Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Man On Dog Bites Back

by digby

The other day I was a little bit dismissive of Dahlia Lithwick’s plea to speak out about the nomination of Harold Koh, who was under assault from the right wing blogs. I blithely asserted that I’d heard he wasn’t really in trouble and that the right always does this crazy stuff. The right is going mainstream with this ridiculous charge that Koh will put us all under Sharia law and sell out the country to the UN. (I know it’s ridiculous, but it seems to be gaining some traction so it has to be addressed.)

Here’s none other that Little Ricky Santorum writing an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Watching President Obama apologize last week for America’s arrogance – before a French audience that owes its freedom to the sacrifices of Americans – helped convince me that he has a deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions. His nomination of former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh to be the State Department’s top lawyer constitutes further evidence of his disdain for American values.

This seemingly obscure position in Foggy Bottom’s bureaucratic maze is one of the most important in any administration, shaping foreign policy in the courts and playing a critical role in international negotiations and treaties.

Let’s set aside Koh’s disputed comments about the possible application of Sharia law in American jurisprudence. The pick is alarming for more fundamental reasons having to do with national sovereignty and constitutional self-governance.

Still with the French hating (and still failing to acknowledge that we owe our freedom to the French in a much more fundamental way.) But that’s just playing to the rubes. This is really about reestablishing the old liberals-are-commietraitors story line. He politely “sets aside” the alleged comments about Sharia law — but naturally feels the need to throw the grenade into the commentary without any explanation.

He then goes on to basically claim that Koh wants to make the United States follow other counties’ laws instead of its own. That’s the kind of thing that really gets the jingoistic, xenophobic wingnut bloodlust up. Because the United States is perfect and anyone that even breathes that we are not perfect is a traitor.

This is standard issue conservative dogma and it’s pretty likely that the country isn’t all that receptive to it. But it’s red meat to the base and they are really starting to get riled up. It remains to be seen if they have the juice right now to affect a Senate nomination on ideological grounds, but the one thing that will give them hope and make them feel powerful is a scalp. It’s not a good idea to give them one (particularly when we know that this may very well be an elaborate blackmail scheme to force Obama to keep the torture secrets from the light of day.)

Update: Dave Weigel has the full rundown on the right wing plan of action to derail the Koh nomination. Apparently, it’s ti-for-tat on the John Bolton nomination as much as anything. Apparently, they didn’t get the memo about not looking in the rearview mirror. Someone ought to send it to them.

Unconstitutional Tasing

by digby

For thee but not for me:

A former sheriff’s deputy has filed suit against his department, claiming the department violated his constitutional rights.

Former Hamilton County Sheriff’s Deputy Ray Robert says a medical condition prevented him from being exposed to the electric current of a stun gun. Being shocked by the gun is common, mandatory training for officers to carry one in many departments. The 50,000 volts of current exchanged lets officers know first-hand exactly what kind of pain they’re inflicting.

“I can’t be tased, I can’t take that chance,” Robert said.

He says his doctors told him not to do it. With a metal plate in his neck and back issues, they said it was a bad idea. His attorney said the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department’s policy of forcing deputies to be shocked is unconstitutional.

“It’s dangerous, that it is arbitrary, that it does not have a rational basis, that it is the TASER company that contends that people have to be tased as part of training but that it is not necessary,” said Mary Jane Lapointe, Robert’s attorney.

One wonders if people who are tased for being in the wrong place at the wrong time — or just because they pissed off the police officer — would have the opportunity to mention that they had a metal plate in their head — or if they would be believed? I don’t think so. Police are told they can shoot first and ask questions later.

It’s quite interesting that the department had offered the man a different job (but he refused.) Apparently, they judged that it was reasonable that he wouldn’t want to be tased because of a potential health hazard. I’m not sure how that squares with the idea of using them on the public.

Not that this fellow has any concerns along this line:

A sheriff’s department employee for 29 years, Robert said the policy that he claims cost him his job makes no sense.

