Month: December 2008

Saturday Night At The Movies

Frost/Nixon: Confessions of a dangerous mind

By Dennis Hartley

Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.

-Wm. Shakespeare (from Richard III)

I’m saying that when the president does it…that means it’s not illegal.

-Richard M. Nixon

There’s an old theatrical performer’s axiom that goes “Always leave ‘em wanting more.” In August of 1974, President Richard Nixon made his Watergate-weary exit from the American political stage with a nationally televised resignation soliloquy, and left ‘em wanting more…answers. Any immediate hopes for an expository epilogue to this five year long usurpation of the American Constitution-cum-Shakespearean tragedy were abruptly dashed one month later when President Gerald Ford granted him a full pardon. Like King Lear, the mad leader slunk back to his castle by the sea and out of public view.

Time passed. Most Americans turned their attention to the recession of ’74-’75, and various shiny distractions like Pet Rocks, disco balls, and Charlie’s Angels. Some inquiring minds, however, still wanted to know. One of them was a British television personality/savvy self-promoter by the name of David Frost, who had been kicking around the medium since the early 60s in various guises, ranging from droll satirist (That Was the Week that Was and The Frost Report in the U.K.) to straight-up talk show host (Frost on America). Although he occasionally interviewed politicians and statesmen, he wasn’t generally thought of as a “journalist” prior to 1977. When he first started shopping an idea to tackle former President Richard Nixon in a series of exclusive TV interviews, he raised many an eyebrow and was ostensibly laughed out of a few network executive’s offices (it would be like David Letterman suddenly deciding that he wanted to become the next Mike Wallace… “Get out of here, you nut!”). Undeterred, Frost decided that he would fund the project himself and independently syndicate the broadcasts. Eventually, of course, the interviews did hit the airwaves, and the rest (as they always say) is History.

While the broadcasts themselves have become the stuff of legend to political junkies (being the closest anyone ever got to coaxing and capturing for posterity something resembling a pang of conscience and regret from The Tricky One for his crimes), the machinations leading up to the actual broadcasts may not sound like the makings of an engrossing tale, but it has inspired a popular Broadway play and now a riveting new film.

Guided with an assured hand by director Ron Howard, and adapted for the screen by Peter Morgan (from his own award-winning play), Frost/Nixon is a superbly crafted mélange of history lesson, courtroom drama, backstage tale, heavyweight championship boxing match, and (perhaps most importantly) another handy reference link for you to use in order to impress friends with your prowess at playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Morgan’s screenplay is deftly built around this perfect setup for a clash of the titans: The Consummate Showman vs. The Consummate Politician. The “oil and water” mix of the two personalities is also a natural for theatrical consideration; Frost was good-looking, charming, glib and well-appointed in personal appearance, whereas Nixon was shifty-eyed, socially awkward and brooding, topped off by a relatively rumpled countenance.

In this corner: Former President Richard M. Nixon (Frank Langella, reprising his Tony-winning stage role), his agent Swifty Lazar (Toby Jones), his former White House Chief of Staff/Man Friday Jack Brennen (Kevin Bacon!), and wife Pat (Patty McCormack). And in this corner: David Frost (Michael Sheen, also reprising his Broadway role), his chief researchers (Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt) and girlfriend/Muse (Rebecca Hall).

Langella and Sheen are masterfully, perfectly in tune with each other onscreen; this is undoubtedly due to the fact that they already had ample opportunity to flesh out their respective characters during their Broadway run together. It’s one of the best movie performances I’ve seen by Langella (he already has a Golden Globe nom, we will see what happens come Oscar time). Armed with Morgan’s incisive dialog, and with Howard’s skillful yet respectfully unobtrusive direction to cover his flank, he is able to uncannily capture the essence of Nixon’s contradictions and complexities; the supreme intelligence, the grandiose pomposity and the congenital craftiness, all corroded by the insidious paranoia that eventually consumed his soul, and by turn, the soul of the nation.

All the supporting performances are wonderful, particularly from Platt and Rockwell as Frost’s tenacious strategists, who in a roundabout sort of way play out like Tom Stoppard’s re-imagining of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Nixon’s Hamlet (if I may continue to run with the Shakespearean analogies here, with the exasperated reader’s kind permission). Indeed, it is Rockwell’s character who utters the script’s most insightful observation about Nixon’s Achilles Heel in this affair; he posits that no matter how cagily Nixon fancied himself to be putting one over on Frost, he was ultimately done in by something that never lies: “The reductive power of the close-up.” Anon. (Fade to black).

