Month: May 2009

No Good Deed

by digby

Boy, you give them all you’ve got and these are the thanks you get:

The House Republican campaign operation released a new series of radio ads targeting five members of the Blue Dogs—a faction of moderate and fiscally conservative House Democrats.

The five targeted members include Reps. Marion Berry of Arkansas, Charlie Melancon of Louisiana, Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota, Zack Space of Ohio and John Tanner of Tennesee.

Each of the members represents a right-leaning congressional district that Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain won in the 2008 presidential election.
[…]

The ads—featuring dogs barking and whining in the background—align the lawmakers with President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and use a similar script.

“[The lawmaker] is not voting like a Blue Dog, he’s voting like a lap dog—a lap dog for Nancy Pelosi and President Obama,” the ad states.

Oh snap.

Good thing the Democrats aren’t so rude and partisan:

A spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign committee countered that it was the Bush administration that handed over a deficit to Obama. Republicans “just aren’t used to seeing members who are independent and stand up for what they thing is right,” said Jennifer Crider.

That’s certainly not going to come back to haunt them when the Blue Dogs stab the party in the back repeatedly.

Blue Dogs have been—and will continue to be—a target of the NRCC for the 2010 election cycle since their districts tend to lean more conservative. There are 49 Democrats who represent districts McCain won—many of them Blue Dogs–while there are 35 Republicans representing districts Obama won.

Funny, I haven’t seen any action on the part of the Democratic Party to target those Obama disticts, have you? I guess they’ll leave that unpleasantness to the DFHs …

Vote!

by digby

Yesterday I posted about Arlen Specter’s latest embarrassment. (In fact, now that he has been revealed to have been raising campaign money on the backs of cancer patients, his proclamations of not being a “loyal Democrat” are actually good news.) But it still leaves us with the dilemma of what to do about him.

You still have a few hours left to weigh in on whether or not you think drafting Joe Sestak for a primary is the way to go. You know what to do:

Primaries are the legitimate, democratic process for the rank and file of the party to choose candidates. Incumbency is already a huge impediment to challengers, but having the party pooh bahs make backroom deals with Republicans is a bridge too far for me.

“We Are Not Guantanamo”

by digby

I’m sure everyone has herd of the two American journalists who were arrested and have been held by the North Koreans the last couple of months. They are going to be put on trial for “hostile acts” which have been unspecified. Most experts believe they will be traded for something of value eventually.

Reader AZ sent me this, which distills exactly why the Obama administration has to deal with torture and Guantanamo resolutely and transparently:

“The rumor was that they are being housed at one of the guest villas,” said Han S. Park, a University of Georgia expert who was visiting North Korea as part of a private U.S. delegation after the women were captured. Park told CNN International that the North Koreans scoffed at any suggestion that the Americans were receiving harsh treatment.

“They laughed. ‘We are not Guantanamo.’ That’s what they said,” Park said.

American foreign policy is weakened in dozens of different ways until it is made very clear that America has repudiated what was done. The administration has many different interests to serve with this issue, but none are more important than that.

Saturday Night At The Movies

Maladies of Spain: New Jarmusch and vintage Frears

By Dennis Hartley

The LBJ look: Bill Murray in “The Limits of Control“

Any devotee of director Jim Jarmusch will tell you that when you watch one of his films, there are certain things you can expect. Or maybe it’s more about the things that you don’t expect. Like car chases. Special effects. Flash-cut editing. Snappy dialog. A pulse-pounding music soundtrack. Narrative structure. Pacing. Not that there is anything wrong with utilizing any or all of the above in order to entertain an audience, but if those are the kinds of things you primarily look for when you go to the movies, it would behoove you to steer clear of anything on the marquee labeled “A film by Jim Jarmusch”. And you will find none of the above and even less in his latest offering, The Limits of Control.

Jarmusch has decided to take another stab at the “existential hit man” genre (which he first explored in Ghost Dog – The Way of the Samurai); and here he has concocted something best described as The Day of the Jackal meets Black Orpheus. Isaach De Bankole is a killer-for-hire (referred to in the credits simply as Lone Man), who at first glance appears to mostly kill time. After receiving his cryptic assignment at an airport, he sets off via train, plane and automobile through the Spanish countryside, with a stop in Madrid (reinforcing my hunch that the film is, among other things, homage to Mr. Arkadin). Along the way, the taciturn Lone Man meets up in appointed locations with an assortment of oddballs, with whom he trades matchboxes (don’t ask). Each of these exchanges is really a setup for a cameo-length monologue about Art, Love, Life, the Universe and Everything by guest stars like John Hurt, Tilda Swinton and Gael Garcia Bernal (whose characters sport archetypal names like Guitar, Blonde and, um, Mexican). As each contact pontificates on a pet topic, De Bankole sits impassively, sipping a double espresso, which he always demands to be served in two cups (the film’s running joke).

