more personal profile of Holder, with sketches of his easygoing temperament, his fealty to the law measured against his sympathy with the President's agenda, the figure that he and his wife cut at dinner parties (!), his desire to seek common ground in an Obama-esque fashion, a longish section on the Marc Rich issue, and more. It's almost an elegy for the Eric Holder before making the decision to appoint an independent prosecutor, if not a warning that this man will be lost if he pursues such a decision. It's almost that the reporters were preparing a puff piece or beat sweetener and they stumbled upon some hard news.

But there is news here, even beyond the point on an independent prosecutor. The authors try to depict the actions of the Justice Department throughout the Obama Presidency, and on that front, they seem to have taken Holder's side as someone trying desperately to do the right thing regardless of the consequences. Such as:

Holder couldn't shake what he had learned in reports about the treatment of prisoners at the CIA's "black sites." If the public knew the details, he and his aides figured, there would be a groundswell of support for an independent probe. He raised with his staff the possibility of appointing a prosecutor. According to three sources familiar with the process, they discussed several potential choices and the criteria for such a sensitive investigation. Holder was looking for someone with "gravitas and grit," according to one of these sources, all of whom declined to be named. At one point, an aide joked that Holder might need to clone Patrick Fitzgerald, the hard-charging, independent-minded U.S. attorney who had prosecuted Scooter Libby in the Plamegate affair. In the end, Holder asked for a list of 10 candidates, five from within the Justice Department and five from outside [...]

For weeks Holder had participated in a contentious internal debate over whether the Obama administration should release the Bush-era legal opinions that had authorized waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods. He had argued to administration officials that "if you don't release the memos, you'll own the policy." CIA Director Leon Panetta, a shrewd political operator, countered that full disclosure would damage the government's ability to recruit spies and harm national security; he pushed to release only heavily redacted versions.

Holder and his aides thought they'd been losing the internal battle. What they didn't know was that, at that very moment, Obama was staging a mock debate in Emanuel's office in order to come to a final decision. In his address to the cadets, Holder cited George Washington's admonition at the Battle of Trenton, Christmas 1776, that "captive British soldiers were to be treated with humanity, regardless of how Colonial soldiers captured in battle might be treated." As Holder flew back to Washington on the FBI's Cessna Citation, Obama reached his decision. The memos would be released in full.

Holder and his team celebrated quietly, and waited for national outrage to build. But they'd miscalculated. The memos had already received such public notoriety that the new details in them did not shock many people. (Even the revelation, a few days later, that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and another detainee had been waterboarded hundreds of times did not drastically alter the contours of the story.) And the White House certainly did its part to head off further controversy. On the Sunday after the memos were revealed, Emanuel appeared on This Week With George Stephanopoulos and declared that there would be no prosecutions of CIA operatives who had acted in good faith with the guidance they were given. In his statement announcing the release of the memos, Obama said, "This is a time for reflection, not retribution." (Throughout, however, he has been careful to say that the final decision is the attorney general's to make.)

This depiction of Holder and the Justice Department acting at cross purposes to a White House that wanted to keep a lid on past abuses of the Bush Administration neglects the fact that they have in many cases openly facilitated such a cover-up in court filings. The DoJ has consistently invoked the state secrets privilege to shut down lawsuits, tried to keep various records from the past secret, advocated for things like preventive detention and post-acquittal detention, and so on. Among many liberals the Justice Department has been the source of the greatest disappointment in the entire Administration. Clearly, they got the ear of Newsweek, who decided to paint a narrative around this decision on an independent prosecutor. But it doesn't totally scan. Here's the conclusion:

The next few weeks, though, could test Holder's confidence. After the prospect of torture investigations seemed to lose momentum in April, the attorney general and his aides turned to other pressing issues. They were preoccupied with Gitmo, developing a hugely complex new set of detention and prosecution policies, and putting out the daily fires that go along with running a 110,000-person department. The regular meetings Holder's team had been having on the torture question died down. Some aides began to wonder whether the idea of appointing a prosecutor was off the table.

But in late June Holder asked an aide for a copy of the CIA inspector general's thick classified report on interrogation abuses. He cleared his schedule and, over two days, holed up alone in his Justice Department office, immersed himself in what Dick Cheney once referred to as "the dark side." He read the report twice, the first time as a lawyer, looking for evidence and instances of transgressions that might call for prosecution. The second time, he started to absorb what he was reading at a more emotional level. He was "shocked and saddened," he told a friend, by what government servants were alleged to have done in America's name. When he was done he stood at his window for a long time, staring at Constitution Avenue.

The failure to hold those who directed and authorized torture to account impacts our national security and foreign policy in so many different ways, beyond encouraging further abuses and encroachment of executive power. Just this week, alleged cases of torture by the Mexican government in prosecuting the drug war have been revealed, and despite American funding contributing indirectly to these actions, we have little recourse to mount any efforts against it.

Many Mexican human rights activists do not support the [human rights] conditions, noting that they were imposed by a U.S government widely accused of torturing prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“It really takes a lot of cynicism, a lot of hypocrisy, for the United States to say, ‘We will give you money to fight drug trafficking as long as you respect human rights,’” said José Raymundo Díaz Taboada, director of the Acapulco office of the Collective Against Torture and Impunity, which documents abuses in Guerrero.

I think nobody will expect Holder to follow through on this until the moment he announces it, especially given the record of the Obama Justice Department. But there's at least a glimmer of hope that in the documents of the Bush era, the abuses crossed, in the mind of the Attorney General, a bridge too far. And if this is a trial balloon, it's one of the first in the direction of accountability and justice. Perhaps they're looking for some agreement.


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dday 7/11/2009 05:00:00 PM |

 
Incentives

by digby

If you didn't see the Bill Moyers interview last night with Wendell Potter, the former Cigna executive who testified before congress last month, you should watch it at the link or at least read the transcript. It's stuff you know, but this tale of the insurance industry's skewed, inhumane incentives told from the inside in a clear narrative will jolt you anew:

In his first television interview since leaving the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter tells Bill Moyers why he left his successful career as the head of Public Relations for CIGNA, one of the nation's largest insurers, and decided to speak out against the industry. "I didn't intend to [speak out], until it became really clear to me that the industry is resorting to the same tactics they've used over the years, and particularly back in the early '90s, when they were leading the effort to kill the Clinton plan."

Potter began his trip from health care spokesperson to reform advocate while back home in Tennessee. Potter attended a "health care expedition," a makeshift health clinic set up at a fairgrounds, and he tells Bill Moyers, "It was absolutely stunning. When I walked through the fairground gates, I saw hundreds of people lined up, in the rain. It was raining that day. Lined up, waiting to get care, in animal stalls. Animal stalls."

Looking back over his long career, Potter sees an industry corrupted by Wall Street expectations and greed. According to Potter, insurers have every incentive to deny coverage — every dollar they don't pay out to a claim is a dollar they can add to their profits, and Wall Street investors demand they pay out less every year. Under these conditions, Potter says, "You don't think about individual people. You think about the numbers, and whether or not you're going to meet Wall Street's expectations."

It always seems to circle around to the same problem, doesn't it?


*Also be sure to watch Moyers' excellent blogger worthy rant against the Wapo's Pay2Play scandal.


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digby 7/11/2009 04:30:00 PM |

 
Secrets And Lies

by digby

The latest:

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.

[...]

The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.

[...]

Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities. They have said the program was started by the counterterrorism center at the C.I.A. shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year.

“Because this program never went fully operational and hadn’t been briefed as Panetta thought it should have been, his decision to kill it was neither difficult nor controversial,” one intelligence official, who would speak about the classified program only on condition of anonymity. “That’s worth remembering amid all the drama.”

Members of Congress have differed on the significance of the program, whose details remain secret. Most of those interviewed, however, have said that it was an important activity that they felt should have been disclosed.

At first the Republicans were saying this wasn't such a big deal, that the program was nothing out of the ordinary. Now they are saying that it's no big deal because it wasn't fully operational, which is a different thing altoether. And they are forced to admit that the CIA often isn't forthcoming (in other words, they are breaking the law)

This article implies that the program really is something quite shocking after all ---- like Sy Hersh's report that there was an "executive assassination squad."

But hey, the last thing we want to do is play the blame game, especially if John Yoo wrote a memo to the file saying it was ok, so there won't be any serious recriminations. But it's yet another level in our never ending parlor game called "What Were They Really Doing?"


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digby 7/11/2009 03:00:00 PM |

 
Village Secrets

by digby

I've been away from the TV for a while and so I missed this amazing confession:

Earlier this week, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about how “the dignity code” has been “completely obliterated” in Washington, DC. Discussing the concept on MSNBC today, Brooks recalled how he “sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time”:

BROOKS: You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here.

HARWOOD: What?

BROOKS: I can only imagine what happens to you guys.

O’DONNELL: Sorry, who was that?

BROOKS: I’m not telling you, I’m not telling you.

It's pretty clear from his subsequent comments that it wasn't a woman, which of course still leaves dozens of GOP possibilities.

Let me ask you something. If someone puts his hand on your inner thigh, do you just sit there? Even if he is a Senator, I'm pretty sure I would move the hand --- or stab it with a fork. Do these media parasites value their access so much that they are willing to grant any kind of "access" themselves? And here I thought the term mediawhore was a metaphor.

If this is such common behavior among Republican Senators that national columnists just sit there and allow themselves to be fondled at dinner parties, it goes a long way toward explaining why nobody in DC thought Larry Craig's toilet stall foot signals were that big of a deal. They are obviously used to much more aggressive behavior than that.


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digby 7/11/2009 01:32:00 PM |

 
Immunization Program

by digby


Needless to say, Greenwald has the definitive overview of the DOJ IG report and Emptywheel has begun the examination of the deep weeds. Ackerman is breaking it all down into choice tasty bits for easy consumption. No need to reiterate any of that here. Just click those links for the full catastrophe.

I would just like to highlight one paragraph of Glenn's post simply because, to me, it is at the very heart of the issue:

These were not legal opinions in any sense of the word. What happened, instead, is clear: Cheney and Addington knew that Yoo was a hardened ideologue who would authorize anything they wanted. So they purposely chose only him -- a low-level Assistant Attorney General -- to be "read into" the program, and then used his memos to give themselves legal cover. The same thing happened in the realm of torture. This is what reveals how corrupt is the claim that Bush officials cannot be held accountable for the laws they broke because they had DOJ lawyers telling them it was legal. These legal opinions were anything but exercises in good faith. They were nothing more than bureaucratic cover to commit crimes, and -- as the IG Report makes clear -- ones that were as factually inaccurate as they were legally flawed (yet John Yoo remains on the faculty of Berkeley Law).

To accept the central premise of our political class -- it's unfair to prosecute Bush officials for things that DOJ lawyers told them was legal -- is to destroy the rule of law in the United States. Presidents will always be able to find subservient John Yoos in the bowels of the DOJ willing to authorize anything they want to do. There is no such thing as a permission slip from an underling to commit felonies. Yet our political class -- obviously motivated by their own self-interest -- has decided in unison to endorse the principle that the existence of such documents should bar accountability even for clear crimes.

I've been struck by this since the beginning. If it is the case that the president can designate an Office of Legal Counsel functionary to immunize government officials and employees against criminal behavior, then it is true, to all intents and purposes that "if the president does it it's not illegal."

One could make the argument that the political fallout would be so huge if it were ever revealed that no president would ever attempt it, but we are proving right now that this is a very remote possibility. Ever since Nixon, the political class has reaffirmed the idea that anything the president does as a political leader or in his official capacity is unpunishable. And more recently we've seen that anyone who carries out his orders is also immune, which wasn't always the case. Nixon's people did do time.

If that was the intention of the revolutionaries who broke away from despotic monarchical rule, they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble. At this point, both political parties agree that if the president has a low level lawyer in the Justice Department write a secret memo authorizing him to break the law then all those who broke those laws are legally immunized from any punishment, including firing evidently.

There is no political risk in a president breaking the law --- a Republican president anyway. It remains to be seen if the Republicans are so consistent when their next turn at power comes around. But as of today, they are the picture of bipartisan comity --- the only thing presidents cannot legally do is lie about fellatio. And if the recent cavalcade of lying, adulterers in the GOP are any example, that one may no longer be applicable either. After all, all they have to do is get some clerk in the Justice Department to write them a note legalizing it and it's all good.


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digby 7/11/2009 12:30:00 PM |

 
Tort Reform!

by digby

Oh my goodness....

Ricci is invariably painted as a reluctant standard-bearer; a hardworking man driven to litigation only when his dreams of promotion were shattered by a system that persecutes white men. This is the narrative we will hear next week, but it somewhat oversimplifies Ricci's actual employment story. For instance, it's not precisely true, as this one account would have it, that Frank Ricci "never once [sought] special treatment for his dyslexia challenge." In point of fact, Ricci sued over it.

According to local newspapers, Ricci filed his first lawsuit against the city of New Haven in 1995, at the ripe old age of 20, for failing to hire him as a firefighter. That January, the Hartford Chronicle reported that Ricci sued, saying "he was not hired because he is dyslexic." The complaint in that suit, filed in federal court, alleged that the city's failure to hire Ricci because of his dyslexia violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Frank Ricci was one of 795 candidates interviewed for 40 jobs. According to his complaint, the reason he was not hired was that he disclosed his dyslexia in an interview. That case was settled in 1997 with a confidential settlement in which Ricci withdrew his lawsuit in exchange for a job with the fire department and $11,143 in attorney's fees.

In 1998, Ricci was talking about filing lawsuits again, this time over a dispute with his new employer, Middletown's South Fire District—which had hired him in August of 1997. According to a Hartford Courant report of Aug. 11, 1998, Ricci was dismissed from the Middletown fire department after only eight months. He promptly appealed his dismissal, claiming that fire officials had retaliated against him for conducting an investigation into the department's response to a controversial fire. A story in the Hartford Courant dated Aug. 9, 1997, has Ricci vowing "to pursue this to the fullest extent of the law."

In August of 1998, a state Department of Labor investigation cleared Chief Wayne S. Bartolotta of any wrongdoing in the firing. The Aug. 3, 1998, letter from the state Department of Labor indicated that the case was closed with a finding of no violation. "After a thorough investigation, it was determined that the South Fire District did not discriminate against Mr. Ricci." Ricci's response? According to the Courant, Ricci contended "Their decision was political, it has nothing to do with who was right and who was wrong." He told the paper he would "pursue the matter in civil court."

Ricci also tried to discredit his former boss, Chief Bartolotta, by disparaging his professional credentials. His fight over access to Bartolotta's professional training records was resolved between the two of them a week before the matter was slated to be taken up with the state Freedom of Information Commission, according to a Jan. 13, 1998, report in the Hartford Courant.

