Month: March 2009

Waiting For the (Blue) Dog Days

by digby

According to Stephanoupoulos, EFCA isn’t going to come up for a vote any time before summer. I had heard it had pretty much fallen off the agenda early on, and believed it when I read this comment from Obama back in January (which Steph also links to.)

I think the basic principal of making it easier and fairer for workers who want to join a union, join a union is important. And the basic outline of the Employee Fair Choice are ones that I agree with. But I will certainly listen to all parties involved including from labor and the business community which I know considers this to be the devil incarnate. I will listen to parties involved and see if there are ways that we can bring those parties together and restore some balance.

You know, now if the business community’s argument against the Employee Free Choice Act is simply that it will make it easier for people to join unions and we think that is damaging to the economy then they probably won’t get too far with me. If their arguments are we think there are more elegant ways of doing this or here are some modifications or tweaks to the general concept that we would like to see. Then I think that’s a conversation that not only myself but folks in labor would be willing to have. But, so that’s the general approach that I am interested in taking. But in terms of time table, if we are losing half a million jobs a month then there are no jobs to unionize. So my focus first is on those key economic priority items that I just mentioned.

That seemed to me to be a pretty clear signal that the administration wasn’t going to push to pass the bill that passed last year. And so they aren’t. If the unions don’t mind, I guess nobody else should. And they don’t seem to mind. So, we’ll see where we stand in four or five months I guess.

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Da Man

by digby

Blue America congressman Alan Grayson is over at FDL right now discussing the appalling lack of transparency with the various bank bailouts. He’s one of the few who have been pressing on this issue.

Here’s a sample:

I used to think that war profiteering in Iraq was the crime of the century. But this is bigger.

Remember: Tell members of Congress that you want them to take action here.

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Contract With His Pants

by digby

St John of Sedona has decided that what this country really needs is more inane ramblings from him about the economy:

Sen. John McCain is putting together a major economic plan that will be structured, in some ways, off of Newt Gingrich’s famous Contract With America. In an email obtained by the Huffington Post, the Arizona Republican’s chief of staff, Marc Buse, asked an outside adviser for help with a “ten principles” program that the senator could use as a “definitive” platform. “We are looking for some guidance on a definitive plan (aka contract with america style) on the economy…principles,” writes Buse. “Ten principles that JSM could point to on what MUST BE DONE to address the problems our nation faces.” Buse doesn’t offer specific suggestions of his own, save “NO TAX INCREASES.”

The man who said “the fundamentals of the economy are good” at the very moment the meltdown was reaching critical mass (and put the final nail in his campaign coffin) is going to become the voice of the Republican economic message? Wow, they really are desperate.
And keep in mind that the Contract On America was a media creation (just as John McCain and Newtie Gingrich are media creations) which was introduced in the final six weeks of an election that was already polling heavily for the Republicans. Nonetheless, Newtie and the gang tried to claim the election was a validation of their silly little manifesto and for years we had to put up with the media touting it as if it had been carved in granite on Mt Sinai. I don’t think it’s going to work this time — the “angry white male” is now the “scared witless American” and their silly crap just isn’t relevant this time.
I get the feeling that McCain is stung by the fact that everyone in the world knows he’s an economic moron. Unfortunately for the Republicans, every time he opens his mouth on the subject he reminds everyone in the country just how close they came to electing someone who doesn’t even know how many houses he owns, much less how to fix the thorniest economic problem in modern memory.
Bring it on St John. Get out front on the economy. It only helps the ball team.

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Missing The Story

by tristero

This article was on the front page – the front page! – of the New York Times today:

It is a sign of the times when Sacha Taylor, a fixture on the charity circuit in this gala-happy city, digs out a 10-year-old dress to wear to a recent society party.

Or when Jennifer Riley, a corporate lawyer, starts patronizing restaurants that take coupons.

Or when Ethel Knox, the wife of a pediatrician, cleans out her home and her storage unit, gives away an old car to a needy friend and cancels the family Christmas. “I just feel so decadent with all the stuff I’ve got,” she explained.