The coffee quirk is the least of Lone Man’s OCD-type eccentricities. When he is on a “job”, he suffers absolutely no distractions-including sleep. He doesn’t seem to require much sustenance either, aside from the double espressos. He can’t even be bothered to take up an offer for recreational sex with Paz De La Huerta (what is he, NUTS?!) who, true to her character’s name (Nude) spends all of her screen time wearing little more than a pair of glasses (I hereby nominate the Costume Designer for an Honorary Oscar. Woof!)

The Big Mystery, of course, is Who’s Gonna Die, and Why-but we are not let in on that little secret until the end (in other words, don’t expect any exposition vis a vis Coppola’s over-the-shoulder peek at Captain Willard’s perusal of Colonel Kurtz’s dossier in Apocalypse Now). OK, you’re thinking at this point, we don’t know who he is chasing, and there doesn’t appear to be anyone chasing him, so where’s the dramatic tension?

Well, dramatic tension or traditional narrative devices have never been a driving force in any of Jarmusch’s films (as I pre-qualified at the outset). It’s always about the characters, and Jarmusch’s wry, deadpan observances about the human comedy. In Jarmusch’s universe, the story doesn’t happen to the people, the people happen upon the story; and depending on how receptive you are to that concept on that particular day, you’re either going to hail it as a work of genius or dismiss it as an interminable, pointless snooze fest.

As it so happened, I was in a pretty receptive mood that day, and I found a lot of things to like about The Limits of Control. In purely cinematic terms, I think it’s one of his best films to date. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle makes the most out of the inherently photogenic Spanish locales and deftly instills highly atmospheric flourishes throughout, giving the film an “acid noir” feel. Jarmusch has put together a great (and typically eclectic) soundtrack, from flamenco (required!) ambient (Boris, Earth) and psychedelic (LCD Soundsystem, The Black Angels) to jazz and Shubert. I think I’ve even figured out what the film is “about”. Or maybe Jarmusch is fucking with me. For the eleventh time.

I love the 80s: Terence Stamp, John Hurt and Tim Roth in “The Hit”

As the credits were rolling for The Limits of Control, and I was digesting what I had just experienced, something was nagging at me. There was yet another film that it reminded me of (in addition to the ones I have already noted), and in a fairly major way, but I couldn’t quite place it. As I was racking my brain, I thought “Now, there can’t be THAT many other existential hit man films, filmed in Spain, which also feature….John Hurt! That’s it! It was so obvious that I wasn’t able to see it right away. One of my favorite Brit-noirs ever, The Hit, is an existential hit man movie, filmed in Spain and features John Hurt. From now on, it’s Six Degrees of John Hurt for me. Move over, Kevin Bacon.

Directed by Stephen Frears and written by Peter Prince, this 1984 sleeper marked a comeback of sorts for Terence Stamp, who stars as Willie Parker, a London hood who has “grassed” on his mob cohorts in exchange for immunity. As he is led out of the courtroom following his damning testimony, he is treated to a gruff, spontaneous a cappella rendition of “We’ll Meet Again” (which has never sounded so menacing, especially when it is sung by a group of Cockney thugs who look like they were on loan from the cast of The Long Good Friday). The oddly serene Willie doesn’t appear fazed.

Flash-forward a number of years, and we learn that Willie has relocated to Spain, where he leads a somewhat comfortable existence (although his ever-present bodyguard would seem to be an indicator that he probably still sleeps with one eye open). When the other shoe finally drops “one sunny day”, and Willie is abducted by freelancing locals and delivered to a veteran hit man (John Hurt) and his hotheaded young “apprentice” (Tim Roth), he accepts his situation with a Zen-like calm (much to the chagrin of his captors).