Eventually, Ricci made his way back to the New Haven Fire Department, where he famously aced his promotions test, then sued, yet again, in 2004.

Ultimately, there are two ways to frame Frank Ricci's penchant for filing employment discrimination complaints: Perhaps he was repeatedly victimized by a cruel cadre of employers, first for his dyslexia, then again for his role as a whistle-blower, and then a third time for just being white. If that is so, we should all be deeply grateful for the robust civil rights laws that protect Americans from unfair discrimination in the workplace. I look forward to hearing Republican Sen. John Cornyn's version of that speech next week.

The other way to look at Frank Ricci is as a serial plaintiff—one who reacts to professional slights and setbacks by filing suit, threatening to file suit, and more or less complaining his way up the chain of command. That's not the typical GOP heartthrob, but I look forward to hearing Sen. Cornyn's version of that speech next week as well.

read on ...

Ricci may very well have been justified in filing all those law suits against his employers for different reasons. Some people are just unlucky. And it has no bearing on the facts of the case in question, obviously, at least at the apellate level which is where Sotomayor heard it.

But let's face facts. Mr Ricci is obviously not the tough, manly public servant who was cheated out of his rightful job by a the lazy "you know whos" that free ride on the system. It looks like this guy would be a much better poster boy for tort reform than reverse discrimination. Maybe somebody in wingnut central got the file mixed up.


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digby 7/11/2009 09:30:00 AM |

Friday, July 10, 2009

 
Best And Brightest Redux

by digby

In the week that Robert McNamara died, it's more than a little bit chilling to see a headline like this one:

Commander to Seek Expansion of Afghan Forces, Officials Say

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly arrived top commander in Afghanistan, has concluded that Afghan security forces will have to expand far beyond currently planned levels if President Obama's strategy for winning the war there is to succeed, according to senior military officials.

digby 7/10/2009 07:30:00 PM |

 
Heads Up

by digby

Physicians for Human Rights Press Release

July 10, 2009, 3:40 p.m. EDT

New Evidence that Bush Administration Impeded 3 Investigations into Alleged Massacre of Up to 2,000 Prisoners in Afghanistan

Human rights group that discovered the mass grave and sued for release of government documents is available for comment.

Cambridge, MA—Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has issued a call for a criminal probe in the wake of a major New York Times story with new evidence that the Bush Administration impeded at least three federal investigations into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan in 2002.

PHR is calling for the Department of Justice to investigate why the Bush Administration impeded an FBI criminal probe of the alleged Dasht-e-Leili massacre.

According to US government documents obtained by PHR, as many as 2,000 surrendered Taliban fighters were reportedly suffocated in container trucks by Afghan forces operating jointly with the US in November 2001. The bodies were reportedly buried in mass graves in the Dasht-e-Leili desert near Sheberghan, Afghanistan. Notorious Afghan warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who was reportedly on the CIA payroll, is allegedly responsible for the massacre.

Physicians for Human Rights, which shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, first documented the existence of the alleged mass grave in January 2002 and since then:


· Advocated for witnesses to be protected, the mass grave site to be secured, and for a full and impartial investigation;


· Conducted preliminary forensic investigations -- including exposing 15 remains and conducting three autopsies -- under UN auspices at Dasht-e-Leili;


· Successfully sued for compliance with a PHR Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the release of US government documents that reveal US intelligence knowledge of the magnitude of the alleged crime and awareness of the execution and torture of witnesses to the incidents;


· Helped identify the US chain of command likely responsible for impeding federal investigations into the alleged massacre;


· Discovered and reported on alleged tampering of the site; and



· Requested satellite image analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that appears to demonstrate that tampering occurred soon after PHR filed its FOIA request in June 2006.


“Physicians for Human Rights went to investigate inhumane conditions at a prison in northern Afghanistan, but what we found was much worse,” stated Susannah Sirkin, PHR Deputy Director. “Our researchers documented an apparent mass grave site with reportedly thousands of bodies of captured prisoners who were suffocated to death in trucks. That was 2002; seven years later, we still seek answers about what exactly happened and who was involved.”

Senior Bush Administration officials impeded investigations by the FBI and the State Department, and the Defense Department apparently never conducted a full inquiry, the New York Times reports in the story for the July 11 print edition by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter James Risen.

“The Bush Administration’s disregard for the rule of law and the Geneva Conventions led to torture of prisoners in Guantánamo and many other secret places,” noted Nathaniel Raymond, PHR’s lead researcher on Dasht-e-Leili. “Contrary to the legal opinions of the previous Department of Justice, the principles of the Geneva Conventions are non-negotiable, as is their enforcement. President Obama must open a full and transparent criminal probe and prosecute any US officials found to have broken the law.”

“The State Department’s statement to the New York Times that suspected war crimes should be thoroughly investigated indicates a move towards full accountability,” added Raymond. “We stand ready to aid the US government in investigating this massacre. It is time for the cover-up to end.”

Sirkin added, “President Obama must set a different course by signaling publicly that in all of its operations anywhere in the world, the US and its allies will respect the Geneva Conventions and safeguard the rights of prisoners of war, as well as all captured combatants and detainees to be treated humanely.”

PHR reiterated its call on the Government of Afghanistan, which has jurisdiction over the alleged mass grave site, to:


· Secure the area with the assistance of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force-Afghanistan);


· Protect witnesses to the initial incident and the ensuing tampering; and


· Ensure a full investigation of remaining evidence at the site, including the tracing of the substantial amount of soil that appears to have been removed in 2006.


“Gravesites have been tampered with, evidence has been destroyed, and witnesses have been tortured and killed,” stressed Sirkin. “The Dasht-e-Leili mass grave site must finally be secured, all surviving witnesses must be protected, and the Government of Afghanistan, in coordination with the UN and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), must at last allow a full investigation to go forward.”

McClatchy published a story about this last December but it passed under the radar. The story is potentially explosive, not because it's about an Afghan warlord who removed the forensic evidence of a war crime, but because he removed the forensic evidence of a war crime that the US knew about, if not actively participated in, and covered up. They didn't protect the site because they didn't want it protected. And they didn't order an investigation because they didn't want one ordered.

The NY Times story should be very interesting.

Update: The story is up. Read it and weep:

A military commander in the United States-led coalition rejected a request by a Red Cross official for an inquiry in late 2001, according to the official, who, in keeping with his organization’s policy, would speak only on condition of anonymity and declined to identify the commander.

A few months later, Dell Spry, the F.B.I.’s senior representative at the detainee prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, heard accounts of the deaths from agents he supervised there. Separately, 10 or so prisoners brought from Afghanistan reported that they had been “stacked like cordwood” in shipping containers and had to lick the perspiration off one another to survive, Mr. Spry recalled. They told similar accounts of suffocations and shootings, he said. A declassified F.B.I. report, dated January 2003, confirms that the detainees provided such accounts.

Mr. Spry, who is now an F.B.I. consultant, said he did not believe the stories because he knew that Al Qaeda trained members to fabricate tales about mistreatment. Still, the veteran agent said he thought the agency should investigate the reports “so they could be debunked.”

But a senior official at F.B.I. headquarters, whom Mr. Spry declined to identify, told him to drop the matter, saying it was not part of his mission and it would be up to the American military to investigate.

Catch 22 come to life.

We know much about this whole sordid story from the documentary "Convoy of Death," and earlier stories. And so did the government, which did nothing to protect the crime scene.

Update II:

Obama administration officials said Friday they had no grounds to investigate the 2001 deaths of Taliban prisoners of war who human rights groups allege were killed by U.S.-backed forces.

The mass deaths were brought up anew Friday in a report by The New York Times on its Web site. It quoted government and human rights officials accusing the Bush administration of failing to investigate the executions of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of prisoners.

U.S. officials said Friday they did not have legal grounds to investigate the deaths because only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country.

PHR begs to differ:

“For US Government officials to claim that there is no legal basis to investigate this well-documented mass atrocity is absurd,” stated Physicians for Human Rights Deputy Director Susannah Sirkin. “US military and intelligence personnel were operating jointly and accepted the surrender of the prisoners jointly with General Dostum’s forces in northern Afghanistan. The Obama Administration has a legal obligation to determine what US officials knew, where US personnel were, what involvement they had, and the actions of US allies during and after the massacre. These questions, nearly eight years later, remain unanswered.”

“Furthermore,” added Nathaniel Raymond, PHR’s lead researcher on the Dasht-e-Leili case, “The New York Times has shown that the Bush Administration engaged in a coordinated effort to prevent this alleged war crime from ever being investigated. Under the Geneva Conventions, the cover-up of a war crime can itself constitute a war crime.”

Sorry, those rules don't apply to the United States of America. We don't play the blame game here.


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digby 7/10/2009 05:00:00 PM |

 
The Blue Dog Lament

by dday

As you may know by now, 40 members of the Blue Dog Caucus sent out a letter vowing to withhold their support for health care reform without what they call "significant changes." What's interesting about the letter is how insignificant the changes actually are. Among other things, they want:

• a deficit-neutral policy, which is what every single proposal for this bill has included;
• aggressive solutions to bending the cost curve, which also is a goal of pretty much everyone;
• protecting small businesses, which every iteration of the plan has, including the employer mandate proposals that exempt certain small businesses and make them eligible for purchasing health care through the insurance exchange;
• rural health equity, a pretty small point;
• a public option that doesn't use Medicare bargaining rates, which isn't different from what, for example, Chuck Schumer has called for, although I find that to be a toothless public option, which I'll explain later;
• time to read the bill, which I support;
• bipartisanship, which is the most ridiculous of these demands, but which actually does exist in the bill on the Senate side, where dozens of Republican amendments have been included in the HELP Committee markup.

So what's the problem here? Well, dig a bit deeper and you'll see. In short, the Blue Dogs want to reform the health care system without implementing things that would reform the health care system. They want to bend the cost curve and find savings from within the current system, yet they also want "rural health equity," which actually means spending more on rural health. That would INCREASE costs. Similarly, a separate letter signed by many Blue Dogs ask Henry Waxman to cancel plans to reinstate price controls on prescription drugs to help seniors. The entire point of Waxman's proposal is to plow savings from the current exorbitant prices paid to drug-makers back into the system. And finally, there's the matter of the public option. Here's the language in the letter:

We also wish to reiterate our support for the recommendations previously made by our coalition regarding how to appropriately structure a public option. In order to establish a level playing field, providers must be fairly reimbursed at negotiated rates and their participation must be voluntary. A "Medicare-like" public option would negatively impact hospitals, doctors and patients. Medicare reimbursement is on the average 20 to 30 percent lower than private plans and this inequity is even greater in some parts of the country. Using Medicare's below-market rates would seriously weaken the financial stability of our local hospitals and doctors.

So, they don't want a public option using Medicare reimbursement rates because they're 20-30% lower than private plans. Which means they want to spend 20-30% MORE on provider rates, while... controlling costs, somehow. The entire point of a public option would be to lower overall costs to individuals and government; a plan on a "level playing field" is just another non-profit with little leverage to change the overall dynamic. The Blue Dogs are just being incoherent.

You don’t save money by magic. You save money by spending less money. You can do that by just letting a large and growing number of people go without adequate health care. Or else you can do that by spending less money on overpayments, inefficient processes, and unnecessary treatments. But you can’t do that without taking a bite out of someone’s bottom line. The Blue Dogs seem to be looking for a free lunch, or else just grasping at straws for reasons to object to the bill.

I think it's the latter. Like with the effort in 1993, the Blue Dogs are inventing reasons to resist a health care overhaul. It's obvious from the contradictions in their argument.

But lurking behind all of these complaints, according to several sources I consulted Thursday evening, is a general wariness of taking a political plunge on health care. Like their counterparts in the Senate, House members don't like taking hard votes. Raising taxes, cutting spending, anything that takes money ouf of people's pockets--these are not things they want to do, even in the service of a greater, more popular cause.

And now they're getting nervous. They're seeing the president's popularity dipping, however incrementally. They're watching the Senate chase its tail over the same controversies. And having just taken what were--for many of them--similarly tough votes on an energy bill, they're not exactly thrilled about "walking the plank" again.

Never mind the literally clueless arguments from conservatives, or the complete hash from contrarians over health care - in the end, Democrats hold the fate of this bill in their hands. And lots of them don't want to face up to the fact that their concerns about costs are solved in this case by MORE progressive reforms, not less. It hurts their wittle feelings. And maybe they'll just use their go-to lament about bipartisanship, when the minority on this issue exists to prevent anything from being signed into law.

Fortunately, some Blue Dogs have spoken out on this issue in an intellectually coherent way. But unless more of them come around, this is how an overhaul will either be whittled down to nothing or just plain die - because so-called fiscal conservatives want to stick their fingers in their ears rather than face up to the facts.


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dday 7/10/2009 03:00:00 PM |

 
Depressions And Quants

by digby

Chris Hayes has written an excellent, accessible overview of the two main economic arguments at play at the moment between those who believe that depressions are a kind of necessary economic tough love and those who believe that they are the outgrowth of human error or greed which can and should be prevented.

Of the first, he writes:

Famed economist Joseph Schumpeter said that "a depression is for capitalism like a good, cold douche," one that rinses off accumulated dysfunction. Robber baron Andrew Mellon (who served as Herbert Hoover's treasury secretary) welcomed the Great Depression with these infamous words: "It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people"

It's not hard to find this same view among bankers, financiers and sundry Wall Streeters today. Recently a bond trader told me he hoped that the Fed would raise interest rates and plunge economy into a truly deep, painful (but he hoped, quick) depression. "I don't think that would be good for you," I said. "Oh, I'd be fine," he responded. ( I meant politically: as in, there'll be people with pitchforks at
your door. We were talking past each other I suppose.)

There's no question that economic contraction feels quite different to a bond trader and an unskilled worker. A spike in unemployment hits those on the margins of the labor market the hardest, while contractions also usher in deflation, which has a strong tendency to make the rich richer. But the faith in the salutary effects of
economic misery also derives from a puritanical view of the economy, one that can manifest itself on both the left and right. Under this view contractions are collective punishment for our trespasses; we are sinners in the invisible hands of an angry God.

Of the second:

Paul Krugman, to put it mildly, disagrees. In 1999 he published a book
with the prescient title the The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. While folks like Samuelson and Robert Lucas were celebrating the fruits of neoliberalism, a strange thing was happening: Financial crises of larger and larger scale and scope were wreaking havoc on the global financial system. Mostly, as Krugman notes, we ignored the tremors.

[...]

These crises tended to have a few things in common, but at the heart of many were central banks, governments and international lending institutions that had learned the lessons glossed in Samuelson too well. Low inflation became a central obsession of the so called "Washington Consensus," the term given for the uniform prescription of stiff free-market medicine -- balanced budgets, privatization of government services, and tight monetary policy -- that dominated global economic policy in the 1980s and 1990s.