In just the seven months since the stock market began to plummet, the recession has aimed its death ray not just at the credit market, the Dow and Detroit, but at the very ethos of conspicuous consumption. Even those with a regular income are reassessing their spending habits, perhaps for the long term. They are shopping their closets, downscaling their vacations and holding off on trading in their cars. If the race to have the latest fashions and gadgets was like an endless, ever-faster video game, then someone has pushed the reset button.

A “fixture on the charity circuit” wears a 10-year-old dress. Golly, that’s serious.

Now, I understand why this story was written. White people in the middle and upper classes like to read about themselves and assume everyone else in the world does, too. Besides, why should a reporter trouble her beautiful mind talking to strangers who literally are having problems putting food on the table? They might get angry and say something her bosses don’t deem fit to print. Better to just call up her pals and ask them to suggest possible subjects. Everyone saves time, effort, and money, and everyone’s happy.

Trouble is, it’s not the story. Because of the meltdown of the financial system on Republican George W. Bush’s watch, people will starve. That’s the real story, and the New York Times should be ashamed of itself for typing up and printing drivel like this.

Manipulating The Markets

by dday

Howie Klein has been all over the Employee Free Choice Act today as it begins debate in the Congress. He highlights all the Democrats who were co-sponsors of the same bill in 2007 and 2008 but not now, and then he offers a plausible reason why, in a guest post by Dennis Shulman, the blind rabbi who ran for Congress in 2008 in New Jersey, and was essentially offered what amounts to a bribe by contributors in an attempt to get him to not support the pro-labor bill. They really messed with the wrong guy:

My support for EFCA, in a way, was more than forty years in the making. When I was fifteen years old, going blind, and working to help support my family, I worked for minimum wage after school and during the summers in a factory that hired disabled workers. As a high school student, 85 cents an hour was not bad in 1966. But, as I assembled the toy parts hour after hour, I was surrounded by men and women in their thirties and forties and fifties, some of them veterans, some of them with families, also making 85 cents an hour […]

Over the years, that experience in that factory in Worcester, Mass., never left me. Especially in these times of economic crisis, if we are going to have a nation in which the middle class family is to be strong, then we have to have a nation that gives organized labor a level playing field. If we are going to have working families that have the buying power to keep our economy growing, then we have to support labor. If we are going to have a nation which honors hard work, then we are going to have to give labor the opportunity to freely choose organization […]

Too many times during the last year, at campaign fund raisers, people who had large interests in manufacturing would approach me to “discuss” my position on the Employee Free Choice Act. Although my factory experience from the 1960’s outweighed the pressure exerted in 2008 every time, the campaign system favors manufacturers with money to contribute to the candidate. Let us hope as EFCA is being discussed and voted on in Congress this week that our representatives vote for what is right and fair and in the best interest of our nation, and not for what is personally lucrative.

Read between the lines and you get a picture of manufacturing interests conditioning their support for Shulman based on his position on Employee Free Choice. That’s their right, of course. But it’s startling to see the banking industry working in concert to actually damage stocks in a play to get Congress to back down.

Citigroup Inc. lowered its rating on Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to hold from buy on Tuesday, citing concern that legislation intended to make it easier for employees to unionize would raise the retail giant’s labor costs and hurt its competitiveness.

Deborah Weinswig, a Citigroup analyst, cut her price target on the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer to $48 from $53.

Wal-Mart (WMT) shares rose 2.4% to $48.65 in early afternoon trading, in line with the broader markets. Still, its percentage gain was one of the smallest among components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The proposed Employee Free Choice Act, a top priority for unions this year, was formally introduced Tuesday by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa., and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.

Wal-Mart has a comfortable enough position in the marketplace – their sales are actually up – that they could handle a stock jolt. But they could also show that jolt to people like Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor and Vic Snyder, Arkansas Democrats who supported Employee Free Choice in the past but would be presented with information that it would lead to a hit to the bottom line of the main employer and political player in their state.

