Month: May 2009

Draft Sestak?

by digby

Politico reports:

A liberal political group, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, went live Wednesday with an online straw poll designed to gauge progressive support for a Democratic primary challenge to Sen. Arlen Specter.

More specifically, the effort is aimed at determining the depth of Netroots support for Rep. Joseph Sestak, the two-term Democrat who hasn’t ruled out running against Specter.

The poll, which will remain open for five days, asks whether a “Draft Sestak” movement should be created to take on Specter. The possibility of a Sestak run has been lighting up left-leaning blogs and provoking debate among Pennsylvania Democrats ever since Specter changed his party affiliation last week.

For his part, Sestak appears to be inching closer toward jumping into the race, and on Tuesday said on Fox News Radio that Specter’s switch was at least part of the reason.

“I think that even before Arlen got in I hadn’t made a final decision yet, and I haven’t,” Sestak said. “But I got to tell you that I’m a little bit more concerned now than I was then.”

One Democrat, Joseph Torsella, the former head of the Constitution Center who entered the race in February, has already vowed to remain in the race.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which is devoted to electing progressive candidates to office, plans to announce the results of the unscientific survey Monday—perhaps providing a signal to Sestak as to how much support he can expect from the online liberal grassroots.

Adam Green, a co-founder of the five-month-old organization, said that his group’s goal was to “call the question on a primary in general and whether Sestak’s the candidate in particular.”

“Our hope is that this will have an impact on the political environment in which Joe Sestak makes his decision and in which the larger political world makes their evaluation,” Green said. “If it turns out that it’s 50-50 that would be very informative, if it’s 90-10 in favor of Sestak that would be very informative too.”

I back this effort. At this point, we don’t know how the netroots feel about Sestak or Arlen and it seems like something we should find out. My personal opinion is that the end run the Party made in getting Specter to sign on was undemocratic and antithetical to the bottom-up democracy Obama ran on.

The party does not get to promise people that they will not be primaried, period. The do not choose our leaders for us. If we had wanted that we would have kept the smoke filled rooms. It is insulting that they would promise such a thing to a Republican apostate (even if it’s just a wink and nod that Obama will campaign for him in the primary) particularly one who promptly goes on TV and declares that he is not a loyal Democrat and never will be.

It was widely believed that Sestak could have beaten Toomey who would have beaten Specter. There’s no reason to think that still wouldn’t happen, except now Sestak will have to bear the cost of a primary against Specter instead of the Republican. There’s every reason to believe he could beat Specter and at the very least show Arlen that Democrats are a bunch of potted plants he can take for granted. The only people in the country who love Arlen’s mushy brand of conservative politics these days is the village. He needs to make some choices.

So, go and register your vote so everyone can see, one way or the other, if there’s an appetite among liberals for a Democratic primary against Arlen Specter in 2010. Party leaders forgot to ask before they promised him things they didn’t have the authority to promise anyone so we’ll have to do it after the fact.

Best Democracy Money Can Buy

by dday

For your reading pleasure, some snapshots of the banks and financial interests controlling our economy and eating up hundreds of billions in public money:

Their lobbyists:

A review of lobbying reports filed indicates that finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) interests paid over $42 million to lobbyists who worked to defeat mortgage write-down in bankruptcy (cramdown) in the first quarter of 2009, as well as other anti-consumer legislation such as capping credit card interest rates.

$13 million of that comes from TARP recipients.

Then we have the bonus babies:

The 2008 AIG bonus pool just keeps getting larger and larger.

In a response to detailed questions from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the company has offered a third assessment of exactly how much it paid out in bonuses last year.

AIG now says it paid out more than $454 million in bonuses to its employees for work performed in 2008.

That is nearly four times more than the company revealed in late March when asked by POLITICO to detail its total bonus payments. At that time, AIG spokesman Nick Ashooh said the firm paid about $120 million in 2008 bonuses to a pool of more than 6,000 employees.

