In case you were wondering what the spoiled, wealthy celebrity villagers believe Obama should do to pay for his agenda, here it is on CNN this morning:
Gloria Borger: Out of crisis comes opportunity. And they’re thinking, as long as we’re not paying so much attention to the deficit this year, next year, why not go for it all? Why not do what we want to do on healthcare and energy? Got it done with the understanding that two or three years down the road we’re going to have to start paying for this.
Blitzer: But if he wants to deal with the deficit, the national debt, he’s got to deal with htose entitlements, social security, medicare, medicaid.
Borger: This is the opportunity. This is the opportunity, because everybody understands right now that won’t have the money. So this is what you call a teachable moment here right now for Barack Obama. The American public can’t keep these entitlements at these levels.
That’s completely incoherent, of course. Universal health care is the very definition of an “entitlement” and will be vociferously opposed on the very grounds that Borger cites: “we don’t have the money.” (And if the “grand bargain” is that these programs have to be paid for on the backs of old people, I have a feeling it’s going to run into some resistance from a large political constituency as well. )
This is why talk of “entitlement reform” at a time of great economic peril is a dangerous thing. The Republicans and wealthy villagers get all excited again at the prospect that they might finally be able to destroy social security and this provides them with a great new excuse to push for it. And in doing that, they scare the hell out of people who are more dependent on those “entitlements” than ever. They make no sense and nobody should ever listen to them.
It’s not that deficits don’t matter, mind you. But they don’t matter more than anything else and they certainly don’t matter right now. And by putting “entitlements” on the menu it becomes nearly impossible for Obama to pass health care and makes cuts in social security and medicare the price that must be paid for the Republican sponsored financial meltdown. How convenient.
Social security was passed during the great depression when the country finally understood that the elderly simply had to have a guaranteed pension. It’s incredibly ironic that in a time which many believe may be the worst economic crisis since then, it’s becoming common wisdom among the elites that the only answer is to ensure that they don’t.
You should have seen the smug, satisfied look on Borger’s face.
BTW: If people seriously want to know how to pay for what neds to be done in this country, they should read this.
I doubt that the rich media celebrities who decide the parameters of our political agenda will ever agree (after all, it means that they will have to kick in) but it’s certainly doable.
Yesterday the Obama transition team delivered an official estimate of the effects of their recovery package, as it stands now, focusing particularly on job creation. Obama spoke about it in his weekly address.
I asked my nominee for Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Dr. Christina Romer, and the Vice President-Elect’s Chief Economic Adviser, Dr. Jared Bernstein, to conduct a rigorous analysis of this plan and come up with projections of how many jobs it will create – and what kind of jobs they will be. Today, I am releasing a report of their findings so that the American people can see exactly what this plan will mean for their families, their communities, and our economy.
The report confirms that our plan will likely save or create three to four million jobs. 90 percent of these jobs will be created in the private sector – the remaining 10 percent are mainly public sector jobs we save, like the teachers, police officers, firefighters and others who provide vital services in our communities.
The jobs we create will be in businesses large and small across a wide range of industries. And they’ll be the kind of jobs that don’t just put people to work in the short term, but position our economy to lead the world in the long-term.
(The insistence that the jobs be in the private sector doesn’t make much sense to me. Who cares where the paycheck is coming from? This is an example of how Obama still accepts too many of the arguments of prevailing conservative economic ideology, which I’ll return to in a moment.)
What’s quite remarkable about the analysis is that it’s honest. It very specifically states that tax cuts will not be nearly as effective in creating jobs as direct government investment. It includes state government relief as a necessary component of saving and creating jobs (state relief provides the biggest job-creation number). It admits that there’s a wide margin of error in terms of numbers of jobs across specific sectors, particularly because of the unusual nature of this recession. And the numbers it eventually uses are basically correct, says Paul Krugman.
Kudos, by the way, to the administration-in-waiting for providing this — it will be a joy to argue policy with an administration that provides comprehensible, honest reports, not case studies in how to lie with statistics.
That said, the report is written in such a way as to make it hard to figure out exactly what’s in the plan. This also makes it hard to evaluate the reasonableness of the assumed multipliers. But here’s the thing: the estimates appear to be very close to what I’ve been getting.
The report does make is hard to determine what’s in the plan, but that’s because they’re assuming a sort of mythical, as-yet-unwritten plan that has elements of what we’ve heard through news reports. Seeing that Krugman has been a critic of the proposal for being not sufficient for what is needed, however, we do see a pattern emerging: the Obama team is diligent, scrupulous, technocratic and aware of the challenge – they just aren’t willing to do what’s necessary.
So this looks like an estimate from the Obama team itself saying — as best as I can figure it out — that the plan would close only around a third of the output gap over the next two years.
One more point: the estimate of what would happen to the economy in the absence of a stimulus plan seems kind of optimistic. The chart above has unemployment ex-stimulus peaking at 9 percent in the first quarter of 2010 and coming down through the year; the CBO estimates an average unemployment rate of 9 percent for 2010, so the Obama people are more optimistic than the CBO, and a lot more optimistic than I am.
Bottom line: even if I use the Romer-Bernstein estimates instead of my own — there really isn’t much difference — this plan looks too weak.
This is a far cry from the Bush era, where they would hide the evidence, lie about the statistics, and reach unreasonable conclusions. However, while the reliance on the facts makes the end result far easier to recognize, it does not make it any more palatable. This is a weak package.
There’s a more generous reading of these numbers by Tim Fernholz, who thinks that the chart showing unemployment still well over 7%, even with the recovery plan, by the midterm elections is meant for a particular audience:
But even with this plan, you can see that unemployment will remain appreciably high through the 2010 election, which could be problematic for Democrats in congress even if it seems that the economy is moving in the right direction. The new administration’s expectation is that every percentage point increase in GDP is equal to about 1 million jobs, and they project a 3.7 percent increase in GDP and 3.6 million new jobs by the end of 2010 […]
But one thing I do expect is for Democratic members of congress to look at that graph above, consider their reelection prospects, and wonder if maybe they ought to make the bill just a bit bigger so that unemployment line will drop just a bit lower as voters head to the polls; nothing like seeing self-interest and good public policy go hand-in-hand.