What animated much of this advice was not just a rigid and dogmatic economic consensus, but also the puritanical normative assessment that a wicked economy must now pay its penance. (Of course said penance was never paid by those who caused the crisis: It was paid out of the pockets of the starving, the poor and working class.)

Read the whole thing. It's very clarifying.

Hayes' trader acquaintance assured him that he would be fine and I'm sure that's exactly what he meant. The financial elites are never held responsible for their mismanagement. It's Blacks who bought house they couldn't afford and day traders who shouldn't have been dabbling in things they don't understand and social climbers who fail to know their place who cause all the problems. Economic puritanism requires punishment, but it is more of a symbolic ritual to prove somebody will pay for failure --- just not those who perpetuated it.

In a slightly similar vein, I would recommend this article in Vanity Fair about "The Man Who Crashed The World" Joseph Cassano, of AIGFP. The author, Michael Lewis, describes his conversations with our old pal Jake DeSantis the millionaire WATB who snivelled to the NY Times that he and others at AIGFP were being unfairly blamed for the collapse of the financial system and that denying them their bonuses was, like, totally bogus because they'd worked 14 hours a day! Lewis seems to think that DeSantis was something of a hero because he single handedly turned the argument away from the bonuses because when they read his letter, people realized that these guys were just hardworking sods being unfairly demonized. I don't know what he's been smoking, but he's delusional if he thinks that NY Times op-ed, rather than severe pressure from America's owners, was what forced the political class to back off. Please.

The upshot of the article is that Joe Cassano was a bullying moron who intimidated all the poor little DeSantis' into following his orders in spite of the fact that they made no sense. And he apparently intimidated them into stuffing their pockets with tens of millions of dollars while he was at it.

I'm not buying it. I have no doubt that there were rash, aggressive jackasses like Cassano in varying levels of power throughout the financial industry during the period, but it's simply not credible that all the good, smart "quants" who worked for them were forced to participate against their will.

At the end of this article I couldn't help but wonder if the fact that Cassano was a working class striver among the elite Ivy boys doesn't merely explain his own motivation for taking obscene risks, but also the motivation of all these little birdies who whispered in Lewis' ears about how stupid and boorish he was. "Some people" just have no business being among their betters. And once you let them in, they trash the place.

My feeling is if the quants knew this guy was a moron who was going to crash the world financial system and they did nothing about it, they are more responsible than he was. After all, they're allegedly the smart guys. Instead, they took the money and then whine like little babies when they got blamed. Sorry, I have more respect for Cassanno at this point than them. At least he's not pretending to be a victim.




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digby 7/10/2009 01:30:00 PM |

 
The Creeping National Security State

by dday

This makes no sense:

The federal government's most secure prison has determined that two books written by President Barack Obama contain material "potentially detrimental to national security" and rejected an inmate's request to read them.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is serving a 30-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush. Last year, Abu Ali requested two books written by Obama: "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope."

But prison officials, citing guidance from the FBI, determined that passages in both books contain information that could damage national security.

Then I guess we'll have to track down all of the couple million copies sold worldwide and redact them, not to mention garbling the Grammy-winning books on tape.

Couple things here. First, somebody tell Republicans and skittish Democrats that there's an Al Qaeda member in a federal prison on US soil! Let the pants-piddling begin!

Second, this has basically become shorthand for any violations of civil liberties, or as we see here, basically anything, in the modern age. Just cite national security to give your actions the patina of importance. There's no justification for the theory that someone confined to a solitary cell 23 hours a day can gain valuable insight to carry out attacks on the nation from a memoir written in 1996 and a campaign-era collection of policy papers. Seduced by secrecy, government officials use the threat of national security to convince themselves of any behavior under the sun. Shielding a book from a prisoner pales in comparison to torture or warrantless spying or whatever it is the CIA held from Congress all those years. But they have the same rationale, which is often uncritically accepted by political leadership and the media establishment. And everyone walks around in this daze, without challenging this constant invocation of national security for increasingly ridiculous actions.

As long as nobody rises to stop it, the ruling class can expand the national security state block by block until we live as we do today, in a fundamentally different country.


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dday 7/10/2009 11:45:00 AM |

 
Un-Signing The Signing Statements

by dday

Good:

The House rebuked President Obama for trying to ignore restrictions to international aid payments, voting overwhelmingly for an amendment forcing the administration to abide by its constraints.

House members approved an amendment by a 429-2 vote to have the Obama administration pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require a Treasury Department report on World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) activities. The amendment to a 2010 funding bill for the State Department and foreign operations was proposed by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), but it received broad bipartisan support.

The conditions on World Bank and IMF funding were part of the $106 billion war supplemental bill that was passed last month. Obama, in a statement made as he signed the bill, said that he would ignore the conditions.

They would "interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the Congress prior to such negotiations or discussions," Obama said in the signing statement [...]

President George W. Bush had used signing statements to ignore a number of provisions in bills that he signed into law, frustrating Democrats in Congress. One Bush signing statement allowed the administration to ignore a provision banning the torture of terror detainees in situations threatening the nation's security.

Frank and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Texas) said that one way they could get presidents to stop issuing signing statements casting aside laws would be to refuse to fund their priorities. The amendment passed Thursday seeks to nullify Obama's signing statement by withholding funds from any agreement involving the Treasury Department that doesn't follow the conditions set out in the supplemental bill.

"The signal we send to the Treasury is very clear: Ignore statute at your peril," Kirk said.

As long as the executive is given a power, he or she will probably keep using it. It's up to the legislative branch to assert their authority. Of course this never happened with a Republican in the White House, as the GOP sees their role in those situations as human shields. But I really don't care about partisanship when it comes to reining in the runaway executive and restoring balance to the branches of government. Congress has a lot more power than they've been using over the years, and while this is a small point, I'm happy if it leads to signing statements going the way of the dodo bird.

...I was hinting at this, but David Waldman fleshes it out:

Pretty much as predicted, Congressional Democrats find their spine in standing up to expansive executive power as soon as there's a Democrat in the White House. Actually confronting a Republican president about it was apparently too politically difficult for them to contemplate. Why? Because Republicans would have voted against it, meaning that standing up for institutional prerogatives and the separation of powers is a politicized issue. It's "partisan bickering" when Democrats say this about Republican presidents, but "bipartisan agreement" when they say it about Democrats, because it's only when it's said about Democrats that Republicans agree that there ought to be a separation of powers.

Which of course means that such a separation only has a hope of existing as the founders intended when there's a Democrat in the White House. Which hasn't been all that often since the advent of the Nixonian "Imperial Presidency," mind you.

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dday 7/10/2009 09:30:00 AM |

 
Missing The Point?

by tristero

I think the great Joe Conason misses a crucial point about Sarah Palin. He writes:

Palin, a manifestly unqualified and incompetent politician unable to string together a series of coherent sentences...

...cursory background investigation that revealed almost nothing about her lack of knowledge, bizarre official conduct, and narcissistic temperament.

Well, yes. All true. But what's missing from this list are Palin's ties to radical extremists, fanatical christianists, and even secessionists. Had Palin been experienced, articulate, knowledgeable, reliable, and a paragon of empathy, nevertheless, her delusional, far-right political views should have immediately disqualified her from serious consideration as a national candidate.

We should never forget: For eight long years, genuinely extreme ideologues, who boasted of the fact they were not members of the "reality-based community," ran this country. Even now, when the executive branch is in the hands of a sane person (whatever his faults). this country's media provides rightwing extremism a place in the national discourse it simply doesn't merit.

Palin is, first and foremost, a political nutjob. That is the most important thing to understand about her from the perspective of a voter. That a major political party would choose someone with such crazy ideas, and that a reporter as intelligent as Conason would fail to note this even in passing or as further evidence of her incompetence for public office, speaks volumes about how far Americans still treat truly bizarre political philosophies as acceptable.

tristero 7/10/2009 06:25:00 AM |

Thursday, July 09, 2009

 
No Pool For You

by digby

I assume that most of you have heard by now about the bigots at the Philadelphia swim club who wouldn't allow the white kids to swim with the African American kids. It takes me back to my childhood wonder years in 1960s Mississippi. Good times.

Sixty-five campers, kindergartners through seventh graders who are African American and Hispanic, arrived at the private swim club around 3:30 p.m. on June 29. It was their first visit to the club, but the camp had made arrangements for weekly trips on Mondays through Aug. 10.

While the campers were swimming, Wright said, three of them came up to her and said they had heard club members asking what African Americans were doing at the club.

Although the children were upset, Wright said, they stayed at the pool for an hour more to complete their session. She said that she approached club president John Duesler while events unfolded that day and that he seemed apologetic.

On July 3, Wright said, the camp's $1,950 check in membership fees to the swim club was refunded, meaning the children no longer had access to the pool. She said Duesler gave no reason for the refund except that the membership no longer wanted the children at the pool.

Repeated attempts to reach Duesler, other club officers, and the club's management yesterday were unsuccessful. NBC10, which first reported the story, said yesterday that Duesler had given the station the following statement: "There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion . . . and the atmosphere of the club."

The club is not affiliated with the Huntington Valley Country Club, which today inadvertantly found itself a target of public rage.

"We've been getting a lot of nasty calls," country club receptionist Karen Ojeda said.

Wright said she heard no racially charged comments when the campers were at the club but did hear a club member express displeasure that the children were at the pool. She said many parents made their children leave the pool after the campers arrived.

But here's something that is rarely focused on in all the stories about the appalling behavior of these awful people:

The camp first contacted the club about membership after the New Frankford Community Y in the Frankford section of the city - where the children used to swim - closed last month because of lack of money. The club is about a 20-minute drive from the camp's location at Devereaux and Summerdale Avenues in Northeast Philadelphia.

Pools are closing all over the place for lack of funds. And if anyone's thinking help is on the way, think again:

Looking to strike fear and compliance in the hearts of local officials, Vice President Joe Biden warns that if they use money from the economic stimulus fund to build what he regards as the wrong kind of projects, “I’ll show up in your city and say this was a stupid idea.”

“No swimming pools!” he implored. “No tennis courts!” he begged. “No golf courses!” he pleaded. “No Frisbee parks!” he exhorted.

Little kids in urban centers being able to swim outdoors in pools close to their homes is a waste of taxpayers money you see.



h/t to rp
digby 7/09/2009 07:30:00 PM |

 
Silbido Del Perro

by digby

A certain kind of thinking knows no borders:

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a press release to announce that she will be meeting with the United States Drug Enforcement Agency to talk about drug trafficking in Honduras.

“Obtaining an assessment from DEA about the situation on the ground is of increasing importance in light of recent developments in Honduras and reports of possible Zelaya drug ties.

“The drug network is like a spider web extending into arms trafficking and used to finance such extremist groups as the FARC. It undermines our regional security and stability. It is critical that we understand the full scope of the problem and the players involved in order to combat it effectively.” [Emphasis mine]

These "reports of possible Zelaya drug ties" have come from none other than the newly-minted Honduran "Foreign Minister" Enrique Ortez. He claimed in an interview that "Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds ... and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking."

Ortez, as those who have been following this situation are well aware, was dressed down by the United States Ambassador to Honduras for frequently invoking the racially charged pejorative "negrito" to refer to President Obama. At one point, Ortez described the president of the United States as "this little black man (negrito) who has no idea where Tegucigalpa is."

But it gets worse:

A third quote by Ortez Colindres surfaced yesterday, made during an interview with a Honduran television station and cited in El Tiempo newspaper:

"He negociado con maricones, prostitutas, con ñángaras (izquierdistas), negros, blancos. Ese es mi trabajo, yo estudié eso. No tengo prejuicios raciales, me gusta el negrito del batey que está presidiendo los Estados Unidos."

--------

"I have negotiated with queers, prostitutes, leftists, blacks, whites. This is my job, I studied for it. I am not racially prejudiced. I like the little black sugar plantation worker who is president of the United States."

I think I finally understand why so many Republicans are backing the coup.


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digby 7/09/2009 05:30:00 PM |

 
Cue My Eyes Rolling Into The Back Of My Head

by dday

The Republicans will trot out Frank Ricci, the firefighter from New Haven, to testify against Sonia Sotomayor at hearings next week. And then we'll all get to hear once again about the poor guy who studied hard - hard! - to pass that promotions test, and then the MAN, in this case represented by a Latina following the established laws on the books which the Supreme Court had to change, knocked him down and took everything he had. He needed that promotion, see, and he was the best qualified, but they had to give it to a minority throw out the test because they could have been sued until the Supreme Court changed the law to essentially indemnify them.

The reality of the case doesn't matter, so this will just be a launching pad for a series of "white man's burden" colloquys among Villagers.

Man, the blowhards are going to make me sick next week. Pat Buchanan is probably testing out new slurs as we speak. "Does Sombrero Lady sound pejorative enough? How about Phi Beta Hubcappa?"


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dday 7/09/2009 03:30:00 PM |

 
Bipartisan-Curious

by digby

It's Groundhog Day:

One of the key Democratic senators whose vote remains up for grabs when it comes to health care reform urged his colleagues to continue to push for a bipartisan bill, even as party leadership said it was time to give up on recuriting GOP support. In an interview this week with the Huffington Post, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) maintained that there was still "great interest in the Finance Committee for a bipartisan bill on both sides of the aisle" and he urged lawmakers to continue to pursue a collaborative path.

He would not comment directly on news that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had urged the Committee's Chairman, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop efforts to attract Republican support. But he also didn't hide his own preferences. "I'm committed to the priority that the president laid out," said Wyden. "I think the president got it right. He said 'I want to get it done this year' and he also indicated that his first choice is to have a bipartisan bill because he recognizes that a bipartisan bill allows the country to come together."

The country is already together in a thoroughly bipartisan way on this issue. It's corporate whores in Washington who are at odds with the people.

And if anyone in their right mind actually believes that the Republican Party is going to have a "stake" in the success of health care reform because a couple of GOP stragglers are dragged across the line to vote for the Democratic plan, I've got some AIG CDOs to sell them. They will be trying to dismantle it for the next 60 years, just as they've spent the last 60 years trying to dismantle Social Security.

Wyden isn't talking to the people, he's talking to David Broder and the rest of the village punditocrisy and it's insulting to the intelligence of anyone who isn't one of them. It's enough to set your teeth on edge to hear this crap again.

Once more with feeling:

From The Agenda:

Gore asked, what did Boren want changed in the plan in order to secure his vote?

Like a little list? Boren asked.

Yeah, Gore said.

Boren said he didn't have little list. Raising the gas tax a nickel or cutting it a nickel or anything like that wouldn't do it, he said. He had given his list to Moynihan like everybody else in the Finance Committee. It was over and done with, and Boren likened himself to a free agent in baseball. "I have the luxury of standing back here and looking at this," Boren said. His test would be simple: Would it work? If not, it didn't serve the national interest.

