Right-wing commenters

In response to a Inky piece about the Army Experience Center, we get comments like:

Posted by ark 06:00 PM, 05/14/2009

I can envision one day the use of real people as targets. The protesters, code pink, ACORN, MADD. Well, one can dream can't he!

followed by:

Posted by steimel 08:27 PM, 05/14/2009

ARK, I share your dream.

shortly before that:

Posted by steimel 08:25 PM, 05/14/2009

Do you protestors ever take the time to protest a cop killer, or a video game? ... Its about your hate for the armed services of the USA.

Erm, okay. We peacenik lefties are the ones consumed by hate. Right. Sure. Okay.
We then see in comments for a piece about Speaker Pelosi and the CIA's briefings on waterboarding:

Posted by STEVE5444 03:13 AM, 05/15/2009

Damm Nancy.. You were kept out of the loop,, shucks, Everyone knew except you.. maybe because you have a BIG MOUTH and don't know when to shut it...

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Posted by blombard 06:14 AM, 05/15/2009

This woman should be convicted for stupidity. How in the world did she get elected. Ohhh..now I remember she used the millions of dollars her husband stole from military contracts to fund her political agenda. Off with her head.

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Posted by nuggett 07:06 AM, 05/15/2009

Yeah right ????? What a crock !!! She and her party will bring down Obama with their greed and pork....Not hard to believe that this woman is a politican.....She lies and back stabs and must have pictures and lots of money to get wehre she is.....If George and Chenney are the best the republicans can produce....they should not be embarrassed as Pelosi is the cheese of the Democrats......NOW that is embarrassing....

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Posted by snad264 07:17 AM, 05/15/2009

This broad is an idiot! The fact that she is House Speaker is quite disturbing. She is an embarassment to the Democrats, and drags down the Party in a similar way former V.P. Cheney hurts the Republican Party.

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Posted by PhillySteve21 07:24 AM, 05/15/2009

Actually, it sounds as if she knew about it the WHOLE time and is only now trying to distance herself! This woman is absolutely insane.

Have to say, though, that the funniest comment came a little later than these first five:

Posted by tr88 07:38 AM, 05/15/2009

Good to see the Inquirer getting on this story a month after the Drudge Report isnt it? And Drudge is free. The difference is Drudge is a real news source, not an advocate.

Drudge is not an advocate - Bwah-hah-hah-hah!!!!! Heh, that's a good one. As if Drudge was ever anything other than a partisan hack. Now do online sources like Drudge out-scoop traditional news sources like the Inky? Unfortunately, yes. That happens all the time. The blogger emptywheel displays her impatience with the traditional media:

Mark, Mark, Mark. I spelled this all out here, back when it became apparent to anyone with a command of the English language that Goss' dispute with Pelosi had nothing to do with her contention (which was clear even then) that the CIA hadn't told Congress that it had already been using waterboarding.

And here's an interesting one:

Posted by TylerDurden 08:32 AM, 05/15/2009

If she [Pelosi] were a Republican, the media would be outraged. Since she's a Democrat, it's ok that she's clueless.

Um yeah, sure, I remember the outrage over there being no connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. As the WaPo put it in
June 2004:

The finding challenges a belief held by large numbers of Americans about al Qaeda's ties to Hussein. According to a Harris poll in late April, a plurality of Americans, 49 percent to 36 percent, believe "clear evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda has been found."

Problem of course, was that there was no documentation for any such connection. Had there been any substantive outrage over the conscious and deliberate deception, why did so many Americans believe as late as this that there had been such a connection?

Unfortunately, a lot of this unhinged hatred for progressives results in eliminationism, a desire to simply eliminate whole categories of people. It's very distressing, but the tendency is far more widespread than most folks would like to believe. I'm pleased to note that the author of the piece I linked to is a bit of a free-speech fanatic. I share his belief that the answer to bad speech is better speech. Ignoring the bad speakers or trying to suppress them is a losers game. It's far better to put a spotlight on them and to show people what we're battling than it is to try and sweep everything under the rug.

Mary Matalin speaks up for Dick Cheney

Mary Matalin has come to Cheney's defense:

“If Barack Obama had come in and done what he said he was going to do and look at the stuff and see what is working, then Cheney would have continued to do what he was doing — working on memoirs, finishing his house,” she said. “He’s got a good life. He’s got stuff going on. He doesn’t care about being on TV. There’s no more politics there. He’s not settling any scores. He just wants people to understand.“

Okay, what did Obama say he was going to do? In MyBarackObama in the defense section, he speaks of "restoring" frayed alliances. That sounds to me like GeeDubya messed things up and Obama felt he had a mandate to fix them. It doesn't sound like there was much investigation to be done. Alliances needed to be restored because they were obviously frayed or broken.

