Month: December 2008

Post-partisan Depression

by digby

Heh:

[Barney] Frank predicted that regulatory legislation aimed at preventing abuses related to subprime mortgages and credit cards stood a much better chance next year, when Democrats have greater majorities in the House and Senate.”It is a grave mistake to assume that parties are irrelevant to this process,” he said. “My one difference with the president-elect, about whom I am very enthusiastic, is when he talks about being post-partisan.”Having lived with this very right wing Republican group that runs the House most of the time, the notion of trying to deal with them as if we could be post-partisan gives me post-partisan depression,” Frank said.

He also got off another good one. The article is about how Democrats in the congress (not just Frank) are pressuring Obama to get more involved in the economic crisis:

“At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time,” Frank said. “I’m afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He’s got to remedy that situation.”

I agree. It’s not that we have too many presidents. It’s that, at the moment, we don’t have any.

h/t to KL

Just Try It

by digby

Back in August of 07, when the Democrats whiffed on the US Attorney scandals, I wrote this:

I assume that the Dems have decided that there’s nothing to be gained politically by pursuing these issues any further so they don’t want to bother. And they are right to the extent that the Republicans will howl like she-wolves if a new Democratic administration tries to fire the GOP whores they’ve installed throughout the department and now that Gonzo is out they’ve lost their villain of the piece.

And here’s we are:

Mary Beth Buchanan was appointed by President Bush to serve as U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh in Sept. 2001. Buchanan has held several significant posts within the Bush/Ashcroft/Gonzales Justice Department, most notably serving as director the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. Just last month, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Buchanan’s reign was expected to end. Indeed, when a new president is elected, U.S. attorneys of both parties generally submit their resignations to make way for the new appointees. But Buchanan has other plans:

Despite a new administration coming into power, U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan said she plans to stick around. “It doesn’t serve justice for all the U.S. attorneys to submit their resignations all at one time,” she said yesterday. […] More than that, she said she would consider working in the Obama administration. She would not discuss what her future might hold beyond the U.S. attorney’s office. “I am open to considering further service to the United States,” Ms. Buchanan said.

She’s been described by colleagues as the quintessential loyal Bushie. “She is very focused to the department first of all,” said one assistant U.S. attorney, who asked not to be named. “She’s not independent, and I don’t think she wants to be.” During her tenure, Buchanan has been criticized for bringing politically-motivated investigations and charges against politicians in Western Pennsylvania, none more famous than the public corruption case against a local high-profile Democrat Dr. Cyril H. Wecht. Former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh told Congress that the Wecht prosecution is “not the type of case normally constituting a federal ‘corruption’ case brought against a local official.” Buchanan hired Monica Goodling, and she hand-picked a Pittsburgh attorney to serve as the U.S. prosecutor in Alaska, going over the heads of Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski.

This is a Republican soldier and if Obama attempts to fire her, she will become a martyr to the cause. And she’s not alone. They are all over the Justice Department.

When the US Attorney scandal broke, you’ll recall that there was a lot of wingnut chatter saying that because Bill Clinton had asked for the resignations of all US Attorney’s at the beginning of his term, Bush had a perfect right to fire US Attorneys who refused to do political dirty work. They set the stage for this at the time. It was entirely predictable that the new administration would be held to a completely new standard — he would not be allowed to fire any US Attorney who had been appointed by Bush for any reason at all or risk being accused of using the Justice department for partisan gain. It’s how they roll.

US Attorneys should be apolitical as much as possible. They most certainly should NOT be hyper political actors as this person was, working closely with a disgraced Attorney General and involved in the scandals. It’s outrageous that anyone like her would even still be in the Justice Department today under Mukasey.

If she stays, she will be working against the Obama administration from within. There are probably many others like her at all levels, some burrowed very deeply. After all, the US Attorneys were fired for refusing to go along with political prosecutions or to make way for political friends. You have to wonder about those who weren’t fired.