“It’s just like a handgun. I don’t have to be shot to use it,” Robert said. “So I don’t feel a TASER. I shouldn’t have to be tased to carry it.”

“That’s an apples and oranges comparison to we don’t shoot each other with handguns. That’s ridiculous and after 29 years, he should know better,” said Hamilton County Sheriff Doug Carter.

It’s not apples and oranges to the people who are dying from tasers, it’s exactly the same thing. And yet he wants to be able to carry one and use it without having a clue as to the medical condition of his subjects. His bosses don’t think there’s any reason to question using such a weapon on an unsuspecting public since they all have submitted themselves to tasing. (Of course, that can go very wrong as well.) But even if it’s done without incident, it’s nothing like what happens on the streets. Like those people who submit themselves to waterboarding and claim it isn’t torture, these officials fail to recognize the terror of being on the receiving end of such a device and having no control over the situation. Which is really the point of all torture — to remove free will.

This officer feels it’s unconstitutional to force him to submit to the taser. Yet he and his fellows do it every day to citizens. I’ll be curious to see how a court will view all that.

Hottie

by digby

Liberal economists are very “in” these days. First Paul Krugman makes the cover of Newsweek. And now this:

[I]n something of a coup, we even landed coverboy Duncan Black, aka Atrios, the juggernaut blogger at Eschaton (styled by Gina Faiola; peep his clothes’ credits here).

I asked Black, a guy read by millions but who keeps a relatively low profile, what it was like to be dressed up like a doll.

“Gina was great, good at making sure I was at ease and comfortable,” said the man who can launch a thousand comments with a single sentence. “I told her I was game for just about anything she came up with, and had fun with her choices.”

Though he’s been photographed for publications before, this is the first time he’s been asked to wear anything other than his own clothes, which he says he prefers to be “comfortable and easy to wear.”

Black isn’t one of those pajamas-wearing Internet recluses. He’s known for being quite socially active. Yet he can still move around Philadelphia pretty surreptitiously.

“I get recognized every three months or so, which is about the level of public recognition I’m happy with,” says Black. “I don’t hide my identity, but I don’t put a picture up prominently on my site either, so only people who care to search for it will see what I look like.”

He’ll likely be a lot more recognizable now. Is there a twinge of vindication — given that he’s been rather critical of the media on Eschaton — of being on the cover of a newspaper?

“Oh, I honestly find the attention bloggers get, approving or disapproving, to be somewhat amusing,” says Black. “Vindication that what I do has some value comes on those rare moments when I see that an idea I’ve come up with or given attention to seems to have some small amount of influence on our discourse and the world.”

So was the experience at all enlightening?

“After finally coming to terms with the fact that dark jeans were in fashion,” says Black, “I was informed that light jeans are coming back in style.”

Luckily, I don’t think the “Magazine Cover Effect” (as Krugman called it) applies to bloggers. Nobody takes us seriously in the first place.

Love the hat.

Ignoring The Obvious

by dday

Over the weekend, the New York Times had an article with the thesis statement that the legislative machinery is rusty and unused to the kind of ambitious policy agenda that Barack Obama has proposed.

Lawmakers, senior staff members and other experts agree that a combination of divided government, thin majorities, the running battle for Congressional control and an emphasis on national security caused a decline in the old-school legislative give-and-take that will be required to deliver major health, energy and education measures to President Obama.

“We have been miniaturized,” said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a moderate Republican from Maine and a veteran of health care negotiations. “You have three talking points on a card. We are going to have to be taught and relearn the process, crack the notebooks.”

Congress has not even managed to produce its basic spending bills on time in recent years and has exhausted considerable energy dealing with recurring tax and Medicare snags. Big bills have been few and far between — the 2003 Medicare drug plan and a 2007 energy law are examples — as lawmakers nibbled around the edges of problems […]

As members of Congress and analysts look at the daunting demands for legislation emanating from the White House, some wonder if Congress is up to the task.

