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Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Monday, December 19, 2005
The President Speaks: It is true that Saddam Hussein had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass destruction. It is true that he systematically concealed those programs, and blocked the work of UN weapons inspectors. It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. And as your President, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Shorter GWB: "I'm responsible for the war. He started it." Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Public Service Announcement Please remember Athenae for next year's Koufax Awards for this post. Thank you. Hacktacular Harris Julia makes a very nice catch relating to the John Harris-Dan Froomkin contretemps here. It seems that the "conservative blogger" Harris used as a springboard to start this whole thing was the webmaster of the '04 Bush-Cheney campaign website. It's interesting to note that Harris' attack is woefully short on specifics, that is, he doesn't so much have a problem with specific things Froomkin said in his column, as with the column itself. It's possible, given that White House Briefing functions largely as an aggregator of reporting and commentary about the administration, there could have been a problem with the links and citations rather than with the original content. But Harris doesn't cite anything concrete at all, not even articles or subjects that Froomkin didn't mention. All he does is wave the term "liberal" around threateningly, as though one column's having such a bias were an unpardonable offense in the paper that publishes George Will and Bob Novak. Even as I watch the politics editor of the Washington Post openly carrying water for the Bush administration, I comfort myself with the knowledge that Dan Froomkin has nothing to worry about. If the Post were to try to make his life miserable, he could turn around and be a top-5 blogger within a week, just by doing what he's done all along. He'd probably make more money to boot. Thursday, November 24, 2005
You Heard it Here First or, Holy Crap, I Was Right! Josh Marshall reports that disgraced FEMA head Michael Brown has plans to go into the emergency management consultancy racket. Actually, from the quote it seems that Brown's actual angle may be providing not generic emergency response consulting services but rather consulting services to incompetents who've been saddled with emergency preparedness responsibility and fear becoming national laughing stocks when they turn mid-size disasters in to full-on catastrophes through gross mismanagement. Back on 9/13, while musing on "Brown's Future," I warned of this very possibility. He could have a come-to-Jesus moment in which he sees the error of his ways and becomes a motivational speaker for those afraid of making catastrophic errors. Assuming neither he nor his audience has any self-respect, that is. That's pretty dead-on, except I don't think Jesus had anything to do with it. Just the latest installment of that eerie prescience that keeps you coming back to A Level Gaze again and again. Thursday, November 17, 2005
This is powerful stuff. Murtha tells it exactly like it is. Oh, and he's mad. It's been a while since we've heard anyone of any stature speak truth to power*, and this is a damned refreshing change. *Excepting Robert Byrd, to whom no one listens. Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Bush's "Enemies From Capitol Hill Blue, this lovely little item: Spurred by paranoia and aided by the USA Patriot Act, the Bush Administration has compiled dossiers on more than 10,000 Americans it considers political enemies and uses those files to wage war on those who disagree with its policies. Bushco had the good sense not to keep its enemies database on government-owned hardware. The article notes, however, that it "can be accessed remotely by a select list of senior aides, including Rove." Obviously, maintaining such a list, unrelated to any official and legitimate executive-branch business, on government owned computers would be a misuse of resources. How would such use differ from the labor put in by these government employees while using the database remotely, possibly via government-owned computers? As you may remember from the Al Gore "no controlling legal authority" brouhaha, using government resources for political purposes is a no-no. Additionally, using federal law enforcement for purposes unrelated to, er, enforcing the law, is also a no-no. The article mentions Joe Wilson and his wife in connection to the database, which brings to mind more, possibly much more important (and certainly more timely) questions: 1. Was classified information, such as Valerie Plame's employment history, sent to this private server? 2. Was the information contained there accessible to people without sufficient security clearances? 3. If so, are those who transferred the information from within the government to this server, and those who knowingly compiled and/or formatted this information for just such a purpose, presumed to be guilty of leaking the information? Or could they be accused only of negligence with classified information? 4. Does this "private server strategy" constitute obstruction of justice, insofar as it allowed government officials to conceal their activities (and, possibly, communications) relating to Wilson and Plame, possibly up to and including the use of federal law enforcement to obtain information about persons not under suspicion of illegal activities? Just a little food for thought. Sunday, October 30, 2005
Brooks: This Is All Libby's Fault  Thank God it wasn't cancer "Senator Frank Lautenberg assented that Rove was guilty of treason. Howard Dean talked about a "huge cover-up." Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York said: "The C.I.A. leak issue is only the tip of the iceberg. This is looking increasingly like a White House conspiracy aimed at misleading our country into war. Jesus, David, you're obtuse. Why can't we leave it at that? Why don't we start by doing the obvious: asking why Libby lied? It didn't happen in a vaccuum, you know. Working backwards, Libby was a conduit for the information that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent who got Joe Wilson sent to Africa. Why was that relevant? It wasn't, really, but the leak was designed to undercut Wilson's credibility. Why? Because he vehemently disputed the administration's claim that Saddam had the potential to get uranium from Niger as a part of a nuclear weapons program. Why did that matter? Because Bush and Cheney were trying to convince the country that Saddam was a threat to us. Why were they doing that? Because they were trying to justify their proposed invasion of Iraq. All of this is beyond dispute. It happened. You were here the whole time, David. Libby didn't just decide on his own to out Plame for the hell of it. If Saddam had had a dozen nuclear bombs made with uranium from Niger, what Libby did would still have been a crime. But here's the thing, David. There was no possible way he could have actually obtained the uranium, and it was obvious. The African uranium story was bullshit, and poorly-constructed bullshit at that. As soon as the documents behind the scenario saw the light of day, they were exposed as clumsy forgeries, yet the administration continued to push the story. Colin Powell lied to the UN, and Fearless Leader Bush lied to the nation in his State of the Union address. If they didn't know the uranium allegations were false, not to say impossible, plenty of other people in the administration did, not to mention the CIA. It's possible the war would have happened even without the Iraqi nuclear weapons program flimflam, but as it actually happened, it was a crucial element of the administration's scenario. Wilson tore a hole in that scenario, and, according to the grand jury, Libby committed five felonies to undercut (and/or possibly punish) him. Honestly, David, do you really believe Scooter did this all on his own initiative? Have you been paying attention? Invading Iraq was the main focus of the Bush administration for a long time. During Fitzgerald's investigation, it came out that Dick Cheney himself revealed Plame's status to Libby. Karl Rove helped spread the story to reporters. Whether or not these actions constituted criminal activity, they were indisputably part of a coordinated effort to discredit Joe Wilson and sell the Iraq war. Naturally, then, you conclude that critics of the Bush administration have lost their grip on reality: "The answer is found in an essay written about 40 years ago by Richard Hofstadter called "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Hofstadter argues that sometimes people who are dispossessed, who feel their country has been taken away from them and their kind, develop an angry, suspicious and conspiratorial frame of mind. It is never enough to believe their opponents have committed honest mistakes or have legitimate purposes; they insist on believing in malicious conspiracies. We're just making shit up because we feel disenfranchised? This isn't some air-filled conspiracy that hints at dire, ill-defined future events that may or may not come to pass. This is about a war that is actually happening now. Thousands of Americans have been killed or maimed. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, and their blood is on our hands. If Wilson's story had gone unchallenged, this unnecessary war might have been averted and those people would still be alive. It looks an awful lot like the Bush Administration led the country to war on the basis of information that many of its staff knew to be false. The CIA leak case is only one piece of a much larger whole, but it may be the loose thread that leads to the exposure of the rest. It's deadly serious, David, and we're going to keep at it. Friday, September 16, 2005