The Nixon library: Frost/Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews, Nixon – The Election Year Edition, Secret Honor, All the President’s Men , The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Dick, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, The Final Days (TV), Missing , The Parallax View, The Conversation, Three Days of the Condor

Previous posts with related themes: The Hoax

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Protecting Their Own

by digby

Last week-end I wrote a long and I’m sure mostly unread post about uber-villager Stuart Taylor and his crusade to ensure that the Bush administration’s unitary executive torture regime goes unpunished. I talked about how Taylor was a major player in the Clinton scandals who believed that it was a serious breach of law and ethics for the president to lie about his sex life, but who now thinks it would be wrong to prosecute those who ordered torture based upon a clearly unconstitutional executive power grab designed to provide cover for anyone who broke the law. Taylor even goes so far as to say that Obama will probably need to preserve these powers because he will be faced with the need to do the same things.

Today Ruth Marcus proves that this has gelled into Beltway conventional wisdom, which is entirely predictable. Taylor is one of the”serious” people among the legal punditocrisy, a man who is trustworthy because while he is clearly a right wing hack, he tut-tuts just enough about right wing excesses to be considered “fair and balanced.” His and others’ assertion that some unknown extremist Justice Department functionary’s cracked legal opinion absolves those who ordered law breaking is now the default view among the beltway elites.Indeed, it was likely never in dispute.

Marcus discusses this in the context of Mark “Deepthroat” Feldt’s death this week-end and Ronald Reagan pardoning him for having illegally spied on Americans in the 1970s. She feels compassion, as many people do, for people of her own social class who find themselves in trouble with the law. And like all establishment types, she sees no good purpose in putting nice elites in the dock and convinces herself that pardons in these cases are always required in order to heal the country and move on. Except, as Glenn Greenwald points out in this masterful take down of her column today, the country is never actually healed and we never move on.

In fact, I have long argued that most of the past 35 years have been one long, horrific orgy of undemocratic political thuggery and conservative usurpation of the constitution. They get caught, they suffer some temporary public disapprobation, people like Feldt are caught in strange moral quandries, we define democracy down, but there is never any official sanction. It’s become so common that we now this as a natural part of our politics — the Republicans seize power, they use it in illegal and undemocratic ways, they are exposed, the Democrats win, they fail to hold them accountable and the cycle starts again. (Why, if we didn’t know any better, we might think they were all in on it together! Heavens…)

Meanwhile, the villagers know these people as friends. (Indeed, they resent the public for being unpleasant about all this.) I wrote a post a while back about the beltway’s reaction to the Christmas Eve pardons that illustrates how they think:

Here’s some world weary beltway wisdom from our old pal Richard Cohen in the Wapo’s December 30, 1992 issue, who had his suspicions, but in the end just shrugged his shoulders and moved on:

Back when Caspar Weinberger was secretary of defense, he and I used to meet all the time. Our “meetings” — I choose to call them that — took place in the Georgetown Safeway, the one on Wisconsin Avenue, where I would go to shop and Cap would too. My clear recollection is that once — was it before Thanksgiving? — he bought a turkey.

I tell you this about the man President Bush just pardoned because it always influenced my opinion of Weinberger. (In contrast, I submit the member of the House leadership who had an aide push the cart.) Based on my Safeway encounters, I came to think of Weinberger as a basic sort of guy, candid and no nonsense — which is the way much of official Washington saw him. It seemed somehow cruel that he should end his career — he’s 75 — either as a defendant in a criminal case or as a felon. The man deserved better than that.

And so when Weinberger was indicted by Lawrence E. Walsh, the special Iran-contra prosecutor, I despaired. Weinberger had been on the “right” side of the debate within the Reagan administration of whether to sell arms to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages held in Lebanon. He opposed the swap, but he did so in confidence. Clearly, he lost the argument, and he may have lost his good sense when he allegedly withheld evidence. That being said, I was pleased when he was pardoned.

[…]

We now know that Bush kept a diary that, until recently, he withheld from the special prosecutor. My guess is that we will eventually get even more evidence of Bush’s participation in the making of the arms-for-hostages policy but that, ultimately, his role will always be in dispute. That, in a way, is fitting. It conforms to his posture on raising taxes, on abortion, on civil rights and on judicial appointments, the misrepresentation of Clarence Thomas as eminently qualified for the court above all. A kind of haze, a political-ideological miasma, is the fitting legacy of the Bush presidency.

Cap, my Safeway buddy, walks, and that’s all right with me. As for the other five, they are not crooks in the conventional sense but Cold Warriors who, confident in the justice of their cause, were contemptuous of Congress. Because they thought they were right, they did not think they had to be accountable. This is the damage the Cold War did to our democracy.

And so it goes.

