Month: February 2014

Building the legacy backwards

by digby

Hmmm. Does this seem a little bit backwards to you?

When aides refer to “your policy,” Kerry is always careful to correct them, saying, “the president’s policy.” For the last five years, this has been largely true: Obama has been the stern author of his administration’s approach to the world. But Kerry has much more freedom to act than Hillary Clinton did. “He is operating in a fundamentally changed environment,” Miller says. “In the first term, Barack Obama was the most controlling president since Richard Nixon.” Now, with only three years to go, and beset with the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, Miller says, “Obama is far more focused on the middle class than the Middle East.… He cannot dominate; he has to delegate.” What may cause tension between them is that “unlike his boss, Kerry actually believes in the power of diplomacy,” Miller adds. The White House disputes that characterization, but when it comes time to cut controversial, possibly politically toxic, compromises with the Iranians, Syrians, Israelis, or Palestinians, Miller asks, will Obama “have Kerry’s back?”

Now he’s interested in domestic priorities? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to be obsessed with the economy when it was in freefall and we had unemployment approaching 10%? And a Democratic majority?

This may be BS, but if it isn’t is explains a lot. The president may have made a fundamental error in his priorities and is now trying to right that. But it flies in the face of the way presidential legacies are usually shaped. As they move toward lame duck status they usually focus on foreign affairs since they have much less clout on the domestic front as the party starts to reform around whomever is slated to succeed him.

You can’t help but wonder if he felt Clinton was unreliable and that he had to keep a close eye on her to make sure she didn’t stray from his vision. Perhaps Kerry is someone in whom he has such total confidence that he can move on to the other pending matters on his agenda.

Whatever the motivation, if this is true it’s quite unusual. It’s hard to see how he burnishes his domestic record much with the pen and and phone, although it’s certainly worth doing whatever he can. And as the article points out, Kerry’s plate is extremely full and very ambitious. He’d better pull it off or this second term will be seen as the flip side of the frustrating first one. I’m certainly hoping that Kerry is successful, even a little bit. Apparently the president has a whole lot of faith in him.

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“We are uncool”

by digby

RIP Phillip Seymour Hoffman:

Honest and unmerciful

QOTW: Tammy Bruce

by digby

Out of the mouths of wingnuts:

We’re in this mess for a reason, and it’s because GOP leaders either doesn’t understand the conservative ideal (which is why they can’t articulate it), or they do understand it and simply don’t like it.

Edroso quips:

If that’s true, it’s probably the only thing “GOP leaders” and the American people have in common.

Hiyo

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One way political correctness


by digby

No More Mister Nice Blog makes an interesting observation about Villager policing of the discourse:

Have you been following this story?

On January 30, Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Reince Priebus announced a boycott of MSNBC by RNC officials after the network posted an offensive tweet, which was later deleted, which stated “Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family.” After Priebus demanded an apology and corrective action from MSNBC President Phil Griffin, he apologized for the tweet and fired the employee responsible for writing it later that day.

He points out a little difference in this reaction to an earlier, similar flap:

You’ll recall that, back in 2009, there was a much-publicized Obama administration “war on Fox.” Did reporters and commentators remain silent while the White House took on Fox, as they did when Priebus took on MSNBC? Just the opposite — every concern troll in the media wagged a finger at the White House and said the Fox war was a terrible idea, if not a totalitarian one.

Ruth Marcus, Washington Post:

The Obama administration’s war on Fox News is dumb on multiple levels. It makes the White House look weak, unable to take Harry Truman’s advice and just deal with the heat. It makes the White House look small, dragged down to the level of Glenn Beck. It makes the White House look childish and petty at best, and it has a distinct Nixonian — Agnewesque? — aroma at worst.

Chris Rovzar, New York magazine:

Recognizing Fox as an enemy worth fighting is an admission of weakness for a president whose appeal has been partly predicated on the promise of unity…. it makes it seem as though they’re actually wounding the president. When you’re winning, acknowledging the enemy isn’t necessary.

Louis Menand, The New Yorker:

… wars of words are distracting, and Obama campaigned as a listener — a contrast with his supremely deaf predecessor that was evidently welcomed by the electorate. Why are his spokespersons throwing red meat to Fox’s angry white men? Wouldn’t it be better to supply them with only tofu smoothies? … The dubious efficacy of a war on Fox News is not the only reason to feel qualms. It’s hard to kill the press, but it is not hard to chill it, and this appears to be the White House’s goal in the case of Fox…. The state may, and should, rebut opinions that it finds obnoxious, but it should not single out speakers for the purpose of intimidating them. At the end of the day, you do not want your opponents to be able to say that they could not be heard. It may be exasperating, but that is what the First Amendment is all about.