What exactly is going on in Willie’s head? That’s what drives most of the ensuing narrative. As they motor through the scenic Spanish countryside (toward France, where Willie’s former boss awaits for a “reunion”) the trio engages in ever-escalating mind games, taking the story to unexpected places. The dynamic gets even more interesting when circumstances lead to taking on an additional hostage (Laura del Sol). Hurt is sheer perfection as his character’s icy detachment slowly unravels into blackly comic exasperation. Roth (in his film debut) is edgy, explosive and sometimes quite funny.

This is ostensibly a grim drama, by the way, and not a “ha-ha” comedy; but there are black comedy undercurrents that become more apparent upon subsequent viewings. There’s a fiery score by flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia (Eric Clapton plays the opening). Well worth rediscovery, especially since it has (finally!) been given the deluxe Criterion treatment (the previous DVD was a dismally mastered pan and scan version).

Previous posts with related themes:

An Appreciation of Jim Jarmusch

In Bruges

No Country for Old Men

… And one more thing

I want to take this opportunity to thank all the readers (you know who you are!) who generously took time to lobby on our behalf to the powers-that-be at the Seattle International Film Festival for recognition of Digby’s sizeable audience, and to reconsider accreditation for yours truly. I was floored by the overwhelming response. Our approach was never intended to be adversarial, and I was particularly delighted that the majority of readers who weighed in picked up on that. (Never underestimate the power of nice). Nor was this lost on the SIFF staffers who I have since spoken with; I could tell that they were genuinely impressed by the passion and eloquence in your missives.

Now, it’s time for me to STFU and go watch some movies, because you’re the boss and I better look busy…

Specter Of Madoff?

by digby

Good old Snarlin Arlen strikes again. Apparently, he has been raising money for his reelection with a web site that appears to be collecting money for cancer research. I’m not kidding.

Here’s Adam Green:

Where’s the media outrage over a true scandal, Arlen Specter’s Cancergate? (Yes, I’m coining that term — to describe Specter tricking the public into donating to a cancer cure website that actually funds his political campaign.)

Also today, I believe I’m first to break some news: Arlen Specter’s campaign has quietly changed his “Specter for the Cure” website after initially denying it was a scandal. And I have the screenshots to prove it.

Check out the screen shots. It’s nearly impossible to believe anyone could be so dumb, but apparently that’s what they want us to think.

And he hasn’t even really started to run yet. What other stupid Republican tricks are we going to have to put up with? Didn’t we have enough thick headed fools in the Democratic Party already?

Shrinking Violence

by digby

I have long thought that one of the most repellent aspects of the US Torture Regime was the participation by medical and psychological professionals. I wrote about this NY Times article way back when, about the complicity of doctors and nurses in the Abu Ghraib scandal:

Much of the evidence of abuse at the prison came from medical documents. Records and statements show doctors and medics reporting to the area of the prison where the abuse occurred several times to stitch wounds, tend to collapsed prisoners or see patients with bruised or reddened genitals.

Two doctors recognized that a detainee’s shoulder was hurt because he had his arms handcuffed over his head for what they said was “a long period.” They gave him an injection of painkiller, and sent him to an outside hospital for what appeared to be a dislocated shoulder, but did not report any suspicions of abuse. One medic, Staff Sgt. Reuben Layton, told investigators that he had found the detainee handcuffed in the same position on three occasions, despite instructing Specialist Graner to free the man.

“I feel I did the right thing when I told Graner to get the detainee uncuffed from the bed,” Sergeant Layton told investigators.

Sergeant Layton also said he saw Specialist Graner hitting a metal baton against the leg wounds of a detainee who had been shot. He did not report that incident.

It went on in gory detail. It was wrong of them not to report this, obviously, but the medical personnel didn’t deny the prisoners care or actively participate. But clearly others did. After all, the CIA required that doctors be present during the torture sessions in case the prisoners needed emergency tracheotomies and the like if the torture went just a little too far and the prisoner started dying before he confessed.

There was this, from Gitmo:

The stories coming out of Gitmo are remarkably consistent. This is not an unusual case. Indeed, the attempted suicide rate down there is astronomical, but after this was publicized, in a typical Bushian move, they have decided to simply give attempted suicides another, less disturbing, name. From the Vanity Fair article:

In the camp’s acute ward, a young man lies chained to his bed, being fed protein-and-vitamin mush through a stomach tube inserted via a nostril. “He’s refused to eat 148 consecutive meals,” says Dr. Louis Louk, a naval surgeon from Florida. “In my opinion, he’s a spoiled brat, like a small child who stomps his feet when he doesn’t get his way.” Why is he shackled? “I don’t want any of my guys to be assaulted or hurt,” he says.