That’s very possible. And as Fernholz notes, the effects of limiting foreclosures and recapitalizing banks with the second half of a rejiggered bailout could also be positive for economic growth. So in a sense, we’re viewing this recovery package in a vacuum.
But the central problem remains. Obama’s team has a sense of the problem, knows what’s needed for the solution – and is reluctant to do all that is necessary. At the end of Krugman’s The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, he basically says (can’t find the quote right now) that the only thing holding back a real response to the crisis is ideology – the accumulated economic thought of the last several decades that is based on old paradigms and the belief that depressions can never happen again, that the tools have been put in place to eliminate the possibility of bank runs and extended pain. The events of the past year have shown that this isn’t true, and depression economics must again be used to get us out of the wreck. And so, despite Obama’s frequent calls for post-partisanship and his focus on “what works,” the problem with his outlook, at this point, is really ideological. He prefers incrementalism and cautiousness over real solutions because he cannot comprehend using the instruments of depression economics at this time. I do think Obama has shown the capacity to listen and alter his thinking based on the facts. But until he bridges this ideological divide, when he can accept a real Keynesian solution, or nationalization of the banks, we are going to be struggling with insufficient, incremental responses.
I can’t believe what I saw yesterday: CNN showed the Shock Doctrine documentary I.O.U.S.A. It is an amazing piece of propaganda, which, if it isn’t designed to destroy any chance of enacting a necessary stimulus, will persuade more than a few Americans that the biggest problem we face at this moment is long term debt caused by entitlements — and nothing short of massive spending cuts can save us. Here’s the press release:
Wake up, America! We’re on the brink of a financial meltdown. I.O.U.S.A. boldly examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens. Burdened with an ever-expanding government and military, increased international competition, overextended entitlement programs, and debts to foreign countries that are becoming impossible to honor, America must mend its spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions.
Throughout history, the American government has found it nearly impossible to spend only what has been raised through taxes. Wielding candid interviews with both average American taxpayers and government officials, Sundance veteran Patrick Creadon (Wordplay) helps demystify the nation’s financial practices and policies. The film follows former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker as he crisscrosses the country explaining America’s unsustainable fiscal policies to its citizens.
With surgical precision, Creadon interweaves archival footage and economic data to paint a vivid and alarming profile of America’s current economic situation. The ultimate power of I.O.U.S.A. is that the film moves beyond doomsday rhetoric to proffer potential financial scenarios and propose solutions about how we can recreate a fiscally sound nation for future generations.
Creadon uses candid interviews and his featured subjects include Warren Buffett, Alan Greenspan, Paul O’Neill, Robert Rubin, and Paul Volcker, along with the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s own David Walker and Bob Bixby of the Concord Coalition, a Foundation grantee.
Pointedly topical and consummately nonpartisan, I.O.U.S.A. drives home the message that the only time for America’s financial future is now.
I suspect that people who read this blog know why that’s deeply dishonest and why the timing for this crusade couldn’t be worse. It’s obvious to those who are following this story that what’s required to avert a far worse recession and quite possibly a depression, is for the government to do the opposite of what these deficit obsessives say must be done. But I don’t think everyone in the country has that understanding.
I say this is a shock doctrine documentary because it is nearly impossible for me to believe that it is a coincidence that the deficit hawks have put together this slick “non-partisan” documentary and well financed campaign to cut spending at the moment of what many people believe is America’s greatest economic peril since the 1930s. They are, quite obviously, attempting to use the crisis to dismantle the social safety net and avoid doing the real work of reforming the financial system. Shock Doctrine 101.
And when I say slick and non-partisan, it really is. The show also featured a panel with none other than the smarmy village saint Bill Bradley and the Clinton era deficit maven Alice Rivlin. Of course, it also included hedge fund king and deficit fetishist Pete Peterson and his little dog ex-CBO GAO chief David Walker. (Walker seems to be halfway aware that he might not be on the right track, but he’s committed to this project.) It couldn’t be more in keeping with the post-partisan, non-ideological zeitgeist. Except it’s ideological to the core.
One would think this message is so dissonant that no one could possibly find it persuasive. After all, they are worrying about some potential future catastrophic event while we are in middle of a current calamity. But it’s actually very clever —you can see by the press release that it sounds like they are talking about the current problem, even though their prescription is exactly the opposite of what is required . Indeed the diabolical effect of this project and its timing is that it’s designed to make people believe that government spendingis the cause of the current economic crisis.
And it’s smart. What they are prescribing makes more intuitive sense to many people than what is actually necessary to solve the problem. We are all coming to terms with the fact that we are going to have to stop spending beyond our means and pay down our debt in order to get our financial houses in order. Why shouldn’t the government have to do the same thing, especially if it’s facing an imminent “balloon payment” with all those retirees and sick people getting ready to explode the debt? We all know that the government has been spending like drunken sailors and it stands to reason that’s why we find ourselves in this crisis, right?
The sainted Bill Breadley said it right out on the program:
People understand that if they run up debts in their own lives, it’s no different than when the government runs up debts the same way.
Americans have been mentally trained over the past few decades to believe drivel like that— the free market is always the preferred method to solve economic problems, that the government should be run like a business (or your household budget) and, most importantly, that government is the cause of problems, not the solution. This deficit obsession plays into all those beliefs and makes it very difficult to explain in the middle of the crisis that the government isn’t a business or a household and needs to go further into debt in periods when everyone else is trying to escape it. And, needless to say, it also sounds like the tax ‘n spend libruls are at it again.
