Thieving Monkeys Blog

The End

2006-09-05T03:03:00.000-07:00

The end is just a beginning. In order to remain anonymous, I can't disclose the reason for the ending of this blog. But it is ending and today the ending is official. I have ended this blog with regret, but it must end. I am now in an official position. The Thieving Monkeys was a one-man operation and is now dead. Fare thee well, thievingmonkeys, long live the thieving monkeys! That is all...

Hilary's Missing Link

2006-08-04T23:12:00.000-07:00

"Mrs. Clinton has sought to cast her position on Iraq as part of a
broader and consistent approach to foreign policy and the use of
military force. She subscribes, in her words, to a doctrine of
“sensible internationalism, pragmatic internationalism” — a philosophy
that essentially calls for military intervention when it has broad
global support and is all but certain to succeed." NY Times, August 5, 2006, "Clinton Dodges Political Peril for War Vote"

While the NY Times article on the differences between Sen. Clinton and Sen. Lieberman's defense of their votes for the Iraq war details many reasons for why Hilary has not seen the force of the war's opposition, despite her support of it, the quote above baffles me. She defends her vote for war with a doctrine that demands "broad global support and is all but certain to succeed". This condition is only met by the Bush rhetoric and a complete blindness towards what the data showed. The war was unpopular worldwide and the U.S. went in largely on its own because the U.N. Security Council wanted to make sure that the existence of WMD in Iraq was true (the causus belli given initially by Bush). While Bush claimed many international coalition partners, most were small countries with token contributions and most of the troops were not involved until well after the initial invasion. Second, I do not understand how anyone could claim that the war in Iraq was "all but certain to succeed". The Middle Eastern region is one rife with divisions, between Israel and Arabs (and Persians), between Arabs and Persians, between Shia and Sunni Muslims, and between the many countries. The Middle East has become the powder keg of the world, just as the Balkans played that role in Europe in the 20th century (not to downplay the conflicts in the Middle East during the 20th century). For one to act based on the doctrine she says she acted upon, the best move would have been to oppose the use of force resolution unless the weapons inspectors found WMD or the U.N. Security Council authorized military force, which would have been accompanied almost certainly by broad global support. The latter pillar of the doctrine (the mission being "all but certain to succeed") fails in almost all cases of supporting war in the Middle East. The region is so complicated that only the gravest crises, not American whim, are almost certain to be unsuccessful without a clear plan and international mandate. Even with a mandate, the job is difficult. Without a mandate, the U.S. should not have invaded Iraq and should have been very, very hesitant to do so even with broad global support and an international mandate. Extricating U.S. troops as quickly as possible should be the highest priority for American national security and a timetable and a plan for internationalizing the mitigation of the damage caused by the U.S invasion should accompany this extrication.

Lieberman: Down and Out

2006-08-02T23:39:00.000-07:00

There is a fascinating NY Times article about the Lieberman-Lamont race in Connecticut that suggests a move away from a rightist Democratic model of the Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC) and towards a more progressive face for the Democratic Party. Ned Lamont is even or ahead of Joe Lieberman in the primaries in many polls. I have been either neutral or opposed to Sen. Lieberman since he was the Vice Presidential candidate in 2000 because he brings the rightward movement of the Democratic party into focus for all its flaws: corporate whoring, religious pandering (Lieberman has been unapologetic about being a religious demagogue focusing on being ultra-religious for the sake of political appearances) and pandering to the right-wng poltics that have unfortunately dominated the country in the past 6 years (26 if you go back to Reagan's election as president). While Ned Lamont is a wealthy corporate figure (he was a cable tv executive), the issues he is focused on are central to retaking the working-class: the economy, jobs, the minimum wage and more than anything for the press, ending the war in Iraq which has most affected the working class (the rich get tax cuts, the working-class deal with the loss of their children in Baghdad). It is about time the Democrats move towards their natural base, the working class.

Brookings study

2006-07-27T22:29:00.000-07:00

A note on my post on the Brookings Institution paper on reducing poverty from the expenditure side, there is a Barbara Ehrenreich article on Alternet summarizing the article very well.

Israeli Deception

2006-07-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

Although Israel declared at the start of the bombing of Lebanon that it would not seek to occupy parts of Lebanon, its actions have changed. On the day when Israel "accidentally" bombed the U.N. monitors (accidentally like the U.S. accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade because of 'bad maps'), they also announced that they would occupy parts of Lebanon, although according to the NY Times, less than they occupied for 22 years until 2000. While Israel claimed to occupy it "until an international force could take its place," it is unclear whether the U.S. will allow an internation force to step in. The U.N. has had monitors in southern Lebanon for decades, but these forces have not had the power to enforce a ceasefire and the Bush administration doesn't seem willing to step in and support one. While they officially, according to their vague statements, support a ceasefire, in actuality, they do not support an unconditional ceasefire, but rather one that justifies the Israeli human rights violations (e.g. retribution on civilian populations). Until the Bush administration grows morals and cojones enough to force an immediate, unconditional ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah, the Bush administration is morally responsible for every civilian death on both sides of the current war. Furthermore, while the Bush administration supported the Lebanese government in expelling the Syrians after the assassination of Rafik Hariri (the right move), they are unwilling to be a neutral broker when Israel has invaded Lebanon. This is callous and unjust and makes the U.S. hypocrites. The Lebanese Army is not fighting Israel and in fact, the Lebanese government that the Bush administration loved so few months ago has become destabilized by Hizbollah's actions. If nothing else, the administration should show some consistency by pushing for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah in order to preserve the Lebanese government and then work for a negotiated settlement demilitarizing Hizbollah, expelling Israel from the territory they are occupying and settling the long-standing differences between Israel and Lebanon (primarily over the Israeli-occupied and Lebanese-claimed Sheba Farms area.

Democrats take a step forward

2006-07-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

Several Democratic House members have proposed the PROGRESS Act, an act designed to reduce America's energy consumption. Most of what the bill would do would be create regional energy strategies, help fund research into alternative-fuel-powered cars, increase the biofuels infrastructure (which increases the economic viability of biofuels) and promotes public transit and commuter rail. These are laudable goals (and I am proud that my local Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) is one of the sponsors, along with Steny H. Hoyer (MD), Rep. John Dingell (MI), Rep. Jim Oberstar, Rep. Mark Udall (CO), Rep. Stephanie Herseth
(SD), Rep. Adam Schiff, and Rep. Rush Holt), which will create long-term benefits to the economy while lowering energy consumption. What is missing, unfortunately, are short-term plans to reduce energy use. The two biggest policies that could be implemented immediately to reduce energy use would be to increase the CAFE standards (governing average fuel economy across an entire company's line of automobiles) and to increase the gas tax by $0.50 per gallon. The former would be more politically acceptable, as the sales of large, gas-guzzlers has fallen (although the big automobile manufacturers would fight it), and more equitable in spreading the costs. The latter would be effective (raising gas prices higher would increase pain, particularly for low- and moderate-income people who have not seen wages rise much in the past 5 years), but could be most effectively implemented by targeted tax credits to these income groups and not increasing the tax, but committing to a price floor at $3.00 per gallon. The only major cost of implementation would be to ensure that oil companies do not continue to charge $3.00 per gallon if oil prices fall. Both of these programs will bring much more short-term energy reduction, but also be complementary with the PROGRESS Act by encouraging people to switch to alternative fuels and use public transportation more often instead of driving. While I commend the sponsors of the PROGRESS Act, if they want the act to be more effective in the short-term the two policies I outlined above would be essential.

Union rights in the crosshairs

2006-07-21T12:49:00.000-07:00

The Economic Policy Institute has a paper, "Supervisor in name only" that highlights the Kentucky River cases, which, depending on the outcome, could result in millions of workers with no responsibility for hiring, firing and disciplinary actions being classified as supervisors and therefore "be denied the right to form unions or engage in collective bargaining". The case is a test of how anti-labor the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has become after 6 years of Bush. Examples of some of the occupations where the ruling has the power to affect includes Registered Nurses, Cooks, Secretaries, and even Chemistry Teachers, hardly jobs expected to have significant supervisory roles as they are currently thought of under the National Labor Relations Act. In fact, the act defines supervisors as:

Any individual having authority, in the interest of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action, if in connection with the foregoing the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment. (29 USC 152 (11))

This case could help put the nail in the coffin of organized labor, something the Republican party and the business interests which fund it have dreamed about for a long time. If the NLRB has any decency and respect for labor unions and the fundamental right of workers to unionize, it will uphold the rights of nurses, chemistry teachers, cooks and many other non-supervisory workers to unionize and overturn a bogus attempt by anti-labor business interests to subvert the intent of the National Labor Relations Act.

Reducing Poverty on the Household Expenditure Side

2006-07-19T23:50:00.000-07:00

There is a great Brookings Institution report by Matt Fellowes, "From Poverty, Opportunity," that highlights many ways in which poverty can be reduced by helping even out the costs faced by low-income families and individuals with higher-income families and individuals. The report starts by identifying the key areas on the expenditure side where those with low-incomes are charged more than those with higher incomes: morgages and house insurance, car payments and insurance, short-term lending, appliance purchases and groceries. He systimatically goes through each area detailing how lower-income people are charged more than higher-income people, for example, by the prevalence of payday lenders in lower-income areas, whereas higher-income people are more likely to use a bank. Furthermore, much of the pricing difference in the insurance market is due to murky and non-existent insurance disclosure and reporting requirements. Beyond these, there are five areas where local policymakers can help reduce costs to lower-income people:

Alert business of opportunity - There is a tremendous area for companies to add consumers if they enter low-income neighborhoods. Many have been hesitant because of higher actual and perceived risks. However, there are many ways in which local governments can facilitate their entry, particularly by restricting the growth of the exploitative loan/rent-to-own companies in lower-income neighborhoods
Eliminate unscrupulous businesses and high-fee/interest rate lending institutions - Many state and local governments have capped the rates of interest and fees payday loan, auto title loan and check-cashing companies can charge. Other governments have either banned them entirely or issued a moratorium on issuing licenses for these companies. With regards to rent-to-own stores, many states and localities have restricted the interest and fees to a percentage of the total worth of the item being purchased.
Encourage companies to develop products designed for low-income consumers that undercut payday loan institutions - With their tremendous financial resources, if banks open branches in low-income neighborhoods, they could increase their profitability by offering services that compete and undercut the existing payday loan companies and therefore reduce their presence and increase the experience of lower-income consumers with mainstream financial institutions, as well as saving consumers money.
Increase grocery store sizes in lower-income neighborhoods - The data show that smaller grocery stores, which are more likely to predominate lower-income neighborhoods, charge higher prices than larger stores. Often zoning regulations restricts their presence. In most areas, consumers want larger stores, but not supercenters like Wal-Mart. Therefore, policymakers can alter zoning regulations to allow larger grocery stores, while still restricting or preventing the growth of supercenters in these areas.
Assist low-income consumers in financial education and price comparison - The internet is a powerful tool for price comparison and the spread of information like financial education, both of which would allow lower-income consumers to save money on the necessities. If the internet is made available in lower-income areas for free with publicity about the areas in which consumers can compare prices and get financial education, the positive impact would be quick and meaningful.

This report demonstrates how a series of policy changes can reduce excess expenditure of lower-income consumers and free up resources to allow them more flexibility in terms of savings, which will help them increase their income in the long-term by increasing their skills and education, increasing their savings or allowing them to buy a car or a home. It is an invaluable report and although it's long (80 pages), it is very illuminating.

Executive Power Increased - The New Line-Item Veto

2006-07-19T21:49:00.000-07:00

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a new report analyzing the effect of a proposed new line-item veto that would increase executive power (while fixing the aspects of the 1996 line-item veto that caused it to be struck down in the courts). The proposed bill would allow the president to send four veto packages back to Congress to be voted upon with no amendments or filibusters. Since there are 11 appropriation bills passed each year, each veto packages would contain items from a number of spending bills. The president would have one year from when the bills are passed to veto line-items. Even if the Congress over-ruled the president's veto, the president could withhold funding for up to 45 days. If the veto was made in late August, for example, and the Congress voted upon the veto immediately (there is a 13 day maximum window from the veto until the vote), the President could withhold funds until after September 30, the end of the fiscal year, which would cancel the appropriations even though the Congress struck down the veto. Because the president has a year to make a veto package, he could use it to blackmail legislators on many unrelated issues by promising not to veto pork barrel legislation of a Congressman if he votes the president's way on another bill. One need only to recall the Congress holding the highway bill vote until after the vote on the Central American Free Trade Area (CAFTA) in order to pressure wavering Congressmen to vote the Administration's way. Furthermore, tax cuts are treated differently than spending. Spending can be vetoed in all cases, cannot be partially reduced and automatically reverts to deficit reduction. Tax cuts can only be vetoed if they are 'limited' in scope, defined by the Senate bill as applying to less than 100 people and by the House bill as applying to one individual or company. All other tax cuts are exempt from a veto and the determination of whether tax cuts are 'limited' is up to the Congress to decide. If the line-item veto is passed in this form, the executive branch would gain an immense amount of political leverage over the legislative branch, a point made by conservative columnist George Will (quoted in the CBPP report), "The line-item veto's primary effect might be political, and inimical to a core conservative value. It would aggravate an imbalance in our constitutional system that has been growing for seven decades: the expansion of executive power at the expense of the legislature." Furthermore, as Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute notes (again, quoted in the CBPP report) , "The larger reality is that this gives the president a great additional mischief-making capability, to pluck out items to punish lawmakers he doesn’t like, or to threaten individual lawmakers to get votes on other things, without having any noticeable impact on budget growth or restraint." The new line-item veto hurts the constitutional separation of powers, doesn't lead to spending restraint, particularly when pork projects are involved, and favors tax cuts over spending.

Tracking Tax Incentive Effectiveness, continued

2006-07-19T00:38:00.000-07:00

As I have looked through the database in Illinois, I have come across two possible problems with the system, one for which there is an easy remedy and one which appears somewhat intractable. The first is that companies are able to forecast their future employment increases. For example, looking at the first entry for Advance International, Inc., the company forecasted an increase in employment of 150 jobs but only 3 materialized (and at only $14,040 per year salary). In the final section of the report (available in pdf), the company reports the number of jobs it expects to create over the next year. For Advance International, Inc., the company expects to start 147 new employees on June 1, 2006 (at $14,040 average salary per year), exactly the amount needed to make up for their deficiency from the projected employment creation upon signing the agreement to receive tax credits. This allows companies to delay accountability by forecasting employment growth up to their "quota" for the next year. However, as long as the database remains available, the public can keep informed about the compliance of various companies with their agreements. In addition, to control the incentive to produce just enough employment to comply with agreements for awards, the governments may be able to extract higher promised employment increases in new tax credit agreements. The other problem, however, is not so easily solved. The problem is that state-by-state databases do nothing to diminish the inter-state competition for jobs and the tax credit shopping behavior of companies. Unless either the databases are shared between states before awarding new tax credits for companies (which could use threats of withholding future tax credits unless jobs are created), companies can still pit states against each other in the competition for jobs. States still need to not only account for whether jobs are moved within the state (like the Illinois system does), they need to assess whether the jobs are actually new jobs or are just jobs transferred from another state. This is a difficult problem because state government's primary goal is to demonstrate that they are bringing jobs into the state and the movement of jobs out of other states into the home state are not judged differently than newly created employment. $1 used to create a new job is far better money spent than $1 spent moving a job from Ohio to Oregon for the national economy. State tax credits should be focused on creating new employment, not moving jobs from one state to another. The state-to-state movement via tax cuts will only increase the power of companies to lead a race-to-the-bottom in terms of state taxes and leave all the states in a worse budgetary state. The best way to deal with this would be to not only ask whether the employment created is the result of moving jobs within a state, but also to require reporting on whether the jobs created are moving in from other states, rather than being created. The Illinois system benefits Illinois, but may harm Maryland. For the system to benefit America as a whole, it must also have a national reporting focus.

Tracking Tax Incentives Effectiveness

2006-07-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

The Oregon Center for Public Policy (OCPP) has a fascinating article (CenterPoints, July 2006) advocating the creation of a database that details the tax breaks given to companies, the job commitments the companies offer and the performance towards meeting these commitments, including the salary of the positions created. This type of database has already been created in Illinois and is called the State of Illinois Corporate Accountability database. For example, if you look the 2005 progress report for ISG Steel Group, the database shows that the company received an Enterprise Zone Expanded M&E Sales Tax Exemption for $158,364 and a Large Business Development Assistance Program award for $500,000 with the promise of creating 200 Technician jobs paying on average $38,556 per year. The report shows that not only were more Technician jobs (447) created, they were slightly higher paying on average ($39,995 per year), more Managerial, Administrative and Specialist jobs were created as well. While in this case, the company exceeded the projections, the database can also show when companies fall behind their commitments and allow the public the knowledge of this in detail. It is an excellent way to bring about corporate accountability for companies receiving tax breaks as well as accountability to the politicians responsible for giving tax credits. It is a way to use the internet to increase government accountability and should be adopted by every state.