And there are the fraudsters:

New York AG Andrew Cuomo just issued 100 subpoenas to investment firms in his expanding investigation of pay-to-play schemes that defraud public employee retirement funds, and announced the participation of 100 officials in 36 states’ attorney general offices in the probe.

(This pension fund placement agent scandal looks like a doozy.)

And finally, you have the good old American greedheads:

The White House, auto executives and union representatives were all able to come to an agreement last week to keep Chrysler out of bankruptcy. But the car company’s creditors — Wall Street banks and hedge funds — refused repeated compromises and drove the company under.

The refusal doomed a major American auto company to bankruptcy, but it may have been a smart business move for the lenders.

Many of the Wall Street firms holding Chrysler bonds may also own credit default swaps that they bought to hedge their bets. These swaps, which are essentially like an insurance policy on the bonds should Chrysler default, were likely mostly issued by AIG.

AIG, thanks to the government bailout, has paid off swaps in the past at 100 cents on the dollar. Under the deal they would have had to accept with Chrysler, the bondholders would have received as little as 30 cents on the dollar, for example.

Why take 30 or 35 cents on the dollar from Chrysler when you can get the whole buck from the American taxpayer?

Like one of these hedge fund managers recently said, “This is America!” It sure is. The land of the “we’re going to bring down your car company so taxpayers can indirectly bail us out with our credit default swaps from the company paying out millions in bonuses, freeing us up with more money to put into defrauding public pension funds, and our lobbyists will ensure it.”

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Don’t Go There

by digby

Blogger Mark Frauenfelder shared this little illustration with his readers:

It’s very nicely done, I think. It’s true that the artist is probably a liberal having a little bit of fun (although it could be a Republican too, at this point) but it certainly doesn’t seem like something that would terribly upset anyone. And considering the current state of the GOP, it’s quite uncontroversial.

Alas, some conservatives were mighty peeved evidently. Liberals are awful depraved human beings for creating such a disrespectful image. So, being a fair and balanced guy, this prompted Frauenfelder to feature the kind of harmless political illustrations conservatives favor:

This is just straight talk too:

Here’s some good clean fun:

This one’s real laugh riot:

Yes, liberals putting clown make-up on Republican politicians is beyond the pale. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Perfect

by dday

Ron Paul’s son, who is considering a Senate run in Kentucky, is named Rand.

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Bravery Comes In All Colors

by digby

Joan Walsh deserves a round of applause for her appearance on Tweety this afternoon. Both Matthews and Buchanan were having a conniption fit about the fact than an white firefighter was allegedly discriminated against. (Affirmative action, blah,blah,blah.) Walsh was very even handed and ably made many good points during the argument, admitting that this particular case was a tough balancing act, and trying to keep these two meatheads on track. But she finally got fed up when Chris let fly with this simple minded nonsense:

Matthews: Frank Ricci’s Italian, the other complainant in this case is Hispanic. I don’t think it’s all about the Irish, but I do think the Irish have a proud tradition of firefighting and damn it Joan, the guys that got killed on 9/11, a lot of them were Irish and they chose to be firefighters, because it’s a family tradition going back to the 19th century…

Joan Walsh: Don’t race bait me, Chris. There are firefighters in my family. God bless them …

Matthews: Then why are accusing them of bigotry?

Joan Walsh: because the fact of the matter is that they have protected those jobs for their brothers, for their sons and they’re public sector jobs. This isn’t the family business, Chris. Bravery comes in all colors.

Damn straight. And by the way, the reason the Irish dominated the firehouses from the 19th century on was straight up political patronage. Those days have been over for a long time. The “family” business of the public sector has to be open to everyone this century.

I don’t see why it’s ok to dismiss all complaints about discrimination as special interest whining except when it’s coming from conservative white males. Aren’t they a minority now? Why shouldn’t they be dismissed as a just another special interest as all these people dismiss the half of the population that’s female? Or the large number of Hispanics and blacks of both sexes? If they want to play this game they should at least be forced to play by their own rules.

Go Joan.