I’m sure it hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice that the deficit scolds are coming out of the woodwork now that the Republicans brought us to the brink, slashing taxes for the wealthy, larding their own contributors with earmarks, solidifying the notion that military industrial complex spending is a sacred, untouchable icon, and fetishing and deregulating the market until they finally brought the whole system to its knees. They certainly didn’t say much about the debt while it was adding up these last eight years.
They did the same thing during the 80s, which is why Cheney uttered “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. (What was left out was “for Republicans.” Democrats are endlessly and relentlessly harassed about deficits — as they clean up the big mess the deficit spending Republicans leave behind.)
They’ve reanimated the yellow peril, which is only fitting. Last time, we were told that Japan was taking over the country by buying up all of our real estate. This time it’s the Chinese buying up all our bonds. (In 92, Perot put a little zesty mexican salsa in the recipe.) It’s always something. The foreigners are going to kill us in our beds unless we cut social security and medicare. And if we even think of enacting any new “entitlements” (a conservative buzzword designed to make you think people are getting something they don’t really deserve) it’s pretty clear that the Asian hordes are going to destroy our way of life (if the muslims don’t get to us first.)
One of the fundamental characteristics of shock doctrine economics is extreme complexity for which a simple, intuitive solution is proposed. It’s hard to argue with and it’s hard to resist. Here are famous people who really seem to understand what’s going on and the solutions they propose just seem like common sense. Even Joe the plumber can see how right their view is. Unfortunately, they’re completely wrong — at least if you care about the country as a whole and the suffering of the millions of people who will have to endure their “solutions.”
It’s highly unlikely that they will fully have their way on this. We are in deep shit and there are a lot of very smart people who know the deficit is the least of our problems at the moment and that “entitlement reform” is one sure way to deepen the panic and make personal spending contract further than it needs to. (There’s a lot of wealth among seniors and near seniors. I can’t imagine that chit-chat about how social security is going broke is particularly good news to people who’ve just lost a good portion of their portfolios in the real estate plunge and the stock market crash.)
But these people are going to cause trouble, which comes as no surprise to me. I’ve been writing about this for years. It’s one of the reasons why I believe in liberal rhetoric (and, yes, the dreaded “ideology.”) If you don’t bother to educate people counter to the myths and propaganda they hear from the right, they have nothing to hold onto except faith in the Democrats in the face of arguments that have been built layer by layer over many years. (And having faith in Democrats really take courage.) The fact that they refuse to do this doesn’t automatically spell failure for democratic policies, but it makes it many times harder to succeed.
They don’t even seem to intend to do tank the stimulus, just restrict it. What they are doing is setting the stage for entitlement cuts and a swift, premature pullback on government spending — thus extending the crisis. And if the Democrats are cowed by these people (they always are — they hate being called spendthrifts) there will be enough egomaniacs in the congress to hamstring the administration and force them to adopt these “common sense” methods of running the economy — which is precisely how we got into this problem in the first place.
*In case you would like a more erudite argument against deficit hawkishness at a time like this, here’s James Galbraith on the subject. (I wonder if he’s still so sanguine about the Peterson Foundation now.)
Update:Here’s a post I wrote some time back about the long term crusade to destroy social security. This part is relevant:
[Ronald Reagan said back in the 1960s]:
But we’re against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They’ve called it “insurance” to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term “insurance” to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they’re doing just that.
A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary — his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he’s 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can’t put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they’re due — that the cupboard isn’t bare?
That was forty years ago. Later, in the 1980’s, Ronald Reagan’s indiscreet budget director David Stockman admitted that the purpose of ginning up the social security crisis was “to permit the politicians to make it look like they are doing something for the beneficiary population when they are doing something to it, which they normally would not have the courage to undertake.” And then with masterful chutzpah, considering his famous “Choice” speech from 1964 excerpted above, Ronnie then went on to use the so-called “looming” SS crisis to great effect — he flogged the GOP contention that the program was insolvent (as they’d been doing for fifty years) and also raised the payroll taxes which they immediately raided to cover their budget deficit. And now, lo and behold, we are “in crisis” again. Imagine that. Brilliant.
I guess if you repeat a lie long enough, it might actually come true some day. But let’s just say that those who say that social security is going broke and that “entitlements” must be reformed haven’t been right for decades and they aren’t likely to be right this time.
We have a real crisis on our hands, but this crap is a very clever sleight of hand — the problem, as we all know, is free market ideology run amok. If they can misdirect the public to “reforming government” instead, they might be able to take the heat off enough to get back in the saddle before anyone notices.
I asked the president-elect, “At the end of the day, are you really talking about over the course of your campaign some kind of grand bargain? That you have tax reform, healthcare reform, entitlement reform including Social Security and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?”
“Yes,” Obama said.
“And when will that get done?” I asked.
“Well, right now, I’m focused on a pretty heavy lift, which is making sure we get that reinvestment and recovery package in place. But what you described is exactly what we’re going to have to do. What we have to do is to take a look at our structural deficit, how are we paying for government? What are we getting for it? And how do we make the system more efficient?”
“And eventually sacrifice from everyone?” I asked.
“Everybody’s going to have give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin the game,” Obama said.
“Structural deficit” is the exact wording used in I.O.U.S.A.
FDR went with “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” but Obama is adopting “everybody’s going to have to have to sacrifice.” It’s an unusual way to get people through a period of extreme economic insecurity, but maybe it will be character building. It’s certainly better than insisting that the fundamentals are strong.