The Demo0crats did the new president no favors by not adequately pursuing this scandal and leaving it in the hands of Mukasey’s department. There may be some individual repercussions, but without a full public investigation of the rot inside the DOJ during the Bush years, it left many of these people in place and gave the Republicans a weapon with which to threaten the new president. It will be interesting to see how Obama responds to the threat.

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Stupendous?

by digby

Or delusional?

One Down

by digby

Monica Goodling’s BFF and prayer partner was a bad girl:

An independent federal investigation has determined that former U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose retaliated against the No. 2 person in her Minneapolis office after he filed a complaint that she had mishandled classified materials.

The announcement by the Office of Special Counsel in Washington on Wednesday appeared to be a full vindication of John Marti, the first assistant U.S. attorney, who resigned his management position in 2007, along with two other top lawyers in the Minneapolis office.

Marti, who continues to work as an assistant U.S. attorney, reached a financial settlement with the Justice Department. Any negative references will be removed from his personnel records. He had filed a complaint under the Whistleblowers Protection Act.

The finding, by acting Special Counsel William Reukauf, caps two years of near-constant turmoil in the local U.S. attorney’s office over Paulose’s policies and management style. The contention pitted many of the office’s career attorneys and staff against Paulose, a political appointee of President Bush.

When the U.S. Senate approved her appointment in December 2006, Paulose, then 33, was the youngest U.S. attorney in the country and the first woman to hold the post in Minnesota. She resigned in November 2007 and was reassigned to a non-supervisory position in the Department of Legal Policy within the Justice Department in Washington, D.C.

Former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger said that complaints like Marti’s are rare and that the very strong public statement from the special counsel was also unusual. “The press release is not good news for Rachel Paulose because it is very critical of her conduct as U.S. attorney,” he said.

Remember this crazy shit?

Sorry

by digby

Blogger is bloggered, please excuse us. If you want to comment on dday’s post, post on the one right below this one. We’ll delete the repeats as soon as blogger is fixed.

Annals Of Privatization

by dday

Conservative dogma states that private enterprise and contractors accomplish basic services more efficiently and professionally than nasty ol’ big government. This happens through crackerjack tactics like holding workers like slaves in windowless warehouses.

Najlaa International Catering Services, a subcontractor to KBR, an engineering, construction and services company, hired the men, who’re from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. On Tuesday, they staged a march outside their compound to protest their living conditions.

“It’s really dirty,” a Sri Lankan man told McClatchy, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he still wants to work for Najlaa. “For all of us, there are about 12 toilets and about 10 bathrooms. The food — it’s three half-liter (one pint) bottles of water a day. Bread, cheese and jam for breakfast. Lunch is a small piece of meat, potato and rice. Dinner is rice and dal, but it’s not dal,” he said, referring to the Indian lentil dish.

After McClatchy began asking questions about the men on Tuesday, the Kuwaiti contractor announced that it would return them to their home countries and pay them back salaries. Najlaa officials contended that they’ve cared for the men’s basic needs while the company has tried to find them jobs in Iraq.

Now sure, you could say that slavery is just the price we pay for efficiency and the best in service and quality. And you would be right. Because without keeping costs down by enslaving workers, contractors wouldn’t be able to provide ice with human remains in it to the troops so quickly and crisply.

The lawsuit also accuses KBR of shipping ice in mortuary trucks that “still had traces of body fluids and putrefied remains in them when they were loaded with ice. This ice was served to U.S. forces.”

Eller also accuses KBR of failing to maintain a medical incinerator at Joint Base Balad, which has been confirmed by two surgeons in interviews with Military Times about the Balad burn pit. Instead, according to the lawsuit and the physicians, medical waste, such as needles, amputated body parts and bloody bandages were burned in the open-air pit.

“Wild dogs in the area raided the burn pit and carried off human remains,” the lawsuit states. “The wild dogs could be seen roaming the base with body parts in their mouths, to the great distress of the U.S. forces.”

I suppose you could provide bodily-fluid free ice to US forces, if you wanted to increase the size of government to outrageous degrees. Or you could believe in the shining glory that is private enterprise and the free market.

Here endeth the lesson.