Gore said he was optimistic for the first time.

Boren shot back. "There's nothing you can do for me or to me that will influence my decision on this matter." he added. "I'm going to make it on the basis of what I think is right or wrong."

Nobody responded for a moment. Clinton then stepped in. Why didn't Boren think it was in the national interest? he asked.

It wasn't bipartisan, Boren answered. To be successful in this country it had been demonstrated over and over, an effort had to be bipartisan, Clinton had even said so himself, Boren pointed out. Even most optimists, Boren said, thought they were still not even halfway there.

No Republican voted for the plan.

There you have it. That ridiculous Villager article of faith that says bipartisanship is not only important for its own sake, it's the only thing that's important.

Someday, in my dreams, Democrats will run as progressives in the same way that Republicans proudly ran as conservatives both when they were ascendant and holding the reins of power over the past 30 years. They won't apologize for their ideas or pretend that the most important thing in the word is for Republicans to approve of what they are doing. They will recognize that while compromise is a necessary element of politics, progress and systemic change requires a fight which usually results in the losing side being unhappy. That day is not here yet.


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digby 7/09/2009 02:06:00 PM |

 
Oh Nancy

by digby

Oh my goodness

Panetta Admits CIA Misled Congress on “Significant Actions”
By Tim Starks, CQ Staff

CIA Director Leon Panetta told the House Intelligence Committee that the agency had misled and “concealed significant actions from all members of Congress” dating back to 2001 and continuing until late June, according to a letter from seven Democrats on the panel.

The letter was dated June 26, two days after Panetta appeared before a closed door session with the committee and it asked that the CIA chief “correct” his statement from May 15 that “it is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress.”

“Recently you testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week,” states the letter to Panetta from Anna G. Eshoo of California, Alcee L. Hastings of Florida, Rush D. Holt of New Jersey, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Adam Smith of Washington, Mike Thompson of California and John F. Tierney of Massachusetts.

CIA spokesman George Little said Panetta stood by his May remarks and believes Congress must be kept fully informed and Little added, “it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees.”

Big of them. But you have to stop and truly appreciate the weasel words in that statement: Panetta stands by his statement -- at least the part where he said he believes congress should be kept informed.

The issue is politically sensitive because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., found herself at the center of a firestorm in May when she accused the CIA of misleading Congress over the use of harsh interrogation methods during the Bush administration.

Somebody owes Pelosi an apology. According to the article it won't be Pete Hoekstra who is simply putting his fingers in his ears and singling "lalalalalala."

But lest anyone thinks that the actual rules and processes are going to change any of this:

The Obama administration has threatened to veto the funding bill for US intelligence agencies because the House included a provision that would increase the number of members who receive briefings on highly secretive covert operations.

[...]

The same provision allows Congress, not the administration, to restrict the briefings in extraordinary circumstances.

This seemingly small change to the law is what's provoked the veto threat. The Obama administration, like all previous administrations of the modern era, believe that the president, and only the president, has the power to determine what constitutes national security information and, even more vitally, what safeguards ought to be in place to protect the information.

Because it's worked out so well up to now.


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digby 7/09/2009 12:00:00 PM |

 
We're Calling This Victory?

by dday

You all probably know by now that Karl Rove was deposed in front of House Judiciary Committee staffers the other day, about the US Attorneys scandal and the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. But what you don't know, and what I don't know, and what nobody knows, is why. At some level, I'm glad that Congress was able to assert a modicum of its authority and at least get Rove (and apparently, Harriet Miers back in June) on the record with a set of questions. But to what end? Certainly not one of precedent, and not an investigative one as well, it seems.

The White House's foot-dragging may have inflicted some measure of political damage. But in terms of the legal repercussions, by coming to a deal while the case was still pending in an appeals court, the Bushies have largely succeeded in one of their goals: ensuring that no clear precedent has been established limiting the president's power to claim executive privilege in such cases. And the Obama White House's role in helping to secure the deal for Rove's testimony suggests that's an outcome they wanted too.

As for the underlying issue -- the quest to learn what really happened in the firings and the Siegelman prosecution, things remain murky at best. There are conflicting reports about whether Rove will sit for another day of testimony. It's also unclear when and how the committee will decide which parts of Rove's testimony, if any, can be made public, and in what form the probe's findings will be released.

Siegelman, quoted later in the piece, thinks John Conyers will continue to investigate until he finds the truth. He must be an eternal optimist. This has reached the point where Republicans can demagogue with the words "old news," and that was precisely the Bush White House's goal. Even if House Judiciary eventually cobbles together a report and makes recommendations, the chances of the Justice Department taking whatever recommendations concern accountability measures are, in a word, remote. They haven't even moved to set aside the verdict on Siegelman, though I did notice that the Justice Department whistleblower in the case has been fired. At least someone is held to account, right?


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dday 7/09/2009 10:30:00 AM |

 
The Bernie Madoff Of Health Care

by digby

Did I miss the blogospheric attacks on this guy or is this the first we've heard of it?

You've probably seen the ads. Ominous voice-overs warn you about how health care reform "could put a bureaucrat in charge of your medical decisions, not you." A massive bulldozer with "government-run insurance plan" written on the side crushes your health care "choices." Canadians and Britons relay horror stories of their experiences dealing with health care in those nightmarish socialist dystopias.

The ads are the product of a multimillion-dollar ad campaign designed to derail health care reform—especially what's been dubbed the "public option," which would set up a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. The man behind this ad blitz is the person who might be Public Option Enemy No. 1: one-time hospital executive and longtime Republican donor Richard Scott.

[...]

Scott certainly is an odd spokesman for the right's health care agenda. The giant hospital company Scott led in the 1980s and 1990s, Columbia/HCA, was the subject of a seven-year federal investigation. The probe concluded with the company pleading guilty to 14 felony counts of criminal misconduct and paying $1.7 billion to settle civil charges relating to overbilling of state and federal governments—the largest settlement of its kind in American history. Scott, claiming ignorance of what was going on, was booted by his own board in 1997 and received a $10 million golden parachute with $300 million in stock options for his troubles.

[...]

Scott doesn't seem eager to remind visitors to CPR's website of his past. Not surprisingly, the "Fast Facts about Richard L. Scott" section contains no mention of the HCA fraud scandal, though it does highlight the fact that HCA "became the world's largest private health care provider" and was named "one of the 50 best performing companies of the S&P 500" by BusinessWeek. The bio does mention Scott's current venture, a company called Solantic, which "provides urgent care services, immunizations and other services at 23 locations"—including some in Wal-Mart stores—"across Florida." What it doesn't explain is that Solantic makes a lot of its money by catering to the uninsured—giving Scott a direct financial interest in preventing the expansion of health insurance to all Americans.

It seems to me that it should be somebody's job to expose this man. He's the most evil of evil CEOs. He should be a reviled and loathed character on par with the lowliest criminals at this point, and yet he's on TV lying about health care for his own profit. How can this be?

His ads are running on a loop and there should, at least, be some sort of pushback. According to the article, he's just considered a "nuisance" by public plan advocates, which I think is just bizarre. A focused national media buy with a lot of money behind it can do real damage, as the former Clinton administration folks know very well.

Eric Burns, the president of liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America, says Scott's advocacy is having an impact. "Scott is spending an enormous amount of money to influence the debate over health care reform. He's essentially cornered the market on providing false and misleading information on the health care reform debate." Some of Scott's ads focus on nightmarish tales of government-run health care in places like Canada and Britain, but President Obama hasn't proposed going to a Canadian-style single-payer system. And it is not just Media Matters that has criticized the ads—the Annenberg Center's FactCheck.org also found the group's ad "very misleading."

To disseminate its message, CPR has hired the same public relations company that handled the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The firm, CRC Public Relations, did not respond to questions for Scott submitted by Mother Jones. But Burns says CPR's ties to CRC are no coincidence. "CPR is essentially the conservative Swift Boat operation for the health care reform debate," Burns says.

Does anyone think the Swift Boaters didn't have an impact?

And, once again, they are being aided by a lazy media who fail to acknowledge how these people operate:

The media have certainly aided Scott's efforts to dodge his history and his conflicts of interest. CNN and Fox News, among others, have interviewed Scott without questioning him about HCA or his new company's dependence on the uninsured.

Perhaps the health care debate is beyond public opinion now, but I doubt it. The right has an amazing ability to mobilize on votes, as people just found out again on the Cap and Trade legislation, and if opposition to health care is well prepared by guys like this and the vote is close, they could make a difference.

And why in the world hasn't somebody seen the value in making this jackass the face of our health care disaster? He actually is the worst of the worst. Why is he even allowed to go out in public much less make and star in advertisements against health care?

Update: This is embarrassing: Chris Hayes wrote an entire column about Scott, even calling him the Madoff of health care last March. My very bad.

Be sure to read the column for more dirty details about Scott, who really is a world class creep.


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digby 7/09/2009 09:00:00 AM |

 
When Pat Buchanan Isn't Racist Enough

Every once in a while the mask slips. Big time:



That's the host of Fox & Friends, Brian Kilmeade, saying:

We keep marrying other species and other ethnics...The problem is the Swedes have pure genes. They marry other Swedes, that's the rule. Finns marry other Finns; they have a pure society. In America we marry everybody. We will marry Italians and Irish.

And oh! How this crowd loves to call Sotomayor "racist."

tristero 7/09/2009 06:34:00 AM |

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

 
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

by dday

Morgan Stanley has this amazing plan to take a bunch of toxic crap, call it a different name, put a bow on it and sell as a magic moneymaking product. Innovative!

Morgan Stanley plans to repackage a downgraded collateralized debt obligation backed by leveraged loans into new securities with AAA ratings in the first transaction of its kind, said two people familiar with the sale.

Morgan Stanley is selling $87.1 million of securities that it expects to receive top AAA ratings and $42.9 million of notes graded Baa2, the second-lowest investment grade by Moody’s Investors Service, according to marketing documents obtained by Bloomberg News. The bonds were created from Greywolf CLO I Ltd., a CDO arranged in January 2007 by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and managed by Greywolf Capital Management LP, an investment firm based in Purchase, New York.

Two years after the credit markets began to seize up, costing the world’s biggest financial institutions $1.47 trillion in writedowns and losses, banks are again taking so- called structured finance securities and turning them into new debt investments with top credit ratings. While the Morgan Stanley deal is the first to involve CDOs of loans, banks have been doing the same with commercial mortgage-backed securities in recent weeks.

A lot of banks and insurers “cannot buy anything but AAA,” said Sylvain Raynes, a principal at R&R Consulting in New York and co-author of “Elements of Structured Finance,” which is due to be published in November by Oxford University Press. “You’re manufacturing AAA out of not AAA, therefore allowing those people who have AAA written on their forehead to buy.”

That last paragraph is my favorite part - investors cannot buy anything but AAA, so we'll call a bunch of garbage AAA and sell it to them! Genius! And if you're still wondering why that federal buy-up of toxic assets has amounted to nothing, I guess it's because enough customers have been found for this "New and Improved Shitt With Two T's."

It says in the article that Goldman Sachs is preparing a similar sale. Matt Taibbi, you have the floor.


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dday 7/08/2009 05:00:00 PM |

 
Poor Pitiful Me

by digby


So it isn't just Jonah Goldberg. Sarah Palin also believes that she has been more persecuted by her enemies and the press than Hillary Clinton --- which is completely absurd.

Time’s Jay Newton-Small asked Palin about this contradiction in a new interview. Palin replied that she’s totally different than Clinton because the accusations she’s facing are way worse:

What I said was, it doesn’t do her or anybody else any good to whine about the criticism. And that’s why I’m trying to make it clear that the criticism, I invite that. But freedom of speech and that invitation to constructively criticize a public servant is a lot different than the allowance to lie, to continually falsely accuse a public servant when they have proven over and over again that they have not done what the accuser is saying they did. It doesn’t cost them a dime to continue to accuse. That’s a whole different situation. But that’s why when I talk about the political potshots that I take or my family takes, we can handle that. I can handle that. I expect it. But there has to be opportunity provided for truth to get out there, and truth isn’t getting out there when the political game that’s being played right now is going to continue, and it is.

Honest to Gawd...

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr has concluded that presidential aide Vincent Foster was not murdered and that President Bill Clinton and the first lady were not involved in a coverup, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

The Times quotes anonymous sources as saying Starr's report covers more than 100 pages and is due to be released soon.

The report refutes claims by conservative political organizations that Foster was the victim of a murder plot and coverup, the newspaper said.

"It puts the lie to that bunch of nuts out there spinning conspiracy theories and talking about murder and coverups," one source told the paper.

Starr's probe marks the third investigation into Foster's July 1993 death. The earlier examinations -- carried out by a coroner and Robert Fiske Jr., Starr's predecessor as independent counsel -- also determined Foster's death was a suicide.

However, despite those findings, right-wing political groups have continued to allege that there was more to the death and that the president and first lady tried to cover it up.

Foster, who served as deputy White House counsel, was a close friend of the Clintons and a former law partner of the first lady. Among his other duties, Foster helped prepare the tax returns of the Whitewater Development Corp., the controversial Arkansas real estate venture involving the Clintons.

According to the Times, the independent counsel's office had signaled that a report in the case would be forthcoming, first by the end of 1995, then the summer of 1996, then by the end of 1996.

Starr has not indicated when he might release the report.

Has Palin been accused of murder? Have the charges been conclusively proven false by three separate special prosecutors to the tune of many millions of taxpayer dollars in investigations that last for years and personally cost her millions of dollars in legal fees? No? Then I think she needs to rethink her claims.

There are zero well funded liberal hit groups trying to get Sarah Palin. The ethics complaints that have been filed against her are coming from her own constituents and local officials who are fed up with her. And she's lying about the extent of the complaints remaining and calculating the costs in the most ridiculous way possible. Her endless hyperbole on the subject indicates that she can't do her job if people are criticizing her, which disqualifying in a politician.

Let's put it this way; if she can't handle this, there's no way she can handle higher office.


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digby 7/08/2009 03:30:00 PM |

 
Pressure Works

by dday

Several weeks ago Digby and Blue America noticed that Blanche Lincoln, one of the few centrist Democrats facing re-election in 2010, was taking the side of the insurance companies over her constituents in the health care debate. She claimed that "if all Congress comes up with is a government-backed plan, then there will be very little incentive for the private industry to be able to be competitive perhaps in the plans they will be offering and the individuals they will be offering,” showing exactly where her sympathies lie - with those poor, henpecked insurance industry CEOs who scrape by on $14.9 $1.49 billion dollars over five years.