The Torture Lobbyists

by dday

Here’s a little nugget buried in an article about developments in the torture investigations:

At the same time, Bush administration lawyers are facing a deadline to respond to a Justice Department ethics investigation into their support for the rough interrogation tactics.

Investigators are evaluating whether former Office of Legal Counsel lawyers John C. Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury followed professional standards when they drafted memos in 2002 and 2005 that gave a green light to simulated drowning and wall slamming of prisoners.

Sources told The Washington Post earlier this year that an earlier draft of the investigators’ report recommended disciplinary referrals to local bar associations for two of the men: Yoo, now a law professor in California, and Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge based in Nevada. The report requires the approval of new Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., and findings could be released as early as this summer, according to two sources familiar with the process.

The Associated Press reports that this DoJ probe is nearing conclusion. If the recommendations fall short of the disciplinary referrals reportedly cited in the earlier draft, can we conclude that Eric Holder softened the report? Well, we can certainly conclude that BushCo landmines at Justice met their desired effect.

Former Bush administration officials are lobbying behind the scenes to push Justice Department leaders to water down an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts.

In recent days, attorneys for the subjects of the ethics probe have encouraged senior Bush administration appointees to write and phone Justice Department officials, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.

These “torture lobbyists” include past senior Bush DoJ officials, but I’ll bet they also include the burrowed Bush officials at Justice, designated to protect the interests of the previous Administration. Let’s see what kind of power they wield.

One hopes comes from the fact that Eric Holder last month dispatched the Bush-era head of the Office of Professional Repsonsibility, where this investigation originated, and replaced him with Mary Patrice Brown, who looks to be a pretty tough character. Ultimately, though, Holder must sign off on the report.

…Here’s the latest: Devlin Barrett of the AP gets a sneak peek at the report – or maybe just helps the Justice Department float a trial balloon – showing that the professional sanctions remain intact, but that’s as far as it goes:

Bush administration lawyers who approved harsh interrogation techniques of terror suspects should not face criminal charges, Justice Department investigators say in a draft report that recommends two of the three attorneys face possible professional sanctions […]

Officials conducting the internal Justice Department inquiry into the lawyers who wrote those memos have recommended referring two of the three lawyers — John Yoo and Jay Bybee — to state bar associations for possible disciplinary action, according to a person familiar with the inquiry. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was not authorized to discuss the inquiry.

The person noted that the investigative report was still in draft form and subject to revisions. Attorney General Eric Holder also may make his own determination about what steps to take once the report has been finalized […]

Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, called the decision not to seek criminal charges “inconceivable, given all that we know about the twisted logic of these memos.”

Warren argued the only reason for such a decision “is to provide political cover for people inside the Obama White House so they don’t have to pursue what needs to be done.”

They’ve gone back and forth on this several times. But this really would be definitive. There needs to be a very loud reaction to this.

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That’s It

by digby

What exactly was the deal Biden and Reid made with Specter anyway? That his new job was to trash the Democrats every chance he gets? It’s bad enough that he goes on TV and declare that he’s definitely not going to be a loyal Democrat. But this really takes the cake:

Arlen Specter wants Norm Coleman to win the disputed Senate race in Minnesota, a stance that will likely enrage liberal activists and Democrats. According to leaked excerpts of an interview with the NY Times Magazine, Specter said:”There’s still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner.” A Coleman win, of course, would deprive Democrats of a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate. The prospect of reaching that threshold is what made Democrats so ecstatic about Specter’s party switch. The excerpt, teased on The Page, indicates Specter agrees with Coleman’s argument that ballots weren’t counted according to a consistent standard.