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Hippie Punch Of The Day

by digby

Howie Klein reports that the village is suddenly getting very, very nervous that crazy, freaked out weirdos might get important committee assignments:

[Y]esterday’s CongressDaily featured a long post on the ins and outs of finding the right successor for Rangel. Do you recall any of the Inside the Beltway types viewing a Republican appointee to any job thru the lenses of how that person might be accepted by working families or by organized labor? Or did I miss the issue where CongressDaily suggested that Elaine Chao might be the world’s absolute worst Labor Secretary because she loathes working people and doesn’t recognize their aspirations as legitimate or worthy of her attention?

Did anyone ever question whether one of Congress’ biggest corporate shills on environmental issues, Dirty Dick Pombo, would be unqualified to be Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee because he was unanimously loathed by every single environmental group in the country? And what about that issue of CongressDaily– or any other daily– that pointed out that maybe Joe Barton (R-TX) shouldn’t be chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce because the $1,315,660 in legalized reported bribes he’s taken from Big Oil over the years is far more than any other member of the House, more even than notorious Big Oil puppets like Don Young (R-AK- $964,763), Steve Pearce (R-NM- $804,815), Tom Delay (R-TX- $688,840), and Pete Sessions (R-TX- $582,264), and that all the green energy groups feel that Barton is an integral part of the energy problem in our country and decidedly not part of the solution? No, I must have missed it too.

But yesterday CongressDaily was dismissing Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee in line to follow Rangel– should he decide to… spend more time with his family or need to spend more time in the court system– because they are– Heaven Forbid!– too liberal. Or too intellectual. Or not in the pocket of Bug Business lobbyists. And That Will Not Due in Companytown, DC.

Next in seniority to Rangel is Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Fortney (Pete) Stark, D-Calif., who is given virtually no chance. “The conventional wisdom is he would have a tough time getting elected chairman,” said a Democrat close to leadership. From suggesting Republicans were sending troops to Iraq to die “for the president’s amusement” to referring to a former GOP lawmaker as a “little fruitcake,” Stark is prone to gaffes, sources said. “The guy behind [Rangel] is just not tenable. Republicans would have a field day,” an industry lobbyist said, while noting the business community would “go nuclear. It would just be open warfare.” A more viable pick might be Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chairman Sander Levin, D-Mich., who is next in seniority, although sources cautioned the cerebral Levin may be too deliberate for the high-profile job. Levin also appears to relish his duties at the helm of the trade panel. He is also seen as very much in tune with the labor movement, although industry sources said Levin was someone they could work with, as opposed to Stark. Also, the Democratic Caucus still largely respects the seniority system, the Democratic strategist said. “If you make the decision that Stark is too out there, then I don’t see how you go over Sandy,” he said. “He’s been a loyal member, and nobody would doubt he’s got the intellectual and legislative expertise for the job.”

Next is Income Security and Family Support Subcommittee Chairman Jim McDermott, D-Wash., who is seen as a bit more of a pragmatist than Stark but still in the too-liberal category. He also is a highly partisan figure, and sources said there was generally little reason to reach down the seniority list to tap McDermott.

It’s good to know the “business community” still has its veto power in the congress. I was worried they’d lose their clout with all the change going on. But maybe, just to be safe, the Democrats should just give the job to a Republican so there’s no misunderstanding.

Here’s an example of the kind of choice the political establishment approves of with no problem. He was chairman of the Senate Energy Committee at the time he said this:

INHOFE: Now look, God’s still up there. We still have these natural changes, and this is what’s going on right now. New science comes out. I had a news conference yesterday, Brian, and the reason I did is because we were going to go over to Nairobi, take a bunch of scientists to get the true science over there, only to find out that the registration had dropped off. Almost no media was over there. So we had the same news conference yesterday right here in Washington, D.C.

We had all these scientists and all of them came to the conclusion, yes, part of the globe is warming. Let’s keep in mind, now, the southern hemisphere has never been warming and changing in the last 25 years. The last time I checked that’s part of the globe.