Treasury Department Mid-Session Review Casts Doubt on Bush Claims that Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves

2006-07-18T22:16:00.000-07:00

“Some in Washington say we had to choose
between cutting taxes and cutting the deficit….Today’s numbers show that that
was a false choice. The economic growth fueled by tax relief has helped send
our tax revenues soaring. That’s what has happened.” --George W. Bush, July 11, 2006

While Bush claims that tax cuts have 'paid for themselves', the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) claims otherwise. Using projections from the Office of Management & Budget's mid-session review of the 2007, they point out that the increased revenue gained from the tax cuts under the most optimistic economic forecasts would be $29 billion. While this is a positive benefit from tax cuts, it is far short of the Joint Committee on Taxation's estimate for the cost of making the tax cuts permanent (not counting the costs already incurred or the costs of fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax): $314 billion. The Bush administration believes that they can issue hollow rhetoric that even ignores their own estimates of the effect of tax cuts. In fact, I believe that the CBPP estimates of tax revenue increases is overstated. Their estimate assumes that of the $146 billion increase in GDP in 2016, 20 percent of that will be collected in taxes. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) latest budget projections between 2007 and 2016 (pdf), federal government revenues will never reach 20 percent of GDP, ranging from a low of 17.5 percent in 2005 (actual data) to a projected high of 19.7 percent in 2016 with an average over the period of 18.9 percent. This is even probably an overestimate because CBO estimates do not include any estimates of cyclical economic fluctuations, which will probably dampen the levels of revenue (revenue falls when the economy slows or contracts).

Bush blocked review of NSA wiretapping program

2006-07-18T21:15:00.000-07:00

"The president decided that protecting the secrecy and security of the program requires that a strict limit be placed on the number of persons granted access to information about the program for non-operational reasons," --Alberto Gonzales, US Attorney General in Senate Judiary Committee testimony, July 18, 2006.

The revelation by AG Gonzales that Bush blocked the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) from investigating whether the NSA wiretapping program was legal for 'non-operational reasons' raises red flags for me. With the AG is not even claiming that the program was kept secret in order to protect its operations, I become even more suspicious that the administration knew the program was of dubious legality and therefore, in order to protect the President and the Republican Party from scrutiny that would arise upon the revalation of the program's existence, they limited knowledge of the program. Apparently, their fear was that the more exposure the program had among those who might question the necessity or legality of such a warrentless wiretapping program, the more likely it would be subject eventually to Congressional and judicial oversight. Of course, it could have just been the non-operational reason that the administration prefers to keep secrets and it is, in fact, their default.

Condi Rice Stalls

2006-07-18T17:42:00.000-07:00

Reuters reported a few hours ago that Condoleeza Rice had not made plans to travel to the Middle East, or even out of the country, until at least Friday. Reuters reports that:

U.N. sources confirmed Rice would meet Annan on Thursday, but in Washington, State Department officials said no final decision has been made on the timing or itinerary of any foreign travel she might make. An aide to Rice said she would not be making any international travel on Friday.

Further proof that the Administration has no handle on how to deal with the renewed fighting in the Middle East except to give Israel the thumbs up and blame Iran and Syria. In other related news, the wack-jobs at the Weekly Standard and Bill Kristol want the U.S. to get involved against Iran, Syria and Hezbollah

Middle East Disaster and Bush's Ineptitude

2006-07-17T21:35:00.000-07:00

Since Israel has started its excessive retribution against Lebanon (2 Israeli soldiers captured and 8 killed, versus 210 Lebanese killed, all but 14 of them civilians), it has highlighted the ineptitude of the Bush administration's foreign policy. With the Bush administration creating a quagmire in Iraq unnecessarily and entirely ignoring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict apart from a few thumbs up to Sharon (and now Olmert) for some violations of U.N. resolutions and the laws of war, the current situation was all but inevitable. Initially, Condoleeza Rice, US Secretary of State, frowned upon travelling to the Middle East to engage in shuttle diplomacy (defined as "the use of a third party to serve as an intermediary or mediator between two parties who do not talk directly").

Instead, the Bush administration was more focused on brunting the international furore created by Israeli over-reaction. On 'This Week with George Stephanopolous,' Rice was focused on the "root causes" of the violence:

"I'm certainly willing to play whatever role I'm needed to play," she [Rice] said. "We have to go at the root cause. It's fine to have a cessation of violence. We want to have a cessation of violence. We're worried about the escalating casualties on all sides, but unless we go to the fundamentals here, we're going to continue to have these spikes of violence in the Middle East as we have had for the past 30 years."

She seems unaware that Israel has begun widespread bombing of Lebanon, with a focus on civilian infrastructure like the Beiruit airport, government buildings and power plants along with "ports, roads, bridges, factories and petrol stations". This is not the time to deal with the root causes, rather it is a time for an emergency intervention aimed at ending the fighting. Until the Israeli bombing and Hezbollah rocket attacks end, there will be no way to deal with the root causes. The root causes should have been dealt with over the past 5 and a half years of the Bush administration when it was more focused on drawing America into an unnecessary war with Iraq. However, Rice tries to portray Bush as being involved in the crisis. According to Rice on 'This Week':

[She] described President Bush as "deeply engaged" in the Middle East crisis. "The president has spoke out clearly about Israel's right to defend itself," she said.

In essence, the initial reaction of the Bush administration to Israeli bombing of Lebanon was to unconditionally defend the move. Only in the face of continued European pressure has Bush finally agreed that maybe Rice should be sent and maybe there should be a ceasefire. Even on the latter point, however, he was deferential to the Israeli government frowning on the idea of a multilateral force to enforce a cease fire. It is absolutely despicable that a U.S. president can be so supportive of one side's violence in the Middle East. While past presidents have always favored the Israeli side, they were careful to do so while still maintaining an officially neutral position favoring negotiations and an end to the violence. Bush breaks that tradition by officially supporting Israel and opposing moves meant to end the violence and bring the two sides towards a diplomatic rather than military solution.

Dismal Jobs Numbers

2006-07-08T01:04:00.000-07:00

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly employment numbers today showing that only 121,000 jobs were added to the workforce in June. This is short of the 150,000-200,000 jobs that need to be created in order to keep up with growth of the labor force. However, the report starts off with two positive graphs showing unemployment dropping over the past 36 months while employment grows.

I was curious to see whether, using these 3 years (which were the best of the Bush presidency in terms of employment), employment and unemployment met the replacement rate (the rate at which jobs need to be created to keep pace with labor force growth). They were not, and the linked table (HTML) demonstrates that. Below I will discuss possible problems interpreting my analysis, but the fact is that the past 3 years have seen meager employment growth at the same time as the unemployment rate has failed to fall as much as possible. Had the economy grown by 175,000 jobs per month, the average value thought to be needed to keep up with population growth, the unemployment rate should be 3.5 percent and there should be an extra 1.28 million jobs. Even with a more modest assumption that the economy needs to generate 150,000 jobs per month to keep up with labor force growth, the unemployment rate would be 4.3 percent and there would be an extra 380,000 jobs. This is a 0.3 percent lower unemployment rate!

Now for the caveats. The main caveat is that my numbers will underestimate the unemployment level compared to the actual level. This is because I simply take the employment numbers in June 2003 and add 150,000 to it. If I had the capability, I would need to take into account that when employment growth is higher, the workforce will expand at a faster rate than when growth is lower. Because the extrapolations I measure are higher (175,000 and 150,000 per month versus 140,306), my values for employment are going to be high relative to the total labor force, for which I use the actual data. For example, my calculations suppose that with 175,000 jobs being created each month in the July 2003-June 2006 time frame, the unemployment rate will drop to 3.5 percent. In reality, with job growth of 175,000 workers per month, more job seekers are going to be looking for work and so the total labor force will increase more than it actually did, which would probably raise the unemployment rate to between 3.8 and 4.0 percent. However, the gains in total employment would make more people better off, and therefore increase the overall well-being. Therefore,
I think my estimates are still valid at showing that the economic policies which created the actual economic performance are sub-optimal to what is possible (and what actually occurred under the previous Democratic presidency). The rest of my caveats are more for the geeks and there isn't much that would interest the non-geeks and skipping it will not prejudice the overall conclusions. In order to calculate this, I used the seasonally adjusted private sector, non-farm employment number, the standard used by the BLS, calculated from the survey of enterprises (the Current
Employment Statistics survey, or CES). To calculate unemployment, I used the household survey (the Current Population Survey, or CPS). Because of the way these surveys are conducted, they sometimes differ on the level of unemployment, but the CPS is more frequently used. Because I had the private, non-farm employment numbers, I used the unemployment rate to calculate the private, non-farm unemployment numbers and therefore the total labor force (which is the employed plus unemployed populations).

The main thing to be gained by looking deeper by comparing the potential employment numbers with the actual numbers is that, whatever the political spin, the economy has underperformed over the past 3 years. Undoubtably, the picture would look far more bleak if the entire period from January 2001 to June 2006 were used. This compounded with the stagnation of wages for most workers (the minimum wage is at the lowest level in real terms since 1955) that the economic management of the Bush Administration begins to look quite dismal, at least for those who work for a living.

Whales 1, U.S. Navy & DoD 0

2006-07-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

A court has overruled the Department of Defense (DoD) and placed an injunction prohibiting the use of high-powered sonar by the Navy in their "war games" near Hawaii because of the damage it would cause to marine life, particularly whales, in the area. This is a positive ruling because the DoD had exempted the Navy from rules designed to protect marine life from the use of this sonar. It is another ruling against the executive branch's belief that it is free from all Congressional laws and judicial opinion.

Partisan waste of time

2006-06-27T20:06:00.000-07:00

Today, the Senate came the closest it has ever come to passing a useless constitutional amendment that would reduce American's freedom of expression in order to boost partisan support. The Flag Protection Amendment failed 66-34 (it needed a 2/3 majority to be sent to the state legislatures for ratification). While Orrin Hatch, the author of the Amendment claimed on his Senate website that:

This amendment would give back to Congress the power the Supreme Court usurped from it 17 years ago when five unelected justices rejected 200 years of statutes that protected Old Glory. This amendment wouldn’t change the Constitution, it would restore it to what it was before the Supreme Court altered it.

What it really does is strip constitutional protection to those who burn the American flag in protest. It is no more a significant issue (and as much a nationalistic sham) as Congressional moves to make English the only language used by the government. Both of these share the same dishonor associated with extremist rhetoric that anyone who is not a heterosexual English-speaker with blind loyalty to Republican government ideologies (and not too many years ago, also those who were not white and Protestant) are unpatriotic and deserving of punishment. This is the same type of belief that nurtures xenophobia, racism and facism and it scares me that 66 senators (including several supposed liberals) could express support for such a repugnant amendment.

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) summed up why the anti-flag burning amendment is wrong: "This is more than a case of misplaced priorities, it is playing politics with our most fundamental freedoms".

The Real & Ignored Crisis

2006-06-20T22:45:00.000-07:00

From BBC News
While Bush has led the U.S. into a quagmire a more pressing crisis has been brewing: North Korea. While it has managed to get in the headlines recently with the possible missle test that could reach Alaska, the Bush Administration has mishandled and ignored a country that has nuclear weapons to go after a country that didn't. But it's just another area of failure, both foreign and domestic, that litter the Bush presidency.

Pentagon a little behind the times

2006-06-20T20:22:00.000-07:00

Photo from BBC News

The BBC reports that the Pentagon document still classifies homosexuality as a mental disorder, despite the official American Psychological Association classification that explicitly state that homosexuality is not associated with mental illness:

Psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals agree that homosexuality is not an illness, mental disorder or an emotional problem. Over 35 years of objective, well-designed scientific research has shown that homosexuality, in and itself,is not associated with mental disorders or emotional or social problems. Homosexuality was once thought to be a mental illness because mental health professionals and society had biased information. In the past the studies of gay, lesbian and bihttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.photo.gif
Add Imagesexual people involved only those in therapy, thus biasing the resulting conclusions. When researchers examined data about these people who were not in therapy, the idea that homosexuality was a mental illness was quickly found to be untrue.
In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association confirmed the importance of the new, better designed research and removed homosexuality from the official manual that lists mental and emotional disorders. Two years later, the American Psychological Association passed a resolution supporting the removal. For more than 25 years, both associations have urged all mental health professionals to help dispel the stigma of mental illness that some people still associate with homosexual orientation.

23 years after the American Psychological Association realized their error in classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder, the Pentagon has not. Rep. Marty Meehan (D-MA) has started moving to force the Pentagon to change the document. It's well overdue.

Minimum Wage Lowest in 55 Years

2006-06-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

The Center on Budget & Policy Priorities (CBPP) produced a table calculating the purchasing power of the minimum wage between 1947 and 2006 that shows that the current minimum wage of $5.15 per hour is the lowest since 1955, when it was $4.74 per hour in 2006 dollars ($0.75 per hour in 1955 dollars). The closest the minimum wage has been to the current low was in 1989 when it was at $5.22 per hour in 2006 dollars ($3.35 per hour in 1989 dollars). In both these cases, however, within the following year the minimum wage was raised by $1.24 and $1.26 per hour, respectively. However, unless Democrats regain control of Congress there appears little chance that the minimum wage will be increased in the next year. The table also tracks the relationship between the minimum wage and the average non-supervisory wage over the same time period. The last time it was as low as today (the minimum wage is 31 percent of the average wage) was 1949 when the minimum wage was $2.85 per hour ($0.40 in 1949 dollars). It was subsequently raised to $5.28 per hour ($0.75 in 1950 dollars) the following year.

With such a stark differerce between average and minimum wage levels, an increase in inequality will likely result. Because the minimum wage is not at a level at which it is possible to make a successful living, those who earn minimum wage are often forced to take multiple jobs to make ends meet. This reduces the time they can devote to increasing their education and skills and also reduces the time they can spend raising their children or even keeping track of what they are doing. In an era in which Republicans are supposedly supportive of family values, they don't seem to do much except rant against the supposed evils of abortion, divorce and gay marriage, while ignoring and stifling discussion on providing families with enough income from one job that could allow them to spend more time helping themselves move into better careers and also spend more time with their family. That would be supportive of family values and would also probably have a more significant reduction of abortion and divorce than the diatribes the Republicans launch, which may get votes but do not do anything to help solve the problems.

Adios DeLay, You Won't Be Missed

2006-06-09T00:46:00.000-07:00

In his closing speech, Tom Delay (R-TX) said:
"The common lament over the recent rise in political partisanship is often nothing more than a veiled complaint about the recent rise of political conservatism".
This describes why Tom DeLay was such a destructive force for democracy in America. He would not hesitate to pull any stunt if it helped in his goal for conservative hegemony. No bribe was not worth taking, no campaign contribution not worth grabbing. DeLay was a prototype of the prostitution that occurs in the U.S. Congress. Money over principle was his motto and has sadly been embraced by much of the Congress. The dollarization he espoused has nearly destroyed the republican democracy of America. It will be a long time before America has recovered from the themes DeLay believed should run America: money and power for no other sake than their own. I'm glad he's gone. Once Bush is gone maybe America can start recovering from their legacy.

Economic worries

2006-06-06T01:06:00.000-07:00

There was a Washington Post article that worried me today. The article highlights the ever dim economic paths we have to walk today, largely, I think, because of Bush's economic policies. The highlight of the articles are that because of high energy prices that have been fueling inflation, the Fed will likely raise interest rates to combat inflationary pressures even when it sees a weaking economy, and particualrly housing and labor makets. That having been said, on to the specifics of the article.

Stocks plunged after Bernanke vowed to combat the recent "unwelcome" pickup in inflation, even as he told an international bankers' conference that an economic slowdown "seems now to be underway."

This to me signifies that Bernanke, while strong on fighting inflation, has lost a view on the overall economy. With energy prices higher, the housing market cooling and stagnant wages (only up 0.82 percent since Bush took office five and a half years ago), while inflation is a problem, it should be balanced against other concerns. For most Americans, inflation is important, but takes a backseat in relation to their wage growth and house value. With the refinancing boom coming to an end, consumer purchases cannot increase much unless wages increase or prices decreases. Where the most impact could be made, gasoline prices, the Bush Administration has destabilized the Middle East and fed oil companies tax cuts, which have done a lot for the oil companies' bottom line, but resulted in record high (in nominal terms) gas prices. With a stagnation of wages (the 0.82 percent over five and a half years I mentioned earlier) and a cooling housing refinancing boom, consumer spending is set to fall significantly as households try to deal with their -0.7 percent savings rate. I think that estimate is overstating the true level because of how it is distributed. At least 75 percent of Americans are in debt (negative savings), with the rest trying to make up the debt in savings (I wouldnt be surprised if the rate was more like 80+ percent in debt).