By the end of September 2003, the official number of suicide attempts by inmates was 32, but the rate has declined recently-not because the detainees have stopped trying to hang themselves but because their attempts have been reclassified. Gitmo has apparently spawned numerous cases of a rare condition: “manipulative self-injurious behavior,” or S.I.B. That, says chief surgeon Captain Stephen Edmondson, means “the individual’s state of mind is such that they did not sincerely want to end their own life.” Instead, they supposedly thought they could get better treatment, perhaps even obtain release. In the last six months, there have been 40 such incidents.

Daryl Matthews, professor of forensic psychiatry at the University of Hawaii, was asked by the Pentagon to spend a week at GuantAnamo investigating detainees’ mental health and the treatments available. Unlike reporters-who must agree in writing not to speak to prisoners-Professor Matthews spoke with the inmates for many hours.

Manipulative self-injurious behavior “is not a psychiatric classification,” he says, and the Pentagon should not be using it. “It is dangerous to try to divide ‘serious’ attempts at suicide from mere gestures, and a psychiatrist needs to make a proper diagnosis in each and every case.” At Gitmo, Dr. Matthews says, the “huge cultural gulf” between camp staff and prisoners makes this difficult, if not impossible.

Across the board there were medical professionals either helping or failing to sound the alarm. But there are none who are more culpable in the torture regime than the psychologists. Which brings me to this interesting story from ProPublica, which reveals a listserv discussion among the American Psychological Association on the subject of torture:

Earlier this week we published a story examining [1] the psychology profession’s tortured relationship with the Bush Administration’s War on Terror. We found that psychologists warned officials as early as 2002 against using potentially ineffective and dangerous interrogation techniques on detainees, according to a recently-released Senate Armed Services Committee report. However, what had been little noticed was that the same psychologists helped develop the harsh interrogation policies and practices they warned against. As part of our report, we posted a listserv of internal emails between staff of the American Psychological Association and members of its “Psychological Ethics and National Security” task force. (Here’s the entire listserv.) [2] That listserv offers a rare look into a process that led to the adoption of an influential and controversial policy for the world’s largest professional organization of psychologists [3], which represents the profession of psychology in the United States. It also provides a window into a heated discussion among medical professionals grappling with their ethical obligations and their possible complicity in torture. The task force was set up after news reports [4] suggested that psychologists and other health professionals had been complicit with abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, for example by sharing information about psychological vulnerabilities with interrogators. The group’s charge was to examine the ethical dimensions of psychologists’ involvement in “national security investigations” and consider whether the APA should develop policies to guide psychologists involved in those activities. The task force produced a 12-page report [5] stating that the APA’s ethics code prohibited torture, obligated psychologists to report any instances to appropriate authorities, and banned psychologists from using health care information in ways that could harm detainees. [2] But the report also gave psychologists an ethical blessing to continue consulting in national security-related interrogations. An organization of psychiatrists, in contrast, decided its physician members should not participate. In response, the Department of Defense changed its guidance [6] to state that psychologists, but no longer psychiatrists, should participate in so-called Behavioral Science Consultation Teams or “BSCTs” (pronounced “biscuits”), which assist interrogators in prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After the report was issued, the APA task force itself became a target for criticism, when it was revealed that some members had consulted on interrogations at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, trained other psychologists to do so, or worked within chains of command that authorized the very practices the task force was established to consider (six of the nine voting members were members of or had consulted for the military or intelligence agencies)

Read on for details of yet another dry, technical discussion of unspeakable cruelty and barbarism. There was dissent among the group, but the report that was issued reflected the hard core faction that believed it was entirely ethical for psychologists to participate in war crimes. When the report was issued, there was a flood of complaints from members:

“APA members who have been in touch with me have expressed major disappointment,” task-force member Nina Thomas, a psychoanalyst who had worked with war victims, wrote on July 8, 2005 [17]. She shared excerpts of an email from another listserv that criticized the task-force report for offering psychologists “much wiggle room” to “do whatever they see as indicated by concerns of national security.” Tensions rose. “I do not think that we should now begin to second-guess ourselves,” Olivia Moorehead-Slaughter, the task-force chairperson, wrote on July 9, 2005 [18]. A July 28, 2005 New York Times [19] article showing that lawyers had stood up against harsh interrogation techniques led Thomas to lament [20], “reading it made me all the more sad that Mike Wessells, Jean Maria and I were not more successful at arguing our case for a more stringent standard for holding psychologists to account.” Moorehead-Slaughter reminded her colleagues the group had discussed including human rights standards in their report, but had concluded that “including such standards in the document would likely (perhaps definitely) put the document at odds with United States law and military regulations,” she wrote on July 29, 2005 [21]. “[T]he military would simply have ignored the document – thus, the community that we would most want to reach would have been prevented from using the report.” Thomas wrote back to disagree [22]. “(I)t has been the military’s own lawyers, indeed their highest ranking lawyers who have argued for the importance of using international human rights standards as the benchmark.” Koocher, the incoming APA president, supported the task force’s decision to leave international standards out of their document. “I have zero interest in entangling APA with the nebulous, toothless, contradictory, and obfuscatory treaties that comprise ‘international law,'” he wrote on July 30 [23]. “Rather, I prefer to see APA take principled stands on policy issued where psychology has some scientific basis for doing so.” The U.S. military apparently appreciated the report. Banks wrote on August 12 [24] to say that he, James and another psychologist had found it “a solid anchor” in an eight hour meeting with the Army’s surgeon general that hammered out “the doctrinal guidelines and training model for psychologists” who support interrogations.

It sounds as if some of the psychologists had been brainwashed themselves by crude, conservative propaganda. Some of that stuff could have come out of Rush Limbaugh’s mouth.
The medical profession will be tainted by this for a very long time, some more than others. Psychiatrists objected and were removed from the program. Other doctors, like that sadistic piece of garbage who declared that the attempted suicides were “brats” as he had prisoners shackled with feeding tubes forced through their nasal cavities, are culpable. But the psychologists who helped the military and the CIA develop torture techniques have a special place in hell waiting for them alongside some of the most terrible people in history. Remember their names.

The Zelig Of War Crimes

by digby

Bob Somerby picked up on something that I noticed this week as well: the rehabilitation of Colin Powell among progressives. It’s quite irritating. He notes this particularly egregious example with Olbermann and Jonathan “time to think about torture” Alter:

ALTER (5/8/09): [Republicans] could make some gains if Obama—if he were to somehow hit a really rocky period, they can make some gains. But if you’re talking about any long-term comeback where they really become a significant force in American politics again, they’re going to have to change, have to update their message. And the smart Republicans understand this. OLBERMANN: Well, how does this then fit into that? Because there was this ugly note that Mr. Hennen left out of the transcript which refers to General Powell’s political remarks and Hennen said he was tired of Powell’s “tea-leaf reading,” and he said he wished Powell would “stay in his lane.” And I don`t know who talks that way about a decorated veteran who also served as secretary of state. But even worse, Mr. Cheney said nothing in response to that. Is that ultimately another Republican problem here, a sort of cultural problem, this disdain—that you’re not a real American, even if you’re a war hero—disdain they have for anybody who disagrees with them?

Colin Powell is not only not a war hero, he’s actually implicated in war crimes from two different wars — as one of the “White House Principals” who watched the CIA act out torture techniques for their approval and as one of the men who tried to cover up My Lai. (He was involved in Iran-Contra too.) And that’s not even taking into account his pivotal role in energetically selling the Iraq war with bogus intelligence. Certainly, the man cannot be separated from Dick Cheney on that issue.

He was one of the most powerful people in the Bush administration and he failed time after time to step up and use his vast personal popularity to stop themor slow them down. He is, in fact, the worst chickenshit of the bunch since he had a separate power center and a special authority as an ex-general. Cheney may have been the chief architect, but Powell was the chief salesman and cover artist.

The Bush administration people are all running for cover now that they’ve been publicly exposed and repudiated. And it’s fun to watch their circular firing squad. But the fact is that they were all culpable, as were their enablers in the press. It’s clever to play them against each other, but it’s short sighted. These are issues of state violence and fundamental human values and it’s a mistake to not be consistent about such things.