Out of power, Republicans appear to be retreating to familiar old ground. They’re becoming deficit hawks again.GOP lawmakers didn’t seem to mind enjoying the fruits of government largesse for the past eight years while one of their own was in the White House. Now they’re struggling to regain footing at a time of economic rout, a record $1.2 trillion budget deficit and an incoming Democratic president claiming a mandate for change.It might not be the best time for running against more government spending. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from casting themselves as protectors of the public purse, striving for relevancy as Congress tackles President-elect Barack Obama’s stimulus legislation.”Congress cannot keep writing checks and simply pass IOUs to our children and grandchildren,” says Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Asks House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio: “How much debt are we going to pile on future generations?”[…]Republicans “seem to be on a funny tightrope on which they’re trying to enunciate a Republican position,” said Fred Greenstein, a presidential scholar at Princeton University. “They’re saying, `Yes it is a crisis’, and `yes, a lot has to be done. But it shouldn’t be too much. And it shouldn’t be imprudent.’ They seem to be stuck with platitudes and truisms.”
That’s why the “elder statesmen” like Peterson and the members of the Concord Coalition are trotted out after the Republicans have disgraced themselves and spent the country into oblivion. They represent “bipartisan” consensus that pressures the Dems to abandon any economic policies that stand to hurt the wealthy when the Republicans are weak. That’s their job.
If you doubt what they are up to, ask yourself why they didn’t say a word over the past eight years about the shennanigans on wall street or the deficit as it was being run up by the Republicans. I think their lack of credibility is pretty obvious.
“Which one of you punks knocked over my McCain sign?”
Clint Eastwood certainly knows his core audience. Just when you thought that he had ceded his screen persona as one of the iconic tough guys for the more respectable mantle of a sage lion who makes prestige films, Clint Classic is back with a vengeance in Gran Torino, armed with an M-1, a cherry 1970s muscle car and a handy catchphrase (“Get off my lawn!”). Oh, don’t panic- Clint the Sage Director is still at the helm, and Clint the Actor is smart enough to keep it real and “play his age”. This isn’t Dirty Harry with a walker; it’s more like The Visitor…with an attitude. There’s also a Socially Relevant Message, an Important Theme, and even Redemption (if you’re into that sort of thing).
Look in the dictionary under “cantankerous”, and you’ll likely see a picture of Walt Kowalski (hmm, wait a minute-a film starring a 1970s muscle car and a protagonist named Kowalski…now does that ring a bell with anyone else?) Kowalski (Eastwood) is a retired Michigan auto worker and Korean War vet who has recently buried his wife, and along with her, any remaining semblance of social grace or desire for human interaction he may have once possessed. When he is not busy spurning “sympathy visits” from his adult son (Brian Haley) and his family or his late wife’s priest (Christopher Carley) he seems perfectly content to skulk about his Highland Park house, quaffing many beers whilst scowling and grousing to himself about the Southeast Asians who keep moving into “his” neighborhood. He is particularly chagrined about the Hmong family next door; the terms that Kowalski uses to describe them are derogatory racist epithets, which I am loathe to repeat here. Suffice it to say that those words are said often…and with gusto.
He certainly doesn’t mince words when he reacts to his son and daughter-in-law’s not-so-subtle attempts to pump him for his thoughts on estate planning, nor when the tenacious young priest begins sniffing around for dibs on his soul; he ostensibly informs all the circling vultures that he would prefer they fuck off so he can return to puttering around the house, muttering to himself and fetishizing over his beloved ’72 Gran Torino.
Kowalski’s innate mistrust of his neighbors appears to be justified when he surprises a prowler in his garage late one evening, and it turns out to be Thao (Bee Vang) the teenage boy from the Hmong family next door. Initially unbeknownst to Kowalski, the otherwise respectful and straight-arrow Thao has been pressured by his n’er do well older cousin, a Hmong youth gang leader, into attempting to steal the Gran Torino as an initiation rite. After Kowalski inadvertently saves Thao from the gang’s retaliation by chasing them off his property with the able assistance of his trusty service rifle (insert catch phrase here) his porch is festooned daily by an unwanted barrage of gifts, food and flowers, which is the Hmong family’s way of informing him that they are forever indebted for his act of “kindness” (to Kowalski’s abject horror). In further keeping with cultural tradition, Thao is ordered by the family elders to make amends for the attempted theft by offering his services to Kowalski as a handyman/manual laborer for the summer. Thanks to some cultural bridging and good will on the part of Thao’s sister (Ahney Her), Kowalski slowly warms to the family and becomes a father figure/mentor to Thao, teaching him how to “stand his ground” while still retaining a sense of responsibility for his actions.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking- there is a bit of a “wax on, wax off” vibe that recalls The The Karate Kid, but first-time feature film scripter Nick Schenk (who adapted from a story he developed with Dave Johannson) delves a little deeper into the heart of darkness with his variation on the theme. Whereas the aforementioned film was largely about overcoming the fear of failure, Gran Torino deals with a veritable litany of primal fears, namely the fear of The Other, the fear of death, and the fear of losing one’s soul.
That being said, there is still a surprising amount of levity in Schenk’s screenplay, and it provides a marvelous canvas onto which Eastwood can stretch his underrated proclivity (as an actor) for deadpan comedy (I have said for many years that he and Jim Jarmusch could make beautiful music together if they could find the right project to collaborate on). One scene in particular that stands out in this regard involves a parting of wisdom positing that any logistical hurdle you may encounter in your journey can be defeated with a “…pair of Vise-Grips, a roll of duct tape and some WD-40” (which reminded me of Douglas Adams’ sage advice to “Never go anywhere without your towel.”)
The film’s only flaw (and this can be a major distraction for some) is the casting of non-professional actors in most of the Hmong roles. For secondary or background characters, this is not so much of an issue, but concerning two more prominent (and very crucial) roles, I did find myself cringing at some of the community-theater level line deliveries.
Eastwood’s direction is assured as always, but I think the main reason to see this film is for his work in front of the camera; I would consider this one of his career-best performances and certainly his most well fleshed-out characterization since Unforgiven . All I know is-I should be so lucky to be as convincing as a badass when I’m pushing 80.
According to Jon Kyl, and I would imagine a substantial portion of the right, you cannot become Attorney General unless you unequivocally support torturing human beings.