Brown Makes His Stand, Blames White House The consensus about the Michael Brown interview story in today's NYT seems to be that he largely approved of the federal government's response to the disaster and largely laid the blame at the feet of the local governments. I have no idea where this idea comes from. Brown was the head of the Federal Emergency Management Administrationan, an agency whose very existence is predicated on the idea that state and local governments can't handle everything. He wasn't the Director of the Federal Bitch the States Out for Not Doing Their Damn Jobs Administration. Brown is not even at the surface of reproach, much less above it. Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco each failed in deeply troubling ways. However, what comes through most strongly from the interview is the all too realistic depiction of a federal response that, well, wasn't. FEMA has only 2,600 employees; its mission is planning and coordination. It has no stockpiles of emergency supplies, no troops, no fleets of buses, helicopters, or ships. It exists to augment the effectiveness of local, state, and especially federal resources by planning ahead and helping them to work together efficiently. I don’t think Brown was prepared to handle a major disaster on his own, because he wasn’t supposed to. The problem came from the fact that he didn’t know he was on his own. His bosses were working on the situation in their own way, and he wasn’t in the loop. Long before he resigned in disgrace, he had already been hung out to dry. One more time, from the September 4th Washington Post: Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday [August 26], the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday. Such a takeover, especially in advance of any actual disaster (Katrina didn't hit until the morning of the 29th), would have been completely unprecedented. Keep this in mind, it's important. Now, on to WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 - Hours after Hurricane Katrina passed New Orleans on Aug. 29, as the scale of the catastrophe became clear, Michael D. Brown recalls, he placed frantic calls to his boss, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, and to the office of the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr. Note that the "scale of the catastrophe" was only becoming clear to Brown on Monday the 29th. This was two-and-a-half days after the White House had leaned on Gov. Blanco to give up control of her state. Now, either the Bush Administration knew Katrina had catastrophic potential for Louisiana, or saw the storm as an opportunity for a power grab for its own reasons. Either way, Katrina was being taken very seriously at the highest levels of government. Somehow, Brown didn't know this. From all appearances, he was watching the hurricane's progress and hoping for the best. By the time of that call, he added, "I was beginning to realize things were going to hell in a handbasket" in Louisiana. A day later, Mr. Brown said, he asked the White House to take over the response effort. Regardless of the original intentions, the Bushies must have by then made preparations--moved troops and supplies into position, at least--for the takeover. That is, unless they had planned to take the reins in Louisiana long distance from Washington. But Brown didn't know. But Mr. Brown's account, in which he described making "a blur of calls" all week to Mr. Chertoff, Mr. Card and Mr. Hagin, suggested that Mr. Bush, or at least his top aides, were informed early and repeatedly by the top federal official at the scene that state and local authorities were overwhelmed and that the overall response was going badly. Brown may or may not have cared about New Orleans or its people, but he certainly thought what happened to them was his responsibility. He knew what would happen to him as FEMA director if a federal emergency was mismanaged on his watch. He had to be desperate. And the White House was letting him, and New Orleans, twist in the wind. Mr. Brown was removed by Mr. Chertoff last week from directing the relief effort. A 50-year-old lawyer and Republican activist who joined FEMA as general counsel in 2001, Mr. Brown said he had been hobbled by limitations on the power of the agency to command resources. As FEMA director, Brown didn't have much authority unless and until it was given to him by Chertoff or the president, and that didn't happen until late on Tuesday, a day and a half after Katrina hit the city. Again, the Bushies had been prepared to take over New Orleans, lock, stock, and barrel more than three days earlier, but they hadn't given Brown anything to work with. Meanwhile, people were dying. To add insult to tragedy, Bush's September 27 state of emergency declaration had already provided the legal go-ahead for full mobilization of all relevant federal resources. Brown (and possibly Chertoff) didn't know. In Washington, Mr. Chertoff's spokesman, Russ Knocke, said there had been no delay in the federal response. "We pushed absolutely everything we could," Mr. Knocke said, "every employee, every asset, every effort, to save and sustain lives." Uh, no. By Saturday afternoon, many residents were leaving. But as the hurricane approached early on Sunday, Mr. Brown said he grew so frustrated with the failure of local authorities to make the evacuation mandatory that he asked Mr. Bush for help. Bush's people had been trying to strong-arm the governor into giving up authority over her state, and he was surprised he was being asked to call the mayor? Not that he should lean on him or anything. On Monday night, Mr. Brown said, he reported his growing worries to Mr. Chertoff and the White House. He said he did not ask for federal active-duty troops to be deployed because he assumed his superiors in Washington were doing all they could. Instead, he said, he repeated a dozen times, "I cannot get a unified command established." It looks like when the hurricanes hit Florida in 2004, Brown didn't have to call up the troops, line up the supplies, or get the money flowing, because that had already been done for him. That's why he "assumed his superiors in Washington were doing all they could." He'd been through this drill before, and that's how it worked. But not this time. At the same time, the Superdome was degenerating into "gunfire and anarchy," and on Tuesday the FEMA staff and medical team in New Orleans called to say they were leaving for their own safety. How he expected to handle this kind of situation without the kind of serious federal help it was the purpose of his agency to provide is beyond me. By Wednesday morning, Mr. Brown said, he learned that [US Army Lt. Gen. Russel] Honoré was on his way. While the general did not have responsibility for the entire relief effort and the Guard, his commanding manner helped mobilize the state's efforts. Just like that, the army shows up and it starts happening. The green light is given, the resources are put into action, and the situation starts to get under control. Boom. The Bushies let Brown face the fury of Katrina all on his own. That's what I got out of the interview, and I believe it's what he was trying to get across. He put it rather subtly early on in the interview: "I truly believed the White House was not at fault here." I added emphasis there; I wonder if he did. With a lot of help from the TPM Hurricane Katrina Timeline. Credit where it's due. Thursday, September 15, 2005
Can Bush's Ass Cash That Check? From the speech: Within the Gulf region are some of the most beautiful and historic places in America. As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well.You know, Dubya, that applies just the same to poor blacks all over the country. It's that moral absolutism you are so fond of. America did wrong by just about all African-Americans. Do you mean to make things right for all of them? Are you going to undertake a historical national initiative to wipe out our shameful national legacy of racism? Are you going to come out in favor of true educational equality, quality medical care, meaningful affirmative action, and vigorous anti-discrimination enforcement? That's a big check you wrote tonight, Mr. President. I look forward to seeing what happens at the bank when you hand it to the teller. Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Chertoff's Turn in the Grinder Josh has a big, big post up which looks at at a very important Knight-Ridder article entitled "Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows." Although the article doesn't absolve Michael Brown from all culpability for FEMA's failures, it does distribute some of the blame higher up the agency food chain by pointing out that Brown had been waiting on his boss to give him full authority to act until 36 hours after the storm hit. Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.Knight-Ridder's reporters did some fine reporting on this story, but got a significant piece of it wrong. Although Chertoff as DHS secretary had the power to fully mobilize federal disaster response resources, that power also resided with the president. From Page 7 of the National Response Plan (PDF, 2mb): For Incidents of National Significance that are Presidentially declared disasters or emergencies, Federal support to States is delivered in accordance with relevant provisions of the Stafford Act (see Appendix 3, Authorities and References). (Note that while all Presidentially declared disasters and emergencies under the Stafford Act are considered Incidents of National Significance, not all Incidents of National Significance necessarily result in disaster or emergency declarations under the Stafford Act.) (emphasis added)Bush declared a State of Emergency in Louisiana on August 26 and in Mississippi a day later, meaning that from that point forward, all FEMA resources could have been put into action. But not by Brown. According to the Knight-Ridder piece, Chertoff's redundant declaration of an Incident of National Significance on August 30 also "designated [Brown] as the 'principal federal official' in charge of the storm." Until that point, he himself had had that role. However, as indicated by the fact that he felt the need to declare Katrina a Incident of National Significance, he wasn't aware of the powers and responsibilities he had. He'd had the power to act for four days and did nothing. He didn't even know that he was supposed to take the initiative. From the K-R article: That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.It appears Bush's handlers were looking to have him take credit for the federal response by having it credited to the "White House Task Force" rather than DHS or FEMA. This would make sense in light of Bush's reported determination not to repeat his father's failure to take Hurricane Andrew seriously enough in 1992. By taking ownership of the relief efforts he could turn the disaster to his benefit. It might have worked had he moved a lot more quickly. Whether Chertoff's failure to put the federal disaster response machinery in operation was due to deference to Bush, his own ignorance, or a combination of both, it is nonetheless a failure of monumental proportions. On a side note, the K-R article also features DHS spokesman Russ Knocke attempting to defend the federal relief efforts. Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, didn't dispute that the National Response Plan put Chertoff in charge in federal response to a catastrophe. But he disputed that the bureaucracy got in the way of launching the federal response.Although this reflects very well on the CG, it's meaningless in terms of DHS/FEMA, because the very nature of the CG means it doesn't have to wait for authorizations before acting. There's no time for bureaucracy when a ship is in distress; the CG just goes out and tries to rescue people. Hiding behind these brave and tireless people is yet another craven and dishonest dodge on the part of administration officials. Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Brown’s Future What’s next for newly-ex FEMA head Michael Brown? His future can’t be looking too rosy at the moment, and it doesn’t look like he has many options. He was nominally in charge of the biggest governmental failure since the Bay of Pigs. He was unqualified to hold his position, and he lied on his resume. I’d bet his agency’s success in handling the 2004 hurricanes in Florida was the result of quick action on the part of political handlers rather than anything Brown himself did. Even if he had been exemplary, the Katrina failures have rendered the rest of his tenure at FEMA meaningless. Professionally, there really isn’t anything else to the man. Even a hiring manager at McDonald's might have trouble figuring out what to do with a 'horse lawyer.' If he’s bravely taking the fall for Katrina on behalf of the rest of the executive branch, it won't exactly be easy to reward him for it. He will never be given another government job, and I don’t know that the VRWC's think tanks or foundations have any holes deep enough to bury him in. Any job he gets above the level of janitor is going to look like some kind of quid pro quo for keeping his mouth shut. If Brown is ever going to get out of this hole, he’s going to need to find some way to even partially rehabilitate his reputation. But how? Blaming the severity of the storm has already blown up in his face. In all too many cases, FEMA had the ability to help but did nothing or actively blocked others from helping. Blaming the Democrats for his problems won’t wash. If it had been possible to lay this thing at the door of local officials, Brown wouldn’t have been out of a job in the first place. He could have a come-to-Jesus moment in which he sees the error of his ways and becomes a motivational speaker for those afraid of making catastrophic errors. Assuming neither he nor his audience has any self-respect, that is. The simplest way out might be to offload some of the blame onto other administration officials. He could say the wrangling over jurisdiction that took place higher up the chain of command caused his superiors to hold off on acting. He could say that too much attention to the political angle of the situation delayed necessary authorizations. He could say that poor communication outside of FEMA hampered coordination of resources. He could say that he had expected a comparable level of support from the administration to that which he received in 2004 in Florida, but did not anticipate how much effect the fate of a critical swing state (governed by the president’s brother) had during an election year. He could even write a book about it. Other possibilities: He could move to a remote cabin in the mountains and spend the rest of his days muttering incoherently to himself. Some of Bush’s pals could give him a big bunch of money to shut his mouth, get lost, and stay lost. He could turn up dead. Sunday, September 11, 2005
Examples to the Contrary I called bullshit on the "the administration's senior domestic security officials" who claimed that their disaster plans "failed to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated." From 2002's Most Senior Administration Domestic Security Official, (and Bush 2000 presidential campaign director) Joe Allbaugh: Even so, the prospect of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was a FEMA priority. Numerous drills and studies had been undertaken to prepare a response. In 2002, Joe M. Allbaugh, then the FEMA director, said: "Catastrophic disasters are best defined in that they totally outstrip local and state resources, which is why the federal government needs to play a role. There are a half-dozen or so contingencies around the nation that cause me great concern, and one of them is right there in your backyard." Bullshit. Katrina Changed Everything If there is any one indicator of the impact Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath has had upon America's national discourse, it is the front page of the print edition of today's New York Times.  Above the fold, there are three stories and a large picture. Two of them have nothing to do with the terrorist attacks that took place here four years ago today. The third references them once, in relation to the federal government's failure to handle Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. There are no mentions in the three articles below the fold. Out of the page's 10 teasers, only three of them mention the topic, and one of them is primarily concerned with the hurricane. The events of 9/11/01 shocked the nation and the world. Two of the most important civil buildings in the world were destroyed. A huge explosion tore through the heart of the world's most powerful military. The attacks spawned two wars, and a radical reorganization of America's foreign and domestic policies. Elections turned on which candidates voters believed would protect the nation better from such attacks in the future. A mere four years later, the event's anniversary merits only footnotes on the front page of the nation's newspaper of record. Katrina changed everything. Saturday, September 10, 2005
Shorter John Tierney: In the wake of the devastating human tragedy caused by Hurricane Katrina, I can't understand why the Democrats would propose an independent investigation that can't be guaranteed to cover their asses politically. If they would just let the Republicans control everything, no unpleasant truths would be exposed, and everyone could go home happy. Friday, September 09, 2005
Power Grab Update From the look of the NYT this morning, it looks as though Mick Arran might have been on to something. As is often the case, the juicy bits are buried between the lines, so a little dissection is in order. WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - As New Orleans descended into chaos last week and Louisiana's governor asked for 40,000 soldiers, President Bush's senior advisers debated whether the president should speed the arrival of active-duty troops by seizing control of the hurricane relief mission from the governor. This is a red herring, a non-starter. Why would Bush's seizing control over the hurricane area "speed the arrival" of troops? Blanco had already asked him to send military help. I think that formulation may have been a telling slip of the tongue. The debate began after officials realized that Hurricane Katrina had exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration's senior domestic security officials, the plan failed to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated. As the Times makes abundantly clear, it seems that taking over from local authorities was the one thing the administration unambiguously was prepared for. Why would they have spent so much time and effort on it if they had assumed local authorities would have been adequate to the task? How much do you want to bet this is a complete fabrication and that examples to the contrary will be found spread out over dozens of disaster-recovery documents over the next week or two? As criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina has mounted, one of the most pointed questions has been why more troops were