Swine Screw

by digby

This pretty much says it all:

Last night, Rush Limbaugh came to Washington, D.C. to address the President’s Club Dinner, a meeting of wealthy donors and supporters of the Heritage Foundation. The audience included Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), as well as various millionaire trustees of the Heritage Foundation, like Thomas Saunders. After more or less reprising his radio show routine, Limbaugh went on to brag about his $400 million contract with Clear Channel Communications. As he continued to gloat about his show’s success, Limbaugh mocked the idea that Americans are suffering, noting, “I’ve never had financially a down year” despite the “supposed” recession:

LIMBAUGH: But during all this growth I haven’t lost any audience. I’ve never had financially a down year. There’s supposedly a recession, but we’ve got – what is this May? Back in February we already had 102% of 2008 overbooked for 2009. [applause] So I always believed that if we’re going to have a recession, just don’t participate. [laughter]

I’d love to hear him say that on the air.

Meanwhile, as he’s bragging to a bunch of fat cats about how he avoids recession by being a rapacious, greedy pig Rush’s employer, Clear Channel, is laying off people by the thousands. Here’s Eric Boehlert:

Drowning under massive debt and desperate to cut more costs, Clear Channel took an ax to its payroll — again — and hacked hundreds of radio pros out the door. Program directors, morning show hosts, production pros, news anchors — all of them tossed over the side. A “bloodbath,” one newspaper called it. (In Albany, New York, the entire on-air staff at a Clear Channel music station was sacked; same with a radio outpost in Exeter, New Hampshire) The most recent blizzard of pink slips (one industry report pegged it at “nearly 1,000”) came in the wake of a January purge, in which 1,850 Clear Channel employees were let go. So already this year the company has shed nearly 3,000 employees, or 12 percent of its workforce. Also, last week, Clear Channel’s parent company announced it was suspending its matching contributions to employee 401(k) retirement programs.

Every single day Limbaugh demonstrates why he is the poster boy for everything people loathe about the GOP.

Supercop

by dday

President Obama reportedly wants to put the Federal Reserve in charge of managing systemic risk among “too big to fail” financial giants. And why not? They’ve certainly done a bang-up job so far.

Thrill to them throwing down the hammer on the biggest banks during the stress tests:

The Federal Reserve significantly scaled back the size of the capital hole facing some of the nation’s biggest banks shortly before concluding its stress tests, following two weeks of intense bargaining.

In addition, according to bank and government officials, the Fed used a different measurement of bank-capital levels than analysts and investors had been expecting, resulting in much smaller capital deficits.

When the Fed last month informed banks of its preliminary stress-test findings, executives at corporations including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. were furious with what they viewed as the Fed’s exaggerated capital holes. A senior executive at one bank fumed that the Fed’s initial estimate was “mind-numbingly” large. Bank of America was “shocked” when it saw its initial figure, which was more than $50 billion, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

Bank of America’s final gap was $33.9 billion, down from an earlier estimate of more than $50 billion, according to a person familiar with the negotiations […]

At Fifth Third Bancorp, the Fed was preparing to tell the Cincinnati-based bank to find $2.6 billion in capital, but the final tally dropped to $1.1 billion. Fifth Third said the decline stemmed in part from regulators giving it credit for selling a part of a business line.

Citigroup’s capital shortfall was initially pegged at roughly $35 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The ultimate number was $5.5 billion. Executives persuaded the Fed to include the future capital-boosting impacts of pending transactions.

Chill to the makeup of one of the Fed’s branch boards:

The kerfuffle about current New York Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Stephen Friedman’s purchase of some Goldman stock while the Fed was involved in reviewing major decisions about Goldman’s future—well-covered by the Wall Street Journal here and here—raises a fundamental question about Wall Street’s corruption […]

So who selected Geithner back in 2003? Well, the Fed board created a select committee to pick the CEO. This committee included none other than Hank Greenberg, then the chairman of AIG; John Whitehead, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs; Walter Shipley, a former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, now JPMorgan Chase; and Pete Peterson, a former chairman of Lehman Bros. It was not a group of typical depositors worried about the security of their savings accounts but rather one whose interest was in preserving a capital structure and way of doing business that cried out for—but did not receive—harsh examination from the N.Y. Fed.

The composition of the New York Fed’s board, which supervises the organization and current Chairman Friedman, is equally troubling. The board consists of nine individuals, three chosen by the N.Y. Fed member banks as their own representatives, three chosen by the member banks to represent the public, and three chosen by the national Fed Board of Governors to represent the public. In theory this sounds great: Six board members are “public” representatives.