KYL: I think Eric Holder will have some problems. He has not been able to stand up to his bosses in the past, President Clinton when he wanted to do pardons that I think Holder must have realized were big mistakes but he facilitated. And he’s also made some very unfortunate statements about our interrogation of prisoners, terrorists, and other things that lead me to believe that he is not going to be supportive of the Patriot Act, the FISA law, and others. And if he can’t be supportive of those laws, then he shouldn’t be Attorney General.
Got that? If you cannot be trusted to violate federal and international law, you cannot be allowed to become the nation’s top law enforcement official. This is the looking-glass view of the world on the right.
And it infects the discourse. I would argue the reason for Obama’s stilted rhetoric and the general reticence, outside of John Conyers, to prosecute the war crimes of the torture regime is that nobody in the establishment ever really pushed back in a coordinated fashion on the mainstreaming of torture, that allows for this kind of a statement by Kyl, which would have been almost nonsensical a few years ago. The Village got infected with war fever, goosed by the right, and they are only now coming out of it. And so Obama awkwardly tiptoes around ending torture because there are non-trivial political consequences for doing so. That’s a very sad commentary on this country, but it’s true.
Once we started having a debate in this country about torture, we made it tacitly acceptable. That was the original sin.
As President-elect Barack Obama assures intelligence officials that his complaints are with the Bush administration, not them, there are growing hints from Democratic Senate allies that spy agency veterans will not be prosecuted for past harsh interrogation and detainee policies.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein told The Associated Press in an interview this week that there is a clear distinction between those who made the policies and those who carried them out.
“They (the CIA) carry out orders and the orders come from the (National Security Council) and the White House, so there’s not a lot of policy debate that goes on there,” she said. “We’re going to continue our looking into the situation and I think that is up to the administration and the director.”
Feinstein declined to comment on whether her committee would take specific action to offer legal cover to those involved in harsh interrogations that some critics say amount to torture.
This is a straw man. The debate is not about the low level operatives involved in the interrogation regime. It’s about those who devised and ordered it. Not that I blame the low level people for being concerned that they will left holding the bag. That’s how it usually works. But that’s not where the argument over torture is at the moment.
The clever thing about Feinstein deftly throwing of the hot potato back to the administration is that the congress should be where any serious investigation of the policy and those who ordered it takes place. What appears to be happening is that the administration will task someone with finding out if any “crimes” were committed, and they will likely find none because John Yoo decided what the law was. But that’s just my cynical guess.
I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t more to all this than is obvious. I don’t honestly think anyone wants to deal with the torture regime, and it doesn’t seem to me that there is a huge public clamor for it. For most people, it’s probably enough that the president has promised to end the policy. So, I’m a little bit surprised that it remains so prominent on the radar screen. Something doesn’t scan.
Meanwhile, I have to ask why Obama is using this very careful language repeatedly:
“I was clear throughout this campaign and was clear throughout this transition that under my administration the United States does not torture. We will abide by the Geneva Conventions. We will uphold our highest ideals,” he said. “We must adhere to our values as diligently as we protect our safety with no exceptions.”
Why does he keep saying “the United States does not torture.” Why does he use the exact phrase that Bush used, which was clearly calibrated to conform with the notion that “torture” was a matter of definition, which his administration defined as being something other than the practices they approved? It’s a strange phrase, which sounds as though he’s saying that the United States shouldn’t torture, when he’s actually saying that it hasn’t tortured. And that’s just not true.
I would chalk it up to mangled grammar and wouldn’t mention it if it had only happened once, but he said it on 60 Minutes too:
I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.
It is awkward grammatically for him to say it that way and it stands out like a sore thumb. His use of the phrase yesterday — “under my administration the United States does not torture” makes him sound like English is his second language.
I don’t know what it means, maybe nothing. I have no reason to believe that Obama isn’t completely sincere about ending the torture regime, so I assume this is more about pretending that it never happened than any desire to keep torturing. But he is a very precise speaker and it strikes me as noteworthy that he repeatedly uses this phrase. I find it hard to believe that it’s accidental.
It seems that the conservative airbrushers have decided that poor George W. Bush’s fantastically successful presidency was derailed by an act of God. Yes, that’s right. Until Hurricane Katrina, Bush was headed to Mt Rushmore. It’s just so darned unfair.
That’s ridiculous, of course. The fact is that his support, even after 9/11, was never more than an inch deep, despite the media’s insistence that he was the second coming of Alexander the Great. There was that little matter of a catastrophic terrorist attack, the looting of Iraq, the missing weapons of mass destruction, Enron and the fact that his allegedly triumphant reelection was another squeaker that relied once more on Republican shennanigans. Those things were in the mix long before Katrina.It was the press, more than anything, that propped him up, calling him an “enormously popular president” long after his numbers had fallen back to earth.
But in my opinion, there was a specific turning point, and it wasn’t the hurricane. As John Amato reminded us the other day, the real moment of realization that Bush and the GOP majority were inmates running the asylum, was this:
Tom Delay and his crew were so drunk with power that they even threatened the Republican judges involved in making the right decision. (Above video from the C&L vault in 2005)
Delay: Mrs. Schiavo’s death is a moral poverty and a legal tragedy. This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today. Today we grieve, we pray, and we hope to God this fate never befalls another. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Schindlers and with Terri Schiavo’s friends in this time of deep sorrow.
“I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office,” he said in a lengthy speech in which he quoted medical texts and standards. “She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli.” His comments raised eyebrows in medical and political circles alike. It is not every day that a high-profile physician relies on family videotapes to challenge the diagnosis of doctors who examined a severely brain-damaged patient in person.