not available more quickly to restore order and offer aid. Interviews with officials in Washington and Louisiana show that as the situation grew worse, they were wrangling with questions of federal/state authority, weighing the realities of military logistics and perhaps talking past each other in the crisis. Blanco had been begging them to send help, as much as they could. To help her people. As it wasn't necessary for Bush to completely take over the situation in order for aid to be delivered, why would she be "wrangling" with the feds over power issues? Answer: because they were insisting on a takeover. Blanco wasn't the one bringing it up. To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Ms. Blanco would have resisted surrendering control, as Bush administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established. (emphasis added) Again, as I'll get into in a bit more detail below, Bush's seizing control wasn't necessary for him to use the active-duty military to deliver aid. Also, the whole "felt certain that Ms. Blanco would have resisted surrendering control" is fishier than bouillabaisse. I'm guessing they had already been directly pressuring her to do so, and did not want to admit to so egregious a power grab. Finally, we see again the centrality of the Insurrection Act, which, in the absence of an actual, uh, insurrection, was the only means whereby the feds could have sidestepped local control. The central issue in New Orleans wasn't that law and order had broken down--of course it had; there was a catastrophic flood--it was the humanitarian nightmare of hundreds of thousands of people trapped without water, food, or medical facilities. The fact that talk of martial law and the Insurrection Act caused available help to be withheld from the dispossessed and stranded is iteslf criminal, but also indicative of an overriding motive that had nothing to do with the welfare of these people. While combat troops can conduct relief missions without the legal authority of the Insurrection Act, Pentagon and military officials say that no active-duty forces could have been sent into the chaos of New Orleans on Wednesday or Thursday without confronting law-and-order challenges. This is bullshit, pure and simple. Do they mean to say that the biggest, baddest-assed force in the world can't be sent outside of martial law jurisdictions for relief purposes unless everyone there promises to be perfectly behaved? Aren't disaster areas, the site of most relief operations, themselves challenged in terms of law and order? Don't fights routinely break out in relief lines? That's assault, which is a law-and-order challenge. Give me a break. But just as important to the administration were worries about the message that would have been sent by a president ousting a Southern governor of another party from command of her National Guard, according to administration, Pentagon and Justice Department officials. Bullshit again. They didn't care about how it would have looked. In an emergency the size and scale of Katrina, the public would have approved of anything they thought would help. They didn't do it because it would have been blatantly illegal, and would have scared the crap out of every state politician in the country. Once it became clear there wasn't evidence of an armed revolution in the streets of New Orleans, they needed Blanco's permission for a takeover. Officials in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area. But they also say they were desperate and would have welcomed assistance by active-duty soldiers. (emphasis added) Is this BS, too? Where does it say Bush has to take control over the National Guard troops in order to send active-duty soldiers? Exactly how many troops would constitute a "large number"? How many could he have sent without seizing control? By Wednesday, she had asked for 40,000 soldiers. Why were they discussing who could get where faster on Wednesday? The enormity of the human tragedy that engulfed New Orleans was on every newspaper and television screen in the country. They should have sent everything they could find, or at least up to the 40,000 requested by Blanco. This shouldn't have required reflection, or legal niceties. People were in trouble, and it was the administration's duty to help. And of course the active-duty forces could have gotten there faster. They're "active" and "on duty." So they can get places fast. In any case, they would have arrived a hell of a lot faster if they had been ordered to go. But one senior Army officer expressed puzzlement that active-duty troops were not summoned sooner, saying 82nd Airborne troops were ready to move out from Fort Bragg, N.C., on Sunday, the day before the hurricane hit. So, "administration civilians" are admitting they didn't send available help to New Orleans because they were worried about "political fallout." Just like that. People suffered and died so the Bush administration could avoid "political fallout," and the Bush administration appears not to be shy about admitting it. And why, exactly, would they have had to shoot looters? Aren't there priorities in life-and-death situations? Perhaps they could have worried first about feeding and rescuing people to save their lives, and then taken care of the breaking and entering. I don't know where it's written that looters have to be shot, and I don't know of many small bands of looters that would stand up against organized military force, but that's evidently how the thinking went in the Bush administration. I don't know what's more inhuman: that they feel that people's lives are expendable in the name of politics, or that they were focused on the potential for looting over their responsibility to protect their own citizens. Perhaps the latter can be attributed to the time spent laying the groundwork for a takeover. Aides to Ms. Blanco said she was prepared to accept the deployment of active-duty military officials in her state. But she and other state officials balked at giving up control of the Guard as Justice Department officials said would have been required by the Insurrection Act if those combat troops were to be sent in before order was restored. More reverse-causality crap. Short of a full-on rebellion, whether the Act was invoked was Blanco's decision; it couldn't be used to force her to do anything. It could, however, have been involved as the price of a quid pro quo that got desperately needed aid to the huddled masses of New Orleans. In a separate discussion last weekend, the governor also rejected a more modest proposal for a hybrid command structure in which both the Guard and active-duty troops would be under the command of an active-duty, three-star general - but only after he had been sworn into the Louisiana National Guard. After any justification of invoking the Insurrection Act had passed, they were still trying to take over. As in so many other instances, when one rationale fails, the Bushies try another. A federal takeover was in no way necessary or legally mandated; they wanted it. The Pentagon is reviewing events from the time Hurricane Katrina reached full strength and bore down on New Orleans and five days later when Mr. Bush ordered 7,200 active-duty soldiers and marines to the scene. So it turns out they could send active-duty troops down to help? Even without taking over completely? Or does 7,200 fall short of the "large number" that would require the Act to be invoked? Or have they finally been dragged, kicking and screaming, to do the right thing by the fear of more political fallout? The issue of federalizing the response was one of several legal issues considered in a flurry of meetings at the Justice Department, the White House and other agencies, administration officials said. Why were they discussing whether a military deployment could take place without a state invitation? They had already been invited. It was a non-issue, unless, perhaps as part of a deliberate strategy to confuse the issue, you're conflating "military rescue mission" with "complete federal takeover of a disaster area." Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Why FEMA Dithered: Power Grab? This Mick Arran article over at Dispatches From the Trenches is an absolute must read. I don't know if it's 100% true or not, but it's the shortest path to an explanation I've seen for why FEMA sat on its hands and, in some cases, actively blocked, efforts to save the citizens of New Orleans. According to the Washington Post: Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday. Why might taking over be important enough to them that they'd let people die to do it? Arran explains: 1. Bush’s concern wasn’t centered on helping the starving and homeless refugees in New Orleans but on protecting private property in the suburbs from potential ‘looters’. The refugees were poor and black and the conservative view of them is that they’re all dangerous ‘rabble’—lazy, shiftless thieves; a mob. For my own part, I'd also add that it would give the feds the ability to limit press access to the city and classify information they didn't want out in the open, possibly on the grounds that it would reveal too much of our DHS infrastructure. It makes sense of the Bush administration's repeated Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said. Finally, it provides a rationale for why the feds were pushing the 'armed looter' story so hard: it wasn't to blame the locals for what had happened to themselves; it was meant to be used to justify the invocation of the Insurrection Act and as a stick to beat Blanco into giving up control over the city because she couldn't secure it. Here's how the Insurrection Act works: Quelling Civil Disturbances: The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C. § 331 et seq.)State and local governments have primary responsibility for quelling rebellions (32 C.F.R. § 215.4(a). It doesn't take much of a stretch to see the feds' actions and statements as specifically tailored to invoke the Act. It's pretty damned obvious that if relief workers and the NG had been allowed into the city in a timely manner, order could have easily been restored without a complete federal takeover of the city. As in Iraq, when the locals didn't follow the script and greet us with candy and flowers and coronate Ahmad Chalabi, there was no Plan B for New Orleans. DHS and FEMA didn't have any contingency worked out for the possibility that full martial law would not be imposed that would tell them to open the aid spigots. And there wasn't a way to quickly disseminate the new orders that wouldn't reveal that administration had dragged its feet. This further delayed relief, compounding the tragedy immensely. I'd imagine there were a lot of people in the DHS/FEMA carrying out these bizarre orders who were not under the Bush political machine umbrella, and who are scratching their heads awfully hard about it. Perhaps some of them will come forward and tell the nation in the coming days and weeks exactly what went on that prevented them from saving the lives of their fellow citizens. Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Tierney's Double Standard A lot of American conservatives cry for blood when a crime is committed. They want to deter potential criminals, and to simply punish the wrongdoers for what they've done. I don't know whether the lack of federal response to Katrina meets the legal definition of a crime. I believe it does, but that will in time be determined by the relevant authorities. At the very least, however, it amounted to grave incompetence that directly contributed to the deaths of hundreds or thousands of people. John Tierney doesn't seem to think the standard conservative reasoning should apply to a (republican) president and his administration: Mr. Bush made a lot of mistakes last week, but most of his critics are making an even bigger one now by obsessing about what he said and did. If your mother died because the nurse whose job it was to administer her medication failed to do so, you'd want to know why. You'd want her removed from her post so she wouldn't put any other patients at risk. You could very understandably wish to see her punished for her negligence. You could find yourself obsessing about the nurse, and no one would think it inappropriate or unnecessary. Why is it that conservative principles never seem to apply to conservative politicians? Sunday, September 04, 2005
Prediction When the stories of the Katrina survivors are more widely circulated, if some really seriously big heads don't roll (and aren't kicked into smithereens), there will be riots across America. If the Rodney King verdict was jaywalking; the lack of response to Katrina is mass murder. And lest anyone get the impression that there's a simple response to this situation, throwing Chertoff and Brown under the bus won't be nearly enough. Read this for just a few of hundreds of counts that belong in the indictment. Friday, September 02, 2005
Putting "Race and Class" in Context I keep hearing various folks in the post-Katrina media barrage talking about "race and class," and how they have influenced who has borne the brunt of this disaster. On one hand, I'm cheered that, at long last, the gatekeepers of our public discourse have seen fit to address the issue of poverty. The same bunch who couldn't pause for a moment's breath in their last few weeks of their hideously absurd coverage of rich, white, missing Natalee Holloway (during a war, no less) are actually talking about the tragedy of poverty and the inhumanity of the stark inequality that so often lies beneath the visible surface of this "richest country in the world." On the other hand, I want to tell them to shut the fuck up. It's almost as if they're under some kind of compulsion to come to the wrong conclusions. Here's a story that writes itself--they merely need to stand next to it and let the facts osmose through them and it's the very soul of journalism--and they just can't let it happen without screwing it up. What's wrong with the phrase "race and class"? Aren't the people trapped in the intensifying chaos and devastation of New Orleans, the people dying from lack of water and medical attention, aren't they largely poor and black? The fact that Katrina has brought class out in the open is hugely beneficial and long overdue. There are a lot of things we can do to help raise up all Americans, that will help people now and in the future. Maybe now, forlorn as that hope might be, we as a country can start down the road of full citizenship and dignity for all of us. But if you're going to talk about race, then you'd better be ready to talk about the legacy of slavery, the KKK, Jim Crow, and the effects of generations of institutionalized and informal discrimination. You'd better be ready to talk about how the families of most blacks in this country started out with nothing and have since been blocked again and again from accumulating more by the pure blind hatred of (some) whites, very often with the acquiescence and active participation of government. You'd better be ready to talk about how racism is still a powerful, living force in America today. You can't just wink at the issue. You can't use just the word "race" and assume everyone knows what you're talking about, because a lot of people don’t or won’t admit it. They'll just go and paint it with their own happy interpretations of history where there's nothing to regret, nothing to redress. They’ll conclude that these people were too lazy or stupid to get out of town, even after the mayor declared a mandatory evacuation. They’ll conclude that these people had the option to save money for emergencies but simply didn’t because they're irresponsible. (You know, because they're black.) Poverty--class--is the only immediate reason these people they didn't have the means to leave the city following the "mandatory" evacuation, and it would have applied equally to anyone regardless of color. In this context--in the context of New Orleans, of Katrina, and of the horrifying suffering of the people left behind to suffer and die--in this context, race is only relevant if it explains why they were poor to begin with. If you mention race but do not talk explicitly about why it's connected to poverty, then people are going to come to their own conclusions as to why you brought it up, and some of them are going to come up with some very ugly answers. Thursday, August 11, 2005
George W. Bush, Sociopath Bush tried to bullshit a grieving mother whose son died in Iraq. Right to her face. From The O'Reilly Factor: Kesterson: So actually, you know, it did come about. They put me into a cubicle by myself, took everything away from me. I also came prepared with a letter to give to the president about how I felt about the war and, you know, the loss of my son, my only child for a cause that I thought, you know, was not worthwhile at that point in time. The level of disrespect Bush showed Dolores Kesterson is staggering. When he was trying to sell the Iraq war to the international community, he talked about WMDs, about Saddam's aggressive and brutal history, and about the possibility of remaking the countries of the Middle East into stable democracies. He didn't try to connect Iraq with 9/11 because he knew it was false, and no nation would expend money and manpower in support of a lie. When it was possible he would get called on it, he actually bothered to stick to plausible justifications. When he was alone in a cubicle with a defenseless, utterly devastated, woman, he didn't. After all, what could she do for him? She wasn't worth the trouble. Why should he waste his beautiful mind on her? He thought he could slide on out of the room with a simple, crude, and deeply dishonest rhetorical question. Did he for a moment consider that she might have tried to make sense of why her only child had died? That she might be in the 90+ percent of the literate population of the world that knew Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11? Did he really believe he could put this one over on her? I guess so, or it just didn't matter. The leader of the free world had the unfathomable gall to look into the eyes of a grieving mother and lie to her face about why he put her son in mortal danger. That's not glib, shallow, or (most charitably) ignorant. It's sociopathic. The man has no business sharing the society of decent people, much less being the leader of the free world. Friday, August 05, 2005