The Citigroup report is bad analysis, by the way. Shocking, I know, that someone at Citi would make a bad decision. As much as Wal-Mart having to pay reasonable wages and benefits would cut into their profits, the increase in overall wages as a result of unionization would bolster purchasing power for precisely the kind of people who shop at Wal-Mart. It’s just a fact that unions help workers achieve higher wages, and that the wage stagnation at the middle class and below has been crushing America in the past decade. If Wal-Mart and employers like them could spend two seconds looking past their own immediate self-interest, they would recognize that a strong middle class with good union jobs would lift everybody throughout the economy. And all the Employee Free Choice Act would do is to ensure fairness in the unionization process, by punishing employers who fired or intimidated workers and giving the power back to workers to decide how to organize themselves.

…for those who say that someone like Blanche Lincoln has to watch herself for the 2010 midterms, consider Senate Guru’s analysis that nobody’s really running against her worth a darn. Therefore we can conclude that, if Lincoln votes against Employee Free Choice, it’s not because she has to, but because she wants to.

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War With Terror

by digby

Greenwald discusses the absurd Fred Hiatt column expressing outrage that Secretary of State Clinton refuses to condemn other countries for the very things the United States is known to have done. Read it an laugh at the sheer chutzpah of the village, as it insists that we can still credibly speak on human rights after what our country did (and, sadly, continues to do.)

Greenwald links to this post about the ongoing revelations in the Mohammed Bunyam case, which continue to astonish. I’ve been following the torture issue from the beginning, and I’ve often wondered at the motivations behind the torture regime. It’s obvious the CIA knew that it was an unreliable interogation technique — it’s their business. Ex CIA oficers have testified to that fact. If they were truly looking for information, torture wouldn’t be the best way to obtain it. So what was it?

And what was all this torture for? According to Mr. Mohamed, it was during his stay at the Dark Prison that U.S. interrogators went beyond inducing confessions. They wanted him to finger other individuals, and use him to testify in the military commissions trials they were planning. Later, when Mohamed arrived in Guantanamo in September 2004, interrogators got worried Binyam would testify he only “confessed” or gave information because he was tortured, and tried to conduct “clean” interrogations, so they could say the testimony was uncoerced. They demanded he give his confession “freely”. After Obama was elected president and announced Guantanamo would close, Mohamed says his treatment became more brutal.

The entire Mail article goes into much, much more detail, and makes important reading for those trying to understand what kinds of crimes the U.S. and UK governments have committed when they undertook the torturing of individuals in their custody. Andy Worthington has also written an excellent summary and review of Binyam’s interview, and furthermore, writes from the standpoint of one who has followed both Mr. Mohamed’s case, and that of a myriad of other Guantanamo prisoners for years now.

Andy Worthington’s article makes abundantly clear that the torture of prisoners like Binyam Mohamed was not about, or at least not solely about, the collection of information. It was about the manufacture of information, including false confessions and fingering others for prosecution or further torture. In an earlier interview with Binyam Mohamed’s attorney, Clive Stafford Smith:

Binyam explained that, between the savage beatings and the razor cuts to his penis, his torturers “would tell me what to say.” He added that even towards the end of his time in Morocco, they were still “training me what to say,” and one of them told him, “We’re going to change your brain.”

This emphasis on brainwashing — for that is the popular terminology for such an assault on the psyche of a prisoner — is a key component of the kind of psychological torture that was researched by both the United Kingdom and the United States in the years following World War II. It highlighted the use of isolation, sleep deprivation, fear, stress positions, manipulation of the environment, of food, the use of humiliation and both sensory deprivation and sensory overload upon the prisoner. The idea was to overwhelm the nervous system and make a human being collapse without a blow being made, without scars, without evidence usable in court.