So we decided to do something about it. Blue America kicked off the Campaign for Health Care Choice and produced three advertisements to press Lincoln on supporting a quality public insurance option to compete with private companies. Digby write the spots, John Amato helped with locations and logistics, I directed and edited them, Howie Klein managed the fundraising. Blue America held a contest to pick the best spot, and after raising $23,740, voters chose their favorite:



Today, we can announce that, before the spots even fully hit the airwaves in Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln is already hedging on her rejection of a public insurance option.

Lincoln, who’s getting hammered by ads demanding she commit to the public option, has now shifted towards supporting one, at least in rhetorical terms. In a piece for today’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, she says health care reform should include a public plan or a non-profit substitute.

Here’s the key graf from Lincoln (the piece is subscription only):

Health care reform must build upon what works and improve inefficiencies. Individuals should be able to choose from a range of quality health insurance plans. Options should include private plans as well as a quality, affordable public plan or non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals as those of a public plan.

The assertion that reform “should” have a public plan or non-profit substitute is a shift from her previous position, which was only that she was “evaluating” a public plan or a substitute.

In this op-ed, Lincoln makes absolutely no mention of an employer mandate to provide coverage to their workers, which Wal-Mart, America's largest employer and a virtual kingmaker in Arkansas, signed onto this week. Instead, Lincoln goes out of her way to support a public insurance option in competition with private insurance. There are weasel words there, of course - note the "non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals." But in the final analysis, two events happened to Blanche Lincoln in health care recently - Wal-Mart's sign-on to the employer mandate and the prospect of Blue America running ads in her state ($25,000 can go a fairly long way on cable in Arkansas, by the way). She chose to specifically align herself with the element of health care policy that Blue America endorses.

But she's not all the way there, so we plan to keep pushing. But this should be a valuable lesson - every small thing you do to advance solutions to the health care crisis can make a difference. The political animals in the Senate know that on this high-profile vote, defying the public on a popular plank will cause them some difficulty. It's up to us to make sure of that.

Please support the Campaign for Health Care Choice so we can continue to raise the pressure on the ConservaDems who want to hijack this crucial policy goal.

...More at FDL and Washington Monthly.


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dday 7/08/2009 01:00:00 PM |

 
Tenured Torturer

by digby

The University of Colorado doesn't owe former professor Ward Churchill his old job even though a jury found regents improperly terminated him, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Denver District Judge Larry Naves vacated the jury's finding, ruling that CU's Board of Regents is a "quasi-judicial" panel that cannot be sued.

[...]

CU began investigating Churchill after an essay surfaced in which he had called some victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks "little Eichmanns."

The statement triggered outrage and led to calls for his dismissal.

Subsequently, the university launched an investigation of his scholarly writing and found that he engaged in repeated acts of plagiarism over a period of years.

CU said he was fired, in 2007, for academic misconduct. Churchill and his supporters said that the university manufactured a case against him to appease his critics, among whom was then-Gov. Bill Owens.

"This shows that if you step out of line and do something considered unpalatable by people with power, you are in danger of losing your job," said retired CU faculty member Tom Mayer.

Well, let's not go crazy, here. After all:

What do you do when a guy high in the running for most hated man in the world teaches at your law school? If you're Christopher Edley Jr., dean of UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall law school, you half-heartedly defend the professor while highlighting your powerlessness to do anything -- as he did last week did for his embattled faculty member John C. Yoo.

Yoo, of course, is the Berkeley law professor best known as the former Bush administration lawyer who authored the infamous "torture memo" of 2003. Besides laying out a legal argument he thought could protect practitioners of almost certainly illegal "enhanced interrogation" methods from prosecution, Yoo exhibited in his writings a stunning disregard for international law and a creepy nonchalance about expanding the president's terrorism-fighting authority. That much Edley denounces, just as the administration did when the public got wind of the memo. Edley's criticism of Yoo's work in the Bush administration isn't surprising.

More intriguing is how Edley approaches the question he set out to answer: Why is Yoo a professor at such a prestigious university when his legal advice to the most powerful man in the world has come under such resounding criticism by his colleagues?

That's an excellent question.

The difference between Churchill and Yoo probably comes down to the different stature of the two professors and the two Universities, which makes it much easier to scapegoat Churchill than Yoo. But it's still amazing that a tenured professor can be hounded out of the academy for writing an obscure literary tract that nobody would have read if the right hadn't made it a cause and the legal architect of a torture policy that will have reverberations for generations is untouchable. Amazing.

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digby 7/08/2009 12:00:00 PM |

 
And Justice For None

by dday

Glenn Greenwald has the gory details about yet another civil liberties backtrack for the White House, introducing the new term of "presidential post-acquittal detention power." Basically, if the Administration puts a terror suspect on trial and they are actually found innocent, the President reserves the right to detain them anyway for an indefinite period.

All of this underscores what has clearly emerged as the core "principle" of Obama justice when it comes to accused Terrorists -- namely, "due process" is pure window dressing with only one goal: to ensure that anyone the President wants to keep imprisoned will remain in prison. They'll create various procedures to prettify the process, but the outcome is always the same -- ongoing detention for as long as the President dictates. This is how I described it when Obama first unveiled his proposal of preventive detention:

If you really think about the argument Obama made yesterday -- when he described the five categories of detainees and the procedures to which each will be subjected -- it becomes manifest just how profound a violation of Western conceptions of justice this is. What Obama is saying is this: we'll give real trials only to those detainees we know in advance we will convict. For those we don't think we can convict in a real court, we'll get convictions in the military commissions I'm creating. For those we can't convict even in my military commissions, we'll just imprison them anyway with no charges ("preventively detain" them).

After yesterday, we have to add an even more extreme prong to this policy: if by chance we miscalculate and deign to give a trial to a detainee who is then acquitted, we'll still just keep them in prison anyway by presidential decree. That added step renders my criticism of Obama's conception of "justice" even more applicable:

Giving trials to people only when you know for sure, in advance, that you'll get convictions is not due process. Those are called "show trials." In a healthy system of justice, the Government gives everyone it wants to imprison a trial and then imprisons only those whom it can convict. The process is constant (trials), and the outcome varies (convictions or acquittals). Obama is saying the opposite: in his scheme, it is the outcome that is constant (everyone ends up imprisoned), while the process varies and is determined by the Government (trials for some; military commissions for others; indefinite detention for the rest). The Government picks and chooses which process you get in order to ensure that it always wins. A more warped "system of justice" is hard to imagine.

I get the feeling that if those left at Guantanamo wanted to engage in mass suicide right now, someone in the White House would give the go-ahead to mix the Kool-Aid for them. This is just a problem they don't want to solve.

And of course, the focus on Guantanamo, and the fate of the prisoners there, keeps everyone's eye off of those indefinitely detained at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, without charges, and in greater numbers at this point than in Cuba. Furthermore, what Obama's team has not answered is if they plan to continue these show trials and preventive detention tactics for those they capture, not just the artifacts of the Bush regime. That answer could come soon.

We have, through expansion of executive power, extreme Congressional deference and a failure to counteract the push in the popular culture, allowed the arguments of reactionaries - that any suspect in the so-called "war on terror" must be detained indefinitely until the end of combat in an endless, figurative war - to take hold in the public mind. When these issues made the public debate, when torture became the stuff of online poll topics, when they were allowed legitimacy, we inevitably and inescapably lost that debate. The genie has left the bottle, and while a popular President could put it back in, he has shown absolutely no willingness to expend an ounce of political capital to do so. And we will look back on decisions like this as part of a sad legacy, regardless of the rest of the tenure.


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dday 7/08/2009 10:30:00 AM |

 
Mission Accomplished

by digby


For those who were glued to the cable networks all day for the breaking memorial service news John Dickerson does a recapitulation of yesterday's message mishmash coming out of the White House. He points out that Obama didn't actually contradict Rahm and sets forth the shocking proposition that the president is keeping his options open, not foreclosing the trigger or any other "com[promise." He ends with this:

Liberal Democrats and their allies were concerned enough about Emanuel's remarks to seek clarification from the White House. But the president's statement, while aimed at reiterating his commitment, doesn't actually contradict anything Emanuel said. If, in the end, if Obama decides that a trigger or a cooperative plan keeps insurance companies honest, then he will say he's kept his word on the goals of the public option. So Obama's statement today can be read as both a walk-back of Emanuel's remarks and support of them. When I pointed this out to a White House adviser, the response was succinct: "Mission accomplished."

(Cute. But this person might want to think a little bit about the recent history of that phrase...)

I think Dickerson is reading this pretty well. This is a negotiation and Obama has not drawn any lines in the sand. He has stated broad goals and preferences, but he is "keeping his options open." A trigger or co-ops or some other rube goldberg scheme have not been ruled out.

It occurs to me that progressives might be more inclined to trust the White House on this if it hadn't already shown that it is more than capable of being total tools for the bankers and sycophantic servants of the national security state. It makes it a little bit hard to feel confident that they are pursuing a super duper crafty progressive strategy to reform health care.

The trigger is still on the table. It always was. It will be up to those progressives in the House and Senate to dig in and hold the line. Now we have the reanimation of the co-op zombie:

Schumer has declared the idea dead previously, but sounded more positive Tuesday. "If we can come to some kind of compromise on some kind of co-op situation that really keeps the insurance companies honest, I'm open to it. It can't be two little co-ops in two little places." Schumer even seemed to have compromised on a key sticking point in his negotiations with conservative Democrats. He had previously advocated that the co-op board be linked to the government. Now he says that while "there would be a role for the federal government in setting it up, then it would become independent."

Right. We were already down this road last month. Here's what Robert Reich said about this at the time:

Nonprofit health-care cooperatives won't have any real bargaining leverage to get lower prices because they'll be too small and too numerous. Pharma and Insurance know they can roll them. That's why the Conrad compromise is getting a good reception from across the aisle, just as Olympia Snowe's "trigger" (which means no public option until some time down the pike, and only if Pharma and Insurance don't bring down and extend coverage a tad) is also gaining traction.

The truth is that there's only one "public option" that will truly bring down costs and premiums -- one that's national in scale and combines its bargaining power with Medicare, and is allowed to negotiate lower drug prices and lower doctor and hospital fees. And that's precisely what Pharma and Insurance detest, for exactly the same reason.

Whatever it's called -- public option or chopped liver -- it has to be able to squeeze Pharma, Insurance, and the rest of the medical-industrial complex. And the more likely it is to squeeze them, the more they'll fight it. And the greater the opposition from Republicans, and from Dems who either believe any bill has to have some Republican support or who have sold themselves out to the medical biggies.

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digby 7/08/2009 09:00:00 AM |

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

 
Fighting Back

by dday

The structure of California government makes rational solutions impossible. But the people who bear the brunt of the pain from a structure wired to drown government in the bathtub have an option. They can stand their ground and refuse to be moved.

And so it begins. As Anthony Wright is tweeting, a group of disabled activists have taken up positions in the Capitol building and are refusing to leave until the health and human services cuts are reconsidered:

Wheelchairs blocking the Governor's office for the last two hours over the budget cuts.. CHP threatens arrest, they say they are prepared...

Over 100 folks protesting cuts in the hall outside Governor Schwarzenegger's office. Gov is at Mason's having lunch... maybe Jacuzzi later?

CHP threatens not just arrest-and-release, but taking disabled protestors to county jail. They say they rather be in jail than nursing home.

Outside Gov's office... Several Dem legislators came down to talk to/cheer on the disabled protestors: Cedillo, Perez, Beall, Skinner, etc

Budget protesters call out "hold the line" when someone tries to pass. The wheelchairs effectively stop any traffic in hallway.

Bad budget boon for Blimpie's: Food arrives for protestors with disabilities, as thet settle in for the long haul in front of Gov's office...

UPDATE: The protest organizers, the "People's Day of Reckoning Coalition" (an offshoot of the IHSS Coalition) have explained their actions to the media:

Caregivers and people with disabilities are furious that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is asking for more cuts to California's in-home support services.

About 100 protesters said they successfully blocked the entrance to the governor's office Tuesday. The People's Day of Reckoning Coalition organized the protest.

The coalition sent a letter to Schwarzenegger in June, asking him to come up with a budget solution that includes new sources of income and not just cuts to services.

"We are calling for a budget solution that is based upon shared responsibility and shared sacrifice -- not a solution that falls squarely upon on the shoulders of children, people with disabilities, elders, the chronically ill, the unemployed and the impoverished," the letter said.

The People's Day of Reckoning Coalition represents human services, health care, community improvement and educational interest....

John Campbell, a caregiver, said claims of fraud are exaggerated, calling the governor's remarks "just a bit of political theater."

The California Highway Patrol cited about a dozen protestors. They'll be back, to coin a phrase.

The long story of Governor Stogie and In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) is here. The short version is that Arnold up and decided, after months of budget negotiations, that there was massive fraud in this program (there isn't), which allows the elderly, disabled and blind to receive in-home care rather than being consigned to a nursing home, and he demanded that anti-fraud provisions immediately get adopted as part of a budget deal, adding a massive, complex policy shift 24 hours before the budget deadline. There's more about how ridiculous this all is at the link.

What's important here is that those with a stake in Governor Stogie's ruthless cuts - the people who actually feel the effects - have had enough. The structure makes decent solutions impossible, but the only way to fix that structure starts with activists like this, literally blocking the way to right-wing shock doctrine tactics.


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dday 7/07/2009 09:08:00 PM |

 
This is Good

by digby

Nothing is worth doing in America anymore unless somebody's making a profit off of people who can't afford it:

California "IOU" recipients can turn to credit unions and check-cashing storefronts if a state budget deal does not appear by Friday and if three major banks refuse to accepting the notes beyond Friday as planned, analysts said on Tuesday.

The willingness of the smaller institutions to take IOUs from the cash-strapped state should also stop the development of a secondary market for trading them, although individuals could end up paying hefty fees to get their hands on cash.

[...]

Three major banks are currently accepting the IOUs, but only through Friday. After that recipients may turn to credit unions to cash them or, perhaps, to check-cashing storefronts.

Their cashiers could see more than $3 billion of the IOUs at their windows this month should the state budget crisis persist and big banks hold to their Friday cut-off for processing them.

Check-cashing storefronts are especially well poised to score IOUs, said Daniel Penrod, a senior industry analyst at the California Credit Union League.

"I could see a lot of bank customers turning to a third-party source and losing a lot of their paycheck," Penrod said.