Consumer price inflation has risen this year, largely because of climbing energy prices, Bernanke said. Moreover, he added, measures of "core" inflation, which exclude traditionally volatile food and energy prices, have also moved higher in recent months. The Labor Department's core consumer price index rose at a 3.2 percent annual rate over the past three months and at a 2.8 percent pace over the past six months, he said.

This just illustrates what I said above with more clarity. Energy prices have skyrocketed, as anyone who fills up their car at a gas station can attest to, but other prices are rising too (the 'core inflation rate'). This combined with a stagnating wage means that most Americans are making less in real terms than they did last year. This is America's real problem. High gas prices are actually good in the long term because they force the U.S. to use more efficient and environmentally friendly technology. However, anyone who has seen a Ford, Chrysler or GM ad recently will know, Detroit will not get the more efficient cars to market (instead marketing Suburbans, Explorers and the like) without mandatory higher fuel efficiency standards (beyond the CAFE standards that only apply to the average across all cars made by a manufacturer. This will help the environment and the environment. This benefits us now and in the future.

Fed policymakers "must continue to resist any tendency for increases in energy and commodity prices to become permanently embedded in core inflation," Bernanke said.

This is a noble goal, but without a plan to increase wages, it won't do a damned bit of difference for American workers.

But, Bernanke said, a single economic report, such as one month's employment figures, would not by itself change the Fed's interest rate policy. Rather, because interest rate changes take effect over many months, the Fed would study how such a report affects its forecast for the economy six to 12 months down the road.

As much as I admire Bernanke as an economist, he has the market on his ass to say the "right" things and is full of shit right here. One unfavorable employment statistic won't have him bending over, but one inflation report will. The Phillips curve, which maps out unemployment as a function of inflation saying one will rise if another falls, is dead. It has not been very precient since the 1960s, but policymakers still operate as if it were valid. Then again, we have a president dead set against any gain for the middle- and lower-classes at any expense, no matter how small, to the upper classes. The money rolling around Republican Washington is a sickening corruption, stinking more than the swamps that L'Enfant conquered.

Milberg Weiss

2006-06-06T00:30:00.000-07:00

While the Republicans, in an effort to conflate the fact that Milberg Weiss gave heavily to Democrats, suggest it equalizes the Abramoff affair, push their bullshit, it is even clearer to me than it was when I first wrote about it that the two have nothing to do with each other. As the NY Times reports, Milberg Weiss went securities litigation fishing (after a legitimate target, Oxford Health, whcih had $3 billion wiped off its market value because of a computer malfunction that they subsequently lied about). However, they were not found to be pandering to legislators for more favorable rules. They were simply a part of the dollarization mafia who believe giving money will help them (it usually does, but not in this case). The desparate Republicans unintentionally reveal the seedy side of Washington. We should decriminilize sexual prostitution while at the same time criminalizing political prostitution, but sadly the Republicans are too much of whores to do that. Oh, the irony.

Gay rights and fanning the flames of bigotry to bring out the base

2006-06-06T00:09:00.000-07:00

In an effort to bring out the Republican base in the November elections, Bush and the Congress are pushing an effort to pass a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. This is stupid for so many reasons. The main one is that no amendment that enshrines discrimination in the Constitution is legitimate, as other attempts have either been failures or later reversed when people finally realized the discrimination was wrong. Banning gay marriage is a failed policy. There are homosexuals, normal people with normal sexual urges that happen to fall outside the Christian dogma but can be fully functional, stable relationships that have the nuturing capability to last and raise children. Reuters reports that:

Several religious leaders joined [Colorado Republican Sen. Wayne] Allard to argue that the ban is needed to counteract an array of social ills, from rising divorce rates to out-of-wedlock births.

This argument is bullshit for so many reasons, I don't know where to start, but I guess I'll start with out-of-wedlock births. Gay marriage has NOTHING TO DO WITH out-of-wedlock births. By definition, gays cannot have out of wedlock children (except for the fact that they can have children together with help and the Republican bigots won't let them marry). Second, rising divorce rates are not related to gay marriage because gays cannot get married (except to the opposite sex). This may be more of a problem than gay marriage (which isn't a problem). The increasing divorce rates are more likely caused by a more relaxed stance towards two consenting adults of the same sex being able to be attracted to one another. Any higher divorce rates, aside from other factors that play a far more significant role in it, are due to the harsh cultural bigotry of the expectations that men must marry women, and then did, despite being gay. Now that some of the bigotry (at least among enlightened members of society) has been lifted, people who have been gay all their life are able to escape from the enforced heterosexual marriages in which they have been bound. Gay marriage will do more to help in terms of the (bullshit) idea of the "sanctity of marriage" and lowering divorce rates. However, it will do nothing for out-of-wedlock births, except for those involving homosexual parents. Gay marriage should be legalized, not banned.

Bush approval ratings at new lows: a look at the economy

2006-06-03T00:25:00.000-07:00

Despite the fact that GDP grew by 5.3 percent in the first quarter of 2006 (and 3.5 percent and 4.2 percent for 2005 and 2004, respectively), a new NY Times/CBS poll shows that only 28 percent of Americans support Bush's handling of the economy (lower even than the 29 percent that approve of his handling of Iraq). I have long believed that the reason for this is the low wage growth seen by American workers, particularly over the past 5 years since Bush has been in office. While the unemployment rate has fallen from a high of 6.3 percent in June 2003 to 4.6 percent today, wage growth has been dismal. I made some calculations from Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data of average hourly wages between January 1996 and April 2006, adjusted for inflation. This measure doesn't reflect total earnings very well because the higher income brackets have higher non-wage income, so it will be biased downwards. In addition, it will be biased downwards by the reduction in average hours worked in the Bush era (between 1996 and 2000 it was 34.4 hours per week, while it was only 33.8 hours from 2001 to 2006). During recessions average hours worked usually decrease, and. Furthermore, the unemployment rate between 2001 and 2006 was higher than between 1996 to 2000 (5.4 percent versus 4.6 percent), which will also reduce average earnings. To compensate for both the hours worked per week and the unemployment rate differential, wages need to increase that much more to make a real improvement in the average American's life (which is what is being measured in these polls, the perception of well being). The bare facts are such:

Real wage growth 1996-2000: 6.23 percent
Real wage growth 2001-2006: 0.82 percent
Real wage growth 2001-2005: 0.72 percent

I will deal with the distributional impacts later, but the difference between the last 5 years of the Clinton Administration versus the years until now (and the first 5 years) of the Bush Administration. Real wages were actually significantly increasing under Clinton. Furthermore, average hours were higher and unemployment was lower so more people were benefiting from the average wage growth than under Bush. This explains why Bush has not gotten "credit" for the economy. For most Americans the economy stinks. Either they are working for not much more than they were 5 or 6 years ago, they are unemployed (like me) or are working fewer hours with no increase in wages and therefore taking home less than they were under Clinton. As much as the Bushies hate to admit it, most of America is seeing a stagnation of wages along with higher unemployment and fewer hours than under Clinton. As a reference point, the nominal growth rates of corporate profits are 12.6 percent between 2003 and 2004 and 16.4 percent between 2004 and 2005 (Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis). Even if you knock off a few points for inflation, this is tremendous compared to wage growth. When one is looking at wage data, there is an implicit bias in the distributional allocation of corporate profits and wages. The upper classes hold significantly more in stocks and bonds than the lower classes, and therefore benefit significantly more from higher corporate profits (and are less reliant on wages as a percentage of their income). Therefore, higher corporate profits or lower wages will tend to increase the gap between rich and poor. Under Clinton, corporate profits were increasing quickly, but so were wages (and hours worked were higher and unemployment lower), so the income gap didn't increase as much as it has now with higher unemployment, lower average hours, low wage growth and high corporate profit growth. The reason Bush's approval rating for his handling of the economy is at 28 percent is because that is what he deserves. Most people don't see the economy improving over the past 5 years.

Was the 2004 election stolen

2006-06-02T11:18:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting article in Rolling Stone (via CommonDreams.org) by Robert Kennedy Jr. about the many signs (confirmed by statistical analysis) that the 2004 election was marred by many instances of electoral fraud that benefited Bush and hurt Kerry. Had Kerry not been so quick to concede, maybe we would have a different president.

A Note

2006-05-27T02:28:00.000-07:00

For anyone who has seen the dropoff in my posts recently. I had a job that I was laid off from today. I should be blogging more until I find another job. A slight mea culpa, but nothing compared to Bush's (insert dripping sarcasm)

Destroying the American Military

2006-05-27T02:10:00.000-07:00

In case you are in a bubble and didn't realize we were in a war, there was a massacre of Iraqi civilians in Haditha with 24 dead at the hands of U.S. Marines. (Tangentially related, Paul Hackett, a Marine Iraqi veteran and candidate against Jean Schmidt and former Ohio Senatorial candidate, is defending a slighly related Marine in the incident's investigation. This incident describes in catastrophe how the war has been conducted. A U.S. Marine is killed in a roadside bombing and in retaliation, U.S. Marines go on a rampage killing 24 people. The reasons lie, predominantly in the overstretching of the U.S. military and the complete lack of planning (and plans) for the conduct of the (unnecessary) war. When there is no plan and a shortage of troops for adequate rotation, frustrations (with the military and the Iraqis) grow. If you keep re-enlisting the same troops (voluntarily or by stop-loss order), they build up a potential to massacre civilians because of the overstimulation and stress of the war zone. Since there is no concrete plan for how to extricate ourselves from Iraq, the frustrations come out of the barrel of the gun. While this is not a defense of the Marines responsible (they should be investigated and prosecuuted), it should alert the American people to the incompetence of the war planning and execution. Our soldiers are exhausted and should be withdrawn, for the sake of our military, our country and the international rule of law.

Gonzales to quit to support executive perogative

2006-05-27T01:50:00.000-07:00

The NY Times reports today that Attorney General Gonzales has threatened to quit if the materials seized in the raids on Rep. Jefferson's (D-LA) office are returned to the Congress. This issue has raised some troubling questions about the real motives of Republican protests about the Justice Department's raids, the first on a member of Congress. As the Times notes, this is "largely a proxy fight for battles likely to come over criminal investigations into other Republicans in Congress". Republicans have time and time again demonstrated that, as long as Republican is in the White House, they don't care about the separation of powers. Their acquiecience in the NSA domestic spying program, the executive-branch led war in Iraq, to mention a few, demonstrates a crass political raison d'etre. If the Republican president is popular, they will support everything he does. However, if there is a chance that their offices will be raided in the future, they will stand behind a (likely) corrupt politician. It makes perfect sense. Even though Jefferson is a Democrat, the raid was related to a corruption probe, something the Representatives can easily identify with.

Don't let them conflate the two

2006-05-22T23:57:00.000-07:00

Reuters reports today that the law firm Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman LLP that has been recently convicted of fraud in class action lawsuits it initiated donated almost exclusively to Democratic candidates, PACs and the DNC and the Congressional re-election committees. The summary ends with:

Republicans and Democrats have returned more than $200,000 in contributions from clients of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in January in a wide-ranging investigation into possible attempts to bribe lawmakers.

Fraud is, quite obviously a serious breach of attorney responsibility and the law, but the fact that the firm gave to Democrats indicates no corruption in and of itself with the Democratic party or legislators. It merely signals another reason why turning politicians into prostitutes doesn't serve America. The key point in this last paragraph is that Jack Abramoff "pleaded guilty...into possible attempts to bribe lawmakers". There are no such allegations with Milberg Weiss. The only bribery going on (at least from what we know at this point), was the legalized bribery that is called campaign finance. The Abramoff affair was a corruption issue, while the Milberg Weiss scandal is one of a scummy law firm that happened to give to Democrats. They joined the party that supports peoples rights to sue corporations and probably saw the donations as ways to help ensure that class action law suits were still possible (of course, for them to exploit). It says nothing of any connection between the Democrats and the fraudulent law firm. To claim that this rebuts claims by Democrats that the Republicans are promoting a "culture of corruption" is ridiculous (according to the Reuters article, "Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said Republicans would likely use the donations as ammunition in the November congressional elections and to blunt criticism about recent corruption scandals involving Republicans."). Of course, the Republicans will do this, but it is invalid. The main solution to what the Milberg Weiss case has highlighted is to eliminate corporate donations. All corporate donations do is buy off politicians and make them beholden to corporate interests, so they will be able to be re-elected. With public financing of campaigns (like they have here in Portland, Oregon), grass-roots candidates who are not corporate whores can get elected and they will enter office with no campaign financing ties to corporate interests (they may have preconcieved ties), but it would allow candidates to challenge the conventional wisdom of corporate dominance of politics. That is the main lesson to take from this incident. Do not be fooled by Republican talking points or the corporate purchase-hold on government will be continued.

A Chocolate City

2006-05-21T02:48:00.000-07:00

The preliminary results have been announced for the Mayoral elections in New Orleans and Ray Nagin has come out on top. I think that is good because Nagin was not wrong in asserting that New Orleans should be rebuilt as 'a chocolate city'. While the term was significantly loaded in racial terms (i.e. New Orleans should be rebuilt with a predominantly black population), I think there should be a racial point made in the process. New Orleans has historically been a black city. In the 2000 census, New Orleans was less than 30 percent white (see page 9) (excluding the small population classified as other or mixed races, which makes up less than 7 percent of the total population). New Orleans should focus on repopulating black expatriates and reducing the poverty of those in the city. New Orleans was a very poor city, but now the spotlight is on it, it has the chance to be a golden city of black America, as long as the funding that was promised by Mr. Bush comes. It better not be cut short.

Racist bill makes English the "national language"

2006-05-19T20:11:00.000-07:00

The Senate passed 63 to 34 a bill that "declare[s] English as the national language of the United States and to promote[s] the patriotic integration of prospective US citizens", The bill, although it doesn't officially change other laws, it could invalidate executive orders and court rulings that promote multi-lingual government services. The real aim of the bill is to throw a bone to the xenophobic racists who want to destroy any outreach to residents and citizens of America that speak other languages and tries to destroy the history of the country as one built by immigrants. The amendment stated that:

Unless specifically stated in applicable law, no person has a right, entitlement, or claim to have the Government of the United States or any of its officials or representatives act, communicate, perform or provide services, or provide materials in any language other than English. If exceptions are made, that does not create a legal entitlement to additional services in that language or any language other than English. If any forms are issued by the Federal Government in a language other than English (or such forms are completed in a language other than English), the English language version of the form is the sole authority for all legal purposes.

The bill is hugely damaging for the U.S.'s appearance of being a welcoming and accepting country of the immigrants that come here. It is another Republican move (aided by some cowardly Democrats) to denigrate the image of America.

The Senators who voted for the bill are:

Alexander (R-TN) (co-sponsor)
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Burns (R-MT) (co-sponsor)
Burr (R-NC)
Byrd (D-WV) (co-sponsor)
Carper (D-DE)
Chafee (R-RI)
Chambliss (R-GA) (co-sponsor)
Coburn (R-OK) (co-sponsor)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dole (R-NC)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY) (co-sponsor)
Frist (R-TN) (co-sponsor)
Graham (R-SC) (co-sponsor)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK) (author of amendment)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kyl (R-AZ) (co-sponsor)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Roberts (R-KS)
Santorum (R-PA)
Sessions (R-AL) (co-sponsor)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Talent (R-MO)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)

Jim Bunning (R-KY) did not vote, but was a co-sponsor

The CIA and Republican Turmoil

2006-05-08T01:04:00.000-07:00

Well, the Republican Party is in crisis and I couldn't be happier. Those slimy bastards have dug their own grave and now the Congressional-Executive battle continues. With the resignation of former-Rep. Porter Goss from the head of the CIA (with questions being asked about his role in the Duke Cunningham Watergate prostitution scandal), the legislative and executive branches of the Republican Party are battling it out over the expected nomination of General Michael Hayden to Goss' former post. Goss burned a lot of bridges in the CIA and furthered the suspicion (not without justification, I might add) that the White House wants to sideline the CIA in favor of the Defence Intelligence Agency and the group of secret intelligence-fixing agencies under Don Rumsfeld's contol. The White House has mistrusted the CIA since it warned the Administration that the White House claims of WMD in Iraq and a tie between 9/11 and Iraq rested on shaky (if any) intelligence. However, Congress has begun to mistrust the White House because the War in Iraq (and the bunglings of said war), as well as the mismanagement of the war in Afghanistan, and the plunging poll numbers for Bush and Republicans generally. The NY Times reports today that:

Senior Republican lawmakers on Sunday criticized the probable choice of Gen. Michael V. Hayden to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, voicing concerns about his ties to a controversial eavesdropping program and about the wisdom of installing a military officer at the civilian spy agency.