Fergawdsake:

WOODRUFF: Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter has been in Tallahassee for much of this day, and he joins us now. Senator Specter, thank you very much for being with us so late this evening. Let me ask you about something that Senator Joe Lieberman, your colleague, said tonight in his remarks. He said, “How can we teach our children that every vote counts if we are not willing to make a good faith effort to count every vote?” SEN. ARLEN SPECTER (R), PENNSYLVANIA: I would respond by saying there has been a good faith effort. When Senator Lieberman says there has not been a reasonable effort, I would remind him that the Supreme Court of Florida extended the time, I would remind him that when Vice President Gore came in with a special request to order Dade-Miami to have a recount that the Supreme Court said no that they had gone far enough. There was a count, there was a recount, there was a re- recount, and I think the time has come to move on.

The man is a hypocritical Republican ass to the bottom of his soul and always will be.

Update: Apparently, this was a weird response to a question about whether or not Arlen was concerned that there were no more Republican Jews left in the Senate. Whatever.

Market Value

by digby

Dean Baker makes an excellent observation in light of the Chrysler bailout that really should be emphasized. He notes that one of the obvious advantages conferred on the company by being owned by Fiat is that the top executives and designers will be European and will, therefore, save the company a boatload of money. See, they don’t pay the ridiculous compensation that American masters of the universe seem to believe is their God-ordained right. And as he explains, this should be an object lesson for the American worker:

Trade agreements like NAFTA were explicitly designed to remove any barrier that made it difficult to export manufacturing goods to the United States, thereby placing US manufacturing workers directly in competition with their much lower paid counterparts in the developing world. Most of these restrictions had nothing to do with tariffs. Instead the key issues were rules protecting investment in the developing world along with limits on the ability of the US to exclude imports through safety or environmental regulations.

There has never been any similar effort to eliminate the barriers that prevent professionals from the developing world from coming to the United States and competing directly with their US counterparts as doctors or lawyers or in other highly paid professions.

The economists and the media somehow failed to notice that professionals were intentionally sheltered from international competition and instead just trumpeted them as the winners in the global economy. We were just treated to a beautiful example of this double standard when the media and the economists got all huffy about the “buy America” provision in the stimulus bill that might have protected a few manufacturing jobs in steel and other industries.

While this provision was roundly condemned and eventually watered down, the buy America provision in the Treasury’s latest bank bailout bill went completely unnoticed. This provision requires that any investment manager taking part in the program be headquartered in the United States. Even though the argument against protectionism in financial services is identical to the argument against protectionism in steel, no one bothered to make the argument when Wall Street was the beneficiary of protectionism.

The end result of this protectionism for those at the top is a bloated overpaid sector of top managers, which is what we saw at Chrysler. If we compare wages for assembly-line workers in Europe and the United States, there would not be much difference between the pay of UAW members and their counterparts in Europe. However, there would be a very large difference between the multi-million dollar pay packages of the top executives at the US companies and their European counterparts. The pay gaps persist among the more highly paid engineers and management personnel.

Therefore, it was only logical that a bailout of Chrysler would seek to take advantage of the lower cost management and design skills available at a European car company like Fiat. In Chrysler, as in other companies, the high pay packages for these people are like an anchor dragging them down in international competition. If the US is to be competitive in the 21st century, we must either bring the pay of those at the top back down to earth or we should look to follow the lead of Chrysler and contract out for these services.

And the most ironic thing about this is the fact that these American executives keep threatening to leave the country to take jobs elsewhere, as if they can actually make more money overseas. Running a company into the ground and nearly destroying an industry wouldn’t normally be considered a resume builder, but in America, the corporate narcissists and their friends in politics seem to want us to believe that this wrecking crew is so in demand that we must continue to pay them obscene compensation and beg them to keep destroying things on our behalf. They claim to live and die by the free market so maybe we should tell them to let the market decide this one too. Somehow, I doubt they will be too enthusiastic.

*In a similar vein, I’ve been meaning to recommend this article from Sunday’s NY Times about what it’s like for an American to live in that socialist hellhole, Holland. The Dutch, of course, are the people who pretty much invented international commerce and banking and have deal making in their DNA, so it’s not like they don’t believe in capitalism. But they have learned something that Americans continue to resist at our peril (and which David Brooks, of all people, seems to want the conservatives to adopt. Weird.) The nature of their land forced them to create a mutually beneficial system of collaboration. It turns out they aren’t “socialists” at all, even in the sort of soft sense — or, at least, their system predates socialism. It’s very interesting.