“Do we have a Lyndon Johnson in the Senate at the moment, someone who can push through legislation?” asked Stanley E. Collender, a former top aide on Capitol Hill and a longtime observer of Congressional budget fights. “We haven’t seen it in a while.”

There’s no doubt that some of this is true. The “Masters of the Senate” have come and gone, and the reasons cited do tell part of the story. Furthermore, the internal dynamics of the Republican opposition tend them in the direction of unthinking opposition, behaving like perpetual candidates in a contested primary (Similarly, the glory-seeking Evan Bayhs of the world see value in obstructionism and shining attention on themselves). But this article never gets around to mentioning the special interests who frustrate progress on a daily basis. And we see them lining up, one by one, particularly with respect to the domestic agenda, to throw sand in the gears of the legislative machinery. As campaigns grow more expensive, and as inequality increases with the biggest firms getting bigger, these impediments have simply metastasized.

For example, lobbyists for practically every corporation want to halt the move to tax overseas profits from offshore tax havens, something the entire world came to an agreement on at the G-20. Corporate farming interests succeeded in removing cuts to farm subsidies from the budget resolution. And despite the rhetoric that action on the climate and on the economy are inextricably linked, oil companies have flat out given up on renewable sources of energy, and appear to have convinced the Administration to cave on the 100% auction element of their cap and trade proposal.

The Obama administration might agree to postpone auctioning off 100 percent of emissions allowances under a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas pollution, White House science adviser John P. Holdren said today, a move that would please electricity providers and manufacturers but could anger environmentalists […]

During the presidential campaign, Obama called for auctioning off all greenhouse gas emissions permits at the outset, rather than just a portion of them. Many industry leaders say a phase-in will be essential to easing the transition to a low-carbon economy.

“The idea, obviously, is to end up with a bill that reflects both the thinking of Congress and the administration, a bill that the president can sign,” Holdren said, adding that when it comes to a 100 percent auction, “Whether you get to start with that or get there over a period of time is something that’s being discussed.”

We have a model for “getting there over a period of time,” in Europe, where they wasted a decade making almost no progress on reducing carbon until they just went ahead and moved to a full auction. The whole point of cap and trade is to price carbon, not give it away for free, because the pricing element encourages the innovation needed to make the needed reductions.

Some, like Chris Bowers, are optimistic that public investment will continue to grow. The question remains whether that will manifest in government spending that improves lives, or the kind of corporate welfare and Treasury raids we have seen over the last decade. Call me skeptical. And I think the reason is simple – a political class too intertwined with a corporate elite, too attentive to their concerns over the concerns of their constituents. Perhaps full public financing of all campaigns is the answer, and what we should be fighting for. Or maybe we just need A New Way Forward to sever that insidious symbiotic relationship and restructure the economy.

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Boxers Or Briefs

by digby

Sure, why not:

As chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan was known for using quirky, proletariat metrics to judge the temperature of the economy. The most famous of these, as recounted by NPR’s Robert Krulwich in January 2008, were the sales of men’s underwear. If the economic scales dipped even the slightest, Greenspan reasoned, it was as sure a sign as any that people were truly feeling the pinch. “If you look at sales of male underpants it’s just pretty much a flat line, it hardly ever changes,” Krulwich recounted after the publishing of Greenspan’s book, “The Age Of Turbulence.” “But on those few occasions where it dips that means that men are so pinched that they are deciding not to replace underpants. And [Greenspan] said ‘that is almost always a prescient, forward impression that here comes trouble.'” Well, here comes trouble.

Apparently, the sales of men’s underwear are projected to drop precipitously.
Greenspan’s underwear observation is actually much more sophisticated than his theory that Masters of the Universe would never succumb to greed because it would be irrational for the goose to destroy the golden egg. I personally think underwear sales down because godless liberals are promoting immorality and free-wheeling personal freedom. Or maybe it’s just that the young guys aren’t wearing pants with the waists somewhere around their knees anymore and don’t need such nice undies.
In any case, I look forward to a big new advertising push from Calvin Klein to boost sales. They’re always stimulating.