But if the northern hemisphere is warming up, it’s not due to manmade gases. And that’s what these people all come to the conclusion. And yet the other side, the far left, the George Soros, the Hollywood elitists, the far left environmentalists on the committee that I chair — all of them want us to believe the science is settled and it’s not.

By the way, there’s all kinds of new things. Gretchen, you’ll enjoy this. Get your violin out and get ready. They came out with a great discovery just a few weeks ago. And this came from the geophysical research letters and you know what they said? Hold on now! They said the warming is due to the sun. Isn’t that remarkable?

Of course, he’s a Real American rather than a dirty hippie so he represents the beliefs of people who matter. (And needless to say, the business community felt no need to “go nuclear.”)

I don’t think I’d be as angry about this double standard if “Democratic strategists” wouldn’t publicly (and anonymously) support it. But they need to maintain their credibility, I guess, and the simplest way to do that, as dday says, is to punch a hippie.

Update: Stoller has more.

They Work Hard For The Money

by dday

So after driving to Capitol Hill this time, the heads of the Big 3 auto companies are due for their ritual stoning in front of Congress today, as they continue to prostate themselves and beg for funding to keep them alive. This time, they came prepared with plans for viability, and the promises are wide and deep. The three top executives will lower their salary to $1. They’ll cut product lines and consolidate operations. They’ll work on comprehensive health care reform, fair trade and even producing more fuel efficient cars, though many like Robert Reich are skeptical about that last offer, especially considering that gas has fallen back to under $2 a gallon and demand for bigger vehicles and SUVs may be creeping back up. I’ve read that getting the real junkers off the road and replacing them with even moderately efficient cars saves a lot more gas than getting everyone in an economical car into a Prius, so incentives for trading in those cars on the low end would actually be the best policy, and Ford has suggested that as well.

Even the UAW is offering concessions in return for the loans, which flies in the face of conservative propaganda about fat-cat unions destroying the industry (which makes sense, because, you know, without the industry, there is no union):

The United Auto Workers said Wednesday it is willing to change its contracts with U.S. automakers and accept delayed payments of billions of dollars to a union-run health care trust to do its part to help the struggling companies secure $34 billion in government loans.

United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said the union will suspend the jobs bank, in which laid-off workers are paid up to 95 percent of their salaries while not working, but he did not give specifics or a timetable of when the program will end.

“We’re going to sit down and work out the mechanics,” Gettelfinger said at a news conference after meeting with local union officials. “We’re a little unclear on some of the issues.”

In truth, the union contracts are not a problem, it’s the fact that a country without high wages and benefits and free healthcare is competing with a bunch of countries that have all that, and hopefully we’ll see people finally understand that fact. And by the way, this is on top of UAW restructuring from 2007 that lowered the wage structure under even nonunion auto plants in the South and transfered responsibility for the pension plan to the union as well. So this is not the first time the UAW has lent a hand.

GM and Chrysler are even considering a pre-arranged bankruptcy in exchange for bailout money, to reorganize the entire sector.

My point is that the auto companies are bending over backwards for an accommodation with Congress, all for a mere fraction of what Emperor Paulson has spent on the TARP program without hardly any oversight at all. And yet the votes still aren’t there, at the moment.

One day after the auto companies sent survival plans to Capitol Hill in an urgent plea for bailout billions from the fund, Sen. Harry Reid told The Associated Press in an interview, “I just don’t think we have the votes to do that now.”

I don’t think the automakers are saints or anything. They’re still spending a fortune on lobbying and campaign contributions. And Ford wants Congress to block California’s plan to regulate tailpipe emissions, saying that there ought to be one national standard (and it should be California’s – 16 states have signaled they would adopt it, and it is completely in government’s interest and mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions). But this really shows how completely in bed Congress is with the financial industry. The CEO of Citigroup didn’t have to agree to take $1 in salary. The head of Goldman Sachs didn’t have to drive to Washington. Nobody on Wall Street had to agree to major reregulation as a precondition for a bailout.