So, the IOU recipients get a pay cut anyway, but the money will go to payday loan sharks instead of the state, which will continue to go broke. These free markets are just awesome,

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digby 7/07/2009 06:30:00 PM |

 
We'll Take Care Of Ya

by digby

It's interesting watching the fallout from the Washington Post pay to play scandal, but I have to say that I've not seen anyone address what was my first concern about such arrangements: the effect of such salons on the press. Everyone's acting as if the only problem is that the Post was compromised because it was taking money from people with a vested interest in the outcome. This is a problem, to be sure, but it's not exactly the only one. Montag in the comments asks the right question, in my opinion:

These "salons" have another effect on the press. In a sense, in such situations, they're the captive audience, and they mostly get to hear the corporate arguments, so what they end up reporting is one-sided. Weymouth wasn't also inviting grassroots groups with a decidedly different take on legislation than corporate whores or contribution-dependent legislators, so, those views will be largely absent from any reporting coming out of such gatherings. Therefore, even if the reporters attending convince themselves that they're not being compromised, that they're still independently reporting, they're still getting a stilted and tilted view of the overall picture--which is precisely the point in Weymouth's inclusion of her own reporters in her little pay-to-play get-togethers.

I wondered from the beginning when the the Post and unnamed members of the administration (who I had assumed to be in discussions about this) had invited any grassroots groups, unions or public interest organizations to attend these salons and add their perspective. They were not. And this is because their reflexive assumption is that the only "stakeholders" in this are industry and government.

This is the Village --- a small, powerful, insular group of elites with most of those in the media and all politicians among them perpetuating a myth that they are common folk with the same parochial interests as the rest of us. And that is why it never occurred to anyone that only inviting politicians, reporters and industry lobbyists to a salon to talk about health care reform was not going to result in a well rounded view of the issue. In their minds, they are "the people."

I actually respect the industry lobbyists the most. They, at least, know whose interests they represent. The rest of the villagers are far more deluded -- or dishonest.


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digby 7/07/2009 05:00:00 PM |

 
The Plot Thickens

by digby

Roll Call - Reid to Baucus: Stop Chasing GOP Votes on Health Care

DAVID M. DRUCKER and EMILY PIERCE

Tuesday, July 7, 2009


Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday ordered Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill.

Reid, whose leadership is considered crucial if President Barack Obama is to deliver on his promise of enacting health care reform this year, offered the directive to Baucus through an intermediary after consulting with Senate Democratic leaders during Tuesday morning’s regularly scheduled leadership meeting. Baucus was meeting with Finance ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) Tuesday afternoon to relay the information.

According to Democratic sources, Reid told Baucus that taxing health benefits and failing to include a strong government-run insurance option of some sort in his bill would cost 10 to 15 Democratic votes; Reid told Baucus it wasn’t worth securing the support of Grassley and at best a few additional Republicans.

Wow. He can count. Good news.

Update: And the progressives in the House weigh in:

The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
1600 Pennsylvania Aye, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I read with alarm and dismay the article in the July 7th edition of the Wall Street Journal, “WhiteHouse Open to Deal on Public Health Plan”. In particular, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel stated in the article that one of several ways to meet your health care reform goals is a mechanism under which a public plan is introduced only if the marketplace fails to provide sufficient competition on its own.

I want to be crystal clear that any such trigger for a strong public plan option is a non-starter with a majority of the Members of the Progressive Caucus (CPC). As the CPC has repeatedly stated, its Members cannot support final passage of any health care reform bill that does not include a robust public plan option, akin to Medicare, operating alongside the private plans.

Public opinion polls show that 76° o of Americans want a robust public plan option and I will stand in solidarity with them. Moreover, I consider it unacceptable for any of the cost savings that you are negotiating with hospitals and other sectors of the health care industry to be madecontingent upon a robust public plan option not being included in the final legislation.

Thank you for your thoughtful consideration.

Sincerely,

Raul Grijalva

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digby 7/07/2009 03:00:00 PM |

 
Trigger Finger

by digby

So, the latest scuttlebutt is that Obama walked back Rahm's "trigger" comments to the Wall Street Journal today by saying that he still thinks a public option is the best way to get to serious health care reform.

But it looks to me as if we are seeing the trigger being set up as the "compromise." I don't know that, of course, but it's highly doubtful to me that Rahm was totally off the reservation. But it would probably be a good idea to get the trigger off the table sooner rather than later. The trigger is a reform killer.

Update: I'm told that this isn't really considered a threat because everyone knows that a trigger isn't a public option and that the left will walk away. That's good news. But someone should get the president to confirm that he isn't backing it.

Update II: Sanders and Dean speak out against the trigger --- and Sanders says that progressive Dems are ready to buck the finance committee, which is good news:

Two major progressive voices in the health care debate took White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to task on Tuesday for suggesting that a public option with triggers could be a potential compromise on reform.

One of those voices, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) went so far as to insist that some Senate Democrats would vote against any proposal that didn't include a strong government-run option. Even the bill being crafted by Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, Sanders noted, might not get the caucus' full support because it could stray too far away from an effective overhaul of the health care system.

"I think that it is fair to say that there are a number of us who would not be voting for anything resembling a Baucus-type plan as we understand it right now," the senator told the Huffington Post, referring to Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus' effort at constructing a reform bill.

In separate interviews, Sanders and his fellow Vermonter, former DNC Chair Howard Dean, both took umbrage with comments Emanuel made in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that was published Monday evening. The White House chief of staff did not deviate fully from the administration's line, suggesting that all prospects for reform remained on the table. But Emanuel added something that health care operatives said they hadn't heard from the White House to date: a statement of support for a health care insurance compromise based on a public option with triggers.

The president would, hours later, issue a statement reiterating his support for a "public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and keep them honest." Progressives, fearing in part that the frame of the health care debate would be irrevocably shifted, pushed back.

"I think that a public plan with triggers is not a real public plan and it is going to be a trillion dollar failure," Dean said. "Anyone who thinks a trigger is going to lead us to a good place five years from now is wrong... It is not a sensible policy compromise."

Blue America is starting its ad campaign tomorrow asking Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln, a member of the finance committee who says she is leaning toward the completely unworkable co-ops, to back the public plan . I realize that centrist Democrats think this "unhelpful" but at this point it looks to me as if the public option needs all the help it can get.




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digby 7/07/2009 01:00:00 PM |

 
Removing The Obstacles

by digby

Ezra Klein has posted an interview today with my congressman Henry Waxman in which they discuss one of the most fundamental problems we face in trying to pass needed legislation:

KLEIN: ... Even with a popular new president and a large House majority and 60 Democrats in the Senate, it seems unlikely we'll actually solve these underlying problems. We might get legislation. But it's not likely to avert the existence-level fiscal threat from health-care reform or the existence level environmental threat from climate change. But if not now, then when? And if Congress can't respond to challenges of that magnitude, doesn't it suggest that something is quite wrong?

WAXMAN: I think we need to be open-minded and think about the possibility in changes of process as well as policies. We shouldn't be so burdened by the past that we can't face the future. The seniority system in the House was traditionally dictated by members who didn't like the speaker having so much power over the committees. But when I came to Congress, if you were the senior member, you became chairman no matter how competent you were, no matter how in sync you were with the majority caucus. That was enormously advantageous for many of the Dixiecrats who remained Democrat for that reason, to take advantage of the seniority, but who aligned themselves on policy with the Republicans, and created a situation where even when Democrats had large margins, there was this sort of Southern Democrat-Republican coalition that ruled.

The fight by Sam Rayburn to allow the Rules Committee to be controlled by the leadership was an enormous and brutal fight, but a necessary one. The chairman before that time was Judge Smith from Virginia, who wouldn't let civil rights legislation go to the House floor because he was a segregationist himself. That meant that even when the Judiciary Committee proposed a bill for civil rights, members of the House couldn't vote on it.

There are anti-democratic rules that need to be changed. In some ways, the filibuster is an issue we might want to look at more closely. It is a two-edged sword. But I come from California, where to pass a budget you need a two-thirds vote. And they've been unable to pass a budget for years now able to deal with the fiscal problems. And it has thrown the state into chaos because they can't get the two-thirds vote.

The filibuster used to be a two-thirds requirement, and it wasn't until 1975 that they changed it to 60 votes. Well, that was a move in the right direction. For sure

Ezra points out that the filibuster affects legislation in more ways than one because the House anticipates the the Senate's reaction as well.

The filibuster and other arcane undemocratic processes are issues that should be addressed. if we can assume that we are entering an era of progressive possibilities, and knowing that we saddled with a conservative judiciary, it becomes important to have the legislative branch working with fewer impediments.

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digby 7/07/2009 09:30:00 AM |

 
Holding Back The Tide

by dday

The White House has done a pretty good job of rolling out these deals with the health care industry. They made the main announcement of $2 trillion in savings months ago, and that got a large news hit. Then they've been dribbling out each element of the industry and their pledges to lower costs. We haven't reached $2 trillion - in fact, we haven't come close - but every time they do it, the White House gets another news hit. It's pretty brilliant.

The latest is an agreement with the hospital industry to give back $155 billion in profits over a decade, on the heels of an $80 billion dollar agreement with the drugmakers to help fill the dreaded donut hole for prescription drugs for seniors. Because of the way in which Max Baucus (who is brokering most of these deals) and the White House have done it, assenting to changes in how they are paid, this money can be used to help pay for reform, unlike the $2 trillion, which was outside the purview of the CBO. But they seem to be bargaining, like the drug industry, for the best deal they can get, instead of designing the policy and forcing the various industries to accept it.

Still, you have to wonder: Could these industries be giving up more? The drug deal, at least, doesn't look all that great--except, perhaps, to the drug industry. My reading of the agreement--and, to be clear, there's still a lot of ambiguity here--is that the drug industry has agreed to kick in some of its own money to help fill in the "donut hole" in the Medicare drug benefit.

That's very nice and will, I think, make it easier for seniors to afford their drugs. But it also seems that, as part of the deal, seniors have to buy more drugs from name-brand manufacturers rather than generics. It's entirely possible that the name-brand drug industry--that is, the companies represented by PhRMA--could actually come out ahead [...]

The expected hospital agreement seems may be more signfiicant--and, for liberals, more encouraging. Although it's impossible to know without seeing the details, $155 billion is a decent chunk of change. That could represent a serious sacrifice on the part of the hospitals.

On the other hand, it's not clear whether, perhaps, this is an example of some hospitals effectivelly cutting a deal that hurts others. Insofar as the savings come from reduced payments for charity care--payments that now flow through Medicaid--is this a case in which suburban and speciality hospitals actually do just fine but charity hospitals take a hit?

Perhaps the most important question to answer is what these industry groups are getting in return. Changing payments to the health industry isn't simply about generating savings that can finance expansions of insurance coverage. It's also about changing the behaviors of these industries--and, in so doing, creating a health care system that offers better quality care for less money.

To accomplish that, reform should ideally include measures like strengthening the hand of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), developing more data on comparative effectiveness (CE), or building a strong public insurance plan. But hospitals don't like the idea of a stronger MedPAC, drug makers are pretty hostile to good CE, and insurers (among others) hate the idea of a public plan. When the industries cut these deals, are they prying promises from Baucus--or the White House--not to push too hard on these levers?

The effect has been to set a ceiling for what the drugmakers and the hospital industry and the other stakeholders will accept, brokered through the most conservative and industry-friendly committee in Congress, Max Baucus' Senate Finance Committee. Any committee that seeks more savings from industry immediately gets attacked, even though they never made such an agreement.

Having struck a bargain with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the industry is aggressively targeting individual House Democrats, warning of repercussions in the 2010 elections if they go along with a tougher set of savings advocated by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.).

PhRMA, the powerful Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association lobby, is openly playing one chairman against the other. Billions of dollars are at stake; a politically sensitive population, the elderly, is caught in the middle. With House Democrats expected to finalize their bill this week, President Barack Obama could face pressure to come off the sidelines and spell out better where he stands.

What Baucus agreed to specifically in his June 20 bargain is still in some dispute. But PhRMA is bluntly telling House moderates that the senator will oppose the rebates demanded by Waxman and that the smart move is to kill that provision outright and save themselves political pain in 2010.

Then there's the effort in the Senate Finance Committee to deny women legal medical services inside any insurers operating inside the Health Insurance Exchange:

The Senate Finance Committee has been writing a health care reform bill and struggling to create legislation that will have bipartisan support. Chairman Max Baucus considered several compromises to win Republican support, so they can claim it is bipartisan legislation. One of these potential compromises comes in the form of an abortion exclusion, which would prevent abortion services from being covered by some or all insurance plans in the Health Insurance Exchange. We fear that members of the Senate Finance Committee are considering such a compromise.

Remember, most of the groups inside the insurance exchange are private companies. I thought conservatives didn't want to put a government bureaucrat between the patient and the doctor. I guess when it comes to reproductive choice, that's OK.

The Senate HELP Committee's favorable budget score raised hopes that a workable solution was on the way, which was affordable and used a public health insurance plan to increase that affordability. But there's a whole maze of committees and votes to maneuver through. And the Senate Finance Committee is really building a dam to hold back the tide of a legitimate overhaul. Must be all of that industry money.


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dday 7/07/2009 08:04:00 AM |

Monday, July 06, 2009

 
Here We Go

by digby

I'm surprised he didn't whisper this one to Ceci:

It is more important that health-care legislation inject stiff competition among insurance plans than it is for Congress to create a pure government-run option, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said Monday.

"The goal is to have a means and a mechanism to keep the private insurers honest," he said in an interview. "The goal is non-negotiable; the path is" negotiable.

His comments came as the Senate Finance Committee pushed for a bipartisan deal. To help pay for the package, the committee planned to announce an agreement Wednesday with hospitals and the White House for $155 billion over a decade in reductions to Medicare and charity-care payments for hospitals, according to a person familiar with the agreement. That will help pay for the legislation, expected to cost at least $1 trillion over 10 years.

One of the most contentious issues is whether to create a public health-insurance plan to compete with private companies.

Mr. Emanuel said one of several ways to meet President Barack Obama's goals is a mechanism under which a public plan is introduced only if the marketplace fails to provide sufficient competition on its own. He noted that congressional Republicans crafted a similar trigger mechanism when they created a prescription-drug benefit for Medicare in 2003. In that case, private competition has been judged sufficient and the public option has never gone into effect.

Mr. Obama has pushed hard for a vigorous public option. But he has also said he won't draw a "line in the sand" over this point.

Using the prescription drug plan as an example is brilliant. Pharma loved it. And they really loved Billy Tauzin, the man who rammed it through. Good times.

Dday wrote about the "trigger" in this post:

A trigger mechanism is simply absurd. The insurers have had decades to provide decent coverage and have demurred every time. They have shown themselves to be untrustworthy that entire time, including just last month, when they backpedaled on the cost controls they vowed to offer. Mike Lux, who has seen these battles up close, senses that this is the big proxy fight right now.

The insurance lobby has had multiple tactics for stopping the public option idea, which they despise because they know if regular folks have choice to go to a public option, insurance companies won't have the same ability to treat their customers like garbage when they get sick. The first tactic was just to try to kill the public option outright, and the good news is that they appear to have failed at that. This so-called trigger proposal is the second tactic: the idea is to write a "trigger" that will allow for a public option only under certain conditions, but write the legislation so that those conditions would never get met in the real world. It's a classic DC tactic, right up there with calling for a commission to study something. Olympia Snowe is carrying the insurance industry water on their trigger proposal, proposing triggers that would only get tripped in some fairyland none of us have ever visited.