Polar Bores

by digby

All day long the gasbags have been pimping this op-ed by Michael Gerson in which he castigates Obama for “polarizing” the country with his partisan ways. It seems like just yesterday they were gushing like Old Faithful about his post-partisan inclusiveness. What happened?

Well, first of all Michael Gerson may be a Bush administration whore, but he is now a member in good standing of the political establishment with a column in the Village paper and everything. If he says it, it must be worth discussing right? But, as with other Washington Post columnists these days, Gerson is just wrong on the facts. Here’s Greg Sargent:

But — and this is not an easy thing to bring up, because it means colleague Gerson doesn’t read this blog — none other than the director of Pew’s polling told me in an interview the other day that this is a bogus interpretation. “It’s unfair to say that Obama has caused this divisiveness or to say that he is a polarizing president,” Michael Dimock, Pew’s associate director, told me. Dimock said this phenomenon is driven by the uncommon Dem enthusiasm, and even the Republican tendency to be more hostile to opposing presidents than Dems. Parsing this very closely, the person who oversees Pew’s polls thinks Gerson’s interpretation of his poll is wrong and “unfair.”

It’s true that Democrats really,really like Obama. But Republicans really, rewally liked Bush for a long time and I don’t recall anyone seeing that as a polarizing factoid. Indeed, they referred to him as enormously popular long after he had sunk into the low 40s for months on end.

The political polarization of America can best be explained by the simple fact that the conservative tribe (whichever party it reside in) is a bunch of assholes. Or, to be more charitable, they are organized first and foremost by a paranoid loathing of their opposition. In their modern incarnation, they actually prefer to be in the minority because it sets them free to do what they believe is their most important duty: obstruct and discredit government. This has nothing to do with the individuals — they hated Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton with the same fervid passion as they hate Obama. It’s just how they are.

What’s more interesting to me is that the right is managing to work the refs on this and get them to adopt this premise that it’s Obama’s fault that Republicans are assholes. That we are dealing with this question just a couple of months after the inaugural lovefest just shows how quickly the worm can turn. And I also suspect they are aiming some of this rhetoric at Obama himself, trying to provoke him into bending ever more to the right in order that nobody see him as being too partisan — hoisting him with his own post-partisan petard. Let’s hope that’s not going to have any effect. (Clinton had a bad habit of contining to seek their approval even after they went into full character assassination mode — and it got him the second impeachment in American history.)

Obama’s promises to change Washington were always far fetched and it’s a great relief to see that actually pass by the wayside. Democrats lose in that game. Everyone likes the idea of it, but not at the expense of their values and needs. The whole thing was far more important to the beltway elite who wanted their little berg to be more personally congenial. But the rest of us don’t actually care about that except in the most abstract sense of not enjoying the fatuous TV gasbags go at each other.

The bottom line is that people have have fundamental, meaningful, serious disagreements about policy and the role of government. And there’s not actually anything wrong with that. If liberals are prepared to do political battle with the conservatives then we can see these things played out in the political system, which is as it should be. Where they get into trouble is when they listen to the Village elders who are conditioned to be hostile to (liberals) upsetting the status quo and fetishize “bipartisanship” and process over policy and outcomes.

People who have lost their jobs and are struggling with health care costs and the prospects of a struggling retirement don’t actually care if Republicans and Democrats fight over how to fix it. Only in the beltway bubble is there some expectation that everyone is going to agree. The rest of us would prefer that our politicians stand up for what they believe in and try to do what they promised. Apparently we have more faith in democracy than the villagers do … which is thoroughly unsurprising.

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COP On The Beat

by dday

As we learn today that the life insurance industry set to get in on the bailout act and receive TARP money, the Congressional Oversight Panel, charged with actually overseeing the Treasury Department’s TARP strategy, has released their latest report, which is largely unsparing. Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the COP, delivers a video introduction.