Was torture "working" in any meaningful sense? Not according to former Army Intelligence Officer Stuart Herrington, who said:

"We have lost the moral high ground,"

"If we use torture when we question prisoners, we forfeit the right to demand that anyone treat our soldiers decently if they are taken prisoner,"

"If we engage in that kind of activity, we put our soldiers at increased risk."

It wasn't necessary to "look at the stuff and see what is working," it was already obvious that it wasn't "working."

If there are no "politics" to his appearing on the teevee, why won't Cheney appear with interviewers who will challenge him? If he's just going to be talking with people like Bob Schieffer of "Face The Nation," who didn't ask any tough questions or as Air America pointed out "he'd have no problem testifying before Congress about the torture memos, but stopped short of promising to do so under oath." Meaning he doesn't want to, y'know, actually be held accountable for anything he says.

What I find very disturbing is the tendency of people in the press corp's "village" to try and find some sort of middle ground in the "debate" (If you can dignify the discussion with that highfalutin' term) over torture. Folks, there IS NO "middle ground"! It's wrong, period! The idea that we should let people like former President Bush trust their "guts" is insane! Bush's "gut" is absolutely the worst guide to anything wise or sensible I can imagine.

Answer to Austrian Economists

I wrote a piece called "The Great Recession." It prompted a follower of the "Austrian Economists" (A Libertarian group) to ask whether the Federal Reserve was pumping too much money into the economy and whether that was causing recessions.
I said I'd look into it and finally went to my local library after a few unsuccessful internet searches and asked about Federal Reserve Board interest rates going as far back as possible (It was easy to find rates going back a few weeks or months, but the librarian had to search for a bit to find them going back further) and I then pulled up a list of recessions (That wasn't hard at all).