Much to the chagrin of some in the government, I suppose, the Moroccans had some ideas of their own regarding torture, and it included the use of razor blades. According to the Mail account, there are plenty of pictures of Mr. Mohamed’s scarred penis in his files. That may be bad news for somebody, if anyone’s head is ever going to fall over this monstrosity of a treatment.

Brainwashing. False confessions. Show Trials. Of course. That’s the main purpose of torture. Indeed, it’s the only thing it’s capable of. That’s been the case going all the way back to the Inquisition. So the purpose of torture is to use the power of the authority to force people to make false confessions — and, more importantly, use those false confessions in kabuki procedings which many people know are show trials but which are powerless to challenge due to their superficial legality. The sheer power of that is awe-inspiring to the victims and the torturers alike.

The Bush administration’s simplistic approach to national security was to show that they were the biggest, meanest bastards on the planet. Part of that is to create the impression that there is no rhyme or reason for our violence other than a demonstration that we have the power to do it. The inexplicability of it is the point. And to that end, all those creepy rituals with the prisoners in the orange jumpsuits and the goggles on their knees were designed to show that the United States was engaged in a form of bureaucratic, systematic sadism. Which it clearly was.

Interrogations for the purpose of gaining intelligence were never the point. The point was to create terror. And there’s a word for that.

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Good News

by digby

I’ve heard Van Jones speak several times and have always been impressed and inspired by his ideas so it’s great news that he’s going to work in the administration. His rhetoric is a little edgier than what we’ve come to expect from national politics and I hope he doesn’t end up getting booted for speaking the truth as Joycelyn Elders was. He’s super smart and very creative and hopefully they’ll move some of his ideas.

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And Signing Statements

by dday

As I’ve noted a few times, the Bush Administration so catastrophically fucked this country in seemingly limitless weighs, that the Obama Administration could be 90% on the side of the angels and still have lots of issues where they are wrong, creating an impression that they are not fulfilling the promise of change. Well, here’s one area where they are: ending the pernicious practice of signing statements that nullify settled Congressional law based on extreme theories of executive power, which was brought to truly epic levels under Bush and Cheney.

In recent years, there has been considerable public discussion and criticism of the use of signing statements to raise constitutional objections to statutory provisions. There is no doubt that the practice of issuing such statements can be abused. Constitutional signing statements should not be used to suggest that the President will disregard statutory requirements on the basis of policy disagreements. At the same time, such signing statements serve a legitimate function in our system, at least when based on well-founded constitutional objections. In appropriately limited circumstances, they represent an exercise of the President’s constitutional obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and they promote a healthy dialogue between the executive branch and the Congress.

With these considerations in mind and based upon advice of the Department of Justice, I will issue signing statements to address constitutional concerns only when it is appropriate to do so as a means of discharging my constitutional responsibilities. In issuing signing statements, I shall adhere to the following principles:

The executive branch will take appropriate and timely steps, whenever practicable, to inform the Congress of its constitutional concerns about pending legislation. Such communication should facilitate the efforts of the executive branch and the Congress to work together to address these concerns during the legislative process, thus minimizing the number of occasions on which I am presented with an enrolled bill that may require a signing statement.

Because legislation enacted by the Congress comes with a presumption of constitutionality, I will strive to avoid the conclusion that any part of an enrolled bill is unconstitutional. In exercising my responsibility to determine whether a provision of an enrolled bill is unconstitutional, I will act with caution and restraint, based only on interpretations of the Constitution that are well-founded.

To promote transparency and accountability, I will ensure that signing statements identify my constitutional concerns about a statutory provision with sufficient specificity to make clear the nature and basis of the constitutional objection.

I will announce in signing statements that I will construe a statutory provision in a manner that avoids a constitutional problem only if that construction is a legitimate one.