All of Michael Hayden's cheerleading for the war in Iraq, which contrary to Republican claims is not going well. All the controversy spells good things for Democrats in the mid-term elections assuming they get their heads out of their ass and push for a withdrawl from Iraq so no more of our troops get killed in what is essentially target practice for the coming civil war in Iraq. But my assumption about Democrats is probably overly optimistic, but in the environs of Little Beiruit [named by George H.W. Bush] (i.e., the People's Rebublic of Portland, OR), we embrace the anti-war democrats like Earl Blumenauer (people in the 3rd district of the PR of Portland should vote to re-elect him, you have until May 16th to get your ballots in) .

Honor the dead
Heal the wounded
End the war
(from my parents' bumper sticker)

In other news, no grad school this year and I want to stay in Portland for a while, maybe go into politics instead of grad school. Anyone know if Erik Sten needs staffers?

My bands: The TNA Transparent Asphalt Highway Tourette's

Back in the U.S.S.R.

2006-05-05T00:18:00.000-07:00

Dick Cheney had some harsh words for Russia in a speech in Lithuania that was seen to represent the Administration's position on Russia. While Cheney rightly criticized the Putin Administration's commitment to democracy, I have serious doubt about Cheney's commitment to democracy. Many of this Administration's tactics have verged on totalitarianism, especially the reaction to critical thinking within the Administration (on Iraq troop levels, economic policies and illegal domestic wiretapping) and criticism of the administration. This also is suspicious given that Bush "had looked into President Putin's eyes and 'got a sense of his soul.'" Back then, the Putin government had been supportive of the Bush administration so it seems funny that now that they will not toe the line on Iran, that now they are not democratic. Russia has not been very democratic in the fifteen years since the end of Communism, and it has been deteriorating since Putin took over in 2000. The recent criticism has (intentionally or not) coinsided with the takeover of Yukos, the large gas company run by the now-jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Funny how democracy promotion follows hand-in-hand with efforts to secure American gas supplies for the Hummers and gas-guzzeling SUVs the Republicans drive, not to mention their prostitution on behalf of the oil and gas industries. I think that this is another instance in which democracy as a concept is paraded out in a deeper, more sinister effort to push the Bush imperialist doctrine (and I say that in the least Marxist way possible).

That's right, I'm staying

2006-04-27T01:48:00.000-07:00

Well, unless I get some fabulous offer from University of Virginia or Boston University (which won't happen), or fall in love with Charlottesville, Virginia, I am not going to grad school and I'm staying in Portland. Right now, I'm thinking too of becoming active in Portland's thriving (haha) left-wing political scene. I'm probably going to start small in working my neighborhood association of Rose City Park, but then on to City Hall. I'm the material Portland needs right now. Economist, left and better than Randy Leonard.

Rove under fire

2006-04-27T01:23:00.000-07:00

Turd Blossom is under fire again. Karl Rove testified in front of the grand jury on Wednesday this week on "a matter", according to his lawyers "voluntarily and unconditionally", but it presents a new angle on how the new Chief of Staff Joshua Bolton will conduct White House affairs. Rove's removal from his policy-making position, although he remains in a political role, suggests that Bolton is not as passive as Andy Card, in getting between Bush's brain and his body. Well, good. Rove is a schemer, and a nerfarious one at that and should be allowed no access to the body he controls (Bush). I am almost at the end of my rope with Bush at this point. With gas prices as high as after Katrina, Bush announced that to halt further increases in gas prices, he had instituted a few measures. He told the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate price gouging and suspended environmental regulations of the additives to gasoline. While in the NY Times' words Bush noted that "high gasoline prices are like a hidden tax on consumers and businesses", his remaining energy was spend extricating the oil companies from any further burden relating to the effect of gasoline prices on the economy, which he claimed was strong (have you been unemployed recently? I have). The main solution Bush proposed was "[e]asing the environment rules will allow refiners greater flexibility in providing oil supplies since they will not have to use certain additives such as ethanol to meet clean air standards."

What!?! That's bullshit! We should be raising the emissions standards on cars and industry to combat the furtherance of global warming towards the "tipping point" at which we will not be able to reverse it. Reducing emissions will also hurt those living in cities with high air pollution like Salt Lake City, Utah, Los Angeles, California and Houston, Texas. They already have many (over 30 at least) days a year where the air is so polluted that they urge citizens not to do exercise outdoors. What the fuck? That's not how this country should be run.

Marxist tourists

2006-04-25T20:04:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been really busy with work and music and trying to enjoy myself as much as possible, so blogging has really taken the backseat.

However, it would have been impossible to ignore an article in the NY Times about Chinese tourists travelling in huge numbers to the house where Karl Marx was born. I guess as the only economically growing Marxist country (even if Marxism has all but been abandoned except in the fiction of the "dictatorship of the proletariat". The sign above says it all about how many Chinese make the hajj to Marx's house.

A political nutjob I can support (being in the race, not winning)

2006-04-17T17:39:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post reports that former Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel has announced his candidacy for president (a little early, I think) on the platform of eliminating the income tax and representative democracy (in favor of direct democracy). While his platform is way out there (much too much for me), I think it would be good to see him as a candidate (which he could if there were voter owned elections). [This blog post was unfinished (interrupted), but I'd like to use it to reiterate my policy on third parties].

Third party politics would be good for the electoral system. I think that there should be many more than three parties in the system. However, Nader-loyalists who think that a presidential bid is the ticket to multi-party democracy are dead wrong. The only way there will be more than two parties where the third party is not a spoiler party (as Perot was in 1992 for George H.W. Bush or Nader was for Al Gore) is if the electoral college is abolished. However, the only way for that to become at all an issue is not from running no-shot candidates on the Green, Reform, Independent or Constitution parties. That reinforces the two-party system (in the interests of full disclosure, I am an anti-Nader guy; he cost Gore the election and ran in 2004 to masturbate his ego). To eliminate the two-party monopoly on power, the electoral college needs to be abolished and the only way to do that is to focus on the branches that matter in deciding the matter. For the constitution to be amended to eliminate the electoral college, the Congress needs to pass a bill by a 2/3rds majority and then it needs to be ratified by some number of states (I'm no constitutional expert). Therefore, non-major parties need to focus on state legislatures and the U.S. Congress. That is the avenue for their sucess. They could learn from Portland, Oregon in enacting voter-owned elections, which provide funding for candidates that otherwise wouldn't have a chance. It would also highlight the differences between candidates who buy into the corporate money government versus those who emphasize the power of the people, the ones who they supposedly represent. Until then, third-party candidates in presidential elections are just a distraction and spoiler driven by ego gains and no real concern about the direction of the country. They can play their game as long as they withdraw before they appear on the ballot (as a way to draw attention to the failure of two-party politics), but I am sick and tired of egoists like Nader putting Bush into office (I understand that Gore's campaign was weak, but you have to look at end results to draw conclusions)

Nationalizing Health Insurance: A Strategy

2006-04-14T00:54:00.000-07:00

In America today, 45 million people, including the author, are living without health insurance. With assistance for the poor and elderly, an outcome such as this describes flaws in the so-called free-market economy in which we live. While a more lassiaz faire attitude towards the provision of health care can be taken (but not assumed), the insurance gap (we are back in the eighties again talking about this ‘gap’ and the other ‘gap’) is a predictable anomaly. Whereas the governor of Massachusetts can assume that the uninsured are either not taking advantage of government health insurance (Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor), and chalk the uninsured population to those who ‘choose’ to be uninsured. With healthcare costs already 15 percent of the economy and growing at rates in excess of inflation (inflation is around 3.5-4.0 percent, while healthcare costs increases of most companies are projected to grow between 9 and 11.5 percent), the affordability of health insurance is becoming an ever-fading dream. Whereas five or ten years ago, an individual could provide for his own healthcare if necessary, today the costs have become out-of-reach. If one’s employer (if one is lucky enough to be in a permanent position) does not provide health insurance (even with an ever-growing proportion paid by the employees), the luxury of health insurance is becoming steadily unaffordable. While I do not know the statistics on the differential between public and private health insurance administrative costs, all statistics I have seen point to a vastly lower rate of administrative costs for public insurance like the Veterans Administration (if my memory serves correctly, the administrative costs for the VA are near 0.5 percent of the total budget, while private health insurers are much higher). From my experience in economic theory and the fact that the government would be (by definition) required to cover all Americans under a universal health insurance plan, having the government provide healthcare would cost far less and free up money for national savings or corporate investment, both of which would benefit the economy as a whole.

The reason for the vast savings in health insurance costs (I am not proposing the nationalization of the healthcare industry, just the health insurance market would be due to reducing the selection process health insurance companies must deal with. For the maximum profit, they must avoid the high-cost patients or at least charge them more money. In order to do so, they must spend countless dollars in patient risk analysis . Furthermore, they must remain appealing to their potential customers through advertising. In a universal health insurance system overseen by the government, this is not an issue. The pool of insured people is so large that the cost of weeding out high-cost customers is greater than the spending upon them (not to mention the inherent requirement to cover them). While a publicly-run system would leave smaller profits, it would create a public good (increased health) that would far outweigh the costs. The only required question about government-provided healthcare is how to operate the transition period. The government would have to transition the health insurance companies out of the market. The most effective way would be for the government to buy out all of the employees and the future obligations of the companies. However, I am not sure if it wouldn’t be more cost effective (and beneficial to the strengthening of the economy and healthcare industry for the government to immediately nationalize the health insurance companies. A compromise would be to nationalize the companies (taking on their employees for the time being and paying the owners a fixed percentage of the value of the company (I would suggest paying the value of their offices plus 20 percent of their previous year’s revenues). That would be an overly fair arrangement that would eliminate private health insurance (but not touch the actual health care system).

Once the healthcare system is nationalized, healthcare would be provided by the government using existing tax revenues, a corporate tax increase, and a tax increase on the wealthy (a reversal of the Bush tax cuts of 2001, 2002 and 2003) in the form of increased top marginal tax bracket rates, increased inheritance taxes and increased dividend and capital gains taxes. Government could then reign in unnecessary price increases by the collective weight of 285 million Americans negotiating prices as a singular unit. The healthcare cost problem is solved thus. FUCK BUSH!

Italian stalemate

2006-04-10T22:18:00.000-07:00

As of 3 a.m. Italian time, the elections are still too close to call, which portend a mini-crisis in the "sick man of Europe" (a title recently 'won' from Germany). While the end result will likely favor Romano Prodi over Silvio Berlusconi, it will be an inconclusive victory because of the election rules pushed through under Berlusconi, which incorporated proportional voting. Right now, the polls show the center-left under Prodi winning the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house, and Berlusconi's center-right coalition with a lead in the Senate (155 to 154), with the 5 seats given to Italians living abroad uncounted. If the result is a split legislature, Prodi and Berlusconi have said they would cal for a new election, but that wouldn't do much to alleviate the stalemate. What Italy needed now was a strong win by the center-left in order to create the impression of a change from Berlusconi's policies, which have done little if anything to help economic growth. The data for GDP (year-on-year growth) and the ratio of public indebtedness to GDP are listed below:

GDP (% increase)
2000: Euro 946.4 billion
2001: Euro 963.4 billion (1.8%)
2002: Euro 966.6 billion (0.3%)
2003: Euro 967.0 billion (0.0%)
2004: Euro 977.3 billion (1.1%)
2005: Euro 967.0 billion (-0.0%)

Public Debt (% of GDP)
2000: 137.0%
2001: 138.6%
2002: 145.5%
2003: 147.4%
2004: 153.5%

Note: My calculations for public debt are probably overstated. They were calculated on, for example, 2000 Q1 debt/2000 GDP (measured at the end of the fiscal year). However, Italian debt is still quite high. Estimates I've seen for 2005 are in the area of 106% of GDP.

Bush implicated in Valerie Wilson leak

2006-04-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

The NY Times has an article today on the increasing links uncovered by Patrick Fitsgerald's investigation between the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity and the uper eschelons of the Bush White House including both Bush and Cheney. Fitzgerald's most recent filing talks of "a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House" to discredit Joseph Wilson, adding that "It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish Wilson.'" This supports what many of the thinking Americans have claimed from the beginning that the exposure of Valerie Wilson, Joe Wilson's wife, as a CIA operative was nothing more than retaliation for his critical NY Times Op-ed debunking the Niger uranium claims. This theory has credibility both in the timing of the leaks and a general pattern of the Bush administration's treatment of critics. It also opens a vein of discussion about whether the President can legally and unilaterally declassify information with national security implications for political reasons. In this, not only the Wilson leak's legality is called into question, but also the leak of the National Intelligence Estimate. The latter was selectively leaked to Judith Miller at the NY Times in order to bolster the case for the invasion of Iraq. Without the legal authority to unilaterally declassify government documents, Bush could face impeachment for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. I've suspected all along that Bush and, in particular, Cheney were involved in the effort to discredit Joe Wilson and Fitzgerald's recent filing provides further evidence of a widespread conspiracy.

Theoretical Theories

2006-04-07T00:40:00.000-07:00

In the developed countries a rise in economic instability has been characteristic of an increasingly rightist government, but the backswing has come at the end of the administrations and a new personality, however corrupted in the old administration’s policies, has been elected. The post-1970 era beginning with Ronald Reagan brought increasing inequality that was only interrupted by the Clinton era, while better in that working-class incomes rose, still continued the trend of increasing inequality. However, there was no backlash towards support for government programs to soften the blow of increasing trade and globalization, which should have occurred. The domestic economy is best served by the benefit of consumers and workers. On the contrary, the prosperity and the rhetoric suggesting infinite growth that was common in the 1990s led to further right-wing gains, despite the Democratic control of the presidency. The lure of tax cuts and reduced government, the latter heavily pushed by the Democratic executive, proved too much and ushered in an era of profligacy and militarism. The boom mentality of a growing economy corrupted the normal relations between the upper and middle classes. Normally, the two classes have acted in opposition to one another via the American Dream fantasy: the upper class couldn’t care less about the ‘lesser’ classes, while the middle class remained the bastion of economic security through hard work. With this healthy conflict, the repeal of the estate taxes and capital gains/dividend taxes has been avoided. But it was not so in the early years of the 21st century. The illusion that the middle class’ investments would reap unprecedented gains fueled a belief in the “futurism” theory. I call it futurism because it rests on the belief that “in the future, I will be one of the upper class”, without regards to current circumstance or employment. In the boom years of the late nineties, the promise seemed realizable. With an increasing share of the middle and upper classes, although not the working class and the poor, owning stock and seeing it appreciate rapidly, the belief was that a new era was upon us. What had been conveniently forgotten was the elimination of many defined benefit retirement plans that were replaced with defined contribution plans, which shifted the retirement risks onto the workers and freed up monies otherwise occupied to corporate investments. With the market booming, these corporate investments soared (and the new phenomenon of interest rate and exchange rate derivatives reducing risk for corporations), corporate balance sheets, executive compensation and returns on stock market investment values soared. Regardless of economic position, everyone began to believe they could be a part of it. With a Democratic presidency and a Republican Congress, both sides claimed credit and no one looked seriously at the sustainability of the system. Eventually, the bubble burst and a Republican government (controlling the executive and legislative branches and a large contingent of like-minded members of the judiciary), the policies have not bred a rebirth. However, despite the travails of the current adminisration, the people have not moved away from the governing and towards the opposition. In fact, many have, by statistics not connected with the approval rate of the President, stuck with the party that has overseen the economic non-recovery from the bursting of the stock market bubble in 2000-2001. How such a large proportion of Americans could be misled in believing the boom mentality and how such a large part could stick with the Republican party after their incompetent handling of the post-bust economy is the focus of my thoughts. This is not strictly an American dillimna, but an international one. A related problem to the success of conservative parties in the developed world is how the “21st century socialist” candidates are coming to power (e.g., Chavez in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia, likely Humala in Peru, Obrador in Mexico and Lula in Brazil) in countries that, while devastated by conservative economic and political policies in the 1980s, could choose political ideologies that have been tried earlier, quite unacceptably, across the world. The reason for this shift, I believe, is that there is no coherent middle way that provides domestic stability with internationalization at the same time. In this process, the multi-lateral international organizations, as well as the domestic governments are at fault. I want to find a way to remedy the domestic and international conundrums in the post-internet bust wold.

Thaksin steps down...maybe

2006-04-04T22:11:00.000-07:00

The Thai prime minister Thaksin has promised to resign when the parliament meets for its new session. This is a good development for Thailand because of Thaksin's authoritarian tendencies and, like President Bush, promised to run the country as a CEO. While Thaksin had run a successful company (he recently sold it for $1.7 billion tax-free), unlike Bush, they are united in their unpopular and divisive ruling styles and authoritarian tendencies. While it is not certain that Thaksin will make good on his promise, the potential for a reversion to democracy is good and will strengthen democracy, especially since Thaksin waited until after the election to announce his resignation so it wouldn't be seen to be caused by the "street", which could have contributed to further instability in the streets of Bangkok.

I've been away: A summation

2006-03-29T00:26:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry for my long absense. It is because of a new job after a long spell of unemployment. Glimpsing over the news, a few comments and predictions:

-Warrantless wiretapping: former FISA court judges speak out. Judge Harold Baker said "the president ignores it [the FISA court] at the president's peril." Other former judges press for the FISA court to rule on the legality of the warrantless wiretapping program. I think (and so does the text and spirit of the law) that the warrantless wiretapping of Americans is illegal.