Recession of 1953

1951 1Q	1951 2Q	1951 3Q	1951 4Q	1952 1Q	1952 2Q	1952 3Q	1952 4Q
1.75	1.75	1.75	1.75	1.75	1.75	1.75	1.75

Recession of 1957

1955 1Q	1955 2Q	1955 3Q	1955 4Q	1956 1Q	1956 2Q	1956 3Q	1956 4Q
1.50	1.63	1.75	2.25	2.50	2.65	2.75	3.00

Recession of 1960

1958 1Q	1958 2Q	1958 3Q	1958 4Q	1959 1Q	1959 2Q	1959 3Q	1959 4Q
2.94	2.03	1.75	2.00	2.50	3.00	3.50	4.00

Recession of 1980

1978 1Q	1978 2Q	1978 3Q	1978 4Q	1979 1Q	1979 2Q	1979 3Q	1979 4Q
6.37	6.50	7.23	8.26	9.50	9.50	9.69	11.27

Recession of 1990

1988 1Q	1988 2Q	1988 3Q	1988 4Q	1989 1Q	1989 2Q	1989 3Q	1989 4Q
6.00	6.00	6.00	6.50	6.50	7.00	7.00	7.00

Recession of 2001

1999 1Q	1999 2Q	1999 3Q	1999 4Q	2000 1Q	2000 2Q	2000 3Q	2000 4Q
4.50	4.50	4.50	4.75	5.00	5.50	6.00	6.00

Recession of 2007

2005 1Q	2005 2Q	2005 3Q	2005 4Q	2006 1Q	2006 2Q	2006 3Q	2006 4Q
3.25	3.75	4.25	4.75	5.26	5.75	6.25	6.25

Non-recessions

Non-recession of 1970

1968 1Q	1968 2Q	1968 3Q	1968 4Q	1969 1Q	1969 2Q	1969 3Q	1969 4Q
4.50	5.20	5.50	5.25	5.50	5.95	6.00	6.00

Non-recession of 1996

1994 1Q	1994 2Q	1994 3Q	1994 4Q	1995 1Q	1995 2Q	1995 3Q	1995 4Q
3.00	3.00	3.50	4.00	4.75	5.25	5.25	5.25

Non-recession of 2006

2004 1Q	2004 2Q	2004 3Q	2004 4Q	2005 1Q	2005 2Q	2005 3Q	2005 4Q
2.00	2.00	2.25	2.75	3.25	3.75	4.25	4.75

So what do we have?
1953, interest rates in the two years beforehand were completely flat.
1957, we see what looks like a classic rise with rates going from 1.50 to 3.00.
1960, rates wobbled from 2.94 to 1.75, but then rising from there to 4.00.
1980, 6.37 to 11.27 in a straight line upwards.
1990 saw a very gradual rise from 6.00 to 7.00.
2001 saw another gradual rise from 4.50 to 6.00.
2007 saw a rise from 3.25 to 6.25.
With the non-recessions, we see a rise from 4.50 to 6.00 in 1968-69 not leading to a recession.
1994 to 1995, a rise of 3.00 to 5.25 did not lead to a recession.
2004 to 2005, a rise of 2.00 to 4.75 did not lead to a recession.

So, the initial question I received after I wrote my piece on the economy was "Why didn't I account for the actions of the Fed?" What does the Fed do? Basically, it sets the interest rate. The reason why the economists I read did not account for the interest rate set by the Fed appears to be that there's really not much of a connection between what interest rate the Fed sets and how the economy reacts (Note that the list of recessions I linked to above lists a different reason for each recession). It appears there's usually a rise in the interest rate in the two years before a recession, but not always and sometimes it's a steep rise and sometimes it's a gradual one. 1950-1970, rises tended to be extremely gradual with not much change from quarter to quarter at all. That period saw three recessions.
The early 1980s saw extremely high interest rates, going up as high as 14.00, as Paul Volcker was using those rates to eliminate the inflation that had persisted so stubbornly up to that point.
So I find the explanation that the Fed plays an extremely decisive role in the ups and downs of the economy to be an unconvincing one. Obviously it plays a role, but there appear to be many other meaningful factors that also affect the economy.

Conversation with a conservative: political behavior comparable?

I challenged a conservative on an online discussion board following an article on which lefty sources he was familiar with as he kept complaining that I wasn't well informed and that I kept making old, discredited arguments.

rich 2056, I have read Saul Alinsky's "rules for radicals". What else is there to read. It lays out Obama's campaign stratagy and defines the moves he is making since taking office. As far as I am concerned any progressive is just someone that can't make it on his own. Got a job yet? He talks about how he will change the universe for the better, but what he really means is that he will stifle debate, defame excellance and reward mediocrity. He does not know how to make money but is very good at taking it from those that have it. The progressive movement is probably the greatest threat this country has ever faced. No, Rich, I am familiar with "your kind" and I would hope that you would go somewhere else with your drival.

My answer:

Here's a summary of "Rules" Nothing here about radicals being dishonest or deceptive. Alinsky even advocates that radicals have alternative solutions available for the problems they call attention to. [The discussion board generally doesn't allow links, but they allowed my follow-up with the link to be posted as it was clearly relevant to the discussion]

Now, folks in the traditional media like to assume the attitude of "A pox on both your houses" and many, many times it's completely inappropriate. Here's a piece on two sets of political ads. In the first set, former PA Senator Rick Santorum makes factually incorrect suggestions, the other set of ads are entirely accurate. Both sets of ads are "tough," but otherwise are quite different. The problem that the piece points to is that the reporter treats them as equivalents, which they very clearly aren't.

But it seems to me that reading the quickie summary of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and reading the frames within which a typical Daily Kos post looks at a public meeting (at which the issue of gays is discussed) that "A pox on both your houses" is a pretty good way to look at the issue.

On points, the hearings were a resounding victory for the pro-equality side. There's simply no other way to judge it. Our side was on-message, tightly-focused, full of emotional and often-heartbreaking stories, and at the same time respectful of religious groups, who will be affected not a whit by the bill.

The other side came off as a ragtag bunch of whiners and fearmongers and faux-experts citing crappy science. Crappy, crappy, crappy science. Listening to audio only, I had to occasionally check to make sure I hadn’t time-warped back to the 1960s. By late afternoon, the anti-gay crowd could barely muster the energy to clap for their own speakers. It was...kinda pathetic, really. [emphasis in original]

This post views politics in much the same way that Alinsky suggests. Words are viewed as useful tools with which to persuade people. Both sides present their positions with all of their agonizing and debating in the past. For the activists, all of the pertinent questions have already been answered to their satisfaction. The purpose of the debate is not for us all to sit and reason together, but to sell a position to the public at large.