Indeed.  Unfortunately, nobody in the mainstream media seems upset about the RNC doing similar. Which is interesting when you consider just what it was that precipitated the “war on Fox”

Prominent among Fox’s numerous examples is former host Glenn Beck calling President Obama a “racist” who has “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture” in July 2009. In contrast to how MSNBC handled this offensive tweet, Beck’s statement was defended by [Sean] Hannity himself, by Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of Fox’s parent company, and according to a new book, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes privately agreed with Beck.

Read on….

And on to the next guy!

by David Atkins

Oh dear.

Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) political stock is rated a buy by major Republican fundraisers in Washington, who are bullish on Rubio’s future as a 2016 presidential candidate.

A group of Republican fundraising heavyweights and wise men in Washington’s business community are solidly behind Rubio, and see him not only as someone who could win the White House, but someone they can work with.

The fundraisers include Bill Paxon, a former New York lawmaker who is now a senior adviser at Akin Gump; Dirk Van Dongen, the president of the National Wholesalers Association; and Wayne Berman, a big-time donor with a knack for picking winning candidates in presidential primaries.
All three are a party of the business wing of the Republican Party that has clashed with the Tea Party. Their support for Rubio suggests they seem him as a possible ally going forward.

Political strategists think Rubio’s chances of winning the GOP nomination in 2016 are looking better because of the bridge scandal embroiling New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) decision to forego a White House bid to aim for the gavel of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

Koch billions can buy a lot of thing, but apparently not decent candidates. The entire GOP presidential field consists of thugs, retreads and bone fide idiots.

Not that idiots can’t win the presidency, as we’ve already seen this century. Still, the GOP’s sadsack candidate field is just another symptom of a party that has cut its tether with the reality experienced by most Americans. It’s hard to believe that this is really the best they’ve got.

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“The incident”

by digby

I’m not sure who’d watch this:

The man acquitted in the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin will step in the ring for a Celebrity Boxing match and is looking for an opponent, and in an exclusive interview with RadarOnline.com he says it’s a hobby he had “prior to the incident.”

“It was my idea,” Zimmerman, 30, says of the match that will be run by the event’s founder, Damon Feldman.

“Prior to the incident I was actually going to the gym for weight loss and doing boxing-type training for weight loss and a mutual friend put me in contact with Damon and provided me with an opportunity and motivation to get back in shape and continue with my weight loss goals and also be able to help a charity out.”

So he was doing boxing training at the time he was so afraid that he shot and killed an unarmed 17 year old kid (excuse me, at the time of “the incident”.) So apparently he still likes to pretend he’s all macho and train in the gym and then get himself into dangerous situations — at which point he panics. I’d be careful before I accepted any invitation to this match — you never know when he might feel threatened and pull out a gun and shoot you right there in the ring.

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Because they know so much more more about it

by digby

Your chart ‘o the day:

It sure is lucky that women don’t make up half the population or they might even be insulted …

Even the top 1% is disgusted by Tom Perkins

by digby

This is a guest post by investor and technology consultant, John Forbes:

The recent WSJ letter to the editor “Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?”, written by Tom Perkins, has already drawn many comments, including those posted by Digby a few days ago. But I think a somewhat deeper examination of his letter is called for, particularly in regards to the emerging dialog regarding the direction our capitalist system is now taking, and the corrosive effect it is having on the social, political and physical infrastructure of the United States.

First, let me say that I have a somewhat different background than the typical contributor to this blog. I have been a serial entrepreneur for over 25 years, and I’ve served as a CEO and senior executive at numerous technology companies. Kleiner Perkins was a significant investor in one of those companies, and I spent many years working with venture capital partners at the firm Mr. Perkins co-founded, as well as with many others in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street. So I have more than a passing familiarity with how our current system of capitalism works, and particular insight into how it’s rewards are typically allocated to technology executives and venture capitalists like Mr. Perkins.

By writing his letter to the editor, Mr. Perkins has taken it upon himself to speak for the 1%. While nowhere near as financially successful as Mr. Perkins, I have been successful enough to be a member of this group. However, on the issue of economic equality in particular, I must part ways with Mr. Perkins as well as some of my other colleagues in the business community who subscribe to his simplistic, almost childlike point of view regarding the factors that are driving the emerging debate on inequality.

Mr. Perkin’s statements are part of a trend by wealthy investors and corporate executives to try and paint the people who are advocating more sensible and equitable economic policies in this country as a bunch of ignorant villagers waving torches and pitchforks, desperate to demonize those that they see as more successful than themselves. Perkins is not the first to take this position, with Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone having made a similarly tone-deaf statement equating closing tax loopholes with the Nazi invasion of Poland. I assume in the coming days that we will see more of these breathless condemnations of those who dare to challenge the privileges that many of these people now enjoy, many of which are completely unearned and actually deeply damaging to our society.