Terri Schiavo may well die. No good will come of it. Those who are half in love with death will only become more red-fanged and ravenous. And those who are still learning–our children–oh, what terrible lessons they’re learning. What terrible stories are shaping them. They’re witnessing the Schiavo drama on television and hearing it on radio. They are seeing a society–their society, their people–on the verge of famously accepting, even embracing, the idea that a damaged life is a throwaway life. Our children have been reared in the age of abortion, and are coming of age in a time when seemingly respectable people are enthusiastic for euthanasia. It cannot be good for our children, and the world they will make, that they are given this new lesson that human life is not precious, not touched by the divine, not of infinite value. Once you “know” that–that human life is not so special after all–then everything is possible, and none of it is good. When a society comes to believe that human life is not inherently worth living, it is a slippery slope to the gas chamber. You wind up on a low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz. Today that road runs through Pinellas Park, Fla.
Yep, Auschwitz. But it wasn’t just the wingnuts. This was one of those events in which the faux provincialism of the village was on display for all to see and, as usual, they were completely out out of step with the rest of the country.
Joe Klein complained that Democrats were relying too much on the law and that Republicans relied too little. What would be “juuuust right” would be if people could vote on whether someone has a right to die or if a woman should have an abortion. It would be “messy” but democratic. He wrote:
Democrats would be wise to stow their satisfaction and give careful consideration to what thoughtful conservatives are saying about the role of the judiciary in our public life because the issue is about to get a lot more contentious.
Which thoughtful conservatives should we be listening to Joe? The ones who are directly threatening conservative and liberal judges who believe their job is to interpret the laws or the ones who merely understandwhy someone would be moved to threaten conservative and liberal judges who believe their job is to interpret the laws?
Or maybe it’s this thoughtful conservative who heads the Coalition For A Fair Judiciary. Here’s what she thoughtfully had to say today, (via Sam Rosenfeld on TAPPED):
My job is stand in the breach between the left and the president’s judicial nominations . . . You know who they are. You’ve seen them. The pro-abortion fanatics and the radical feminists, the atheists who file lawsuits attacking the pledge of allegiance and the ten commandments, the environmentalist tree-hugging animal-rights extremists, the one-world globalists who worship at the altar of the United Nations and international law, the militant homosexuals and the anti-military hippie pieceniks, the racial agitators who believe we are all created equal but some are a little more equal than others, the union bosses and the socialists posing as journalists and college professors, the government bureaucrats and the tax-and-spend junkies, the Hollywood elitists, the air-headed actors and singers who think that we actually care what they think, the pornographers who fund the leftists and who won’t be happy until every Bible in every child’s hands is replaced with the latest copy of Hustler magazine, and of course the gun-grabbing trial lawyers and their willing accomplices in the United States Senate who won’t be happy until they disarm every last citizen down to the last bee bee and paintball gun.
That moment was an important turning point in the conservative movement. The entire country watched as far right radicals like that pulled the strings of the entire Republican party and they saw the entire decadent political establishment become enraptured by radical, pro-life kitsch. If the saga of Patty Hearst and the SLA was the moment when the country decided the New Left had turned into a creepy, surreal sideshow, the sight of those girls with duct tape over their mouths while the crimson faced Sean Hannity shook his fist and shouted about the “culture of death” was the moment for the right.
Something shifted then and the image of Bush with the bullhorn was finally completely supplanted by the picture of Bush slinking back into town under cover of darkness to sign a law which put the full force of the federal government into a complicated and deeply personal dilemma which millions of average Americans confronted every day. The conservative movement showed its true colors over Terry Schiavo and the country got a clear view of what social conservatism would mean in their own lives. They didn’t like what they saw.
Katrina happened just five months late and the woman who claimed that liberals were half in love with death incoherently shrieked from the pages of the Wall Street Journal that looters should be shot on sight while a glib and indifferent president strummed a guitar as a great American city drowned. By that time, the people were well acquainted with the methods and priorities of the people who were running the country.
Oh, and by the way, America’s pastor weighed in on the Schiavo situation by insinuating that her husband had tried to kill her and wanted to finish her off before she could wake up and finger him:
MATTHEWS: Why do you think the husband—why do you think the husband would not allow that? Why do you think he is keeping that decision to himself? He is not getting any money.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: There‘s no insurance money. The malpractice money is gone now. That‘s behind us. There‘s nothing ahead of him in terms of money. I mean, he is certainly not going to write a book about this. That wouldn‘t sell.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I don‘t know if anybody‘s book will sell in this case, because it takes six months for a book to come out. And people won‘t be following the case anymore.
WARREN: Right. Right.
MATTHEWS: So why is he doing this, do you think?
WARREN: I have no idea. Well, I don‘t know.
There‘s 1,000 reasons could you speculate. What if she came back out of the—out of this state and had something to say that he didn’t want said?
Once again I’m struck by how politically and morally inspiring it is to reach out to a great spiritual healer like Rick Warren.
As dday mentioned the other day, the right is planning to bring up the Schiavo mess in the confirmation hearings. If they want to remind the country of that circus, it’s their funeral. As one who is half in love with death, I say bring it on.
I was happy to see Lily Ledbetter become such a rallying cry in the Democratic Party during the campaign season. She got a prime speaking spot at the DNC Convention and was cited multiple times by Barack Obama on the trail. The issue of equal pay for equal work is so elemental to basic fairness and women’s rights, and it’s great to see the House end the first week of business by strongly passing the measure today. This isn’t only a question of fairness, but one that will have an impact on the economy. Americans have seen their wages grow stagnant or shrink even when the economy has grown, and anything that puts pressure to push wages upward can help in a recovery.
Howie Klein has more, including a look at the five House “Democrats” who voted against this bill. I’m sure all the women who voted for them might be surprised to hear that. Howie says the odds look decent for passage in the Senate as well.