It's of course pretty ludicrous to suggest that the party of Richard Nixon's chief political dirty tricks strategist Donald Segretti, Ronald Reagan's William "October surprise" Casey, the elder George Bush's Lee Atwater and the younger George Bush's Karl Rove is in any way a moral paragon that liberals compare at all badly to. But manipulating information in order to present it in the best, most politically effective light is not necessarily a bad thing. Let's recognize that there's absolutely no necessity, whether we're using Saul Alinsky or not, to be dishonest. The current debate over torture is an instructive case. Former VP Cheney gave an interview in which he claimed that there were still-secret documents that exonerated the Bush Administration on torture.

The Bushies want this question — “did torture stave off terror attacks and save lives?” — hovering in the air. There’s plenty of evidence that torture hasn’t worked at all and has done more harm than good. Even some former Bush administration officials have conceded it hasn’t done anything to stop terror attacks.

But it’s easy for the Cheney camp to muddy the waters and turn this into a matter of debate by citing unspecified classified info that supposedly supports the claim that it has saved lives — info that we’ll never see.

So no, the former VP isn't precisely lying. He's just making misleading statements that are difficult to disprove. This was a tactic used constantly during the Bush years, the continual referencing to information that very few people had access to. "Yeah, yeah. The info's solid. Just trust us!" Of course, all of the secret information turned out to be just so much nonsense. Do groups on the political left have that option? No, such groups don't have the option of keeping crucial information on national security threats inaccessible to the government of the United States. If they have important information and don't share it with the government, they're then criminally liable if an attack occurs. "Radical" groups don't have the same option to get away with being able to mislead the public as groups in charge of the government do. It's also useful to keep in mind the fact that the government has become much more close-lipped with information since Alinsky's book was written and that the internet has made it much easier to double-check partisan claims.

Is there anything to the idea that if "radicals" take over the US, that the US will experience a repeat of Cambodia 1975, with the cities emptied and intellectuals forced to work on farms in order to punish them for being snobs? I don't think people on the left are naturally or inherently superior to those on the right, but something very crucial happened between the time Alinsky wrote his book and today.

The Soviet Union collapsed.

One of Karl Marx's ideas was that states could transform. That a state could start out as capitalist, become socialist and proceed to being communist. Not only did capitalism prove to be far more durable than Marx thought, but the Soviet Union started out being a centralized, militaristic and tyrannical system. What was it when it collapsed? It hadn't changed a bit. It was still a centralized, militaristic and tyrannical system.

What lefties, liberals and progressives concluded from that was that political systems, as they grow from being small political groups to running whole states, don't change. They change scale, but they don't change their essence. If we want to end up with a system that's egalitarian, that takes advice from all quarters, that respects the contributions of everyone and allows even opponents to make the occasional contribution, then we have to begin that way. It has to be built that way from the ground up.

Obama "talks about how he will change the universe for the better, but what he really means is that he will stifle debate, defame excellance (sic) and reward mediocrity." Of course all of that is merely guesswork, a presumption that our president will ever be so powerful that he can simply disregard the desire of the people that form his political base. Sorry, but after working with progressives for several years, I just don't see us as "stifling debate." The right-wing pundit and occasional Bill O'Reilly guest Michelle Malkin used to work as a reporter under the editorship of the highly respected progressive writer David Neiwert and refers to him as a "free speech absolutist."

Yes, the website Daily Kos (DKos' "Vision for America") deletes the comments of people they call "trolls." These are comments that are simply disruptive. Comments that a moderator disagrees with politically can only be combated by making a disagreeing comment after it. We as moderators for PhillyIMC and the IMC community in general observe much the same set of rules. So no, the left community in America does not quite come up to Neiwert's standard, but I don't think we fall much short of it and I don't think there's much risk of our copying the Khmer Rouge upon taking control of America.

DNI McConnell's credibility

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell claimed a little over a year ago that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being uncooperative:

DIRECTOR McCONNELL: Let’s take it from the beginning. Has waterboarding ever been used by a professional organization whose mission is to extract information? The answer is yes. You might ask what are the circumstances? Three times. Situations where there’s been interrogation over a period of time. It was unsuccessful. Water boarding was used and then information started to flow.

This testimony, the "only three times" claim was produced many times by conservatives seeking to minimize US culpability.

But now we have access to the 2004 CIA Inspector General's report. In it, the CIA IG John Helgerson details that actually, KSM was waterboarded a total of 183 times and another suspect, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.