The great thing for the insurance companies in a tactic like this is that it gives "centrist" Senators (centrist in Washington, DC usually means those who have taken massive amounts of campaign contributions from the affected industry) an excuse to help the insurance industry while looking like they are open to the public option that their constituents have been demanding.

It's always possible that Emanuel is playing 45 dimensional chess. Gosh I sure do hope so.

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digby 7/06/2009 09:30:00 PM |

 
Packaging

by digby

I've been meaning to post on this "packaging" problem confronting the Obama administration in their quest to find "common ground" on ... contraception. Yes, that's right. Now that the mushy abortion reduction crowd has convinced the Democrats that social conservatives will vote for them in droves if they will only stop treating abortion like a right and instead treat it as tragic female irresponsibility, it seems the right isn't altogether impressed. I know this will come as a shock to you, but while they are perfectly happy to have the government help women bring their unwanted pregnancies to term, they insist that any efforts to "reduce abortion" with birth control is unacceptable. Who'd have thunk, huh?

As I said, I was going to write about this and was working on one of those boring posts about the "pincer" strategy and overton window blah,blah,blah, but when I came across this, by Charles Piece, I just decided to lift it:

Matthew Y is a very smart young man, especially now that he apparently has given up on the Sisyphean task of explaining why the Washington Wizards ever will be any good. But this, alas, is unicorn-shopping at its most gullible. While I have no doubt that it is remotely possible that the nice lady across the street with the pro-life bumper stickers on her car may very well not give a damn who's buying condoms where, and how old the people are who are buying them, the organized political structure of the pro-life movement has been demonstrably anti-woman and anti-sexuality from the very first mailings it ever sent out. It has been financed and organized by religious organizations devoted to a truncated and joyless view of human sexuality. It has as its formal legal basis a philosophy for which the true target never has been Roe, but Griswold. It does not believe in a constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy in any sphere, abortion just being the most obvious and inflammatory one. And, most important, none of this will change. Ever.

No it won't. Ever.

And this common ground effort is designed to advance socially conservative policy, period.


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digby 7/06/2009 08:00:00 PM |

 
Going With The Floe

by digby

A couple of weeks back I made a weak joke about health care reform and putting people on the ice floe. It's nothing worth remembering. Today, Kevin Drum highlights two conservative op-ed pieces on health care in the LA Times, one of which seriously advances the idea that health care reform will result in putting old people on the ice floe:

Charlotte Allen, conversely, thinks that in order to free up some much needed healthcare cash, Barack Obama wants to take all our old people and set them adrift on ice floes to die. Do you think I'm engaged in some bloggy exaggeration for rhetorical effect? Let's roll the tape:

The Eskimos used to set their elderly and sickly adrift on the ice or otherwise abandon them during times of scarcity, and that, metaphorically speaking, is what Obama would like us all to start doing.

....The scarcity of resources to pay for expensive medical procedures will only increase under a plan to extend medical benefits at federal expense to the 47 million Americans who lack health insurance. So why not save billions of dollars by killing off our own unproductive oldsters and terminal patients, or — since we aren't likely to do that outright in this, the 21st century — why not simply ensure that they die faster by denying them costly medical care?

Setting aside the illogical hysteria of this entire piece, somebody really needs to point out toCharlotte Allen that other countries all over the world are able to deliver better outcomes at less cost to all their people than we are. She doesn't seem to have read even the most rudimentary primer on what health care reform is supposed to accomplish.

But the really mindboggling part is this, which Kevin describes here:

Most weirdly of all, though, at the end of the piece the conservative Charlotte Allen herself seems to suggest that Medicare should be funded with infinite amounts of money and there should never be any restriction on how it's spent. Either that or she doesn't realize that Medicare is the way most old people in America get medical care. Or that Medicare is a government program. Or something. I can't really make sense out of it.

Seriously, it's the oddest thing. Read it for yourself.

This is why Republicans are irrelevant to the health care debate and everyone is only concentrating on Democrats. If any of them were even slightly coherent on the subject, there would be a grave danger of them actually impacting legislation. But at this point they are just babbling about ice floes and tax credits and the corporate Democrats have to cary the insurance companies' water all by themselves. It's clarifying, but amazing nonetheless.

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digby 7/06/2009 06:00:00 PM |

 
Health Care, Lobbyists and Journalism

by dday

Happy to be on the opposing side of a lobbyist/access scandal rather than in the middle of it, today the Washington Post writes about the hundreds of former politicians and staffers-turned-lobbyists for the health care industry, fighting tooth and nail against systemic reform.

The nation's largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records.

The tactic is so widespread that three of every four major health-care firms have at least one former insider on their lobbying payrolls, according to The Washington Post's analysis.

Did that analysis come from the newsroom or the guest list for one of Katherine Weymouth's salons?

Nearly half of the insiders previously worked for the key committees and lawmakers, including Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), debating whether to adopt a public insurance option opposed by major industry groups. At least 10 others have been members of Congress, such as former House majority leaders Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) and Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), both of whom represent a New Jersey pharmaceutical firm.

The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records. And even in a city where lobbying is a part of life, the scale of the effort has drawn attention. For example, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) doubled its spending to nearly $7 million in the first quarter of 2009, followed by Pfizer, with more than $6 million.

This has turned lobbying sessions in the major committees into office reunions, where former staffer get together with the politicians for whom they once worked. It begs the question about those pay-to-play sessions: why would any health care company want to pay up to $250,000 for access to the lawmakers making the biggest decisions on health care, when they all have people on their lobbying staff who already know how that lawmaker takes their coffee, and can surely use the knowledge gained through work experience on Capitol Hill to further their employer's agenda? Aside from the unseemliness of it all, the "salon" idea seems like another bad business model.

The use of insiders who move from politics to K Street has a damaging effect on the whole debate, using the journalist/source model as an interesting parallel:

Suppressing your instinct to trust a former chief of staff and legislative director is a hard thing to do. Refusing to return the calls of favored staffers and colleagues goes against every social grain in our bodies. It should be easy to separate professional responsibilities and personal feelings. But it isn't.

Journalists consistently use this to our advantage: When you hear that someone is well-sourced, it generally means they have good personal relationships that make it more likely that insiders will tell them things. A big part of the job is leveraging social pressures to gain access to protected information. And, somewhat amazingly, it works. But the relationship between a journalist and a longtime source is nothing compared to the relationship between a senator and a longtime staffer. One of the secrets about lobbying in Washington is that money doesn't buy access. It buys people who already have access. And that makes it much more insidious.

Relating this to the pay-for-play scheme, I think we can surmise why corporate insiders would use the media as a pass-through for access, whether it's The Washington Post or The Atlantic (that's quite a good article from Zachary Roth about their long history of corporate-sponsored "salons"). The question lies with who is being bought - the politicians, the lobbyists, or the media itself. I would argue the latter. By facilitating the relationship, they become compromised within it. They start to hedge a bit. They adopt a worldview that aligns pretty perfectly with the forces of the status quo on which they are supposed to report. They interweave themselves into the system and become partners within it. And the establishment thus speaks with one voice.


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dday 7/06/2009 04:00:00 PM |

 
Diagramming Disintegration

by digby

If you are in the mood for a really entertaining and insightful look at the current state of conservatism, give yourself a treat and click over to at Batocchio at Vagabond Scholar and read his post and the Venn Diagrams he's done to illustrate it.

Here's just one little excerpt:

This isn't drawn exactly to scale, and it's flawed of course, but I think it's roughly accurate. Most pundits are hacks, but if we broaden out to the general population, we find people of good faith in addition to the professional hacks, their amateur brethren, and the true zealots. The circles represent a kind of compassion-asshole continuum of character and worldview: Cloistered-Indifferent-Callous-Spiteful-Evil. The diamonds represent a continuum of knowledge and wisdom: Thoughtful-Mistaken-Ignorant-Zealous-Devious. This latter continuum loops somewhat, in that both the thoughtful and the devious understand to some degree how the world actually works, but the devious are bent on exploiting that, with little to no concern about who's hurt in the process.

The different strains of conservatism can be broken down several different ways, but Drew Westen has a pretty good set of five: libertarian conservatism, social conservatism, fiscal conservatism, national security conservatism, and an unnamed strain that's basically... bigotry. Authoritarianism is also an important dynamic, and the full dishonesty, idiocy and lethality of the neocons can't be underestimated (see the "Persistence" post for more).

Read the whole thing. It's just great, especially as we watch one GOP circus sideshow after another.


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digby 7/06/2009 02:00:00 PM |

 
They Can Dish It Out

by digby


I really don't want to write another word about Sarah Palin, but unfortunately people keep saying such stupid things there's no escaping it. Take this for instance from Jonah Goldberg, for example:

I'm getting a lot of indignant left-wing e-mail for my statement yesterday re Palin: "It certainly is true that nobody in public life in recent memory has been as shabbily treated as she has."

The gist of the complaints is that some right-wingers said mean things about Hillary Clinton or Janet Reno or some such. And it's true, some mean and unfair things were said about those folks. But I think a lot of these lefties seem oblivious to the fact that the New York Times, the news networks (minus Fox), David Letterman, et al aren't supposed to be scored as partisan outlets, but they are. And they've gone after Palin and her family in ways that I think are particularly egregious. Complaining about Richard Mellon Scaife's treatment of the Clintons is perfectly fair. But comparing it to the mainstream and "respectable" assaults on Palin is not persuasive.

It's mind boggling, isn't it? First, there's the absolutely insane assertion that the mainstream press was easier on Clinton than they've been on Palin, closely followed by his admission that Fox is a partisan outfit but that the New York Times isn't, which has to have Brent Bozell looking for pistol right about now.

But let's set those two astonishing assertions aside and just look at one outlet, shall we? And we won't even go back to the 90s when Clinton was regularly excoriated by the right wing as a murderer while the mainstream merely portrayed her a corrupt, manipulative harpy who refused to behave like a proper woman.

We'll just go back to last year instead:

National Review Online: In a sentence, what is "the truth about Hillary"?

Edward Klein:Hillary is not a victim (not of sexism, not of her husband, and certainly not of this book); she’s not a moderate (despite her effort to re-brand herself in the Senate). Even my sources on the left admit she’s positioning herself as a victim and moderate in order to win the White House.

NRO: Matt Drudge has highlighted the "rape" claim in your book. Which, to be upfront here, I thought was a terrible story to be highlighting, about a child and her parents. Why on earth would you put such a terrible story in your book? — that looks to be flimsily sourced at that. But even if it wasn’t — why tell it?

Klein: Let's set the record straight here. Actually, I don't make that claim in the book. I included the story about their 1979 trip to Bermuda because Hillary herself brings it up and spins it in her own book as an example of their supposedly romantic marriage. The point of the story is that my source, who was with the Clintons in Bermuda and quoted Bill’s boastful remarks to me, was stunned when Bill phoned him a few months later and told him he just learned of Hillary's pregnancy by reading about it in the newspaper! Those who read the book will see this is hardly a “rape story” — rather it's yet another example of a bizarre political union where a pregnancy is leaked to the largest newspaper in the state and treated as political gain rather than shared privately as a couple.

NRO: You do relay Bill Clinton claiming he was going off to rape his wife, however — and then a morning-after report that suggests that might, in fact, have happened. Surely you see how that would become the "rape chapter" of the book — and maybe the most obvious headline from the book? Might it have been more trouble than it was worth simply to relay that the Clintons have a "bizarre" relationship? Surely there are more polite examples.

Klein: Here's why it's not a rape claim: I don’t imply the source was in the room with the Clintons, for all my source knows they could have had a massive fight and then reconciled. My source doesn’t speculate, I don’t speculate. This whole story, "the rape story" as it’s being called by others, speaks more to how the Clintons communicate, their bizarre relationship. And, of course, the whole point of the story is how she leaked her pregnancy to the press — didn't talk about it with her husband first.

NRO: Do you think more is being made out of some of the "dirt" — the more salacious gossipy stuff in your book — than should be?

Klein: The Truth About Hillary is a comprehensive biography, encompassing both her personal and political life. Vanity Fair chose to excerpt a part of the book about political life, while other news sources have chosen to focus on the personal. My book is much broader than any representation that has appeared in the media so far.

NRO: How many times do you use the word "lesbian" in your book? Why point out she had friends who were lesbians? Do we need to go there?

Klein: Hillary’s politics were shaped by the culture of radical feminism and lesbianism at Wellesley College in the 1960s. This is paramount in exploring the political life of Hillary Clinton.

How could someone write a comprehensive biography of Hillary Clinton without investigating the rumors that have long circulated about her? I've gone further than any other journalist in exploring the question of her sexuality, which is often the first thing people wonder about her: Is she misrepresenting herself as a doting wife to Bill Clinton? How can she stand his chronic infidelity?

As for the number of times the word appears in the book, I don't know. But I'm sure there are some in the Clinton campaign counting right now.

NRO: One more sex thing. You write: "Hillary Clinton only had herself to blame for the talk about her sex life." Can there ever really be a good reason for this, never mind in her case?

Klein: The Clintons themselves made sex an integral part of our national political discourse at the turn of the century. There’s no way of getting around sex when it comes to the Clintons.

My favorite thing about that interview is that all this dirt came out in the very first questions, as the interviewer (Kathryn Lopez) pretended to be "troubled" by it all. It's such a stereotypical "Clinton story" you almost have to laugh.

Palin has certainly had her share of unfair stories written and said about her, some of it based on gender. But the idea that Hillary got off easily compared to her is totally absurd --- Clinton has been the target of the mainstream press and the right wing noise machine for almost two decades and the things that have been said about her so vile and so outrageous that it's a testament to her guts and her stamina that she managed to become one of the most important politicians in American life in spite of it. Even her legions of enemies have to give her grudging respect at this point. Palin has a long, long way to go before she can claim to be in the same league --- in more ways than one.


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digby 7/06/2009 11:30:00 AM |

 
The Lessons Of Robert McNamara

by dday

Robert McNamara died today. McNamara was a smart guy, a business type who rose up through the ranks to run the Ford Motor Company after working at the Pentagon during the firebombing of Tokyo. Kennedy pulled a reluctant McNamara out of Detroit and back to the Pentagon in 1960, and he sought to manage it with corporate precision. But this precise structure and its focus on measurements crashed against the shoals of the Vietnam War. Night after night, McNamara would stand before the press in his rimless glasses, looking very much like Don Rumsfeld would decades later, talking of body counts and targeted airstrikes and victory, disassociated almost completely from the realities of the ground and the futility of the enterprise. If you've seen "The Fog of War" you know that the pressure certainly got to McNamara, and he understood his mistakes after the fact (though he never took full responsibility for them). He directed subordinates to write the study that would eventually become The Pentagon Papers, hoping that future generations would avoid the pitfalls that he and his colleagues did in Vietnam.