-Kadima/Labor coalition in Israel: Damned if the do, damned if they don't. The government is so deep in shit that whatever they do they have no credibility to create a two-state solution.

-Andy Card out, Josh Bolton in: One liar for another. Bolton headed the Office of Management and Budget which revise what statistics were presented in the President's budget so that they could hide the fiscal ramifications of the Bush tax cuts when they became the most detrimental.

-Republicans and immigration: They're fucked. They're going to end up going for a cruel enforcement-only plan and lose the Hispanic vote and make no difference on immigration policy or national security.

-Hamdan v. Rumsfeld: This is old news. Guantanamo is illegal and the military tribunals violate the Uniform Code of MIlitary Justice and therefore are illegal. However, the recent court packing will help the Administration in front of the court, but they're still a bunch of evil fuckwads (both the Administration and the genuinely Al Qaeda members they managed to pick up).

-Other notes: Ukraine will end up without an Orange coalition government. Belarus will experience more violent political protests. Humala will become president of Peru in the first round with more that 50% of the vote (to avoid a runoff).

Nothing New In Iraq

2006-03-13T23:39:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post reports that Iraqi units have control over 21,000 sq. mi. of Iraq (out of a total and "need[ing] to control about 85,000 square miles to fulfill Bush's target). However, he has managed to make an increase of 20,000 sq. mi. into a net decrease in the preparedness of Iraqi forces. In the last assessment, only one unit (down from three last year) was able to operate without American assistance. Now it has moved to zero:

What constitutes control, however, depends on the definition, since no Iraqi unit is currently rated capable of operating without U.S. assistance. And vast swaths of Iraq have never been contested by insurgents, meaning they could ultimately be turned over to local forces without directly affecting the conflict. (italics added)

This is a Johnsonian/Nixonian strategy for victory.

The New Plumbers

2006-03-04T17:07:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post has a disturbing article today on the increased pressure by the government to investigate journalists who receive leaks as well as their sources. The investigations (along with many of the Administration's intentional leaks) have been decided upon based on the political imperatives for the Bush administration rather than whether the public interest was served or impeded by the leak. The two leaks that demonstrate the differentiation in the administration's approach are the leak of CIA operative Valerie Wilson and the leak of the existence of a warrantless NSA wiretapping program outside the bounds of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Patriot Act. In the former case, the administration at first seemed to defend itself (and blame non-administration officials) while, as has become clear since, the leak of her identity was a crude political ploy to extract revenge upon her husband, Joe Wilson, who had published an op-ed in the NY Times debunking the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had tried to by uranium from Africa (peaking with the infamous 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union speech). While the issue was later investigated by Patrick Fitzgerald, the Bush administration has continued the strategy of leaking information that supports their arguments, while denouncing the leakers of less favorable information as traitors. The biggest example of this has been the administration and Republicans furor over the leaking of the existence of the warrantless NSA wiretapping program. In this case, the leak did not reveal any of the operational details of the wiretapping proposal and did not damage national security, while at the same time illuminating the public of an illegal program that should, under the rules of democratic governance, be decided openly. No one in their right mind would believe that those who are plotting to attack the U.S. do not know that their phone calls are probably being monitored. Thus, the administration's selective attack on leakers has been hypocritical at best and damaging to freedom of the press at worst. The article tells that:

In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from the FBI's Washington field office, who are investigating possible leaks that led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA's warrantless domestic surveillance program, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials familiar with the two cases.

In addition, they are contemplating going after the reporters who received the information under the 1917 Espionage Act:

The Justice Department also argued in a court filing last month that reporters can be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act for receiving and publishing classified information.

This is a disturbing revelation especially since the Vice President has claimed the unilateral authority to declassify documents and his former-Chief of Staff Scooter Libby has claimed in his defense that superiors authorized the leaking of Valerie Wilson's identity (an argument that seems quite unrelated to his trial for perjury and obstruction of justice). However, it highlights the dichotomy between the administration (and their lapdog Congressional allies) view that some leaks are alright as long as they help the administration while leaks that undermine the administration are the moral equivalent of treason.

8 Years for Cunningham

2006-03-03T16:21:00.000-08:00

The first jail sentence for the Republican sleaze operations. And the longest ever for a Congressman: 8 years, 4 months. I think it was well deserved; he got 1 year for approximately every $300,000 in bribes he took. Oh, and if you want any of the antiques or rugs he got, they will be sold, according to Talking Points Memo:

In the market for a commode? a piece of history?

Duke's antiques are set to be auctioned off in three weeks.

See the loot here - it's under "Antiques."

Proceeds to benefit the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation branch and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

Antique toilets...that's what I need.

New $10 bill

2006-03-03T11:10:00.000-08:00

Designed to thwart counterfeiting, but just making another bill overly colorful. My view is that they should just stick with green and find other ways of stopping counterfeiting.

Xenophobia and Isolationism

2006-03-02T13:23:00.000-08:00

There is a few interesting articles on the port deal controversy in today's Financial Times (here, here, and here (sub rqd)), but a quote from one of them opened up a broader discussion about what the ports controversy illustrates about the movement of American popular thinking. The article notes that:

"Some observers believe that the controversy has exposed growing xenophobia and deep-rooted isolationist instincts within a country that feels threatened by a hostile world"

This is not exclusively because of the attempt by the Dubai state-owned company Dubai Ports World to buy the British-based P&O Company that now controls 5 ports in the U.S.; it has been rising for the past four and a half years since 9/11. Before 9/11, the country was largely behind the Clintonian opening of the American economy to the rest of the world. Since 9/11, with much blame to be placed at Bush's feet for his fear-mongering, particularly in respect to Arabs and Muslims, the country has been moving towards isolationism in economics and foreign policy. The nation-building in Afghanistan and the quagmire in Iraq have added to this increase in xenophobia and isolationism. But, of course, it is not just Arabs and Muslims that have borne the brunt of these beliefs, China has seen its fair share. Politicians on the anti-trade wings of both parties like Sen. Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Graham (R-SC), who have called for increased tariffs on Chinese imports to counter what they see as unfair trading practices. If the U.S. moves towards regulating foreign investment politically, as bills in front of Congress propose, it will represent a step back for U.S. interests because of reciprocal barriers and less willingness to invest in the U.S., either out of concern that it will be blocked or on principle. Part of the problem may come in the form of reduced purchases of our debt, which will increase the borrowing costs (and worsen the deficit). But on a more general point, the U.S. has been best when it was open economically and in terms of foreign policy and weakest when it has been isolationist (like between the two World Wars).

Mine Safety Violation Penalties Decreased under Bush

2006-03-02T12:18:00.000-08:00

The NY Times reports on a Congressional hearing into the reduction in levying and collecting fines imposed on mining companies for safety violations. As they report:

A data analysis by The New York Times found that the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001 and in nearly half the cases not collected them at all.

The reasons for this appear in the first paragraph of the article detailing the Times' data analysis:

In its drive to foster a more cooperative relationship with mining companies, the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001, and in nearly half the cases, it has not collected the fines, according to a data analysis by The New York Times. (italics added)

The Bush administration has been falling over itself to ingratiate itself with energy and mining companies from day one, including appointing many executives from these industries to regulatory positions over the same industries. In addition, the range of exceptions companies can claim to have their fines reduced are disturbing (for example, if they are performing poorly, their fines will be reduced; almost a way to keep failing, unsafe mines in business as a policy). The NY Times has an illustrative chart showing that major fines (over $10,000) peaked in 2000 and fell steeply in 2001, recovering somewhat by 2003 and then falling again. This comes close to mirroring the fatality rate over the same period where fatality rate per 100,000 miners was 31 in 1999, 37 in 2001, 24 in 2002, 29 in 2003 and 20 by 2005. However, the percentage of fines that are major rises and falls slightly before the mining fatalities do. While the causation is not clear, it would appear that current year enforcement and imposing higher penalties is associated with lower mining fatalities in the following year. I've put the Excel spreadsheet I used to calculate these numbers up on the web.

Kenya reporters arrested, offices damages

2006-03-02T11:25:00.000-08:00

(Picture is from an article on the website of The Standard showing copies of the newspaper being burned.)

The BBC reports that the newspaper, The Standard in Kenya has been raided by police and three journalists arrested (who are now out on bail). The ostensible reason for the raid and arrests was inciting ethnic hatred, but more likely it is due to critical coverage of the President of Kenya's handling of the recent corruption scandals. The raid was described by the BBC as:

Hooded men carrying AK-47 assault rifles raided the headquarters of the Standard group just after midnight.

Staff were kicked and beaten and forced to lie on the floors as offices were searched and equipment taken away, The Standard newspaper said on its website.

The printing presses were also raided. Thousands of copies of the newspaper were dragged out into the yard and set on fire.

The Arsenio Hall Effect

2006-03-01T23:50:00.000-08:00

I've been reading the biography of John Kenneth Gailbraith by Richard Parker (co-founder of Mother Jones) and I have arrived at an interesting conclusion on electoral politics, as applied to modern day. My new theory is solely based on the increase in young voter turnout (and their voting patterns) in the 1992 election after Bill Clinton went on the Arsenio Hall Show and played his sax. In large part to his appearance on the show (and the MTV Rock the Vote campaign, too), the 1992 elections saw a starkly higher turnout among young people, who at that time were solidly Democrats (I still think they are, I just think, based on personal experience that they have been jaded). As such I am making a prediction for the 2008 elections. While it has no statistical basis whatsoever (and as an economist as I am, that is a heretical assumption). Whoever comes across the best when they appear on The Daily Show will become the Democratic nominee and probably also the President. If not, I will eat my words.

Patriot Act renewed: Democrats credited with caring about civil liberties

2006-03-01T17:50:00.000-08:00

Reuters reports on the renewal of the Patriot Act that:

The bill was written to resolve a stalemate that pitted a broad bipartisan desire to renew the Patriot Act against largely Democratic demands to better protect civil liberties.

This provides all the information necessary. Both parties support much of the Patriot Act, but the Democrats, in contrast to the Republicans, cared about the impact on civil liberties. While the protections are not really sufficient in my view, they do move in the right direction:

One change would clarify that traditional libraries would not be subjected to a federal subpoena issued without the approval of a judge.

Another would remove a previously proposed requirement that recipients of such subpoenas provide the FBI with the name of their lawyer.

A third would allow individuals to challenge gag orders when they have been subpoenaed to produce personal information. But they would have to wait a year to do so.

The year delay before gag orders can be challenged seems a little excessive to me, but the law can be changed in the future (if the delay doesn't get challenged in courts before then).

Barry Bonds Impersonates Paula Abdul

2006-03-01T10:19:00.000-08:00

Just a random funny picture I came across. I couldn't resist putting it up. What can I say, it's just funny.

Just interesting...

2006-02-28T15:51:00.000-08:00

Newsweek has an interesting interview with the outgoing editor of The Economist. It's a good read and nice and short too.

Economic growth disappointing in 2005 Q4; Predicted to be slower in 2006

2006-02-28T13:25:00.000-08:00

The economy only increased 1.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2005, but that was an improvement upon the preliminary estimate of 1.1 percent. However, growth is expected to slow in 2006 compared to the full year 2005 rate because of stagnating housing prices and rising interest rates. Those two facts are likely to significantly hurt consumption and could also hurt those who are highly indebted, as their disposable income after servicing their loans will be lower and their capacity to borrow further constrained:

"But for all of 2006, they [economists] believe consumer spending won't be as strong as it was last year. The cooling housing market and the expectation that owners won't be seeing huge gains in the value of their homes figure prominently in this scenario of a more subdued consumer. The toll of rising interest rates and elevated energy costs also play roles."

With lower growth next year, there isn't a large chance of an economic crisis, but in the future the risk will be higher as lower growth will translate into lower tax revenues and higher deficits. The servicing costs of the deficit should not rise much because it can be financed by international borrowing. However, this creates a higher vulnerability of the U.S. to future adverse economic news. If holders of American debt begin to believe that the U.S. will not be able to repay the debt, they will demand higher interest rates, which could spiral into a self-fulfilling crisis. The economy is on modest footing today, but the high indebtedness, overvalued housing market, low wage increases and high government deficits projected well into the future are all quite troubling.

Bush believes bin Laden tape helped in his re-election

2006-02-28T11:31:00.000-08:00

According to a new book, Bush believed that the bin Laden tape released before the 2004 presidential election was going to aid his chances of re-election:

"I thought it was going to help," Bush said. "I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush."

Sadly, more evidence that the Bush team was operating on the assumption that if bin Laden didn't like Bush, then it can be inferred that those who oppose Bush and support Kerry like Osama bin Laden. More evidence of mental defect and a generally mean (and incorrect) mindset of Republicans.

A new legal limbo

2006-02-28T11:22:00.000-08:00

I noticed a short passage in the Financial Times' article about the riots at the Pul-i-Charki prison in Kabul that I have not yet found confirmed in any other source. It essentially forecasts the closing of Guantanamo Bay, likely with rhetoric of improving America's image abroad, and moving the inmates to Afghanistan:

"US forces are renovating one block of the Soviet-built prison [Pul-i-Charki in Kabul] to house Afghan prisoners who will eventually be transferred from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba"

This move would allow the US to save face because the prisoners would be farther away from America and further from the jurisdiction of US courts. However, it would be largely a change in location, not respect for international conventions. Just something to watch out for in the future.

Poll: Troops want out of Iraq

2006-02-28T11:15:00.000-08:00

A new Zogby poll released today shows that by an overwhelming majority, US troops want the US to pull out of Iraq within a year, with 72 percent support. Only 26 percent believe the U.S. should stay "as long as it takes" and 29 percent favor an immediate withdrawl. Furthermore 93 percent of troops don't think the belief that Iraq had WMD was the reason for invasion; 68 percent believed it was to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The scariest part of the article is where the poll shows how pervasive the belief is, sown by the Bush administration before the war, that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks:

"Despite the fact that Mr Bush has acknowledged that Iraq played no role in the September 2001 attacks, 85 per cent of troops said the US mission was mainly 'to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9/11 attacks', a result that Mr Zogby described as 'bewildering'." (italics added)

Bush Poll Numbers Down Even More: 34 percent approve

2006-02-28T10:59:00.000-08:00

The NY Times/CBS poll released today shows that Bush's approval rating is now at 34 percent, down 8 points in a month. While part of the drop can be explained by the Arab-bashing over the DP World ports deal, much of the blame for the PR fiasco that has ensued can be placed with Bush. His handling of the approval of the Dubai-based company matches his handling of hurricane Katrina, post-invasion Iraq and his handling of the economy. There are a few points in the article worth noting:

"There has been a decline in Mr. Bush's support even among Republicans. In the January Times/CBS News poll, 83 percent of Republicans approved of the way he was handling his job; in the latest poll 72 percent approve. Approval among self-identified conservatives also dropped to 52 percent, from 62 percent."
[...]
"On Iraq, 30 percent said they approved of his management of the situation there and 65 percent disapproved."
[...]
"Republicans are over all more positive about the work in Iraq than Democrats, with 65 percent saying that things are going well there for the United States. But that number was still down from 76 percent in January."
[...]
"Times/CBS News polls showed George Bush with 34 percent in June 1992 and Bill Clinton with 36 percent in September 1994."

So while conservatives and Republicans remain in quite lockstep agreement with the President, even a number of them are coming to differentiate between the spin of the Bush administration and Republicans in general and the reality, both in Bush's overall performance and more specifically on Iraq. As for the 65 percent of Republicans who say things are going well for us in Iraq, I am left speechless. Is it a sign of things going well that US troops keep dying, that Iraq is on the brink of civil war, with American troops caught in the middle, that the political process is moving slowly, if at all. If that is things going well for America in Iraq, I don't want to know what they consider bad. And finally, in a nice little bitchslap to Bush personally, his approval rating is as good as his father towards the latters last year in office and lower than Clinton's lowest point. Come on George, you can start crying now.

A New African Crisis

2006-02-28T00:38:00.000-08:00

The NY Times reports that the fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan has spread to Chad. This growth in the conflict has been predicted for quite a while, but due to the lack of involvement by major countries such as the U.S. has not amounted to much. Currently the U.S. just supports the African Union (AU) forces, only a few thousand troops interjected in the conflict to enforce a ceasefire that has long since been followed. While there has been talk in the U.S. government and in the U.N., there has not been much substative effort to back up the AU forces in their enforcement, nor has their been much effort in expanding their mission into one preventing genocide. Now, the NY Times is reporting the predicted inevitibilities, the beginning of a Chad-Sudan war. Both sides claim that groups operating out of Darfur have been conducting violence. For instance,Human Rights Watch's recent report on the background of the Darfur conflagration note that:

The government of Chad has several times during the Darfur conflict accused Sudan of harboring and supporting the Chadian rebels and sponsoring attacks on its territory, but relations were mended.