Obama is essentially saying that he would raise constitutional issues BEFORE a law reached his desk. What the Bush Administration would do is negotiate a bill, and then when it passed nullify with the stroke of the pen any aspect that put a check on his executive power. Obama would give the Congress the benefit of the doubt and act with restraint in issuing signing statements, generally within the accepted practice of the previous 200-odd years. The statements typically would be used as a guideline for the Supreme Court to judge the constitutionality of a provision if it were litigated, as I understand it. That is a far cry from what essentially was a line-item veto, the way Bush used it. And the part where he writes that he would “constitutional concerns about a statutory provision with sufficient specificity to make clear the nature and basis of the constitutional objection” would be far different from the boilerplate that Bush used on over one hundred signing statements:

Bush’s postsigning statement declared that he would interpret many sections of the new law “in a manner consistent with the president’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.” In plain English, this means that many of the limits that Congress imposed on Bush’s power – and that he accepted when he took the money Congress appropriated – are null and void. Why? Because the president says so.

Best of all, instead of just looking forward, in this case he’s looking backward.

To ensure that all signing statements previously issued are followed only when consistent with these principles, executive branch departments and agencies are directed to seek the advice of the Attorney General before relying on signing statements issued prior to the date of this memorandum as the basis for disregarding, or otherwise refusing to comply with, any provision of a statute.

In other words, Mr. Bush, your signing statements just went poof in the night.

Charlie Savage, who basically uncovered the practice of nullifying law through signing statements during the Bush Administration, has a writeup on this memorandum. And he says that Obama’s perspective is consistent with his remarks on signing statements in a questionnaire Savage authored during the campaign.

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Allowed To Fail

by digby

I’m being driven nearly mad by the new Republican line propagated by McCain and Shelby that we need to “let these banks fail” instead of nationalizing them. I’m an idiot when it comes to economics, but even I’m not that dumb. (And I didn’t have nearly 50 million people vote for me for president either.)

On Shuster today, Krugman very calmly explained that if what they mean by “letting them fail” is that we put them into receivership, then they’re right. After all that’s what the FDIC is doing about twice a week now with banks all over the country. If it makes these bozos feel better to call it “letting them fail” rather than “nationalization” that’s fine with me. Maybe that’s a good way to phrase it. Unfortunately, it’s pretty obvious that they don’t understand it that way. They think these banks can go “bankrupt,” just close the doors and stop operating like the corner hardware store. Apparently they don’t understand that the government has to take over banks that are deemed to have failed.

Others much smarter than John McCain and I don’t understand why the Treasury Dept is so reluctant to nationalize these big banks after all this time and money has been spent propping them up to no apparent avail. But the fact is that nationalization is exactly what will happen if these banks are “allowed to fail.”

The campaign showed that McCain is one of the dumbest members of congress on economics and it’s clearer ever day that the world dodged a bullet with that one. It’s bad enough that we are all feel like our minds are swimming in quicksand when it comes to understanding this banking crisis. To have these “leaders” out there saying completely stupid things in the face of it is simply breathtaking.

Shuster also asked about John Boehner’s absurd suggestion that we should freeze government spending. Krugman showed great forbearance, explaining the “paradox of thrift” and mildly suggesting that these people seem to be ignoring the last 80 years of economic thinking. I think it’s actually quite clear that these self-professed guardians of the free market and the capitalist system know less about economics than the average high school sophomore. And that is profoundly disturbing.

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Losing Their Discipline

by digby

I’ve been writing about how the Democratic strategists should stop running to their friends in the press and announcing their super-clever strategies to the whole world. And I sauid that the Republicans don’t do that. I was wrong.

And yet another testament to the fact that they have completely lost their moorings, they are now doing exactly the same thing. Via Greg Sargent:

McHenry’s description is buried in this new article from National Journal (sub. only):

“We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., an outspoken conservative who has participated on the GOP message teams. “Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

McHenry’s spokesperson, Brock McCleary, tells me his boss is standing by the quote.

Sargent reports that Dems are already planning to use this to show that the opposition has no intention of being constructive. Why wouldn’t they?

I never thought I’d see the day when Republicans would be as undisciplined as Democrats, but there it is. They just can’t seem to help themselves.

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