Indeed, before the CIA used enhanced techniques in its interrogations of KSM, KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, "Soon, you will know." Id. We understand that the use of enhanced techniques in the interrogation of KSM, Zubaydah, and others, by contrast, has yielded critical information. See IG Report at 86, 90-91 (describing increase in intelligence reports attributable to use of enhanced techniques). (emphases added)

As the blogger Marcy Wheeler points out, Steven Bradbury (Who wrote two of the "Torture memos" released by the Obama Administration on 16 April) is conflating effective interrogation with the sheer number of reports. Waterboarding KSM and Zubaydah produced lots and lots of reports, but it's far from clear that it produced any useful intel. In fact,

By CIA's own admission, they used waterboarding with Abu Zubaydah at a time when he was already completely compliant with interrogators.

And as was pointed out in 2007,

....Under this duress, Zubaydah told them that shopping malls were targeted by al Qaeda....Zubaydah said banks — yes, banks — were a priority....And also supermarkets — al Qaeda was planning to blow up crowded supermarkets, several at one time. People would stop shopping. The nation's economy would be crippled. And the water system — a target, too. Nuclear plants, naturally. And apartment buildings.

Thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each flavor of target. Of course, if you multiplied by ten, there still wouldn't be enough public servants in America to surround and secure the supermarkets. Or the banks. But they tried.

So, it's hardly the case that "breaking people" will produce useful, actionable intel. In Zubaydah's case, we saw just the opposite, we saw wild goose chases where law enforcement personnel were kept busy chasing all sorts of improbable leads.

In other words, no, waterboarding (Controlled drowning) is NOT an effective method for getting uncooperative suspects to talk. What it produces is garbage.
Unfortunately, although the Obama Administration deserves great credit for doing as much as they have, they don't appear inclined to punish the torturers. Here's a petition folks can sign to encourage them to do so.

Heads up on release of documents

By this afternoon (Apr 16th), the Obama Administration will decide whether or not to release four Bush Administration documents and whether to release them in a complete form or as heavily redacted documents, with large areas blacked out. Understand, these are legal opinions on the issue of interrogation and torture, they're not intel or operational reports. There's absolutely no legitimate reason to redact or withhold a single word of the documents.
As to how newspapers will treat the story tomorrow, it's a good bet they'll try to place it on page A5 or A7. It's doubtful they'll cover it with any due diligence.
Secret law is a serious threat to democracy. There's absolutely no reason as to why, in a democracy, a secret law should ever exist. If the Obama Administration endorses keeping these four laws secret, our president will deserve the insult of being called Barack "W." Obama.

Fascinating other side to the story

We in the progressive community have long been very, very sour on the idea of the Bush Administration following up the occupation of Iraq by invading Iran. Very shortly after the fall of Baghdad, a Bush official boasted "Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran." He was expressing a view that had deep roots. Both Israel and the US have been eager to take out Iran since the 1978 Iranian Revolution that had overthrown the Shah and that put the Ayatollah Khomeini in power. In early 2006,

Nearly three years after the Iraqi invasion, the real men are still stuck in Baghdad. Yes, there has been a great deal of talk about attacking Iran: plans in place for air strikes on Iran's revolutionary guards, on its nuclear installations and other WMD sites, and even talk of a ground invasion. There have been reports of spy flights over Iran and operations by special forces inside Iran. Israel too has been goading the US to strike, and if the US shrinks from this duty, threatening to go solo.

The author details the many obstacles that have held back that invasion. A very primary reason it has never taken place is that the US Army in Iraq is essentially hostage to an Iranian counter-strike. Iran is right over the border and has had a healthy cross-border trade with Iraq for as long as both countries have existed. Iran has much more internal cohesion than Iraq and is a great deal stronger. The US Army, not wanting a draft (Which would energize the peace movement back home in any event) and being stretched to the max, would very quickly find itself in severe trouble if Iran were to launch guerrilla attacks in Iraq on US troops.

Time Magazine noted in mid-2004 that

...despite the enthusiasm of those who most aggressively championed the Iraq war for taking on Iran, the results of the Iraq war may, paradoxically, have actually strengthened the position of the Mullahs in Tehran, by making their cooperation essential to achieving U.S. objectives.