The Sudanese govenment, according to a Human Rights Watch report implicate the Sudanese armed forces, as well as the government supported janjaweed in incursions into Chad to target refugees from Darfur:

The government of Sudan is actively exporting the Darfur crisis to its neighbor by providing material support to Janjaweed militias and by failing to disarm or control them, by backing Chadian rebel groups that it allows to operate from bases in Darfur, and by deploying its own armed forces across the border into Chad.

Between these two governments lie the people of the Darfur region and the areas of Chad to which many thousands have fled. When both governments have declared mutual war on the rebels, there is only one outcome likely: a killing field. While the U.S. has responded, in calling this as "a campaign of terror that the Bush administration has called genocide" according to the NY Times, not much has been done about it. If the U.S., NATO and the EU do not act, this will become a stain upon the Western countries' reputations in the shape of Rwanda.

This whisky might kill you

2006-02-27T15:29:00.000-08:00

According to the Times of London, a distillery in Scotland has begun making the strongest whisky again.

Twelve barrels of the world’s most alcoholic whisky, or enough to wipe out a medium-size army, will be produced when the Bruichladdich distillery revives the ancient tradition of quadruple-distilling today. With an alcohol content of 92 per cent, the drink may not be the most delicate single malt ever produced but it is by far and away the world’s strongest. Malt whisky usually has an alcohol content of between 40 per cent and 63.5 per cent

The whisky has an alcohol content of 92 percent and was thought to be strong enough that two spoonfuls could kill you. It has also attracted the watchful eye of the US Secret Service, which is wary of its possible use as a WMD:

The US Secret Service admitted in 2003 that it had been monitoring the distillery because the difference between distilling a fine whisky and making chemical weapons was “just a small tweak”.

Illegal Campaign Activity in Non-Profits

2006-02-27T12:55:00.000-08:00

The NY Times has a story about the increasing number of IRS investigations into non-profit's activities that may violate the prohibition of advocating or fundraising for specific candidates. While both liberal and conservative non-profits are under investigation, the violations are most egregious in the conservative churches. For example, the article describes a drive by Jerry Falwell to raise money and support for Bush:

The complaints by the group include one on July 15, 2004, against Jerry Falwell Ministries, saying falwell.com had endorsed President Bush and urged readers to donate $5,000 to the Campaign for Working Families. Such activities are illegal, Mr. [Barry] Lynn [head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State] said, and the Web site was quickly changed.

Most of the complaints against liberal non-profits were centered around criticism of President Bush rather than urging monetary or other support for candidates. In one of the more blatantly political moves, the East Waynesville Baptist Church in North Carolina kicked out all the members who voted for John Kerry after the 2004 presidential elections. This whole train of political events involving churches demonstrates why it is increasingly dangerous for churches to mix with politics and government, not just for government, but for religion as well.

Human Rights First report on Detainee Deaths

2006-02-23T15:15:00.000-08:00

In a report by Human Rights First (the full report is Available in PDF format), they allege that the U.S. military has failed to investigate and adequately discipline troops and their superiors (and CIA agents) involved in detainee deaths. Furthermore, in 8 of the 100 or so cases of detainee death where death was caused by torture, the steepest sentence given was 5 months. They also question the reporting and investigations, as well as the lack of accountability higher up in the chain of command since “the law that requires commanders to be held responsible for the unlawful acts of their subordinates about which they knew or should have known has been all but forgotten”. For example in one of the most well-known cases of detainee death, that of Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who was killed by being stuffed in a sleeping bag after many beatings, wrapped up with electrical cord and his mouth and nose were blocked and his chest was sat upon. Although publicly his death was of ‘natural causes’, the autopsy reported it as “asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression”. Despite participation of the CIA and Special Forces in the beatings and eventual death of Mowhoush, only one soldier was eventually tried and convicted and he received no jail time. The other descriptions are equally as disturbing and the consequences no more severe. Furthermore, the investigative techniques and procedures were not followed in many cases that looked to be a cover-up method. The report is a disturbing read on why the U.S. needs to make sure that accusations of torture and detainee death are investigated thoroughly and as far up the command structure as the responsibility goes.

Strange Bedfellows

2006-02-23T13:00:00.000-08:00

I didn't want to write about the Dubai Ports World deal and ensuing controversy, but it has done something I don't think any issue has done: put me in agreement with David Brooks, the usually-moronic conservative NY Times columnist. However, strange as it may seem, his column on the DP World controversy today made valuable points (which many can't see because of the Times Select nonsense). Essentially what his argument boils down to is:

But let's be clear: the opposition to the acquisition by Dubai Ports World is completely bogus. The deal would have no significant effect on port security.

However, my one qualm with the op-ed is that Brooks doesn't acknowledge the incredibly bad job the White House has done to reduce opposition. They have failed tremendously, spectacularly on that front, even with the facts supporting their position. Well, hopefully this thing dies down and isn't the start of xenophobic protectionism.

When in doubt, cling to stupidity

2006-02-22T17:18:00.000-08:00

While I support the DW Ports bid for P&O, the President has made a terrible case with both the conflicts of interest within the administration, the lack of consultation of the approval process with Congress and with the claim that Bush "didn't know about the deal until a few days ago". Why is the President using the Iran Contra defense of his father when the facts of the case will expose opponents as protectionists and xenophobes. Bush is incompetent, even in the few cases in which I agree with him, at explaining what he wants to do and why it is the right thing. I thought it was just that his policies were indefensible for those of us living in the reality-based community. If the deal is rejected, it will be a victory for protectionists and xenophobes and entirely the fault of the President.

More ridiculous controversy over P&O purchase

2006-02-22T13:22:00.000-08:00

Well, the political firestorm over the sale of P&O to Dubai Ports World (DP World) has not abated, but at least some of the correct facts are coming out. The Washington Post has a story detailing the resulting security situation at U.S. ports if the deal goes through. Nothing would change from now except the owners of the leases of the parts of the docks. The head of the North American operations of P&O pointed out that "the workers handling security in U.S. ports are supplied by longshoremen's unions--an arangement he said would remain in effect". The article describes the situation at ports across the country:

"Terminal operators typically lease facilities from a local port authority and are responsible for attracting shipping lines to use their terminal, where there main task is to move the thousands of containers that come in and out onto the right vessels, rail cars or trucks. In the process, they must main security at the facility, with the government providing backup and oversight." (italics added)

While there are legitimate concerns over port security, they are not really the same issue as the ownership of the port terminals. Stephen E. Flynn, a specialist in maritime security at the Council on Foreign Relations puts it into perspective,

"What I hope for out of this whole debate is that, as Americans suddenly realize most of our marine terminals are managed by foreign-owned companies, they ask, given that that's a reality, how do we secure it? I also hope this current situation doesn't lead to a feeding frenzy [against foreign operators], because if we want things to be secure over here, we're going to have to work with foreign counterparts"

That is the appropriate reaction, but the NY Times editorial board seems to disagree and sides with Congressional xenophobes and fear-mongers from both parties. However, it does raise the issue that has been missing from the debate: the administration's slovenly pandering to corporate interests:

"The Bush administration has followed a disturbing pattern in its approach to the war on terror. It has been perpetually willing to sacrifice individual rights in favor of security. But it has been loath to do the same thing when it comes to business interests. It has not imposed reasonable safety requirements on chemical plants, one of the nation's greatest points of vulnerability, or on the transport of toxic materials. The ports deal is another decision that has made the corporations involved happy, and has made ordinary Americans worry about whether they are being adequately protected."

Again, while adding an interesting perspective to the debate, the NY Times returns to the fallacy that a change in foreign company control over the port terminals will affect security. It is from this non-truth that the xenophobia and protectionism come from. The LA Times takes a much more realistic view calling the proposed legislation a "bipartisan hissy fit" that "provides members of Congress an opportunity to talk tough and pander to the terrorism-rattled xenophobe in us all". The latter point is explored in a Reuters article detailing how Bush's fear mongering brought this conflict upon himself. A Washington Post editorial agrees with the LA Times and uses much of the information presented in the article on the controversy quoted above. The article closes with the contradiction between the supposed Republican neo-conservative platform and opposition to the P&O purchase:

"Finally, we're wondering if perhaps American politicians are having trouble understanding some of the most basic goals of contemporary U.S. foreign policy. A goal of 'democracy promotion' in the Middle East, after all, is to encourage Arab countries to become economically and politically integrated with the rest of the world. What better way to do so than by encouraging Arab companies to invest in the United States? Clearly, Congress doesn't understand that basic principle, since its members prefer instead to spread prejudice and misinformation"

DW Ports: Letter to Maureen Dowd and other sensible Americans who have been misled

2006-02-22T02:54:00.000-08:00

Ms Dowd,

I have read your column religiously (as well as Bushworld and Are Men Necessary), but I have to, sadly, complain about your last column. You complain about the security of U.S. ports, rightfully. However, DW Ports will not be in charge of security (nor was P&O). That duty falls to the Coast Guard and Customs. Furthermore, you write that "Is [UAE) it a nation that helps us sometimes but also addicts us to oil and then jacks up the price". This is inaccurate. According to a story in Tuesday's Financial Times, Dubai only gets 7 percent of its GDP from oil. It had small reserves to begin with and correctly diversified its economy away from oil. You also claim that "Just because the wealthy foreigners who own our debt can blackmail us with their economic leverage, does that mean we should expose our security assets to them as well?" Again, you miss the main point that DW Ports is an internationally recognized company with a large share of American executives (including the head of the Maritime Authority who was the head of the European division of DW Ports; a conflict of interest, yes, but still a valid consideration). While Britain and Dubai are different across the board does not mean that their running of U.S. ports will be any different. The protectionist wings of the Democratic and Republican parties have jumped on this as an issue which they feel they can tack national security onto their own agendas. Rushing to protect (the British-owned) P&O (or Unocal for that matter) against an "evil" (i.e., Chinese-owned) or "terrorist" (i.e. Arab-owned) company feeds the fires of people like Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan and harms America's reputation as being market-friendly (as opposed to nationlistic) reputation.

Housing Market Turning Negative for the Low-Income Population

2006-02-22T02:17:00.000-08:00

The NY Times reports that there has been a sharp increase in the numbers of foreclosures on mortgages of minorities. This is a worrying sign in an already over-valued housing market because minorities have lower incomes than non-minorities. Therefore, any signs of a weak housing market will begin with lower-income Americans. For one, those living on low-incomes will end up paying higher interest rates and fees due to the higher risk of loaning money to those with lower earnings. The market for these people is called the subprime market because they have lower credit ratings and a higher risk of default. The article notes that subprime interest rates on mortgages are "three points higher than the prime rate, [which is] about 6.2 percent". Furthermore the rates of subprime (i.e., higher interest rate) loans for mortgages is higher for minority lenders than for white lenders:

About 30 percent of home purchase loans made to blacks from 1999 to 2004 and 20 percent of home loans made to Hispanics were subprime, compared with 10.4 percent of loans to Asian-Americans, only slightly higher than for white borrowers.

In 2004, the last year with data available, nearly 27 percent of loans taken out by minorities were subprime, up from 15 percent in 1999.

While these differences reflect largely differences in the relative income levels of minorities and whites, it reinforces the fact that that minority foreclosures could foresee broader problems in the housing market (and the economy as a whole), because foreclosures are linked with the income levels of homebuyers. A stagnating wage and decreases in savings (for instance, the first negative savings rate of the American economy since 1933) could cause the rise in foreclosures to spread upwards into the income distribution. Increases in the foreclosure rate will reduce the demand for housing, which in turn will decrease housing prices and could cause severe economy-wide problems. It is a harbinger of future recession.

Execution delayed indefinitely

2006-02-21T18:59:00.000-08:00

The BBC reports tonight that the execution of Michael Morales has been postponed indefinitely over concerns about lethal injection. The reason give was "ethical issues surrounding the lethal injection method". This is a first step to ending the potentially painful process of lethal injection and eventually ending capital punishment in the U.S.

Explanation for the Danish Cartoons

2006-02-21T13:48:00.000-08:00

The culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten has an op-ed in the Washington Post today explaining why the paper printed the cartoons that have caused so much uproar, as well as the domestic reaction within Denmark. I don't really think I need to comment, as the op-ed is quite illuminating, so a few quotes:

"The idea wasn't to provoke gratuitously -- and we certainly didn't intend to trigger violent demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. Our goal was simply to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter."
[...]
"We have a tradition of satire when dealing with the royal family and other public figures, and that was reflected in the cartoons. The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims."
[...]
"When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy."
[...]
"As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult. This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders."

Fukuyama: The Ideas are Right, They Just Screwed It Up

2006-02-21T13:27:00.000-08:00

In his NY Times Magazine article, Francis Fukuyama, a leading proponent of neoconservatism, seemed to renounce the neocon war in Iraq. However, while articulating a generally liberal foreign policy, he still clung to the ideas of neoconservatism. One thing that was correct is his call to avoid isolationism. It will be difficult with the amount of damage the Bush administration did to American credibility abroad, as well as to the belief many Americans held that foreign policy could accomplish the goal of benefitting American interests abroad. However, Fukuyama's essay reeked of a "don't blame me" mentality where he accuses the administration of misinterpreting the neoconservative message. He appears to still believe in the neoconservative ideology, while disagreeing with the Bush administration's tactics. While it is admirable to admit that the criticisms of the war in Iraq, made before the war even started, were valid, it does nothing to stop the death and destruction occuring on a daily basis as a direct result of an administration's policies which Fukuyama supported.

Idiot Protectionists

2006-02-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

While I am hesitant to agree with much that the Bush administration does, I do believe that the opposition in Congress to DP (Dubai Ports) World's purchase of P&O is wrong-headed. First, the members of Congress have said the ports would be owned by "terrorists", a ridiculously racist charge. Besides the racist aspect, the ports would only be run by the company, continuing the concessionary leases held by P&O Co. As the Financial Times "Lex Column" points out:

The US should be careful about singling out Arab and Chinese [the CFIUS rejected CNOOC's bid to buy Unocal last summer] investors, who happen to be amongh the most likely sources of funding. Moreover, any new laws should not affect already approved deals. Constitutional niceties aside, that would leave the US looking like a third world country that can force foreigners to divest assets at will.

According to sources used by the NY Times, the Coast Guard and the United States customs authorities, not the terminal operators, are responsible for checking incoming cargo, passengers and crews as well as for planning and maintaining port security. This seems to contradict all the hoopla about security. If the security is not good enough at ports, maybe we should look towards the government of the United State, not Dubai or the UAE.

Another execution delayed

2006-02-21T10:27:00.000-08:00

The NY Times reports that the execution of Michael Morales was delayed. He was expected to be killed at 12:01 am today, but he had successfully challenged the means of execution. The Supreme Court agreed that it was cruel and unusual punishment to execute by lethal injection if the barbituates were not administered correctly. To go ahead with the execution, there were two anesthesiologists present to "minimize Michael Angelo Morales' pain". However, both anesthesiologists refused to participate because of ethical concerns. Therefore, instead of killing Morales this way, he will be given an overdose of the barbituates only. If they do not kill him by midnight tonight, the death warrant will expire and they will have to go back to the judge that originally sentenced him, who petitioned for clemency.

"[Sentencing Judge] McGrath said he no longer believed the credibility of a jailhouse informant whose testimony helped land Morales on death row."

Resistance within Navy to torture

2006-02-20T20:35:00.000-08:00

The New Yorker reports that Alberto Mora, general counsel of the U.S. Navy resisted the moves outside of international conventions and laws on the use of torture. He mostly fought with William Haynes II, general counsel for Department of Defense and a member of the clan that agrees with David Addington, Dick Cheney's cheif of staff, in the unitary executive theory. A memo from 2004 reveals that:

Mora's criticisms of Administration policy were unequivocal, wide-ranging, and presistent. Well before the exposure of prisoner abuse in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, in April 2004, Mora warned his superiors at the Pentagon about the consequences of President Bush's decision, in February 2002, to circumvent the Geneva conventions, which prohibit both torture and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." He argued that a refusal to outlaw cruelty toward U.S.-held terrorist suspects was an implicit invitation to abuse. Mora also challenged the legal framework that the Bush Administration has constructed to justify an expansion of executive power, in matters ranging from interrogations to wiretapping. He described as "unlawful", "dangerous," and "erroneous" novel legal theories granting the President the right to authorize abuse. Mora warned that these precepts could leave U.S. personnel open to criminal prosecution.

However, Mora lost out to lawyers close to VP Cheney in the argument about whether the U.S. was subject to the Geneva Conventions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mora, the article points out is a "cautious, cerebral conservative...[who] strongly supported the Administration's war on terror, including the invasion of Iraq". The New Yorker also reports that his concerns came from fear that torture would "undermin[e] any attempts to prosecute [terrorism suspects] in a court of law", doubts about the "reliably of forced confessions" and the feeling that, in his own words, "it just ain't right". Mora also worries that cruel and degrading treatment violates the inherent right to dignity bestowed on all, and in its absense, "the whole Constitution crumbles". For a Republican appointee, it is a remarkably honest view.