Everyone's an Oracle From The Housing Bubble: "[Demos research associate] Silva worries that if housing prices flatten out or decline, some newer homeowners who have built up little equity, could find themselves 'upside down', owing more than their houses are worth. And, if interest rates rise, homeowners with adjustable rate mortgages may not be able to keep up higher payments or sell the house for what they paid. Foreclosures could spike and the supply of homes for sale soar. That could send real estate market into a tumble." Dear Economists, Please stop telling us only what we want to hear and then wondering amongst yourselves why we make so many dumb investment decisions. One of the core principles of your worldview is that market participants have enough information upon which to base their purportedly rational decisions. A lot of that information is supposed to come from the likes of you. If you fail to provide it, then any prognostication you do that assumes rational actors becomes worthless. If you share what you know, then we make better decisions, and you make better predictions. It's win-win. I realize that a lot of you work for private concerns that would prefer that the average schmuck is ignorant or, better yet, misinformed, about economic conditions. I could get angry with each of you personally, but I realize that somebody's going to do it, and it might as well be you pigs. No hard feelings. As for the rest of you, only one of you is the Chairman of the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America, and only a handful more of you are heads of the regional banks. Among your colleagues, it is only they who have the stature to materially and consistently affect the markets with their pronouncements such that they must be purposely gentle and vague with them, lest they upset the delicate balance of the economy. Compared to them, the rest of you are nobodies (exceptions listed to the left) who seriously need to get over yourselves. Individually, your piddling little publications don't move interest rates a tenth of a basis point or generate $10 worth of consumer spending. Together, however, your silence has allowed millions of people making $50,000 per year believe it makes sense to buy $400,000 houses with interest-only loans in a no-wage-growth environment in which rates are set to skyrocket. If your kids were in the that situation and wanted to buy that house, you'd spare no effort to talk them out of it. What about the millions of your countrymen who are headed down the greased rail toward bankruptcy? Do you have something against them? Do you hate America? Please, just do your jobs. Thank You, David Monday, July 18, 2005
Priorities Boy, Bush sure knew the facts when he was selling the Iraq War. Never mind that his own CIA was telling him that his yellowcake assertions were unfounded, that the UN inspections team had found no evidence of WMDs, and that no links had been found between Saddam Hussein's government and the perpetrators of 9/11. In the absence of sure evidence, Bush went with his gut feeling. It was good enough for him, and it should be good enough for us. But now, it's not just the lives of thousands of Americans, tens of thousands of Iraqis, or hundreds of billions of US taxpayers' dollars at stake. But this time it's important. It's his good buddy Karl Rove's future in the balance, and he wants to wait for all the facts before asking his pal if he broke the law. Well, I understand that. Karl's future is obviously a bigger national security concern than taking the fucking country to war under knowingly false pretenses. There are some issues where it's important to be as sure as possible before going forward. Thank god my president knows the difference. Sunday, July 17, 2005
United States of America: Terrorism Supporter A joint Saudi-Israeli (!) study has found that the foreigners fighting against the US occupation in Iraq are motivated by the invasion itself. Reading that, I thought 'yeah, yeah, tell me something I didn't know.' And then they did: the mujaheddin who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan were bad guys! Out of the 154 [foreign] fighters [in Iraq] analyzed, only a handful had past associations with terrorism, including six who had fathers who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, said the report, compiled by the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel. Since when were the Islamic mujaheddin who fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan considered "terrorists?" We helped fund them. We helped train them. We helped arm them. We provided them crucial intelligence. We organized a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics because we strongly believed the Soviet invasion was illegitimate. So now those who put their lives on the line, with our help, are to be regarded as "terrorists?" At the time, they were eulogized by none other than Saint Ronald Reagan as "the true voice of the Afghan people..." As of April, 2004, our friend and ally Hamid Karzai addressed them as "Mujahedin heroes." Obviously, something has changed. Perhaps 16 years' worth of sober reflection has brought us to the conclusion that the Soviets were in fact justified in their invasion of Afghanistan, and our misguided efforts to counter it amounted to supporting terror. Perhaps our invasion of Iraq was in part an attempt to make up for our past mistakes. Indirectly, it's a reasonable conclusion because we currently consider terrorists those who are fighting against the invaders of their own country and in support of their co-religionists and fellow Arabs. Or maybe it's just more politically convenient Newspeak. We have invaded a sovereign country, and thereby sparked a massive uprising that has drawn foreign help against what they clearly see as imperialist aggressors. It suits our purposes to cast those who fight against us as evil terrorists. However, the existence of so close a parallel, in which we were instrumental participants on the other side, puts the boldfaced lie to our righteous self-justifications. Far more galling has to be the fact that our then-allies, now-enemies have been steadfast in their adherence to their principles. As for us, Oceana has always been at war with the Mujahedin. Tuesday, July 12, 2005
A question for Republicans: What would George W. Bush have to do to lose your support? Check all that apply. [ ] - Forget to leave the seat down [ ] - Leave hair on the soap [ ] - Kick a puppy [ ] - Sleep with best friend's wife [ ] - Drown a sack of cats [ ] - Burn down a house containing a woman and three children [ ] - Lie to the American public to facilitate the invasion of another country that winds up costing 1,700 lives, 200 billion dollars, tens of thousands of minds and limbs, and the respect and support of every civilized people on the planet [ ] - Launch a nuclear strike on Peoria [ ] - Eat 10,000 babies per day [ ] - Destroy the earth "Source" vs. "Criminal" While talking about the Rove/Plame/Cooper/Miller situation to a co-worker, she kept saying that, regardless of what happened to Plame/Wilson as a result of the leak, and regardless of Rove's motivations, it was a Bad Thing that journalists could be legally compelled to give up their sources. After a number of attempts to explain why the pressure on Cooper and Miller was entirely justified, I came upon the following example: Let's say you're a reporter interviewing Karl Rove in his office. He points to the corner behind you in which there is a baby with a small bomb attached to it, and says "This is completely off the record, but if I were to say a certain word, beginning with the letter x, that bomb would go off and kill that baby." You ponder for a moment what possible use there could be for voice-activated baby-killing bomblets, and then Rove blurts out, "Xylophone." Boom. Dead baby.She got it then. The mere fact that the Plame leak involved words passing from a governmental official (or anyone, for that matter) to a reporter is not sufficient by itself to make the communication subject to journalistic privilege. What Rove is alleged to have said to those reporters is every bit as much of a crime as blowing up that baby. It's every bit as much of a crime as taking out a gun and shooting someone. There is no journalistic privilege that pertains to a reporter who witnesses a crime. I know this topic has been done to death, but, in the spirit of Plame Made Simple, I thought I'd do my bit to cut through some of the bullshit that Rove's defenders in the administration and the press have kicked up over the issue. The part I don't get is that the press itself fails to understand the distinction between source and criminal. Everywhere you turn, someone is lamenting the chilling effect Plamegate will ultimately have on freedom of the press. Unless freedom of the press is about enabling anonymous criminals to break the law in in front of reporters, there should be no effect from this case whatever. One of journalists' main jobs is to expose criminal activity, especially in the government. Journalistic privilege exists to a great extent to protect whistleblowers from retribution while at the same time enabling the press to bring out evidence of wrongdoing. Reporters make use of thousands of confidential sources every day. Apparently many of them do so without even knowing what a source is. Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Shameless How can Bush say: "I thank those of you who have re-enlisted in an hour when your country needs you. And to those watching tonight who are considering a military career, there is no higher calling than service in our Armed Forces. We live in freedom because every generation has produced patriots willing to serve a cause greater than themselves. Those who serve today are taking their rightful place among the greatest generations that have worn our Nation's uniform. When the history of this period is written, the liberation of Afghanistan and the liberation of Iraq will be remembered as great turning points in the story of freedom."when he was a draft-dodger? He got bumped to the front of the get-out-of-Vietnam line, demonstrably because he didn't want to go to war. He didn't join the Texas National Guard because he wanted to serve in the Texas National Guard (not to mention the fact that he didn't even bother to show up for duty). How can he look military families in the face as he thanks them for shouldering the burdens of defending America? He gives them the clumsy sleight of hand where he turns Iraqis into Al Qaeda, and then he tells them that the clusterfuck in Iraq is going according to the plan that he lied to them to implement. If one of my kids had died in Iraq, I'd want to want to slap that look off his face with the dress-uniformed corpse of my dead child. "Look, this is real *smack!