This all began with Nixon and the pardon, in my opinion. Many of us, myself included, believed as Marcus and Taylor still do, that forgiveness is a good thing, that the country needs to heal after a tumultuous time and there is no purpose in dragging people through the mud. But I was wrong then and they are still wrong today. How many times do we have to be hit over the head with this stuff before we realize that these people are getting more and more radical with each successive bite at the apple?

Dennis is reviewing Frost/Nixon tonight and I look forward to seeing it. I remember the original interviews quite well and I recall thinking I must have misunderstood when Nixon said “if the president does it it isn’t illegal.” (And the corollary is Gerald Ford’s dictum that an impeachable offense is whatever the congress says it is. ) But it is really that simple for these people. It’s about using the levers of power without restraint or concern for the spirit of the constitution to advance their agenda. Obviously the Bush administration created a more complicated set of legal arguments around the commander in chief and “wartime” but Nixon’s simple explanation was far more elegant — and honest — in its simplicity.

Nixon’s legacy is not just presidential lawlessness, although it is. It’s not just conservative belief in imperial prerogatives, although it’s that too. His legacy is also a political establishment that rejects legal accountability by pretending to be protective of the nation’s delicate sensibilities when it is actually covering up for it’s miscreant elders so as not to disrupt their own community. This is the essence of the village critique — it’s the parochialism, stupid. It’s all about them.

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Who Me?

by digby

Peggy Noonan is bemoaning the fact that all of her rich friends are suffering from the finacial collapse because there have been no grown-ups in charge.

Those who were supposed to be watching things, making the whole edifice run, keeping it up and operating, just somehow weren’t there. That’s the big thing at the heart of the great collapse, a strong sense of absence. Who was in charge? Who was in authority? The biggest swindle in all financial history if the figure of $50 billion is to be believed, and nobody knew about it, supposedly, but the swindler himself. The government didn’t notice, just as it didn’t notice the prevalence of bad debts that would bring down America’s great investment banks.

No word on how this could have happened:

Bush, a Modest Man of Faith
The president has to be trustworthy. by PEGGY NOONAN
Thursday, November 2, 2000 12:01 A.M. EST Readers of this page are familiar with the policy questions at issue in the election. As president, George W. Bush’s natural inclination and stated intention is and will be to lower taxes, not raise them, to clear away regulation rather than create it, and to reform Social Security in a way that makes it more lucrative for recipients, more secure as an entitlement, and more respectful toward those workers who will be allowed to redirect a portion of their contributions into markets. He will allow Americans once again to look for and develop energy resources, while opposing irresponsible treatment of precious unspoiled lands. In taking these actions Mr. Bush will strengthen the foundations of today’s prosperity so the long boom continues. Federal decisions of course can weaken prosperity. Al Gore’s proposals–new entitlements, new spending, a balanced budget and no tax increase–seem so contradictory as to be schizophrenic, and more likely to turn a downturn into a deep recession. In the area of public education Mr. Bush, unlike Mr. Gore, is sympathetic to the effort to extend choice to those at the middle and bottom of the economic ladder through charter schools and voucher scholarships. This–the school liberation movement–is the most promising development in American public education because, by its nature, it elevates the needs of children over the demands of unions. In foreign affairs Mr. Bush’s intentions are marked by moral modesty and a lack of illusions: America, he repeated in the last debate, must fully engage the world, but with humility. His first and most crucial foreign-affairs endeavor will begin, appropriately, at home: improving the national defense, remedying the effects of eight years of confusion and neglect, enhancing responsiveness to future challenges, increasing morale, restoring those aspects of the old military culture that are positive and needed. In all this he will differ from Mr. Gore, who, if he took such actions would rouse the anger of his base, parts of which are animated by a reflexive animus to, or indifference toward, American military might. Having been forced to fight to keep his base during the election, he will not soon defy it in the White House. In character, personality traits, history and attitudes, Mr. Bush seems the opposite of both Bill and Hillary Clinton and of Mr. Gore. Mr. Bush has an instinctive personal modesty, an easygoing sense of both human and governmental limits. He will know how to step aside and let the country take center stage; he will know how to show respect for others; he will not bray endlessly about his own excellence, will not compare himself to Nelson Mandela, Mark McGuire, or the heroes of the novels “Love Story” or “Darkness at Noon”; he will not discuss his underpants. Laura Bush will not announce that her husband’s power is hers, that she is co-president, and that she will soon nationalize 17% of the gross national product. Both Bushes seem not emotionally troubled but mentally balanced, which was once considered the lowest of expectations for our leaders but now seems like a gift to the nation. All of this will be a relief. What’s more, it suggests a restoration of civility and grace to the White House, and to political discourse. This will have happy implications for our democracy, and for the children who see it unfold each day. A Bush presidency would mark a cultural-political paradox: a triumph of class that is a setback for snobbery. Class–consideration, a lack of bullying ego, respect for others–has been not much present the past eight years. The Clintons and Mr. Gore have acted and spoken in ways that suggest they believe they are more intelligent and capable than others–superior, in short. They have behaved as if they believe they are entitled to assist others by limiting their autonomy; thus the tax policies in which they take our surplus and spend it for us, the social programs in which they limit what you might fritter away in your sweet but incompetent way. The Clintons and Mr. Gore, intelligent and ambitious, came of age at the moment in our history when America As Meritocracy took off like a rocket; and they had merit. They were educated at fine universities at the moment those universities became factories for manufacturing the kind of people who prefer mankind to men and government to the individual. To absorb those views was to help ensure one’s rise. They rose. In time they won power in the system they helped invent–command-and-control liberalism. In rising and running things they became what they are: vain and ruthless as only those who have not suffered could be. Not realizing they were lucky they came to think they were deserving; they were sure they had the right to show the inferior—that would be you and me–how to arrange their lives. Mr. Bush came from the same generation, lived in the same time, but became a very different sort of man. He wasn’t impressed by Yale; when he saw the elites up close he didn’t like what he saw. He was of Midland, Texas. He became a businessman, floundered, knew success, experienced disappointment, became a deep believer in God. His religious commitment has meant for him the difference between a clear mind and a double mind. It has helped him become a man who is attached to truth on a continuing basis, and not just an expedient one. It means he sees each person as a unique individual worthy of dignity, freedom and responsibility. Mr. Bush has the awkwardness of the convicted, meaning roughly, “I’m a mess, or at least have been; I’m not a hypocrite but I’ve been that too. I am utterly flawed and completely dependent; and I’m doing my best.” He knows he is better than no one. The man with the swagger and the smirk is humble. Mr. Bush has a natural sympathy for, and is the standard bearer of, the modest, the patronized, the disrespected. The lumberman of Washington state who wants to earn his living responsibly and with respect; the candy store owner of New Jersey who’s had it up to here with regulation and taxes; the Second Amendment-loving Louisiana housewife who keeps a gun high up in the closet; the Ohio nurse who worries about abortion and who knows that “You oppose abortion? Then don’t have one!” is as empty and unsatisfying as “You don’t like slavery? Then don’t own one!”; the courthouse clerk in Tennessee who says he’ll go to jail before he’ll take the Ten Commandments off the wall; and the tired old teacher who carries a copy of the Constitution in his pocket and knows that while it is a living document it is not the plaything of ideologues. All of these–the shouted down and silenced in what the Clintons and Mr. Gore call the national conversation–are for Mr. Bush, and he for them. That is a great irony of the 2000 election: The man who speaks for the nobodies is the president’s son, Mr. Andover Head Cheerleader of 1965. But history is replete with such ironies; they have kept the national life interesting. If Mr. Bush is wise he will continue as president to stand with them, and speak for them, so that in time their numbers increase, and a big but beset minority will grow and become again what it once was: a governing coalition. This election could in this sense be a realigning one. There is the question of intelligence: Is Al Gore bright enough to be president? Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore are intelligent men, but they have very different kinds of minds. George Bush respects permanent truths and is not in the thrall of prevalent attitudes. He thinks the Sermon on the Mount is the greatest speech ever given. This would strike some as an obvious thing to say, but it takes courage now to say the obvious thing, because to say the obvious is to declare that you see it, and to declare that you see it is to announce yourself . . . a bit of dunce. If you had a first rate mind you’d see what isn’t obvious, such as . . . the illustrative power of metaphor to speak to the existential challenge to postmodern man, which is to flourish within a democratic framework and negotiate its inevitable power centers while balancing the need for communal unity on the one hand with the necessity to find and unlock individual potential on the other. I don’t think that sentence made sense, but you could speak it in a lot of places–a faculty dinner, the vice president’s house–and elicit nods of approval. And not in spite of the fact that it is nonsense but because of it. The intellectually ambitious of the Clinton-Gore class seem willing to follow any small crumbs in their search for truths, perhaps because they can’t see so many of the older and enduring ones. Mr. Gore with his metaphor grids and his arrows and circles shows us not a creative mind at work but a lost mind in search of shelter. Henry Hyde once said of Newt Gingrich: “He’s always discovering new things to believe in.” He meant: a real grown-up doesn’t carry on like this, inventing new philosophies, drawing arrows and sparks; a real grown-up learns what from the past is true, and brings it into the present. Mr. Bush speaks of God and George Washington and Reagan, and the elites find it unsophisticated. But for many citizens it will be good to see in leadership one of such simplicity, grounded in such realities, respecting of such wisdom. Mr. Bush is at odds with the spirit of the past eight years in another way. He appears to be wholly uninterested in lying, has no gift for it, thinks it’s wrong. This is important at any time, but is crucial now. The next president may well be forced to shepherd us through the first nuclear event since World War II, the first terrorist attack or missile attack. “Man has never had a weapon he didn’t use,” Ronald Reagan said in conversation, and we have been most fortunate man has not used these weapons to kill in the past 50 years. But half the foreign and defense policy establishment fears, legitimately, that the Big Terrible Thing is coming, whether in India-Pakistan, or in Asia or in lower Manhattan. When it comes, if it comes, the credibility–the trustworthiness–of the American president will be key to our national survival. We may not be able to sustain a president who is known for his tendency to tell untruths. If we must go through a terrible time, a modest man of good faith is the one we’ll need in charge. That is George Walker Bush, governor of Texas.