Turning The Mirrors

by digby

I too have a sinking feeling this might be the way this will go:

Sen. Feinstein’s ongoing, secret torture probe is ostensibly only a 1-year “review” or “study.” In reality, these proceedings are a functional equivalent of proposed public Congressional inquiries. The Feinstein probe covers the same substantive issues that would be investigated by Congressional probes that are still languishing in the debate stage. The Feinstein probe will review classified CIA documents and “interview” witnesses so that it can formulate US torture policy. CIA witnesses will be key to both the Feinstein probe and any Congressional hearings. Given the number of pressing issues and crises facing the US, will Congress be motivated to conduct a public investigation after Feinstein’s probe is completed? If not, then the Feinstein probe will be the only torture investigation but it will formulate US torture policy in secret and its report may never be released to the public. Moreover, if any Congressional probe provides immunity to witnesses, this can nix or alter the investigative scope and putative targets of subsequent special prosecutions. In short, some in DC have may have decided to implement the move-forward policy whether you like it or not.

More at the link.

The minute Feinstein became the great congressional leader on torture, I wondered if it wasn’t kabuki. It’s DiFi we’re talking about. She rushed in “begging” the president not to launch any investigation until she’d finished hers. The village babblers were using her investigations as the primary reason not to pursue prosecutions. It makes perfect sense that they would bottle the thing up in secret hearings and a very slow investigation as long as possible.

We already saw them do this with phase two of the pre-war intelligence investigation. It took years and the media treated it as old news, not worth talking about, when it was finished. But it helped keep a lid on the political hot potato that was the dawning realization that the Bush administration had manipulated the intelligence to get us into war.

Secret investigations are a junk yard for rear view mirrors.

The Good Kind Of Kabuki

by dday

This Arlen Specter/Joe Sestak story has evolved rapidly in the past 48 hours. Labor in particular has basically given Specter a choice – support our issues or we’ll support somebody else. Snarlin’ Arlen will have to decide whether he only responds to right-wing pressure.

Sestak echoed this after a meeting with the SEIU’s Andy Stern, saying bluntly, “I cannot see the unions across the board supporting Specter if he cannot support EFCA … [Stern] let it be known that it’s very much on the top of their agenda.” And leading Democrats are hinting to Specter that his ability to stave off a primary challenge will be dictated by his record as a Democrat. But this part of a Sestak interview with TPMDC jumped out at me.

I asked him whether he’d been on the receiving end of establishment pressure — from people like Vice President Joe Biden and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell — to stay out of the race, and he insisted, “I haven’t heard from anyone.”

While Democrats from the While House on down might be trying to keep the Democratic primary field clear for Specter, they might not necessarily mind the fact that, for the time being, Sestak is applying pressure on Specter to move left. By keeping the door open to challenging Specter in the Democratic primary, Sestak may serve to nudge Specter further than he might otherwise have gone. Yesterday, Sestak told Greg Sargent that if Specter “doesn’t demonstrate that he has shifted his position on a number of issues, I would not hesitate at all to get in” to a primary fight against him.

I’m wondering whether at least a little of this is kabuki. Sestak loses nothing from calling out Specter – even if he decides against running, he gains credibility as a Democrat enunciating Democratic principles, actually more credibility than he probably deserves – later in the TPMDC interview he equivocates on the question of a public option for health care reform. But at this point, if Specter does end up voting the right way on health care or EFCA, Sestak gets at least some of the credit. And given that Sestak has only grown louder in his criticisms, he certainly hasn’t heard the White House, as he notes, that he might want to tone it down. It serves their interests to have a credible voice pushing Specter, or a chorus of voices. I could absolutely envision a scenario where Sestak has no real intention of running but is being used as a cattle prod to corral Specter.

Regardless of the theater at play here, Specter cannot exactly take the chance of not listening.

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