* This is what you've done with your war of choice! My son *smack!* is dead! Now stop the platitudes and give me the real story, or I'll stuff this corpse down your throat." Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Sigh Well, George, which is it? What you told Tony Blair earlier this month at your summit meeting, or what you're going to say tonight in your big speech? To Blair: Tony Blair was warned that war-torn Iraq remains on the brink of disaster - more than two years after the removal of Saddam Hussein - during his summit with President Bush in Washington earlier this month.To the American people: Tomorrow, the President will also talk about the strategy for success. He will talk in a very specific way about the way forward. There is a clear path to victory. It is a two-track strategy: there is the military and political track. On the military front, it's important to continue training and equipping the Iraqi security forces so that they're able to defend themselves, and then our troops can return home with the honor that they deserve. And then there is the political track. The Iraqi people are showing that they're determined to build a free and democratic and peaceful future, and we must continue to do all we can to support them as they build a lasting democracy.The terrorists are failing... And every step of the way, these terrorists have failed to stop the progress on the political front. They have failed to stop the Iraqi people from moving forward on holding elections and electing a representative government. They have failed to stop the Iraqi people from signing up to serve in the security forces. And they failed to stop the transfer of sovereignty just one year ago, as well, on the time schedule that was outlined....so we're negotiating with them Last night it was revealed that American officials have held secret face-to-face talks with Iraqi insurgents in a bid to diffuse the violent opposition in the country.Why does Bush think he can keep throwing our boys into the wood-chipper without even bothering to keep his story straight and without any pretense that he knows what he's doing? Why does he think the British can handle the truth but we can't? Links via Juan Cole Saturday, June 04, 2005
Decent Living Standards Are So 20th Century As the economic security of the American middle class grows more and more tenuous, some people have been saying that living standards in Europe are better than ours. Europeans take six weeks off a year and don't have to worry about going bankrupt when they get sick. If they lose their jobs, they don't wind up homeless. When they retire, they get guaranteed pensions they can actually live on. Oh yeah? Well David Brooks says their system is failing, and they'll all be broke and disillusioned before long. Who do they think they are, anyway? Thomas Friedman laughs at the stupid French voters who don't want to give up their living standards. They should have approved the EU constitution and started to take their medicine. Knuckle down, Europe. Quit your whining. You're going to have to work longer hours, give up your vacations, your medical care, and retirement benefits. The Chinese and Indians can do your jobs better and cheaper, and Capital is going to drop you like a warm bag of shit. Ha ha, stupid Europeans. Get over yourselves. You have no human dignity. Ok, fellas, just keep telling the proles that. I'm sure you'll convince a lot of them. As things get worse and worse, they'll just bend over and take it, like the good little sheep they are. They won't vote this whole crowd out on their asses. They won't demonstrate. They won't put restrictions on the corporations they themselves built taking their money out of their countries. Nope, nothing like that has ever happened. Oh, wait, it's always happened. When people's livelihoods are threatened, they take action. Jesus, how stupid do these two think people are? Europeans know that the Indians and Chinese earn barely a fifth as much as they do. Even if they give up all of their perks, labor in the developing world is still going to be much cheaper than theirs. Brooks and Friedman tell them that this is what's coming, and that nothing can, will, or should be done about it. Great message, guys. And all this talk about how Europe is living a pipe dream doesn't really do much to advance the unstated but obvious premise that everything's hunky-dory here in the good ol' US of A. It's not going to take Americans very long to figure out that, even with our expensive* and for shit medical system, our piss-poor minimum wage, our inadequate and precarious pensions, our near-total absence of labor protections, and our long working hours, even we're way more expensive than Chinese and Indian labor. Looks like we're going to have to work a lot harder, too, and at the end of the day, we'll be making a lot less money, no matter what. Nowhere in any of this pedantic blather is there any mention of anything we should be doing to increase the value of our labor and protect our standard of living. Nope, in Washington, we're busy cutting government investment in research and education, two of the main reasons we had an advantage over other countries in the first place. Unfettered capital, and its complete disregard for social welfare, has to have its way. Um, and we need smaller government. If this is the new Republican talking point, I say let them run with it. They're doing our work for us. *Hey David, how well do we stack up against Europe per capita GDP-wise after you take into account how much more we spend on medical care than they do? How about after you put a value on all of those extra days off? I'm just saying. Update: Avedon Carol at The Sideshow got there first. Friday, June 03, 2005
Two Analogies I saw these over at Steve Gilliard's, in the comments to this post. They deserve an (ever so slightly) wider audience. Steve: This war has been as bad, if not worse, than we predicted. And this utter gem from BrianOC: A good analogy is if you and a buddy set out at your buddy's instigation to "beat the living crap" out of someone. However when you've both got the guy down and are pummelling your victim, your buddy pulls out a gun and finishes him off. In the post itself, Steve makes a point that all concerned would do well to think about: We can't save Iraq, and we can't salvage our involvement there. I'm not sure I agree with his pick-up-and-get-out-now recommendation, but the idea that we're accomplishing something worthwhile there is ludicrous. We invaded the country based on a series of lies. We killed a lot of innocent people there. We tortured and sexually abused a bunch more. Through lack of planning and follow-through, we caused their infrastructure to be ravaged and their national treasures plundered. We are damaged goods, and we look worse to the Iraqis every day this clusterfuck of an occupation drags on. We tell the Iraqis that we're working towards a day when we'll leave and they can take care of themselves and everything will be wonderful. They must think we're crazy. As soon as we leave, there will be a civil war, and quite possibly a war war if Turkey and Iran decide they don't like the way things are going. Why are we so proud of what we have in America? Because our founders reinvented government, and through two hard centuries of slow progress, which included a civil war that nearly destroyed us, we made this nation into something to be admired and emulated. We had an advantage, though: we started from scratch.* With the possible exception of Egypt, Iraq has more millenia of brutal precedent and built-up grudges than anywhere else in the world. It's not going to change overnight. Saddam is an unrepentant thug who visited unspeakable suffering upon his people. Now there is more suffering, and it is our doing. There is the almost inevitable prospect of much worse to come. We've been irresponsibly meddling in Iraq's affairs since 1990, when Reagan-Bush I Iraq ambassador April Glaspie thoughtlessly said to Saddam " We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait." Nothing we've done there since has done a damned bit of good, for the Iraqis** or for us. Maybe it's time we finally learned our lesson. *Even we began with a healthy dose of **Excepting the Iraqi Kurds, to whom we have given the most heartbreaking gift of all, false hope. Once we leave, Turkey will crush them utterly. Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Toil and Trouble Garance Franke-Ruta really misses the point about the housing bubble: There's been plenty of talk over the past week about "froth" in the real-estate market, much of it very general and a lot of it irrelevant to most local markets, which tend to more closely resemble middling Tampa or Phoenix than super-hot spots like San Francisco or West Palm Beach. Consequently, all this bubble talk can't be taken too seriously -- what really matters are the regional fundamentals, which too few people pay attention to. Yes, some markets are more overheated than others, but everyone should be very concerned about what is happening in the housing market, and not just because of those who are currently having problems. Franke-Ruta's focus is completely wide of the main issues. Let's pay attention to who's really getting hurt in this market, eh? As Richard Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research, told The New York Times, "What does it matter if a 'professional home flipper' gets burned in a housing downturn?' Well, it matters, because all the non-flippers will also get burned, and will, in many cases find their outstanding debt far outstrips the real value of their homes. It matters because financial institutions will tighten credit restrictions beyond recognition, making loans of all kinds much more difficult to come by (and, not incidentally, shrinking the pool of potential homebuyers, further reducing prices). It matters because everyone across the homeowning spectrum will be and feel poorer, which will dampen the consumer spending that has kept the American economy afloat for the past several years. It matters because of the huge pressure that will be brought to bear on the government to bail out profligate lenders and unlucky (ill-informed) homeowners with higher taxes at the same time as the economy is stagnating or worse. It matters because a rapid enough popping of the bubble has the potential to push the U.S. (and world) economy into a full-blown depression. Finally, any discussion of "the [real estate] fundamentals" that doesn't take into account the cheap money made available through historically low interest rates and absurdly lax lending controls isn't going to explain anything. If foreclosures are at record levels now, while rates are at rock-bottom and prices continue to rise, what's going to happen when conditions go south? (For those interested, a thorough overview of the U.S. real estate situation is available here.) Tuesday, March 22, 2005