One of the main rationales for allowing torture and cruel treatment was that, although it was illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Administration officials or other "higher authorities" could allow these otherwise illegal techniques. However, this sounds like the type of practice that caused the Protestant Reformation (not to mention many other revolutions in the past) where people could buy forgiveness in advance. Neither argument holds water and both expose those who give the advanced forebearance to the risk of shaming themselves.

When Mora criticized a report by John Yoo, one of the authors of the torture memos, the Defense Department secretly signed and implemented them. The memos allowed for the use of over 30 techniques that amount to cruel and degrading treatment and "when the Commander-in-Chief deemed it necessary, [the authorization to engage] in torture". However, in December 2003, the memos were withdrawn by the Office of Legal Counsel because the Justice Department "could no longer rely on the legal analysis" in the memo because "Yoo's interpretation of the President's powers [were] overly broad". The article helps tell the story of how the Administration authorized torture and cruel and degrading treatment of detainees that led to Abu Ghraib and left many members of the Bush Administration possibly on the hook for war crimes charges under the War Crimes Act, which defines a war crime as one that violates the Geneva Conventions. Mora closes by saying: "When you put together the pieces, it's all so sad. To preserve flexibility [in interrogation tactics], they were willing to throw away our values".

Another one on free speech

2006-02-20T03:28:00.000-08:00

David Irving is an idiot. While he has recanted his hard-core Holocaust denial, he is still an idiot. There is so much physical evidence that the Holocaust happened that his theories are almost crack-pot delusions. However, like the Mohammed cartoons he has a right to print his views in whichever journal will print them. Those who deny the Holocaust are idiots, out of the view of reality. And those who laugh at stupid jokes about Muslims as terrorists are getting a base view of society. Each group influenced by these cartoons either understand the freedom of the press issues or are idiots. Many people know that it is against the rules of Islam to show paintings of the prophet. It is also in bad taste to show a view of Mohammed as a terrorist. But it is perfectly legal. Fuck you if you disagree with the printing of these cartoons. They may be offensive, but free speech is often offensive in the headlines. I hate Nazis, but they have the right to march at Skokie. That perogative is given under the U.S. constitution. My right to free speech is inviolable!

Medicare & Social Security Changes Anathema to Elderly Voters

2006-02-19T00:55:00.000-08:00

The NY Times has an article on the effect of Republican efforts to change Social Security and Medicare on support for Republicans by the elderly. Overwhelmingly, the changes are detrimental to elderly support for Republcians:

Surveys show that older voters remain skeptical; a new nationwide poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health research group, found that retirees were almost twice as likely to say they viewed the benefit unfavorably (45 percent) as favorably (23 percent). Last month's New York Times/CBS News Poll found that most did not expect the law to lower drug costs over the next few years.

This is what Democrats are focusing on, and with good reason. The programs proposed do nothing to help with the future solvency of Social Security or providing affordable drugs for seniors. The former benefits financial firms and create an unfunded liability for the Social Security program and the latter helps pharmaceutical companies without providing the government the ability to negotiate over drug prices.

Bush administration hypocrisy

2006-02-17T12:23:00.000-08:00

Reuters reports today that the State Department has asked the Palestinian Authority to return $50 million dollars it has received from the U.S. While I am always suspicious of political parties that have armies, the move is dripping with hypocrisy. The Bush administration pushed hard for the Palestinian elections and therefore, to request that aid money is returned when the political party won whom the administration opposed seems to be blatantly inconsistent. Never mind the $2 million in aid given right before the vote (for projects that would have reflected well on Fatah, but likely backfired and ended up benefitting Hamas), an administration that sees democracy as the answer to everything should not make aid conditional on the 'right' outcome. Thomas Friedman's op-ed (sub. rqd) today in the NY Times makes a valid point:

If Hamas is going to fail now in leading the Palestinian Authority, it is crucial that it be seen to fail on its own — because it can't transform itself from a terror group into a ruling body delivering peace, security and good government for Palestinians — not because Israel and the U.S. never gave it a chance.

"Any minute that it is evident to the Palestinian public that Hamas is being forced to fail will guarantee that any future elections will only produce another Hamas victory," said the Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki.

This is an important lesson for the Bush administration if it sees (incorrectly in my view) democracy as the solution to terrorism and anti-Americanism. Democracy alone will not bring economic stability or political stability. In fact, as we are seeing in Iraq, it may lead to chaos. That is not to say that the U.S. should be supporting tyrants like Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak (head of Egypt) or the Saudi Royal family. It is important, though, to realize the potential instability if democracy is pushed forward too fast without any underlying institutions. In countries such as Egypt, which had partially-free elections last year, the Muslim Brotherhood had a strong showing despite the restrictions placed on how well it could do. However, in comparison with the other opposition parties, there was no question about which party won. This is because, for one reason or another, the religious parties have been more successful at organizing and recruiting and avoiding the restrictions placed on opposition parties in countries like Egypt. Therefore, any 'big bang' move towards democracy in Egypt will see a victory by the Muslim Brotherhood, and will be counter to what Bush predicted in his inaugural address that democracy will moderate religious political power. This is the failure of Bush's 'democracy' agenda and the failure is inherent in the policy and has been since the beginning.

Senate Rejects Wiretapping Probe

2006-02-17T12:17:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post reports today that the Senate Intelligence Committee will not investigate the legality of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. Instead, Congress will work with the White House to revise the FISA law to accommodate the desires of the Administration. This is a ridiculously obvious case in which the Congress eschews its oversight role and hands more power to the executive branch. This is how democracy moves towards facism by legal (although highly suspect) legislative action. In addition, by agreeing that the FISA law needs to be revised to accommodate the NSA program, the White House has agreed that they violated the FISA law. The Post reports: "[Scott] McClellan and [chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Pat] Roberts cited efforts by committee member Mike DeWine (R-Ohio). DeWine, who will face a tough reelection battle this fall, is drafting legislation that would exempt the NSA program from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA]" What essentially happened is that the Congress has said the President can do whatever he wants and the Congress will, once the program is leaked, change the law to bring the President's actions within the law. While other hearings will be held, they will be held in closed session and deal less with determining whether the President broke the law and more with presenting the appearance of oversight. the New York Times has a scathing editorial today, quoted extensively below:

"Is there any aspect of President Bush's miserable record on intelligence that Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is not willing to excuse and help to cover up?"
[...]
Mr. Roberts had promised to hold a committee vote yesterday on whether to investigate. But he canceled the vote, and then made two astonishing announcements. He said he was working with the White House on amending the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to permit warrantless spying. And then he suggested that such a change would eliminate the need for an inquiry.
[...]
Mr. Rockefeller said the White House had not offered enough information to make an informed judgment on the program possible. It is withholding, for instance, such minor details as how the program works, how it is reviewed, how much and what kind of information is collected, and how the information is stored and used.

Mr. Roberts said the White House had agreed to provide more briefings to the Senate Intelligence Committee — hardly an enormous concession since it is already required to do so. And he said he and the White House were working out "a fix" for the law. That is the worst news. FISA was written to prevent the president from violating Americans' constitutional rights. It was amended after 9/11 to make it even easier for the administration to do legally what it is now doing.

FISA does not in any way prevent Mr. Bush from spying on Qaeda members or other terrorists. The last thing the nation needs is to amend the law to institutionalize the imperial powers Mr. Bush seized after 9/11.

Renewables and Public Financing

2006-02-16T16:03:00.000-08:00

The International Energy Agency , a group focused on energy policy founded during the oil crisis of 1973-74, released a document advocating increasing renewable energy supplies and supporting the use of public funds for this purpose. The Executive Director, Claude Mandil, notes that: "We need to use public funds as effectively as possible in achieving this" This is a message that the Bush administration should listen to. Although Bush made reference to increasing funding for renewables, he actually proposed cutting the funding in his 2007 budget.

Can Cheney declassify documents?

2006-02-15T16:38:00.000-08:00

In the interview with Fox News about his shooting incident, Dick Cheney made the following claim : There is an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously focuses first and foremost on the President, but also includes the Vice President. From what I can tell, the Executive Order he is referring to is 12958 . It talks about the classification and declassification of documents, but as far as I can tell, there is nothing in it that gives the Vice President any power to declassify documents. This is held by the President, Agency heads, and the Archivist at the National Archives, as far as I can tell. The section relating to declassification is Part 3.

UPDATE: John Dean was asked about this and said that he did not remember an executive order that allowed the Vice President to unilaterally declassify documents.

Bernanke goes to Capitol Hill

2006-02-15T15:52:00.000-08:00

In his first appearance in front of Congress as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank Open Market Committee (FOMC), Ben Bernanke outlined uncontroversial views on the economic performance of the U.S. in 2005 and predictions for 2006. He acknowledged that the 1.1 percent growth rate in GDP in the 4th quarter was likely due to the effect of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. However, he countered pessimism over future economic growth:

“the most recent evidence--including indicators of production, the flow of new orders to businesses, weekly data on initial claims for unemployment insurance, and the payroll employment and retail sales figures for January--suggests that the economic expansion remains on track.”

He also noted the pressures on inflation in 2005 and the possibility for further increases in inflationary expectations in 2006. While inflation excluding food and energy (which are volatile, and therefore unreliable for predicting future inflation) was only 2 percent in 2005, Bernanke noted that

” Prices of consumer energy products jumped more than 20 percent, with large increases in prices of natural gas, gasoline, and fuel oil.”

What was interesting was Bernanke’s discussion of the prospect of a fall in consumption, which has held up the economy for the past couple years (and which has led to the first negative savings rate since 1933). He pointed out that:

“given the substantial gains in house prices and the high levels of home construction activity over the past several years, prices and construction could decelerate more rapidly than currently seems likely. Slower growth in home equity, in turn, might lead households to boost their saving and trim their spending relative to current income by more than is now anticipated. The possibility of significant further increases in energy prices represents an additional risk to the economy; besides affecting inflation, such increases might also hurt consumer confidence and thereby reduce spending on non-energy goods and services.” (italics added)

The full report is clearer on the link between house prices and consumer spending:

”some observers believe that home values have moved above levels that can be supported by fundamentals and that some realignment is warranted. Such a realignment - if abrupt - could materially sap household wealth and confidence and, in turn, depress consumer spending.”

Were house prices reduce significantly and quickly, the repercussions could affect the entire economy through the corresponding reduction in consumption in favor of savings as people’s perceived wealth shrinks dramatically. In addition, the new bankruptcy law has made it more difficult to discharge debt. The full report describes the effect of the law:

”A large number of households filed for bankruptcy in the weeks leading up to October 17, the date when a new bankruptcy law took effect. […] After the new law became effective, filings fell sharply to a level significantly below the average of recent years, and they have since remained low”

With bankruptcy harder to use to reduce indebtedness, the possibility of a sharp drop in housing prices would be even more devastating. As people refinance mortgages, the amount they owe increases. If the value of their house suddenly drops, there will be a significant overhang between their debts and assets that cannot be eliminated through bankruptcy. As more and more people realize the limits of the new law, there may be more hesitation to purchase a house, which could have the perverse effect of creating bankruptcies by precipitating the very drop in housing prices that created the fear of the new bankruptcy rules. It’s a bit of a long shot, but it’s possible. Whether or not events transpire this way, a fall in housing prices is one of the biggest domestic threats to economic growth in the next few years along with the rapidly increasing budget deficit. While the deficit decreased from 2004 to 2005, the Congressional Budget Office (pdf) predicts that the deficit for 2006 will be about $20 billion higher than in 2005 at $337 billion, not counting supplemental appropriation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and much of the hurricane relief. The CBO optimistically estimates these will cost between $20 and $25 billion. The major international threat is the prospect of a sharp spike in energy prices. The full report highlights concerns about future increases in oil prices:

Growing conviction among traders that oil-market conditions would remain tight in future years pushed the price of the far-dated NYMEX oil futures contract (currently for delivery in 2012) from an average of $38 per barrel for January 2005 to about $61 per barrel for January 2006”

This highlights concerns over both the supply of and demand for oil but doesn’t account for any unforeseen events that could disrupt the supply of oil, such as Iran’s nuclear stand-off, Nigeria’s instability in the major oil producing region, Venezuela’s increasingly distant relationship with the U.S. and Russia’s use of control over energy as a political tool, as demonstrated by their shut-off of gas to Ukraine on January 1, 2006 for several days.

The full report presented to Congress is available on the Federal Reserve’s website.

When the Veep Shoots Someone

2006-02-14T16:25:00.000-08:00

The whole Dick Cheney shooting someone is not to surprising. He doesn't like to follow the rules, whether in selling the war or hunting for quail and therefore the fact that he shot someone isn't surprising. On Hardball tonight, they are making a big deal that Bush/Rove etc. (the president's office) has not forced Cheney to reveal fully what happened. That doesn't surprise me at all because throughout the Bush administration, Cheney has been obsessed over secrecy. It has been the president's office that has been concerned with managing the media and what information the public receives. But, as long as the president's people do not compel Cheney to explain what happened, the story will continue to create problems for the administration's credibility.

Bob Barr, Bane of the Right?

2006-02-10T17:49:00.000-08:00

Dana Milbank at the Washington Post has a good column on the conservative's reluctance to hear the truth that Bush is breaking the law with the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. Conservatives booed him: He [Barr] says President Bush is breaking the law by eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants. And fellow conservatives, for the most part, don't want to hear it.[...]"Are we in danger of putting allegiance to party ahead of allegiance to principle?" [Barr said][...]But nobody said anything in the deathly quiet audience. Barr merited only polite applause when he finished, and one man, Richard Sorcinelli, booed him loudly. "I can't believe I'm in a conservative hall listening to him say [Bush] is off course trying to defend the United States," Sorcinelli fumed. I don't like Bob Barr's politics, but the Republican lock-step crowd refuse to hear anything against what the leadership tell them to be.

Maybe Brownie was right?

2006-02-10T14:50:00.000-08:00

NPR is reporting that a Congressional timeline from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs shows that: 28 federal, state and local agencies reported levee failures the day Katrina made landfall in New Orleans[, which] contradicts top officials -- including those at the White House -- who say they learned of the failures the following day. What it does clearly show is confusion and the inability to communicate and respond effectively to the unfolding disaster. It doesn't really support Brownie as an effective leader; all it does is further discredit the White House and Department of Homeland Security.

Bush uses L.A. Plot to bolster his case

2006-02-10T14:31:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post article on the plot to attack the tallest building in Los Angeles leaves much room for speculation that the timing of the release of more details on the plot were motivated by the Congressional hearings on the NSA wiretapping program: The reported West Coast plot had been disclosed before but never in as much detail. The president's speech came on the same day as a Senate hearing into the Bush-ordered warrantless surveillance of telephone calls and e-mail by Americans and their contacts overseas, but aides said his comments were not related to the dispute over the program. However, intelligence officials, speaking anonomously have discounted the claim that the timing of the speech and the NSA hearings were coincidental: But several U.S. intelligence officials played down the relative importance of the alleged plot and attributed the timing of Bush's speech to politics. [...] [They] said there is deep disagreement within the intelligence community over the seriousness of the Library Tower scheme and whether it was ever much more than talk. The Bush administration has used the release of information for political gain many times before and has also manipulated the color-coded threat level from the DHS to help bolster their poll numbers when they slip or when a serious criticism is made against the administration. It is interesting to note how infrequently the threat level has been mentioned or changed since the 2004 presidential elections.

Not what I imagined...

2006-02-10T12:06:00.000-08:00

When I thought we were heading for a 1984 style authoritarian regime, this wasn't the leader I had in mind. But I guess what's done is done.

Just click the panda and it will all be ok.

Brownie Speaks

2006-02-10T11:59:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post reports today that Michael Brown has confirmed that he told the Administration and other Department of Homeland Security officials of the levee breaches when they occurred: Brown said not only did he inform the White House, but he also informed top Homeland Security officials about the situation on the same day. His comments contradicted previous statements by agency officials, who said they did not know the levees had been breached until the following day. Clearly someone is lying and it is not necessarily DHS and the administration. Michael Brown described FEMA under DHS as the agency's red-headed "stepchild". While Brown has said he wants to testify more openly than he could as part of the administration, part or all of his motivation could come from a desire to try to repair his reputation and attract clients to his disaster consulting firm which would be helped by having more media coverage of him. Either Brownie or the administration is lying and it is unclear now which one. Both have reason to lie and both have lied in the past.