Warren’s presentation is lucid and understated, and she makes an amazing amount of sense.

The report looks back at how these types of financial crises have been traditionally handled over time. Warren offers three choices to policymakers: liquidation (essentially what we did in S&L crisis), receivership (the Swedish option), and subsidization (what we’re doing to keep zombie banks alive, like in Japan). As you can see above, Warren handles each of these options expertly, and finds four crucial actions needed to successfully resolve banking crises:

• Transparency. Swift action to ensure the integrity of bank accounting, particularly with respect to the ability of regulators and investors to ascertain the value of bank assets and hence assess bank solvency

• Assertiveness. Willingness to take aggressive action to address failing financial institutions by (1) taking early aggressive action to improve capital ratios of banks that can be rescued, and (2) shutting down those banks that are irreparably insolvent.

• Accountability. Willingness to hold management accountable by replacing – and, in cases of criminal conduct, prosecuting – failed managers.

• Clarity. Transparency in the government response with forthright measurement and reporting of all forms of assistance being provided and clearly explained criteria for the use of public sector funds.

Warren concludes that the TARP bailouts failed to provide transparency, accountability or clarity. The Geithner Treasury Department plans, including PPIP and increased transparency, still fall short. “Bottom line: Treasury’s efforts to date could be enough, but we will continue to press Treasury about these four tests.” Essentially, Warren gives a mixed review, and she thinks that the Treasury efforts are based on the idea that the problems are temporary and not systemic.

One key assumption that underlies Treasury’s approach is its belief that the system-wide deleveraging resulting from the decline in asset values, leading to an accompanying drop in net wealth across the country, is in large part the product of temporary liquidity constraints resulting from nonfunctioning markets for troubled assets. The debate turns on whether current prices, particularly for mortgage-related assets, reflect fundamental values or whether prices are artificially depressed by a liquidity discount due to frozen markets – or some combination of the two.

If its assumptions are correct, Treasury’s current approach may prove a reasonable response to the current crisis. Current prices may, in fact, prove not to be explainable without the liquidity factor. Even in areas of the country where home prices have declined precipitously, the collateral behind mortgage-related assets still retains substantial value. In a liquid market, even under-collateralized assets should not be trading at pennies on the dollar. Prices are being partially subjected to a downward self-reinforcing cycle. It is this notion of a liquidity discount that supports the potential of future gain for taxpayers and makes transactions under the CAP and the PPIP viable mechanisms for recovery of asset values while recouping a gain for taxpayers. On the other hand, it is possible that Treasury’s approach fails to acknowledge the depth of the current downturn and the degree to which the low valuation of troubled assets accurately reflects their worth. The actions undertaken by Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board and the FDIC are unprecedented. But if the economic crisis is deeper than anticipated, it is possible that Treasury will need to take very different actions in order to restore financial stability.

I think Warren is being overly polite, but she’s saying all the right things. And I think she’s informing some of Congress’ future moves in this area. Already the House Oversight Committee is examining the “special purpose vehicles” allegedly used to skirt executive pay restrictions, which contain elements of accountability and clarity.

Warren’s report deserves a wide audience.

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Barney In The House

by digby

…well, in John Amato’s house actually. Howie Klein is hosting:

Having watched– with a great deal of pride– Barney Frank’s congressional career for nearly 3 decades, it’s with a real sense of awe that John and I are hosting him live today at Crooks and Liars. I hope you’ll join us in the live comments forum to get to know the man who Roll Call rated the 7th most powerful member of the House, the man who Out just named the 5th most powerful gay person in America, and who is surely rated by Republican members in Congress as the person they least want to tangle with. In fact the Chairman’s unflappability gave me the idea of marrying his images to a classic Tom Petty song, “I Won’t Back Down,” something he has earned the reputation for never doing. Please enjoy the music, but also enjoy the Chairman looking very much like he’s about to give Fox-thug Bill O’Reilly a coronary as Bill-O the Clown’s attempts to ambush and bully him fall dismally flat. Last month when a barely literate obstructionist Missouri Congressman with a very fancy toupee attempted to read a staffer’s talking points blaming the Bush-Republican economic meltdown on Barney, the Chairman let loose with a rebuttal that Todd Akin is probably still puzzling over and trying to comprehend. When congressional staffers vote in the semi-annual Washingtonian poll, somehow Todd Akin doesn’t get mentioned but the Chairman always comes in at the #1 brainiest, the #1 funniest and always in the top 3 hardest working and top 3 most eloquent.