An auto industry bailout is unpopular, but so was the financial bailout. But that didn’t stop lawmakers from taking seriously the threats of depression if the banks didn’t get practically no-strings-attached money. Automakers are also playing up fears of serious economic collapse but lawmakers seem less concerned.

I think one difference here is that Congress actually understands how auto companies make money, while they can’t fathom the financial industry’s complex arrangements, and tend to just trust the “very serious people” that the banks need hundreds of billions to survive. Also, if Detroit contributes to campaigns, Wall Street bankrolls them. And there’s the skillful PR campaign from the right that the carmakers’ struggles are all the fault of the unions, when that doesn’t come into play with the financial industry.

It’s still pretty shameful that an industry that pushes paper back and forth and pretends to create wealth can ask for and receive hundreds of billions of dollars by snapping their fingers, while companies representing working people that make things for a living have to grovel and beg. A deindustrialized America is an America that will not function as a first-rate power in the future.

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Junk Morals

by digby

Duh:

No high-quality study done to date can document that having an abortion causes psychological distress, or a “post-abortion syndrome,” and efforts to show it does occur appear to be politically motivated, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

A team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reviewed 21 studies involving more than 150,000 women and found the high-quality studies showed no significant differences in long-term mental health between women who choose to abort a pregnancy and others.

“The best research does not support the existence of a ‘post-abortion syndrome’ similar to post-traumatic stress disorder,” Dr. Robert Blum, who led the study published in the journal Contraception, said in a statement.

“Based on the best available evidence, emotional harm should not be a factor in abortion policy. If the goal is to help women, program and policy decisions should not distort science to advance political agendas,” added Vignetta Charles, a researcher and doctoral student at Johns Hopkins who worked on the study.

An estimated 1.29 million American women get elective abortions each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 25 million women globally have legal abortions every year.

And they’re all dizzy broads who have no idea what they’re doing.

Aside from the annoyance of having to argue with mendacious zealots, there has been a real world effect of this junk science:

“The U.S. Supreme Court, while noting that ‘we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon,’ cited adverse mental health outcomes for women as part of the rationale for limiting late term abortions,” Blum’s team wrote.

The anti-choice movement believes that abortion is morally wrong. But they also believe it is moral to lie, cheat and sometimes kill to stop it. I’m sure they would say that the latter is the lesser of evils — they are only doing it to stop the killing of innocent children. But you have have to wonder where on the moral matrix they really fit when they are willing to create a mental illness where none exists and attempt to pin it on millions of women who made the choice to have an abortion. There is premeditated evil in that.

Update: Apparently, millions of Christian believers who don’t agree that contraception and abortion are morally wrong are also waging a war on Christmas.

On Not Using Corporate-Created Buzzwords, Part II

by dday

Wow, when I wrote this brief yesterday about the dangers of clean coal, I honestly had no idea that an entire campaign was being readied by Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, the Sierra Club, The League of Conservation Voters, the NRDC and several other enviro groups, in a coalition they call The Reality Campaign. Their first TV ad is sharp and to the point.

There are some solid quotes in their press release:

“The reality is that there’s not a single home or business in America today powered by clean coal,” said Brian Hardwick of the Alliance for Climate Protection. “If coal really wants to be part of America’s energy future, the industry can start by making a real commitment to eliminating their pollution that is a leading cause of global warming.”

Hardwick continued: “It is high time for the coal industry to come clean and admit to the American people that today clean coal is not a reality. No matter how much they say it in their advertising, coal can’t truly be clean until the plants can capture global warming pollution. With so much at stake, we can’t afford to hang our hats on an illusion.”

While the single-issue enviro groups haven’t been entirely effective, on coal they have started to get it, with the Sierra Club’s legal team winning a major recent ruling at the EPA making it virtually impossible for them to approve new coal-fired power plants. This ad campaign goes after the court of public opinion, and pushes back on the pervasive use of “clean coal.” The coal industry sponsored every single debate on CNN this election season. We can no longer allow these poisonous, PR-friendly phrases to be injected into the discourse without serious pushback.

You can sign up to help The Reality Campaign at their website.

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