Good thing Peggy Noonan bears no responsibility for where we are today.

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Tweety’s Run

by digby

Jamison Foser’s column this week does a masterful job of illustrating what the Democratic Party can look forward to dealing with if it is stupid enough to back Chris Matthews for the Pennsylvania senate. Here’s just one stomach churning example:

Matthews’ praise for Bush was at its most effusive when Bush gave his “Mission Accomplished” speech in 2003. Praising Bush’s “amazing display of leadership,” Matthews gushed:

He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. … He’s like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West. I remember him standing at that fence with Colin Powell. Was [that] the best picture in the 2000 campaign? … The president’s performance tonight, redolent of the best of Reagan … He looks for real. What is it about the commander in chief role, the hat that he does wear, that makes him — I mean, he seems like — he didn’t fight in a war, but he looks like he does. … Look at this guy!

Later that day, Matthews was back at it:

We’re proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who’s physical, who’s not a complicated guy like Clinton … They want a guy who’s president. Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple. … We want a guy as president.

There are some embarrassingly stupid members of congress and some who are more than a little bit theatrical, but Matthews would bring a level of absurdity to the senate that may just be unprecedented.

Foser says that this could be an opportunity to bring accountability to the press and hold at least one gasbag to the same standards to which they hold (some) politicians. It is certainly pretty to think so. But sadly, I think the village would rally around their pal and stage a full blown hissy fit over Matthews’ “swift boating” when the right used his silly words against him. Still, this stuff is just so embarrassing that it’s hard to see how would vote for him no matter how vociferously the media defends him.

But, I could be wrong. After al,l California elected a vapid, muscle bound movie star who literally campaigned using bad movie dialog and bumper stickers. I take nothing for granted. (And look where it got us…)

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Midnight Riders

by dday

This is the most unconscionable of Bush’s “midnight regulations.”

The Bush administration, as expected, announced new protections on Thursday for health care providers who oppose abortion and other medical procedures on religious or moral grounds.

“Doctors and other health care providers should not be forced to choose between good professional standing and violating their conscience,” Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of Health and Human Services, said in a statement on his department’s Web site.

The rule prohibits recipients of federal money from discriminating against doctors, nurses and health care aides who refuse to take part in procedures because of their convictions, and it bars hospitals, clinics, doctors’ office and pharmacies from forcing their employees to assist in programs and activities financed by the department.

This will have profound consequences for women’s health. There is nothing here that doesn’t bar doctors from refusing to deliver birth control, for example, or the morning-after pill, or even let someone know where those services or family planning services can be provided. As Hilzoy said, this is a lazy person’s dream.

This is a wonderful rule for slackers, since it provides a legally protected way to get paid while doing no work at all. Here’s the plan:

(1) Get an MD, and a job as a doctor.
(2) Become a Christian Scientist.
(3) Announce your religious objection to participating in any medical procedure, or to supporting such procedures in any way (e.g., by doing the other doctors’ paperwork. This refusal would be protected under the rule.)
(4) When your employer protests, explain that your right to refuse to participate in any medical procedure at all is legally protected under this rule.

Voila: white-collar welfare! See how easy?

I guess that makes it the Bartleby rule?

If you’re not totally proud of your country right now, I’ll give you another reason:

Alone among major Western nations, the United States has refused to sign a declaration presented Thursday at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality.

In all, 66 of the U.N.’s 192 member countries signed the nonbinding declaration — which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with any-gay discrimination. More than 70 U.N. members outlaw homosexuality, and in several of them homosexual acts can be punished by execution.