The simple fact is that many high net worth individuals and large corporations in this country are no longer paying their fair share of taxes, and the critical infrastructure of our country including core priorities like transportation and public education are being severely damaged by these policies. As with many issues affecting public policy, it has taken some time for the trends and underlying numbers to become clear. I would argue that we have now reached a turning point where the damage that inequality is doing (and the ongoing corruption of our legal and tax system that is enabling it) is no longer a fringe opinion; it is now substantiated by economic statistics and recognized as fact by many economists, investors and financial analysts.

Corporations and wealthy individuals have always lobbied for their own best interests, as is their right. But not since the Age of the Robber Barons in the late 1800’s have we seen the balance of power swing so far towards business interests and the wealthy. Our legal and tax systems have now been seriously corrupted by corporate lobbying, with business interests drafting hundreds of new laws that favor high net worth individuals and corporations over the interests of the overwhelming majority of ordinary Americans.

To illustrate this, let me get specific about some current policies that favor wealthy investors like Mr. Perkins at the expense of regular taxpayers. It is important to state that the current members of Congress, including both Democrats and Republicans, permit many of these inequitable policies to continue, and they bear shared responsibility for the damage that these policies are doing.

The first is the absurd tax break that allows venture capitalists, hedge fund managers, and other wealthy individuals like Mr. Perkins to pretend that the salaries they receive to manage investment funds are not regular taxable income. The general public is easily misled by arcane terms like “carried interest”, but let me assure you as somebody who has worked in this industry for a quarter of a century that this loophole has no justification, and no relation to what capital gains tax rates were originally created for. It should be an embarrassment to every taxpayer and elected official in the United States that this loophole continues to exist. I should note that I am joined in this opinion by such well-known financial commentators as Jim Cramer, who is hardly an enemy of Wall Street. This tax break alone is costing the country billions of dollars every year in lost tax revenue.

The second policy is the institutionalized tax dodging of America’s largest corporations, which has now risen to a truly pathological level. When I sold one of my recent startups to a large technology company, one of their first priorities was outlined to me in a memorable conference call with the company’s CFO. He explained to me how they were going to use the “Double Irish” structure to avoid paying taxes on any revenues generated by our technology. This involves setting up a corporation in Bermuda, which is in turn owned by a corporation in Ireland. The end result is that little or no corporate taxes are paid, even if the revenues generated are in the billions of dollars.

It is important to understand that large US-based corporations are now using these artificial structures to pay tax rates that are so low that they are effectively destroying the corporate tax base of this country. These strategies are well known to executives and institutional investors. Understandably, they would much prefer that these facts not be brought to the attention of the American public and discussed as part of the emerging dialog about inequality.

The end result is that tax revenues have been falling, and the burden has been shifting away from high net worth individuals and corporations and onto the regular taxpayer. While everybody loves low tax rates, it’s obvious that if you have continuously falling tax revenues they will eventually result in the underfunding of the critical infrastructure that we rely on to stay competitive in the global marketplace. In addition, many of these funding shortfalls are then shifted to ordinary taxpayers in the form of things like rising tuition costs at state colleges, which no longer receive the subsidies from tax revenues that used to make a college education affordable for middle class students. Having come from a middle class family, I am acutely aware of the key role that my college education played in my subsequent success in the technology industry, and feel it is essential that our children continue to have the same access to a quality education that we did.

When you combine these issues with the fact that many highly profitable corporations are paying their employees wages that are so low that they have to rely on welfare and food stamps (the costs for which are then shifted to taxpayers and local municipalities), you have the makings of a perfect storm. What we are seeing now are the gathering clouds of a second financial crisis, driven by many of the same people who helped create the first one. This time, however, they are determined to be more proactive, and to try and discourage any dialog that might expose their role in creating these problems.

The growing resentment that Mr. Perkins and many other wealthy investors in Silicon Valley and Wall Street are now feeling has its real roots not in envy or class warfare, but in the emerging realization by the majority of taxpayers that they are being forced to shoulder an unequal share of the burden that is required to preserve our countries most fundamental institutions.

If wealthy commentators like Mr. Perkins would like to be taken seriously on these issues, they can start by advocating for the repeal of the carried interest tax break, permanently eliminating offshore tax structures like the Double Irish, and encouraging corporate CEO’s to pay a living wage that doesn’t force people into state and federal welfare programs that have to be paid for by the American taxpayer.

We can be sure that we will see continued attempts to hide these facts from the American public, and we can anticipate that the stakeholders in the current system will mount increasingly sophisticated marketing campaigns designed to convince the American public that these unbalanced policies favoring the wealthy are key to our shared success. In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth, and Americans from all economic classes need to join together and apply their best efforts to reform the regressive economic and tax policies that are currently doing so much damage to our country.