"What a terrible thing it is to lose one's mind. Or to not have a mind. What a terrible waste that is." Matthew Yglesias' fascinating thought experiment, in which his higher brain function is nefariously swapped with that of Terri Schiavo, inspires me to take a new perspective on the pro-life mind. Their religion tells you that your true worth is in your soul, that your body is only the source of sinful impulses that should be resisted, that your body is evil. When your body has finally broken and died, the important bit, the only bit that is actually you, goes to heaven or is punished eternally. Isn't it interesting, then, that they spend so much of their time defending the dignity of the part that isn't important? They go on and on about the dignity of the unborn fetus (which, in nearly all of the cases that animate them doesn't even have a cerebral cortex), and they go on and on about the goggle-eyed ragdoll that is Terri Schiavo. Although people with functioning cortices die in their millions around the world for preventable reasons, this crowd gets itself whipped up over empty shells. Maybe, as their actions to preserve Schiavo would seem to suggest, the soul is released from the body the latter dies. Wouldn't it be tragic for her if the world worked in accordance with their theology? Her soul, still in its mortal state, would be still alive, chained to that useless body, unable to express itself or even sense the world around her. If they're right, I can't think of any nonsadistic reason they might have for wanting her to persist in this state. Friday, March 18, 2005
Blind Cruelty = B.C. I just wanted to add to Matthew Yglesias' eminently sound rebuke of Eugene Volokh's case for retributive cruelty a few small observations. Matthew is correct in the pragmatic sense, that official sanction for the carrying out of such impulses is detrimental to societal unity by fostering a culture of grudge-holders. It would also tend to the enshrinement of martyrs, the existence of whom would likely act as levers for disaffected groups to legitimize their beliefs. It is instructive to look to the aftermath of the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents, neither of which was a sanctioned, purposeful action on society's behalf, and yet contributed to the belief on the part of Timothy McVeigh and others that blowing up a federal building was a reasonable response. Carrying this line of thinking to its logical extreme, I wonder how far the ideas of a certain Jewish carpenter's son would have spread had the Romans quietly killed or imprisoned him. I'd also like to suggest that followers of that martyred individual who advocate such forms of punitive retribution find another religion. I mean, that's the whole point, that in the face of such treatment, you're supposed to overcome your natural impulses toward revenge and strive to love one another, even unto one's enemies. If you don't even aspire to this, you can in no sense account yourself Christian. Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Social Security Debate  Tanner's earring. Catches the light, huh? Last night I saw the Paul Krugman-Michael Tanner-Josh Marshall Social Security debate at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, and wanted to jot a few things down while they're fresh in my mind. The title of the debate was "Social Security: Is it Really a Crisis?" It was very loosely structured as moderated by the rather unbecomingly partisan (our side, of course) Vered Mallon. Also, it wasn't very clear what Josh Marshall was doing there--nominally, he was there as some kind of political analyst, yet Krugman repeatedly apologized for going into "numbers" and "economics." Structurally, the whole thing on the left side of the issue seemed muddled, and the two-on-one (three, if you count Mallon) setup seemed gratuitous, given Krugman's mere presence. There was nothing muddled about the Cato Institute's Michael Tanner's role, however. He was there to advocate privatization of Social Security, to pooh-pooh the idea that true add-ons have any merit, and to contradict himself as much as possible. Well, the last bit was my impression. It may not have been intentional. The debate began with Tanner admitting up front that privatization had nothing to do with the solvency of Social Security. This was both smart and stupid: smart, because Krugman would have utterly embarassed him, and stupid, because he then didn't have any reason for being there. He kept alluding to the financing problems the system would have to deal with: when it was going to go broke, how much it was going to cost the government to deal with it, the number of retirees, etc., but always in the context of the need for privatization, so he had to stop short of making his point. Krugman never let the point slide, relentlessly characterizing privatization as an ideological preference, rather than a practical necessity. The debate format allowed Krugman to get up to speed and really flesh out his arguments, as opposed to the over-the-top catch phrase-laden performances he sometimes gives on television. I overheard one of a trio of early 20-something guys behind me suggest to his friends that if they had a game where they drink every time Krugman bashes the Bush administration, everyone would be drunk in 10 minutes. By my count, they wouldn't have finished their first beer by the end of the debate. He repeatedly hammered home the point that Social Security is an insurance plan that allows Americans to share the risks of death, injury, and poor lifetime earnings. If that's not the democrats' main talking point going forward, it should be. I almost wanted to feel bad for Tanner. I mean, going toe-to-toe in a debate with a Nobel-worthy scholar in front of a hostile audience is the worst kind of gig. But he was a standard-issue drone, insensitive to having his glaring logical inconsistencies and outright contradictions pointed out to him, self-importantly cheesy, and visibly dishonest. He may have believed in in some greater purpose that was served by the things he said, but Krugman repeatedly pointed out instances where Tanner had said multiple mutually exclusive things, and it never fazed him. He just kept on beating the same old tired drum.  In his introduction, Tanner claimed that a poll released that day had indicated that 54% of Americans favored private plans. I could see Krugman ask Marshall whether such a poll existed (given that the most recent polls show about a 35% approval rating), and both of them shaking their heads and shrugging in turn. Josh said he thought the privatization debate was (paraphrasing--hand cramps) about as close to dead as you can get. It was never a good idea, and the Republicans pushed it because they bought their own spin and thus were completely blinded to what the general public would think of it. Curiously, Tanner didn't even reply to Josh's persuasive case that the ultimate aim of the privatizers was the complete dismantling of Social Security. He made some weak claim that disability benefits, as they exist now, were a part of every plan, but that was it. He didn't deny he wanted to get rid of the program. I don't know if he was saving himself for Krugman, or if he just couldn't make himself say the words. There was an interesting back and forth between Tanner and Krugman on the subject of whether or not Social Security recipients were supplicants to the government. Somehow, with 4% of their income going into private accounts and 8% into traditional Social Security, according to Tanner, workers would be transformed from beggars into proud individualists. Krugman drily dismissed him. Tanner made a lot of noise about the inheritability of private accounts, and, unfortunately, neither Paul nor Josh explicitly made the point that inheritability would really only mean something if you die before you're 65. Krugman did do a great job of explaining how Bush's plan works, he just didn't counter the inheritability argumant effectively. The best moment of the night had to be when Krugman invoked the notion of moral equality, when one doesn't have to defer to others merely because of their wealth. The mere fact of knowing that you can support yourself gives you dignity and standing in society. Once that's gone, equality becomes impossible. |