Co-sponsored by France and the Netherlands, the declaration was signed by all 27 European Union members, as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries. There was broad opposition from Muslim nations, and the United States refused to sign, indicating that some parts of the declaration raised legal questions that needed further review.

It’s a good thing we have a new President who would never validate anyone with beliefs like we see here with the conscience rule or criminalizing homosexuality. Oh wait…

(I should note, in the interest of fairness, that the Obama transition team is committed to reversing the provider conscience rule.)

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Dirty, Dirty

by digby

The underwear sniffing zombie is back on the case:

The sponsors of Proposition 8 asked the California Supreme Court on Friday to nullify the marriages of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who exchanged vows before voters approved the ballot initiative that outlawed gay unions.The Yes on 8 campaign filed a brief arguing that because the new law holds that only marriages between a man and a woman are recognized or valid in California, the state can no longer recognize the existing same-sex unions.”Proposition 8’s brevity is matched by its clarity. There are no conditional clauses, exceptions, exemptions or exclusions,” reads the brief co-written by Pepperdine University law school dean Kenneth Starr, the former independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton. The campaign submitted the document in response to three lawsuits seeking to invalidate Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment adopted last month that overruled the court’s decision in May that briefly legalized gay marriage in the nation’s most populous state.

So much for the sanctity of marriage.

America’s Pastor Rick Warren says that being gay is kind of like having a bad tempter or immaturity — largely a matter of lack of self control. So why should they be allowed to get “gay married” when they can just grow up and be good heteros?

Now you might think that people wanting to join in monogamous, committed relationships would indicate that it isn’t just a matter of poor impulse control, but Warren clearly thinks that there isn’t any reason for it because they aren’t really gay in the first place. It logically follows that their marriages aren’t real either.

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Who Could Have Dreamed?

by digby

The Muckraker’s Zachary Roth has an interesting post up about Chris Cox and the SEC:

In recent years, particularly under Cox, a former California GOP congressman, the SEC has pursued a policy of de-emphasizing enforcement, part of the broader anti-regulatory philosophy of the Bush years — helping to make Madoff, and perhaps others like him, possible. “[Cox] in many ways worked to dismantle the SEC,” Ed Nordlinger, a former longtime enforcement director in the commission’s New York office, told TPMmuckraker. “He slowed everything down. I don’t think he believed in heavy regulation.” That view has been echoed by several others in a position to know. Ross Albert told TPMmuckraker for a post published yesterday: “Under Cox, SEC had de-emphasized the enforcement program. Cox worshipped at the same altar of de-regulation that the rest of the Bush administration worshipped at.”

Of course he did. He was a right wing employee of the financial services industry. Did people think otherwise?
I never got why everyone was so sanguine about Cox in that job. He was known to be one of the worst partisan hacks in the House (this piece of toilet paper being one of his shining moments.) He never met a big money contributor he didn’t like. But he was confirmed unanimously to be the top regulator for Wall Street. If someone repeatedly repeatedly plays the lowest kind of politics and takes huge sums of money from the very people he’s supposed to regulate this is exactly what you’d expect.

I’m afraid this propensity among Democrats to “let bygones be bygones” and blame the victim is a terrible weakness that continuously leads to these results. Accountability is not about revenge, it’s about keeping criminals and hacks like Chris Cox from destroying the country.

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Sick And Tasered

by digby

Tasers are so harmless cops can even use them on people in hospitals. It might be a good idea to determine if they are patients first or figure out if they are having a human reaction to grief and loss, but in the end, it’s their own fault if they get upset in public. Americans are now subject to being tasered no matter where they are and the police have no obligation to determine what the problem might be before they just start shooting you with electricity. That’s because they are so safe:

A 26-year-old San Jose man died early today after he was zapped with a Taser by a Campbell police officer who was helping quell a disturbance at Valley Medical Center.Santa Clara County Sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Don Morrissey did not identify the man, saying that the coroner had not yet given permission because his next of kin had not been properly notified. Morrissey said about 11:20 p.m. Thursday a woman called 911 from Valley Medical Center saying that one of her relatives was involved in a “disturbance.” Sheriff’s deputies arrived to help and were able to “locate the parties involved,” Morrissey said.Moments after they arrived, Morrissey said, the deputies began to struggle with the 26-year-old man who was causing the disturbance.Deputies called for backup.A Campbell officer was at the hospital saw the man fighting with deputies outside the hospital and went to help, said Campbell Police Capt. David Dehaan. He said Campbell Agent Gary Berg fired his Taser, an electric stun gun.The man was taken into custody, but deputies soon realized he was “unresponsive,” Morrissey said.Officers started CPR on the man, who was whisked into the hospital’s emergency room. Efforts to revive the man failed, and he died at 12:11 a.m. today.