John Forbes lives in Seattle, WA.

Your inconvenient history lesson ‘o the day, Perlstein edition

by digby

On the Church Commission findings regarding the NSA:

So what did we learn then, and what have we forgotten about what we learned then, now?

The basic problem, the Church Committee explained, was that “NSA has intercepted and disseminated international communications of American citizens whose privacy ought to be protected under our constitution.” Most dramatically, the congressional investigators discovered—again, almost accidentally—that the NSA had carried out a government program, begun in 1945 (seven years before the NSA was invented and then subsumed under its management), that collected at the end of every work day every single wire sent to or from a foreign country by the three telegram corporations. Practically no one knew about “Operation SHAMROCK”—not even the top executives of the companies. “No witness from the telegraph companies recalled that there had ever been a review of the arrangements at the executive levels of their respective companies,” the document reads.

In one eye-popping passage, the Church investigators write of how, in 1968, a vice president of the telegraph company Western Union “discovered the existence of NSA’s Recordak (microfilm) machine in the Western Union transmission room. The machine was reported to the company president, who directed his employees to find out to whom the machine belonged and what the basis for the arrangement was.”

The basis was meetings between the Secretary of Defense James Forrestal and the companies in 1945 and again in 1947, when the executives agreed upon the program once they were assured by Attorney General Tom Clark they would not suffer criminal liability for participating. The courier, though, who lied that he was from the Department of Defense, said he didn’t know what the basis was, or what was done with the material. The story concludes blandly, “The documents do not reflect whether the machine was removed.”

Wild stuff, right?

What was done with these telegrams was a dragnet—a technologically primitive version of what goes on with “telephonic metadata” now. Then as now, the investigators acknowledged that protecting the secrets of “NSA’s vast technological capability,” if placed under proper supervision, “is a sensitive national asset which ought to be zealously protected for its value to our common defense”—but that “this same technological capability could be turned against the American people, at great cost to liberty.” And then as now, the spooks said if any innocent Americans had their communications spied on, it was only an accident, incidental to the noble work of spying on the bad guys. The Church Committee thundered back, “To those Americans who have had their communications sent with the exception that they were private intentionally intercepted and disseminated by their government, the knowledge that NSA did not monitor specific communications channels solely to acquire their messages is of little comfort.”

And in a related program, carried out between 1967 (when Lyndon Johnson became convinced that antiwar activity just had to be directed by our enemies abroad) and 1973, the NSA received “watch lists” from the FBI, CIA, Bureau of Narcotics, Secret Service and Department of Defense that included “[l]ists of names and phrases, including the names of individuals and groups.” There were 1,200 names in total, with most of the groups “nonviolent and peaceful in nature.” Again, the NSA attempted to drag evidence of foreign influence on dissident activity and civil disturbances out of the various sorts of communications they intercepted. The 1967 riots, and the intensification of antiwar demonstrations, was that era’s 9/11: “A senior NSA official…testified that such a request for information on civil disturbances or political activities was ‘unprecedented’…. It is kind of a landmark in my memory; it stands out as a first.” All told, 2,000 reports were disseminated to other agencies by the friendly NSA, an estimated 10 percent “derived from communications between two American citizens.” But, concluded the Church Committee, “No evidence was found, however, of any significant foreign support or control of domestic dissidents…most…involved rallies and demonstrations that were public knowledge.” Just like President Obama’s panel says they found no evidence that “telephonic metadata” stopped any terrorists plots now.

And, of course, this stuff was carried out with pathological secrecy—in order to protect operational viability, I’m sure the spies reassured one other, but probably as much to hide the serial failures. Who knew if they were breaking the law? Or, as the Church investigators archly asserted, it was “not due to the nature of the communications intercepted (most were personal and innocuous) but to the fact that American citizens were involved.” Communications between two Americans “were classified Top Secret, prepared with no mention of NSA as the source, and disseminated ‘For Background Use Only.’ No serial number was assigned to them, and they were not filed with regular communications intelligence intercepts.”

And then came Nixon. Read on for the refresher on what happened next …

Notice the ratcheting up, over time, of these practices — on a bipartisan basis. They all believed it was absolutely essential to our national security to do these things. And they could never prove to anyone that it actually was. But the paranoid atmosphere of the red scare, the blacklist, the infiltration of dissident movements the political spying and sabotage — those things did get results.

People like to talk about how we need to strike a balance between security and freedom with the secret police powers, as if those who are against these programs are being impractical by failing to understand that life is full of compromises. But the history shows that it’s the other way around. These programs do virtually nothing for our national security but it has a chilling effect on civil liberties. And one would not be paranoid at this point to wonder if that “balance” might not be a bug but a feature.

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