Part of the framing of "The Fog of War" as well as one of McNamara's later books was the 11 causes and lessons that he listed coming out of Vietnam. It's worth listing them here again.

We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.

We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience. We saw in them a thirst for – and a determination to fight for — freedom and democracy. We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.

We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values….

Our misjudgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders….No Southeast Asian [experts] existed for senior officials to consult when making decisions on Vietnam.

We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine in confronting unconventional, highly motivated people’s movements. We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to …winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.

We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.

After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did….We had not prepared the public to understand the complex events we faced…confront[ing] uncharted seas and an alien environment. A nation’s deepest strength lies not in its military prowess, bur rather in the unity of its people. We failed to maintain it.

We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.

We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action — other than in response to direct threats to our own national security – should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.

We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.

…We thus failed to analyze and debate our actions in Southeast Asia - our objectives, the risks and costs of alternative ways of dealing with them, and the necessity of changing course when failure was clear….

If this isn't an accusatory note toward the practitioners of American foreign policy during the entire post-war period up through today, I don't know what is. And although I'd like to think that some statesman could learn from these lessons and take America off such a self-destructive course, given the nature of the people who rise to power in this country I don't know if that's possible. Certainly McNamara's lessons represent the experience of a man who lived in the crucible and at least appears to have judged his actions against some moral set of precepts. But the peculiar dynamics of the political world, the need to act tough in foreign policy, the seeming inability for leaders to step outside themselves and view things through the lens of others, the narrow and incomplete renderings of history often at work, and of course the lure of money and power and the industry of war, resist politicians coming to any of these conclusions in the moment. We have so frequently bungled into conflicts, presuming our role in them when the other participants see it differently, making shortcuts while rationalizing ourselves as heroic, changing the rules if found to violate them, and controlling the message of moral rectitude rather than the actions. I find these cautions from McNamara to be crucially important, but even in my most optimistic moments I don't believe America is even wired to live up to them. Just read the post below for proof.

This is from The Fog of War, with McNamara talking about the firebombing of Tokyo in World War II:

Curtis LeMay said, “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.” And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals.... But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

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dday 7/06/2009 09:30:00 AM |

 
Green Light

by digby

Yesterday, I described Joe Biden's comments about Israel's sovereign right to bomb Iran on Stephanopoulos as "startling" and wondered why everyone seemed so sanguine about what he said. There wasn't any walk back that I could discern and the people I respect on this issue didn't seem to be concerned, so I figured I was off base.

Today, Marc Lynch illuminates the situation saying that regardless of what Biden meant, the middle east is taking the statement as a green light to Israel, which is bad:

UPDATE: a senior White House source tells me that this is being misreported, and points me to this from White House spokesman Tommy Vietor:

"The Vice President refused to engage hypotheticals, and he made clear that our policy has not changed. Our friends and allies, including Israel, know that the President believes that now is the time to explore direct diplomatic options, as with the P5+1."

Good. This needs aggressive pushback though, because the regional media is overwhelmingly reporting the 'green light' headline interpretation of Biden's remark. Time to flex those public diplomacy and strategic communications muscles, folks...

LAST UPDATE (Monday morning): a variety of comments from assorted well-placed worthies have come my way over the last day, some online and others privately. Most suggest that Biden's comments were not meant to change U.S. policy, and that if anything he meant to distance the U.S. from any Israeli strike (though a few speculate that it was actually meant to strengthen the U.S. bargaining position ahead of the Moscow talks). If that's the case, then it is only that much more important to repeat that his comments are being nigh-universally presented in the Middle Eastern media (Israeli and Arab, at least) as a "green light." If that wasn't the intended signal, then the administration needs to recognize that its signaling has gone awry and clear it up before it's too late...

Read the whole post if you are interested in this subject. It's possible that this is what they intended or that Biden himself just misspoke, but it sounds as though this may have been a line they wanted him to give but they misjudged the reaction. (Or maybe not --- it's hard to tell.)

One thing is clear --- it's a very weird thing to have a Vice President who is obviously very close to the president and with a wide ranging portfolio, be someone who has such a history of misspeaking that when he makes foreign policy pronouncements nobody knows if he's carrying an official line. As I wrote yesterday, it's possible that they've decided to use that to their advantage. It's also possible that he's just being Joe.

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digby 7/06/2009 08:15:00 AM |

Sunday, July 05, 2009

 
Krugman On Health Care Reform

by digby

Go 29 minutes in to see the interview. Interesting stuff:




Via The Big Picture

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digby 7/05/2009 09:30:00 PM |

 
Tea Service

by digby

I hate to say it, because it's so pathetic, but the tea party movement is actually finding a coherent theme that may just resonate over time, even though it is a perfect example of the rubes being useful idiots for the aristocrats:

Concerned about taxes, bailouts, government "pork," and rising deficits, thousands of Americans will spill out in cities from Atlanta to San Francisco this weekend, as part of a "Tea Party" movement that began earlier this year in protest of the economic stimulus bill.

The recent NY Times poll showed that by far the most important issue to Americans at the moment is the economy, followed by jobs and health care. Unfortunately, the problem with the economy isn't defined and neither is the solution, so the teabag message may very well speak to that broad concern for a lot of people.

But what's interesting is the the melding of the traditional populist messages with the usual elite obsessions with deficits. The bailouts have made that work and it could be quite potent if they can find a way to market it right. If the right can successfully meld concerns with bailouts for the rich with concerns for deficits --- which is actually another bailout for the rich --- they will have a message that serves their purposes grandly. They can blame the Democrats for failing to restore the economy by serving the wealthy (which, frankly, is true, but no less true of them, of course) while at the same time putting in place all the pieces necessary for their successors to also serve the wealthy. If they can wrap it up in a down home, grassroots "movement" package, all the better.


Update: There were lots of signs against cap and trade, as if any of these people have the slightest clue what that means to them or why they should care. Like other obscure pet wingnut slogans such as "tort reform" and "secret ballot," this one seems to have really captured their imagination.

And then there's this funny person who apparently thinks he's really getting off a zinger:



It's possible that it's an ironic infiltrator, but I doubt it. These people really do believe Sweden is a hellhole.


Update: Apparently, this lovely stuff was also heavily featured again, so it looks like we're in no danger of having the teabaggers being taken too seriously any time soon.

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digby 7/05/2009 05:00:00 PM |

 
Biden Time

by digby

Is it just me or were Joe Biden's comments on Stephanpoulos this morning somewhat ... uhm ... startling?

Plunging squarely into one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. suggested on Sunday that the United States would not stand in the way of Israeli military action aimed at the Iranian nuclear program.

The United States, Mr. Biden said in an interview broadcast on ABC’s “This Week,” “cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do.”

"Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else," he said, in an interview taped in Baghdad at the end of a visit there.

The remarks went beyond at least the spirit of any public utterances by President Barack Obama, who has said that diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program should be given to the end of the year. But the president has also said that he is “not reconciled” to the possibility of Iran possessing a nuclear weapon — a goal Tehran denies.

Mr. Biden’s comments came at a particularly sensitive time, amid the continuing tumult over the disputed Iranian elections, and seemed to risk handing a besieged President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a new tool with which to fan nationalist sentiments in Iran.

What was not immediately clear was whether Mr. Biden, who has a long-standing reputation for speaking volubly — and sometimes going too far in the heat of the moment — was sending an officially sanctioned message.

I haven't heard any outcry about this so far, so perhaps I'm just not up to speed on the latest thinking. Does this seem like a good idea to anyone at this particular moment? The biggest headline on the front page of the NY Times today was "Leading Clerics Defy Ayatollah on Disputed Iran Election" Does this strike you as a good moment for the US to be talking about Israel bombing the place?

In other news, in answer to a question about whether the stimulus was adequate, Biden also said that everyone had misread how bad the economy was back in January, which I think is nonsense. Everyone knew that the economy was in very, very deep trouble. It was politics that made the stimulus inadequate, not imperfect knowledge.

I understand why he would say it, but I don't think it rings true considering all the talk about the "worst economy since the Great Depression" at the time. Plus, I think it's a weak play. They knew that even the best stimulus would take time to kick in --- they said so then --- so they should just stick to their guns. "No one could have predicted" excuses are lame in most cases, but especially lame in this one.

It would be interesting to know if Biden is on message or if he did his usual free association. And I suppose it's always possible that the administration has begun to use his reputation for freelancing to get out messages they don't necessarily want to officially endorse. You always get the feeling that Biden is actually blurting out truths that nobody else wants to take credit for so maybe they are putting that to work for them.

(I'm still not sure why anyone would think that chattering about Israel's sovereign right to bomb Iran at this particular moment is a good idea, but maybe they think this will help lower the temperature somehow?)

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digby 7/05/2009 01:00:00 PM |

 
The Village Is Very Sorry For Being The Village

by dday

In the Apology of the Week (all respect to Harry Shearer), Katherine Weymouth requests a mea culpa for trying to profit off of connecting insiders in government to the lobby community.

So what happened? Like other media companies, The Post hosts conferences and live events that bring together journalists, government officials and other leaders for discussions of important topics. These events make news and inform their audiences. We had planned to extend this business to include smaller gatherings, a practice that has become common at other media companies.

From the outset, we laid down firm parameters to ensure that these events would be consistent with The Post's values. If the events were to be sponsored by other companies, everything would be at arm's length -- sponsors would have no control over the content of the discussions, and no special access to our journalists.

If our reporters were to participate, there would be no limits on what they could ask. They would have full access to participants and be able to use any information or ideas to further their knowledge and understanding of any issues under discussion. They would not be asked to invite other participants and would serve only as moderators.

When the flier promoting our first planned event to potential sponsors was released, it overstepped all these lines. Neither I nor anyone in our news department would have approved any event such as the flier described.

The shorter version of this pretty much tracks with my assessment at the time the scandal broke and Weymouth cancelled the dinner: "Now the Post can go back to being influenced by lobbyists and setting conventional wisdom in Washington without all that dirty money changing hands."

The only difference between this proposed salon and the other "conferences and live events that bring together journalists, government officials and other leaders for discussions of important topics" is that the proceeds went more directly into the pockets of the Post in this case. As Marcy Wheeler notes, Weymouth never disavows the actual content of the salons or the even the exchange of money (as long as it's indirect) to set up meetings between lobbyists and politicians - just the fact that this particular salon would be off-the-record.

I don't suspect for a second that lobbyists have much trouble finding their way into the upper echelons of Washington to speak their peace, anyway. The Washington Post simply wanted to charge for drinks to this particular cocktail party. Other than that, they cannot imagine how any of this could be a problem.

One can hardly blame a struggling newspaper wanting to open up another revenue stream. The problem lies in the barely-discernible difference between essentially a pay-to-play scheme and the normal social and political transactions in Washington.


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dday 7/05/2009 12:15:00 PM |

 
The New Deaniacs

by digby


David Broder is so wedded to the idea of bipartisanship that he's reduced to asserting that begging and borrowing to get eight House Republicans to vote for the cap and trade bill and compromising the economic recovery to get two Republican Senators to vote for the stimulus is a sign that reaching out to the other party is the best way to ensure that legislation is juuust right.

We don't know yet just how much watering down the cap and trade bill will affect its efficacy, but we are already seeing what those compromises with the ladies from Maine have added up to on the stimulus: the money they insisted be cut was mostly money that would have gone to the states to mitigate much of the disasters that are about to hit. As many people said at the time, the stimulus was too small and they will probably need to try to take another bite of the apple, a most daunting task --- all because President Collins decided on some arbitrary number for no good reason other than to please David Broder.

But in fairness, these compromises weren't actually with the ladies from Maine or indeed anyone who is formally affiliated with the Republican party. The true "leadership" on this came from Presidents Nelson and Lieberman and their Democratic cohorts in the Broder Fan Club. Bipartisanship in 2009 has absolutely nothing to do with the political sideshow formerly known as the Republican party. I don't know why he's even talking about them. But he needn't fear that the DFHs have come to town and are trashing the place: there are more than a handful of timorous, corporate owned Democrats who will make sure that things don't get out of hand.

The congress has moved a tiny bit to the left from where it was, which is to say that it is still a deeply conservative institution, by tradition, process, class and ideology. The Dean can sleep well at night knowing that his precious bipartisanship is safe in the hands of the New Deaniacs of the Democratic Party.


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digby 7/05/2009 11:00:00 AM |

 
Over There

by digby

I wrote an unpopular post last week about health care systems overseas in an attempt to show that there are different ways to successfully deliver universal health care to the US. Jonathan Cohn, a certified health care wonk, has written a much better article on the same subject for the Boston Globe which some of you may find more persuasive:

But no serious politician is talking about recreating either the British or the Canadian system here. The British have truly “socialized medicine,” in which the government directly employs most doctors. The Canadians have one of the world’s most centralized “single-payer” systems, in which the government insures everybody directly and private insurance has virtually no role. A better understanding for how universal healthcare might work in America would come from other countries - countries whose insurance architecture and medical cultures more closely resemble the framework we’d likely create here.

Last year, I had the opportunity to spend time researching two of these countries: France and the Netherlands. Neither country gets the attention that Canada and England do. That might be because English isn’t their language. Or it might be because they don’t fit the negative stereotypes of life in countries where government is more directly involved in medical care.

Over the course of a month, I spoke to just about everybody I could find who might know something about these healthcare systems: Elected officials, industry leaders, scholars - plus, of course, doctors and patients. And sure enough, I heard some complaints. Dutch doctors, for example, thought they had too much paperwork. French public health experts thought patients with chronic disease weren’t getting the kind of sustained, coordinated medical care that they needed.

But in the course of a few dozen lengthy interviews, not once did I encounter an interview subject who wanted to trade places with an American. And it was easy enough to see why. People in these countries were getting precisely what most Americans say they want: Timely, quality care. Physicians felt free to practice medicine the way they wanted; companies got to concentrate on their lines of business, rather than develop expertise in managing health benefits. But, in contrast with the US, everybody had insurance. The papers weren’t filled with stories of people going bankrupt or skipping medical care because they couldn’t afford to pay their bills. And they did all this while paying substantially less, overall, than we do.

Again, I'm not saying that what we are going to end up with will be as good as these systems. I have no idea at this point what the final legislation will look like and anyone who says they do is mistaken. All I'm saying is that it's possible. There are systems around the world that do a better job of covering everyone for less money and equal or better outcomes that are not designed like the English or Canadian models. It can be done. Whether we can do it is another story.



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digby 7/05/2009 09:15:00 AM |