The way the law is developing, the authorities aren’t held liable if the person had health problems:

Six people have died in San Jose since 2004 after being stunned with a Taser. Three of these cases highlights the complicated nature of the argument.In May, the daughter of a Mongol motorcycle club member who died after being zapped with a Taser during a naked, drug-fueled struggle with San Jose police in a motel room sued Police Chief Rob Davis, the city and the company that makes the electric stun guns for $20 million. The lawsuit claims that police excessively beat and stunned Steve Salinas, 47, to death on March 25, 2007. But the Santa Clara County coroner’s office concluded Salinas — who was under the influence of a toxic, if not lethal, dose of PCP and had heart disease — died of cardiopulmonary arrest during a violent physical struggle. The medical examiner noted that Taser use was an ”other significant condition,” but did not conclude that it contributed to his death.Just this month, in an unprecedented settlement over Tasers, the city of San Jose agreed to pay the family of Jose Angel Rios $70,000. Rios died in November 2005 after being struck with batons and Tased by police who were trying to calm him down during a domestic dispute. In that case, the coroner determined the primary cause of death on obesity, heart disease and drugs.And yet a another lawsuit was thrown out against the city of San Jose, because the coroner determined that the Taser was not a factor in the August 2005 death of Brian Patrick O’Neal, whom San Jose police were trying to subdue during a fight.

Of course, coroners have good reason to “lean” in the direction of law enforcement on these things:

Taser International has fired a warning shot at medical examiners across the country. The Scottsdale-based stun gun manufacturer increasingly is targeting state and county medical examiners with lawsuits and lobbying efforts to reverse and prevent medical rulings that Tasers contributed to someone’s death. That effort on Friday helped lead an Ohio judge’s order to remove Taser’s name from three Summit County Medical Examiner autopsies that had ruled the stun gun contributed to three men’s deaths. “We will hold people accountable and responsible for untrue statements,” Taser spokesman Steve Tuttle said earlier this week. “If that includes medical examiners, it includes medical examiners.”Many medical examiners, who are charged with determining the official causes of death, view the Scottsdale-based company’s efforts as disturbing, the spokesman for the National Association of Medical Examiners says. “It is dangerously close to intimidation,” says Jeff Jentzen, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. “At this point, we adamantly reject the fact that people can be sued for medical opinions that they make.” In the Ohio case, the judge said the county offered no medical, scientific or electrical evidence to justify finding the stun gun was a factor in the deaths of two men in 2005 and another in 2006. Taser and the City of Akron sued the medical examiner, saying examiners in the case lacked the proper training to evaluate Tasers. [Taser International is happy to help with that — ed]
Chief Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler said that her examiners rightly concluded Taser contributed to the deaths and said county lawyers will appeal the judge’s ruling. “I would not be going forward with this if I did not believe in the rulings,” she said. The judge’s order could have an immediate impact on criminal cases against five Summit County sheriff’s deputies who were charged in the 2006 “homicide” of a jail inmate. Instead of homicide, the judge ordered the cause of death changed to “undetermined.” Before Friday’s verdict, legal experts said Taser’s victory could lay the foundation for other cases against dozens of medical examiners who have ruled that shocks from the 50,000-volt stun gun can be fatal. Medical examiners say they’re concerned that Taser’s aggressive moves could have a chilling effect on doctors, preventing them from blaming Tasers for deaths even when evidence exists.

Ya think?

h/t to trevor and AER

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California Screaming

by digby

Schwarzenneger is going to order layoffs and furloughs of all state employees. That ought to be a big help to the recession.

Here’s where it stands today:

California’s budget mess got messier Thursday as Democratic legislators approved a package of tax increases and spending cuts, Republican legislators threatened to sue over the package’s questionable constitutionality and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made the issue moot by promising to veto it.Democratic legislative leaders then announced lawmakers are going home for the holidays.That announcement came at the end of a day filled with heated rhetoric, impromptu news conferences and a good deal of waiting around. The $18 billion Democratic proposal – approved without Republican votes – calls for increases in personal income and sales taxes, the substitution of a 39-cents-per-gallon fee on gasoline in place of the current 26 cents in state taxes, and a new tax on oil production.It also makes cuts in education, social services and other state programs and slices $657 million from the state’s payroll.The plan, unveiled Wednesday and the third to be voted on by legislators since just before Thanksgiving, is designed to close a bit less than half of a yawning $40 billion deficit in the state’s budget over the next 18 months.Republican legislators blocked both earlier plans by refusing en masse to vote for anything that contained a tax increase. GOP votes were needed because tax hikes require a two-thirds majority in each house.By concocting a formula that eliminated the gas taxes and replaced them with other taxes and fees, Democrats contended the package could be approved without Republican support.”Democrats passed a responsible plan that reduced the budget deficit by $18 billion,” said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. “I’m damn proud of what the Legislature did today.”Even before the votes were taken, Republican legislators and several taxpayer and small-business groups threatened to take the plan to court if the governor signed it.”This is one of the most brazen political moves in California history,” said Jonathan Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. “It doesn’t even pass the laugh test.”The governor, however, appeared to obviate the need for litigation.”This package they are sending down does only one thing, and that is punish the people of California,” Schwarzenegger told a hastily called news conference. “This fell short on every single level … so I cannot sign this.”