Discussing the appointment of John Brennan as counterterrorism advisor, Andrea Mitchell and one of my least favorite “Democratic strategist’s” Michael Feldman, sat down to share a steaming pile of beltway compost:
Andrea Mitchell: But Michael, what about the blogosphere? Liberal critics have been hammering John brennan, putting up all this stuff. now they’ll start going after Steve Kappes, who hasn’t even said yes yet, although Panetta hasn’t even asked him to stay on. How do you answer that side of the equation, people who say “look, what we didn’t know what was going on in the first couple of years of Bush Cheney is what we object to?”
Feldman: Well, look, I think President-elect Obama has been very clear. There are some decisions where folks on the left aren’t going to be happy, there are some decisions where folks on the right aren’t going to be happy. When you’re hearing from both sides, you generally think you’re headed in the right direction…
(Pat Buchanan said many on the right were very reassured by Obama because they’d thought he was “Jeremiah Wright’s guy.” Seriously.)
Let’s look at this. First of all, I think it’s clear that Glenn Greenwald is now one of the most powerful men in the world by dint of writing a handfull of critical posts about Brennan which a small number of bloggers linked to and commented on. It has evidently shaken the American intelligence community to its foundations to such a degree that they are quaking in their boots in anticipation of another onslaught of liberal blogging firepower directed against Steve Kappes, which hasn’t even happened yet.
This week, Grenwald is discussing the Isreali-Palestinian conflict, so I would expect a settlement by Monday at the latest. Such is the awesome power of the Glenzilla.
(Meanwhile, Gary Farber has been wondering why there has been so little said about the troubling issues surrounding Dennis Blair’s complicity in the genocide in East Timor. It’s a good question, but just goes to show you that unless the mighty liberal blogosphere weighs in, nothing happens.)
But let’s go back to Mitchell and her friend Michael Feldman, for a moment. Perhaps you’ll recall this memorable moment from a couple of months ago:
Mitchell: Let’s talk about the State department and foreign policy. John Kerry, widely anticipated to be at least one of the people considered, really wants the job, although with joe Biden leaving the foreign relations committee,if he doesn’t get the job, he would be the foreign relations chairman because he has the seniority.What about John Kerry as Secretary of State? How hard is it to be Secretary of State with Joe Biden as Vice President?
Feldman: What I saw the other day is the domino effect of Kerry as Secretary of State might put the Democratic caucus in a position where Senator Feingold would be the next up to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and of course that poses a whole series of problems so…
Mitchell: Why does it pose a series of problems?
Feldman: Well, because of Senator Feingold’s opposition to the war and I think that would immediately, his vocal opposition to the war, I think that would immediately then raise some issues for the caucus and for leader Reid..
Mitchell: But the president [elect] of the United States is opposed to the war…
Feldman: This is true, but I think they’ll want in foreign relations is maybe a more even handed person. Ben (sic) Nelson’s name has been floated there as a potential consensus pick…
POOL REPORT 2 — Café Milano was packed, wall to wall, standing room only as nearly 400 A-listers showed to up salute Brit Hume for his career in broadcasting. A huge cake in the shape of the Capitol was wheeled out to a champagne toast set to elegant piano music. Notables included: Guest of honor Brit Hume and his wife Kim Hume, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Shepard Smith, The Vice President, Liz Cheney, Ed Gillespie, Bob Woodward, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, Andrea Mitchell, Alan Greenspan, Gwen Ifill, The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Secretary Elaine Chao. Ted Koppel, Irena Briganti, Ann Compton. Bo Derek. Don Graham, Maureen Dowd, Fred Thompson, Debbie Dingell, Dennis Ross, Senator Elizabeth Dole and Bob Dole, Tom Ridge, Senator Joe Lieberman and Hadassah, Bret and Amy Baier, Bill Hemmer, Megyn Kelly, John F. Harris, Oliver North and Robin Sproul.
SPOTTED @ FOX:
— Shepard Smith talking to Charlie Gibson
— Maureen Orth, Jane Harman and Andrea Mitchell smiling and laughing in a front corner of the restaurant
— Maureen Dowd looking fetching in a chocolate-colored dress with her flaming red hair blown out straight
— Sen. Joe Lieberman and wife Hadassah lamenting about yet again getting on a plane — That’s all we do! she joked
OVERHEARD @ FOX:
— Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke both spoke warmly about Brit, how long they’ve known him and been friends with him
— Roger Ailes’ speech focused on Brit lending credibility to a nascent Fox News back in 1996. Ailes joked that once Republican Murdoch heard he hired Brit Hume, he didn’t ask any more questions about the launch.
Regarding Digby’s musing about kabuki, even if this is a game for the cameras to give Obama space to his left, it doesn’t mean that progressives shouldn’t rally to Kerry and Conrad and make the argument. In fact, it seems to me that is the whole purpose – to “make Obama do it,” as it were, and create a bottom-up movement for a real, liberal stimulus with a focus on job creation. Which progressives ought to do. Because there are certainly counter-vailing forces inside the Obama team (I wouldn’t guess that Larry Summers is necessarily in on the game) who have the ear of the President-elect, and so even if this is kabuki it would work better with a grassroots response.
There’s another area in which progressives need to speak up and not assume that our betters in Washington have everything covered, and that’s on the issue of climate change. It looks as if the House has been reorganizing for the sole purpose to pass meaningful climate legislation, be that a cap and trade or a carbon tax. Henry Waxman deposed John Dingell as hed of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Dingell’s coal-state partner in obstruction, Rick Boucher, was hustled out the door as well.
As Kate reported earlier today, new House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is reorganizing the committee, unifying oversight of climate, energy, air quality, and water issues under a single subcommittee: the Energy and Environment Subcommittee.
Right now Markey chairs the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, and reportedly enjoys working on telecom policy. Due to his seniority, he had his choice of subcommittees this session — which meant he could, if he wanted, take the reins of the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee from coal lover and Dingell ally Rick Boucher (D-Va.). That alone would have been, as Joe noted the other day, “almost as big a deal as Waxman defeating Dingell for committee chair.”