Right on Krugman

2006-02-10T00:37:00.000-08:00

Well, for those with NY Times Select, you can see the article in its entirety, for others, some clips. Krugman does a really good job of summarizing the Bush budget shenanigans:

The story begins in 2001, when President Bush was pushing his first tax cut through Congress. At the time, the administration insisted that its tax-cut plans wouldn't endanger the budget surplus bequeathed to Mr. Bush by Bill Clinton. But even some Republican senators were skeptical. So the Senate demanded a cap on the tax cut: it should not reduce revenue over the period from 2001 to 2011 by more than $1.35 trillion.

The administration met this requirement, but not by scaling back its tax-cutting ambitions. Instead, it created fictitious savings by "sunsetting" the tax cut, making the whole thing expire at the end of 2010.
[...]
Clinton-era budgets offered 10-year projections of spending and revenues. But the Bush administration slashed the budget horizon to five years.
[...]
Now, the administration has proposed spending cuts that are both cruel and implausible. For example, administration computer printouts obtained by the center show that the budget calls for a 13 percent cut in spending on veterans' health care, adjusted for inflation, over the next five years.
[...]
At this point the administration's budget strategy seems to be simply to ignore reality. The 2007 budget makes it clear, once and for all, that the tax cuts can't be offset with spending cuts. But Bush officials have decided to ignore that unpleasant fact, and let some future administration deal with the mess they have created.

New head of USAID

2006-02-09T15:25:00.000-08:00

The Financial Times reports today that anti-poverty groups are concerned that the restructuring of USAID and the appointment of a new director who reports directly to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice will hurt the long-term initiatives aimed at fighting poverty. This fear is justifiable because linking USAID with State and the regular foreign aid means that the focus will be placed more on the "war on terrorism" instead of fighting poverty. There is also concern about the new director of USAID, Randall Tobias. According to his State Department bio, the only relevant experience he has was his brief tenure from October 2003 to January 2006 as the United States Global AIDS Coordinator. Even in that position, he was criticized for his links with the pharmaceutical industry--he was President and CEO of Eli Lilly from 1993 to 1999 and became chairman emeritus. Furthermore, and likely the reason he was selected as the Global AIDS Coordinator and now head of USAID is because he has consistently donated money to Republican candidates and groups. According to PoliticalMoneyLine.com, he gave $145,750 to candidates, parties and PACs, 96 percent of which went to Republican recipients. The money went to the following groups and candidates:

Republicans

10/24/2001, Hoosiers supporting Buyer for Congress, $1,000
01/27/2003, Indiana Republican State Central Committee, $5,000
03/03/2003, Indiana Republican State Central Committee, $5,000
06/28/2002, Indiana Republican State Central Committee, $5,000
01/17/2001, Indiana Republican State Central Committee, $250
11/08/2001, Friends of John Hostettler Committee, $1,000
11/08/2001, Friends of John Hostettler Committee, $1,000
07/23/2002, Chris Chocola for Congress, Inc., $1,000
11/08/2001, Cathy Keating for Congress, $1,000
04/17/2002, Brose McVey for Congress, $1,000
12/10/2001, Brose McVey for Congress, $500
09/17/2001, Brose McVey for Congress, $500
08/21/2001, RNC State Elections Committee, $2,000
07/09/2003, Friends of Dick Lugar, Inc., $2,000
07/09/2003, Friends of Dick Lugar, Inc., $1,000
11/22/2002, Friends of Dick Lugar, Inc., $1,000
07/18/2003, Bush-Cheney ’04 (Primary), Inc., $2,000
12/10/2001, Mike Pence Committee, $1,000
05/09/2001, Mike Pence Committee, $1,000
09/09/2003, Mike Pence Committee, $1,000
04/30/2003, Republican National Committee, $15,000
11/15/2001, Republican National Committee, $15,000
03/14/2000, Friends of Giuliani Exploratory Committee, $1,000
03/22/2000, Friends of John Hostettler Committee, $500
07/07/1999, Bush for President, Inc., $1,000
12/31/1999, Friends of Dick Lugar, Inc., $1,000
05/03/2000, Friends of Dick Lugar, Inc., $1,000
09/26/2000, Republican National Committee - RNC, $10,000
05/26/2000, Bush for President, Inc., $1,000
06/07/2000, Bush for President, Inc., $1,000
06/12/2000, Bush for President, Inc., $1,000 refunded
08/01/2000, Bush for President, Inc., $1,000 refunded
08/29/1997, David McIntosh for Congress, $1,000
11/17/1997, Campaign America, Inc., $5,000
05/15/1998, Campaign America, Inc., $5,000
09/22/1996, Virginia Blankenbaker for Congress, $1,000
06/09/1995, Issues ’96 (FKA Issues ’94), $5,000
04/18/1996, Lugar for President - Audit Fund, $1,000
02/01/1996, Forbes for President Committee, Inc., $1,000
02/02/1996, Lugar for President Committee Legal & Accounting Compliance Fund, $1,000
04/18/1996, Lugar for President Committee Legal & Accounting Compliance Fund, $1,000 refund
06/19/1995, Lugar for President Committee Inc., $1,000
05/11/1995, David McIntosh for Congress, $1,000
06/04/1996, David McIntosh for Congress, $1,000
08/23/1995, Indiana Republican State Central Committee, $10,000
04/15/1996, Indiana Republican State Central Committee, $500
11/12/1996, Indiana Republican State Central Committee, $5,000
04/12/1996, Republican National Committee - RNC, $5,000
7/27/1993, Friends of Dick Lugar, $500
11/15/1993, Friends of Dick Lugar, $500
11/15/1993, Friends of Dick Lugar, $1,000
12/06/1993, Indiana Republican State Central Committee, $5,000
06/25/1992, New Jersey Republican State Committee, $250
11/14/1991, Bush – Quayle ’92 Primary Committee, Inc., $1,000
08/04/1992, Bush – Quayle ’92 Primary Committee, Inc., $1,000
10/05/1988, Indiana Republican State Central Committee, $1,000
05/02/1986, Broyhill for Senate, $500

Democrats

04/12/2000, Hamilton for Congress, $500
02/03/2000, Americans for Responsible Leadership, $5,000
04/01/1991, Lautenberg Committee, $500
09/26/1987, Lautenberg Committee, $500

Multi-party PAC (68 percent to Republican candidates and parties)

06/30/1997, Eli Lilly & Company PAC, $2,750
06/30/1995, Eli Lilly & Company PAC, $2,500
06/30/1996, Eli Lilly & Company PAC, $2,500
01/25/1994, Eli Lilly & Company PAC, $1,000
12/31/1994, Eli Lilly & Company PAC, $1,000

Cheney authorized Libby's leaks

2006-02-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

According to a new article in the National Journal , Scooter Libby claims that Cheney and other "superiors" authorized his release of classified materials to bolster the Administration's case for war in Iraq. I don't have any knowledge of classified materials procedure, but I doubt that the rules allow the release of classified information for political gain. The article goes on to say that the defense that he was "authorized by superiors" to release the materials may be an attempt to undermine the prosecution. It was a tactic used by Oliver North in Iran-Contra (one of North's lawyers is working for Scooter Libby) where authorization by superiors is claimed and the government refuses to turn over classified materials that will confirm or deny this. It also doesn't seem to work well at protecting the Administration unless the tactic gets Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, to drop all charges. If it doesn't work to that degree, it may provide support for charges that the release of classified information, and Valerie Plame is not specifically mentioned, started much higher in the Administration and that there may have been a broader cover-up and conspiracy than just Scooter Libby and Karl Rove. The article points to some doubt about whether the tactic used by North will work as well with Libby: "A defendant can make a claim that he is just a victim of Washington politics or doing the bidding for someone else," said [professor of law at Fordham University Dan] Richman, the former prosecutor, "But there may be limits to a jury's sympathy when that defendant himself was so high-ranking. Given Libby's position in the White House, the jury is less likely to view him as a sacrificial lamb than as a sacrificial ram."

Administration misled the FISA court for warrants

2006-02-08T23:28:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post reports that the administration has used NSA wiretaps to provide probable cause when seeking warrants from the FISA court and may have neglected to include the source when getting the warrants. In addition, the presiding judges hid the NSA wiretapping program from the rest of the FISA court. According to the sources, twice in the past four years, "a top Justice Department lawyer warned the presiding judge of a secret surveillance court [the FISA court] that information overheard in President Bush's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to obtain wiretap warrants in the court". This would add to the penalties under the FISA law to include a conspiracy charge that the administration had used an illegal (and no courts have ruled that this specific program was legal and constitutional) method to obtain information presented before the FISA court. The article notes that "Both judges expressed concern to senior officials that the president's program, if ever made public and challenged in court, ran a significant risk of being declared unconstitutional". The judges on the FISA court were appointed by then-Chief Justice Rehnquist and were "generally veteran jurists with a pro-government bent " (italics added). These judges would have had little objections to requests for genuinely terrorism-related wiretaps. Between 1979 and 204, the court approved 18,748 requests and only rejected five. This article suggests a more sinister reason for the wiretaps. They may have been taken in a racially-determined fashion against Arab Americans or even against political enemies. We do not know why they were deemed to be too sensitive or the court too reluctant, and Attorney General Gonzales' testimony does not illuminate at all. We have only to assume the worst since the administration has insisted upon stonewalling any Congressional or judicial oversight on the matter. Until they come clean, the suspicions will continue to grow.

The Republicans have a Boehner

2006-02-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post has an article today showing that the new majority leader in the House, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) rents his Capitol Hill apartment from a lobbyist for whom he has written favorable legislation. While Boehner pays a market rate for the apartment, his close relationship with the lobbyist, John Milne, shows his "reform" agenda for what it is: new face, same corruption.

CIA leaks

2006-02-08T03:04:00.000-08:00

The CIA has been aggressively the leakers of some classified material but not others. The government as a whole has been a bit scattered on what leaks it investigates. While a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate the leak of the identity of Valerie Wilson, the administration has been much more aggressive investigating the leak of the NSA wiretapping program, and had already forced the NY Times from releasing the story for over a year (from around the time of the elections). There is so much more politics involved in leak prosecution than there is national security. The damage from leaking Valerie Wilson's identity was far greater than the NSA illegal warrantless wiretapping program. Our enemies knew that they were being monitored before the NY Times story (by commonsense assumption), but the so-called "rogue states" did not know that the energy consultant Valerie Plame was a CIA agent (and therefore her associates were also implicated as on the CIA budget, and in some cases killed as a result). The NSA (on the President's orders) was breaking the law and therefore the leak was a public service by several NSA employees and should be protected under the whistleblower protection laws whereas the Wilson leak was for political benefit. The administration, by ignoring the differences, is further damaging the legitimate whistleblower protections and hurting national security. All in the name of politics. What a shame.

FY 2007 Budget--Unfair, Untransparent & Irresponsible

2006-02-06T15:45:00.000-08:00

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) issued a preliminary report on the President’s FY 2007 budget that highlights the problems and omissions of the budget. The main problem in the budget is that it makes cuts that hurt low- and middle-income Americans while proposing new tax cuts and legislation making existing tax cuts permanent, both of which are designed so they predominantly benefit the wealthy. The budget proposes cuts in federal funding for Medicare and Medicaid, guts the COPS program (which provides federal funds to increase community policing) by cutting 79 percent of its funding, and cutting many other programs that help the poor, children and the elderly. Another problem the CBPP highlights is what is omitted from the budget: projections past 2011, funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, funding for hurricane Katrina rebuilding and the cost of reforming the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Since the projections only extend until 2011 and many of the most expensive proposals the President has proposed or that has been enacted are designed to show little cost until 2011, with the bulk of the cost appearing conveniently after 2011. The CBPP writes:

Several of the additional tax cuts the Administration is proposing--including costly proposals related to health savings accounts and to retirement and lifetime savings accounts -- are designed in a way that their costs in the first five or ten years would be substantially smaller than their costs in subsequent decades, when they would lose huge amounts of revenue. The budget shows the Administration’s Health Savings Accounts proposals would cost a whopping $156 billion over ten years; the costs would be even higher in subsequent decades. Past analyses by the Congressional Research Service estimated that the Administration’s retirement and lifetime savings account proposals ultimately would cost $300 billion to $500 billion per decade (measured in today’s dollars).

On to Afghanistan, Iraq and Katrina reconstruction. The funding for the two wars have been consistently left out of the President’s budgets, as has the Katrina reconstruction in this year’s budget, with the funding paid for through supplemental appropriations. While the costs of the wars and reconstruction are not known, there is some level of funding that could be anticipated in the budget (with unexpected changes in cost picked up by supplemental appropriations). However, this would shred the President’s claim to cut the deficit in half by 2009, as would a fair accounting of the cost of AMT relief. The AMT was set up in the 1960s to make sure the super-wealthy paid some taxes, but the standard deduction was not indexed to inflation, and more and more middle-class Americans are becoming subject to the AMT and seeing their taxes increase. Currently, year-by-year, Congress passes AMT relief, but there has been no success in making a permanent solution or even incorporating the yearly AMT relief bills into the budget, despite the political necessity to pass AMT relief every year. The CBPP’s conclusion is short and straightforward:

Unfortunately, this budget fails the tests of fiscal responsibility, fairness and balance, and transparency. The nation and its policymakers can do better.

Obesity & Global Warming

2006-02-06T13:40:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting article on obesity in The Washington Post on January 22. My first thought on the problem with obesity is how similar it is in cause and solution (and obstacles to solutions) to global warming. Both are caused, in part, by increasing economic wealth (in fact, they are interrelated, as people who drive more are more likely to be fat because they don't get enough exercise and people who are fat are going to drive more because it is difficult for them to get around by other means). The solution to them is similar too. People need to use less polluting energy sources and need to eat less fatty foods. They need to get more exercise and plant more trees. The entrenched industries for energy and food are going to resist any government action to move towards socially beneficial ends (where energy is cleaner and people are skinnier). The oil & coal (potato chip & cookie) industries are likely to be hurt in the short run if (and while) they adapt to cleaner (healthier) output. In the end, there will be new industries like wind-generated electricity and hybrid cars (and nuts and other healthier snacks, which the article said increased 21.9 percent between 2003 and 2004), but there will be a transition cost. Their is also a cost of doing nothing, but it is borne by such a wide consitutency that there is little collective power, especially compared to the industries that stand to lose from the switch to cleaner/healthier energy and food. However, with both energy and obesity, the end result of making the changes will be very beneficial to the country as a whole economically, socially and environmentally.

2007 Budget Favors Defense

2006-02-04T20:15:00.000-08:00

The www.washingtonpost.com/... Washington Post reports that Bush's fiscal year 2007 budget will cut discretionary spending while increasing defense and homeland security funds. The proposed budget would also not include much of the funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the reconstruction in New Orleans. In addition, The White House also has decided to try again to increase passengers' security fees for air travel from $2.50 per flight for nonstop travelers to $5 This would hurt any recovery of airlines by increasing the total cost of flying. It is a tax, but the Bush rhetoric wouln't allow that, so it is always labeled as a 'fee'. I haven't seen the budget proposal or any analysis of the details yet, but it appears that Bush plans to ask for an unacceptable budget once again.

Fixing the negative savings rate

2006-02-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

The NY Times has an editorial tomorrow about what the government and private companies can do to help people save for retirement and reduce the individual risk that are increasingly burdening workers. The savings rate for 2005 was -0.6 percent, which is the first time since 1933, in the middle of the Great Depression, when the U.S. savings rate was negative. Much of the dissaving has been caused by the recession, increased consumption financed by refinancing of mortgages. However, the record deficits caused by Bush's tax cuts, which benefited primarily the wealthy, have made the future more uncertain because of the budget deficit's relationship with the current account deficit. Both have not been seen as too much of a problem because other countries, primarily Japan and China, continue to buy American government debt. However, there is a high risk of a disorderly currency devaluation of the U.S. dollar in the short- to medium-term which will compound the problems of people saving for retirement by reducing national income and perhaps also popping the housing boom and reducing house prices significantly. Instead, the government should roll back much of Bush's tax cuts and provide more support for individuals saving for retirement and reducing the chances of a currency devaluation, which would hurt the domestic economy tremendously. The New York Times editorial sums up the general rationale for government action on increasing savings and making sure people have adequate resources when they retire: It simply makes no sense, socially or economically, for each person to increasingly bear the risks of financing old age when that risk is more efficiently borne on the much broader shoulders of Washington and corporate America. What America needs are leaders who understand that asking ordinary citizens to assume ever-greater risks is not the path to greater security.

Bush's illegal spying hurts terrorism prosecutions

2006-02-03T19:33:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post reports that the suspect who admitted to working for Al Qaeda on a plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge should be let out of his plea bargain because he was illegally spied upon. While many Bush loyalists will claim that the harm comes from the NY Times publishing of the story that revealed the program, they are wrong. It was not the Times' responsibility that the President was very clearly violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, which explicitly prohibits wiretapping U.S. persons (defined as those on long-term visas, citizens and U.S. corporations). The cause for the plea bargain to be scrapped is the illegal behavior of the government, not the fact that the program is known. However, that's not how the Republicans will spin it. But they are liars and have been for years.