California politics is completely broken and one of the main problems is that we have a Republican party that has been reduced to it’s most extreme members and the system gives them a veto power over the people’s will. That we also have a bucket of warm spit for Governor who thinks he can charm everyone into agreement and inevitably gets rolled and a Democratic party filled with lameass hacks doesn’t help.

We. Be. Fucked.

Check out Calitics for reports of the full catastrophe.

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Disassembling The Middle Class

by dday

Well, the President did not opt for the orderly collapse of the auto industry, finally understanding (and articulating) that no consumer would buy a car from a company in bankruptcy. Instead, he extended $17 billion in loans to the Big 3 automakers, in exchange for major concessions and restructuring.

The deal would extend $13.4 billion in loans to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC in December and January, with another $4 billion likely available in February. It also would provide the government with non-voting warrants, although the exact amount was unclear immediately. Ford Motor Co. has said it doesn’t need short-term assistance.

The deal is contingent on the companies’ showing that they are financially viable by March 31. If they aren’t, the loans will be called and all funds must be returned, officials said.

The deal generally tracks key provisions of the bailout legislation that nearly passed Congress earlier this month. But it is relatively lenient in allowing the companies to show their viability. It defines viability as having a positive net present value — a way of gauging the companies’ worth, taking into account all their future obligations.

The “car czar” who gets to determine the viability of the industry is Henry Paulson, for now, but the Obama Administration will get to pick their own official, and as the real decision comes in late March, that position will have more power.

However, what’s not in the WSJ write-up, significantly, is that the Bush plan would mirror the Southern-state union-busting plan by significantly reducing American wages:

Targets: The terms and conditions established by Treasury will include additional targets that were the subject of Congressional negotiations but did not come to a vote, including:

• Reduce debts by 2/3 via a debt for equity exchange.
• Make one-half of VEBA payments in the form of stock.
• Eliminate the jobs bank. Work rules that are competitive with transplant auto manufacturers by 12/31/09.
• Wages that are competitive with those of transplant auto manufacturers by 12/31/09.

These terms and conditions would be non-binding in the sense that negotiations can deviate from the quantitative targets above, providing that the firm reports the reasons for these deviations and makes the business case to achieve long-term viability in spite of the deviations.

In addition, the firm will be required to conclude new agreements with its other major stakeholders, including dealers and suppliers, by March 31, 2009.

In other words, the UAW must take wages and work rules that are the same as non-union plants, and since “wages” include benefits and legacy costs, and the Big 3 have quite a bit more of those than their Japanese counterparts, this would depress wages FAR BELOW non-union plants. Marcy explains:

Remember, the measure the Republicans were using to measure “wages that are competitive with those of transplant auto manufacturers” was the lizard lie number–the $73/hour, the number that includes legacy costs, the payments to retiree pensions. Otherwise, there would be no reason to make this stipulation–because if you use the real wage number, and not the lizard lie number, American manufacturer wages are already competitive with the transplants!!

So what Bush is demanding is that the UAW lower wages plus pensions to the level of Japanese wages plus pension (though since they have very few retirees, their pension number is basically zero). Alternately, they could lower this number by basically picking the pocket of a bunch of seniors, by taking away pension money those seniors already earned while they were still working. But one or the other will have to happen.

Now, Bush did give the Obama Administration an escape hatch: the ability to deviate from the quantitative targets provided that the companies report why they did so.

But as written, Bush’s last major act as President is to demand that workers for American-owned companies work for less than workers for foreign owned companies. American capitalism, at its finest.

Obama praised the decision to actually lend the auto companies money, and suggested that the automakers must not squander the chance to reform their businesses and get back to viability. If that’s done entirely on the backs of American workers, however, I don’t see the point. “Saving” the auto industry while providing worker wages that rival burger-flipping isn’t going to help the economy even a little. We should be working to increase the purchasing power of the middle class, not to reduce it. This could be a situation in the Obama Administration where we will need a strong labor ally in the cabinet to make that case. Good thing we’ll have Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.

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