Go on over and say hi.

Update: here’s a little sample:

Chairman Frank, looking down the roster of your committee it looks like a pretty unruly group. I mean you’re legendary in Washington for working well and constructively even with die-hard conservatives like Spencer Bachus from Alabama. But he seems a lot saner than some of the real hard core obstructionists and extremists, I mean Virginia Foxx? Patrick McHenry? Michele Bachmann?? Are these serious legislators trying to solve our country’s problems or are these partisan troublemakers looking to score political points?

Wed, 04/08/2009 – 12:47 — BarneyFrank:

First, let’s not make a bad situation worse than it is – Patrick McHenry and Michele Bachman do sit on the Financial Services Committee, but Virginia Foxx is not one of those guarding this particular chicken coop. As to the very conservative Members who do serve on the Committee, excessive partisanship is part of the motivation, but even more prominent is their passionate commitment to a very extreme form of conservatism. This hard lined ideological rigidity according to which the market is never in need of intervention and regulation is in all cases to be opposed is what keeps them from participating in a constructive way in our work. When you hear Members of the Committee condemn the socialist tendencies of the President and the failure of the President and his appointees to show any understanding of the capitalist system, and you realize that they are talking about George Bush, you get sense of how removed they are from reality.

Bull Market

by digby

When I heard Jim Cramer “call” a new bull market the other days I actually laughed out loud. Not because I have any knowledge about that one way or the other, but because he’s been so spectacularly wrong so often that I find it amusing that he’s got the chutzpah to proclaim anything more controversial than that he expects the sun to come up tomorrow.

But Nouriel Roubini took him downtown:

Just weeks after “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart took Cramer to task for trying to turn finance reporting into a “game,” famous bear economist Nouriel Roubini criticized Cramer on Tuesday for predicting bull markets. “Cramer is a buffoon,” said Roubini, a New York University economics professor often called Dr. Doom. “He was one of those who called six times in a row for this bear market rally to be a bull market rally and he got it wrong. And after all this mess and Jon Stewart he should just shut up because he has no shame.” Cramer recently wrote in a blog that Roubini is “intoxicated” with his own “prescience and vision” and said Roubini should realize that things are better since the stock market bottom in March. Roubini said in 2006 that the worst recession in four decades was on its way. He has attracted attention for his gloomy — and accurate — predictions of the U.S. financial market meltdown. Roubini said the latest surge is just another bear market rally following the pattern of other rallies after the government intervened. He expects the market will test the previous low because of worse than expected macroeconomic news, disappointing earnings and because banks will fail after the stress tests come out. “Once people get the reality check than it’s going to get ugly again,” Roubini said. Roubini said Cramer should keep quiet. “He’s not a credible analyst. Every time it was a bear market rally he said it was the beginning of a bull and he got it wrong,” Roubini said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Roubini could be wrong too, of course. Predicting the future is treacherous. But he’s been right more often than not, which is something Cramer most certainly cannot say.

Freudian Wingnut

by digby

You can’t make this stuff up:

U.S. Rep. Steve King said Monday that he is more likely to run for governor next year in light of the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling last week overturning the state’s ban on gay marriage.

“When these kinds of things happen, it sucks me into the Iowa policy in a way that I haven’t been sucked into it in a while,” King told The Des Moines Register. “It’s not a predominant component. But when these kinds of things happen, does it make me more or less likely? The answer is more likely.”