So whom have the banks chosen to be the public representatives on the board during the past decade, as the crisis developed and unfolded? Dick Fuld, the former chairman of Lehman; Jeff Immelt, the chairman of GE; Gene McGrath, the chairman of Con Edison; Ronay Menschel, the chairwoman of Phipps Houses and also, not insignificantly, the wife of Richard Menschel, a former senior partner at Goldman. Whom did the Board of Governors choose as its public representatives? Steve Friedman, the former chairman of Goldman; Pete Peterson; Jerry Speyer, CEO of real estate giant Tishman Speyer; and Jerry Levin, the former chairman of Time Warner. These were the people who were supposedly representing our interests!

As Spitzer notes (and by the way, can we start blaming Eliot Spitzer’s libido as among the causes of the financial crisis?), it’s not necessarily corruption at the NY Fed, but a very cozy groupthink, where what’s good for America and what’s good for Wall Street are seen as equal. Whether you think the stress test portrayed a false picture of overall banking industry health or not, everybody basically agrees that stronger regulation and enforcement could avert the kind of crisis we’ve already seen. But the Federal Reserve acting as any kind of regulator for large banks and investment firms should invite peals of laughter. It reminds me of Bush hiring top industry lobbyists to regulate the industries for which they used to lobby.

.

Here We Go

by digby

The fiscal zombies said nothing when George W Bush passed out the surplus to all their wealthy friends just 8 years ago and then blindly cheered on an unnecessary, hugely expensive war. No, they waited until the economy was in total meltdown to insist that everyone (but them) needs to “sacrifice.” I don’t know where they get the chutzpah, but it seems to be in endless supply.

I wrote earlier about Steny’s speech last week, in which he explained that we can’t afford health care unless we start “making choices” about who gets to live and die. Now, energized by Steny’s clarion call for high taxes, lower benefits and cuts in medicare and medicaid, the Dean is very excited, extolling every fiscal scold in the land for his “courage” and insisting, along with the rest of the Pain Caucus, that the best time to demand higher taxes and huge sacrifices of the American people is during the worst economic crisis of most of our lifetimes.

What could be more inspiring and reassuring right now than the notion that the government is going to cut spending on retirement and health care and raise all our taxes to boot? It’s politically brilliant:

Conrad and Gregg have proposed attacking that larger problem by creating a bipartisan commission to examine the big entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — where savings must be found, and the tax systems that support them. That proposal and its counterpart in the House, sponsored by Republican Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia and Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, have been stymied for two years principally by the adamant opposition of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. So far, Obama has not challenged her, even though he knows as well as anyone that significant steps to avoid a succession of trillion-dollar annual deficits when we emerge from this recession clearly will require reform of entitlements and taxes. Last week, in a courageous break with party solidarity, the House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, reiterated his support for the commission idea, suggesting that along with the overall health-care reform Obama has put on the agenda, Congress tackle Social Security.[…]
More and more individual Democrats and Republicans are expressing a readiness for such an effort. In response to Hoyer’s speech, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who traveled the country last year with John McCain, told my Washington Post colleague, Lori Montgomery, “I think we can get double-digit Republican support for a reasonable compromise.” As if to confirm his words, Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio and independent Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut introduced an entitlement commission bill of their own last week. Voinovich told me that he thinks “the prospects for action on the issue are very, very good, because the feeling is growing that we can’t sustain the path we’re on.” When I spoke with Graham by phone, he outlined a plan that would not only embrace Hoyer’s proposals but provide bigger benefits for retirees past 80 “who are outliving their 401(k)s” in increasing numbers. Graham said that with leadership from Obama, including a barnstorming tour with congressional supporters from both parties, such a compromise could pass Congress this year — with no need for a commission. But while these Republicans are gung-ho, Hoyer is cautious. He reminded me in an interview that both Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have thrown cold water on the commission idea, and said that signals from the White House suggest that Obama would not want anything to get in the way of his health care and energy initiatives this year. If that means more futile gestures, like last week’s tiny budget cuts, the nation — and Obama — will have missed an opportunity.

Right. If ever there was an opportunity to prove that government is completely useless by scaring the hell out of people and cutting much needed services in a time of crisis, it’s now. And that, of course, would be the point.

*And btw, if they want to tank health care, the administration will let this meme take hold. it plays right into Frank Luntz’s hands. You can’t sell health care at the same time you are telling everyone they’re going to have to sacrifice. That’s exactly what Luntz wants people to think.