But now Waxman has consolidated environment and energy jurisdiction in one subcommittee. Gone is the Environment and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee, chaired by Gene Green [D-Texas], another Dingell ally […]
The Energy and Environment Subcommittee has something the Select Committee does not: legislative jurisdiction. It will be the key subcommittee pushing climate/energy legislation through the House.
(Boucher moves to that Telecom and Internet subcommittee, and he’s been pretty good on that issue.)
This seems like a very grand setup for bold action to combat climate change, engineered by Waxman and Nancy Pelosi.
Then why is Pelosi telling Energy & Environment News that the House won’t be getting around to climate legislation this year? (Sub. reqd. for E&E, so forgive the link to National Review’s “Planet Gore” denial site. They think this is a sign that the planet’s actually cooling and Democrats are quietly burying the issue. Someone forgot to tell the scientists!)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said today that she has enough votes to pass cap-and-trade legislation aimed at curbing the effects of global warming but would not commit to holding a vote in 2009.
Speaking to reporters in the Capitol, Pelosi said she has sufficient backing in the Democratic-controlled House to move a cap-and-trade bill, but will not force the issue. “I’m not sure this year, because I don’t know if we’ll be ready,” Pelosi said. “We won’t go before we’re ready.”
Pelosi acknowledged the December deadline looming over U.N. negotiations toward a new international climate change agreement. “We’re sensitive to Copenhagen and the rest of that,” she said, referring to the Denmark capital that will host the next annual U.N. conference. “And it’s a very high priority for me.” […]
Incoming House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) will take the lead in 2009 on a climate cap-and-trade bill. But to date, Waxman has not spelled out his plans for that legislation.
“To be determined,” replied Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and Pelosi’s point person on global warming issues, when asked today about prospects for global warming legislation. . . .
Asked about her expectations for the timing of cap-and-trade legislation, Pelosi replied, “I don’t know what the timetable will be. A lot of that will relate to how quickly we get through the recovery, whatever else we’re doing, and when the bill will be ready. I don’t think it’s ready.”
I spoke to Frank O’Donnell from Clean Air Watch about this yesterday. He agreed that this seems incongruous, given all the work done to change around committees and put the best people on this issue in charge of it. “But why isn’t this a top-line issue?” O’Donnell wondered. “Maybe Pelosi is just being cautious, but the stars seem to be aligned as well as they could be.”
Certainly one would think that you don’t want to try for major climate legislation in 2010, during the midterm elections. Although, given that green energy initiatives are very popular, and seeing all the Republicans greenwashing themselves during the most recent elections, that could be the calculation. But of course, that wastes another year at a time when more Arctic ice is melting and more greenhouse gases are being spewed into the atmosphere. Not to mention the fact that conference committees and reconciliation bills can extend this process for months.
I’m wondering whether this reluctance to act is due to the Obama team’s uncertainty on which way to go, and the conflicts among his top advisers (there’s that Larry Summers again).
In the fall of 1997, when the Clinton administration was forming its position for the Kyoto climate treaty talks, Lawrence H. Summers argued that the United States would risk damaging the domestic economy if it set overly ambitious goals for reducing carbon emissions.
Lawrence H. Summers, left, and Peter R. Orszag, leaders of the Obama economic team, say a cap-and-trade system should include a “safety valve” against high prices of pollution permits.
Mr. Summers, then the deputy Treasury secretary, said at the time that there was a compelling scientific case for action on global warming but that a too-rapid move against emissions of greenhouse gases risked dire and unknowable economic consequences.
His view prevailed over those of officials arguing for tougher standards, among them Carol M. Browner, then the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and her mentor, Al Gore, then the vice president.
Today, as the climate-change debate once again heats up, Mr. Summers leads the economic team of the incoming administration, and Ms. Browner has been designated its White House coordinator of energy and climate policy. And Mr. Gore is hovering as an informal adviser to President-elect Barack Obama.
As Mr. Obama seeks to find the right balance between his environmental goals and his plans to revive the economy, he may have to resolve conflicting views among some of his top advisers.
To be sure, Obama has shown a desire to implement an expansive green jobs plan and fold energy issues into the overall recovery package. But there seems like reluctance on setting climate targets. O’Donnell said that he wouldn’t doubt that Pelosi was deferring on this. “Barabara Boxer has been quoted saying that she’s willing to do something simpler and more bare-bones and let Obama’s team fill in the blanks.”
Once again, I think this is a case where progressives need to be the squeaky wheel. It makes no sense to constitute an environmental dream team in the House and then slow-walk whatever legislation they can pass. The world cannot wait for American leadership on this, and any delay will just increase the needed targets and cause more pain. The House must act. We have to make them do it.
with a walker; it’s more like 
…with an attitude. There’s also a Socially Relevant Message, an Important Theme, and even Redemption (if you’re into that sort of thing).
with anyone else?) Kowalski (Eastwood) is a retired Michigan auto worker and Korean War vet who has recently buried his wife, and along with her, any remaining semblance of social grace or desire for human interaction he may have once possessed. When he is not busy spurning “sympathy visits” from his adult son (Brian Haley) and his family or his late wife’s priest (Christopher Carley) he seems perfectly content to skulk about his Highland Park house, quaffing many beers whilst scowling and grousing to himself about the Southeast Asians who keep moving into “his” neighborhood. He is particularly chagrined about the Hmong family next door; the terms that Kowalski uses to describe them are derogatory racist epithets, which I am loathe to repeat here. Suffice it to say that those words are said often…and with gusto.
, but first-time feature film scripter Nick Schenk (who adapted from a story he developed with Dave Johannson) delves a little deeper into the heart of darkness with his variation on the theme. Whereas the aforementioned film was largely about overcoming the fear of failure, Gran Torino deals with a veritable litany of primal fears, namely the fear of The Other, the fear of death, and the fear of losing one’s soul.