Time Magazine also took note of the Colin Powell camps' lack of enthusiasm for an invasion of Iran and their preference for a negotiated solution. Even so, as late as mid-2008, VP Cheney's daughter, undoubtedly speaking for her father as well as many other frustrated neo-cons, declared to Iran:

"[D]espite what you may be hearing from Congress, despite what you may be hearing from others in the administration who might be saying force isn't on the table... we're serious." Asked about an Israeli strike on Iran, she said: "I certainly don't think that we should do anything but support them."

Fortunately, the Obama Administration has made it quite clear that force is indeed "off the table."

Very interestingly, it now appears that the lack of enthusiasm for invading Iran was one that many other countries shared. Bush Administration official David Wurmser describes the reaction he got in European capitals when he brought up the subject of a US attack on Iran:

“Every time in this period I landed in a European capital at [U.N. Ambassador] John Bolton’s request to discuss Iran, the first thing I got was: ‘What is your end game here; are you going to use the information to pull another Iraq? Tell us where you are going with this before we tell you how much we will admit Iran is going down the path to a bomb in the U.N.’ When I failed to give them a guarantee that we will not strike Iran, they stalled on moving ahead with acknowledging or using the evidence in public which in private they accepted.” [emphasis added]

As Iran is much closer to Europe than it is to the States, it may very well be that Europe was primarily interested in self-preservation, but I find it very highly interesting that Europe prevented the US from making what could have been a very costly mistake, a mistake that could very well have ranked with the utterly disastrous Athenian attack on Syracuse of 415-413 BC.

Question on Atlas Shrugged

The question was posed "What's so awful about Ayn Rand? Is this woman regarded as evil?" My impression from people in the left blogosphere who have talked about her is no, not exactly. I'd say that the general impression of her is that if you've read Atlas Shrugged in high school or college and you think she's wonderful, not a problem. If you've been out of college for a few years or are in your mid-20s in any event and you still think she's wonderful, you've got a problem.
Back during the Roman Republic, the Plebeians and the Patricians also had a problem. From 494 to 287 BC, the Plebeians took off a total of three times and the Patricians had to make do without their labor until they said "Uncle!" and the Plebeians then returned under new conditions.
In the modern era, the Knights of Labor won a strike against the railroads in 1884. The idea of having labor unions (As opposed to the craft unions of the Medieval era) caught on and striking, or withdrawing one's labor from the company, became a popular means for winning concessions.
Rand extended the idea of denying ones' labor to intellectual work and the hero of Atlas Shrugged, an architect, denied his intellect to society until society begged him to come back under better conditions. And wel-l-l-l, that's a nice idea, but personally, I've worked in both military and civilian departments where we had to do without a leader for awhile and we usually weathered the period just fine. That's not to say leaders are useless. But it is to say that followers, laborers, are more indispensable than leaders are. Intellects are crucially important when one is building something new, they're not so critical when one is simply trying to maintain ones' situation as is.
I went to a presentation on Venezuela, where we were told that the oil field technicians and executives took off to protest the presidency of Hugo Chavez. The workers who were left got to work, analyzing and reverse-engineering and figuring out how the process was designed. A few months after the intellectually bright people had left, the oil fields were pumping just as much oil as before. This suggests that if Rands' imagined scenario occurred in real life, society would have hit a "bump in the road" but it would have ultimately gotten along just fine.
So I really don't buy a crucially important tenet of Rand's philosophy. She seems to believe (No, I never actually read the book, I'm just passing along "received wisdom" from writers of the left blogosphere) that "extreme capitalism" is a good thing. Being an adherent of the "anti-globalization" and "fair trade" (As opposed to "free trade") movements, I don't agree with that at all.
Not sure that my economic philosophy falls into any easily-defined category. People have described me as a standard "plain vanilla" leftist. I'm aware that both classic Russian communism and classic Barry Goldwater/Ronald Reagan/Grover Norquist capitalism have failed (Not that I subscribed to that "flavor" of capitalism since a year or two after Reagan took office in any event). I've tried to define my philosophy more with specific real-world examples than by naming any particular people I've taken after.

The Great Recession

I was communicating with a conservative in an online forum and he said: "...common sense and growing numbers of people around the world are basically saying that Obama's policies are throwing gas on the fire. Nobody, no country has ever spent it's way out of debt!" Well, that may be true (Though it seems to me that spending on solid, serious investments would indeed get a country out of debt as a positive side effect of growing the economy) but that's not relevant to the economic crisis that the US finds itself in today. The crisis is more accurately described by Simon Johnson, who used to be the chief economist for the International Monetary Fund and speaks of countries that find themselves needing assistance:

Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason—the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit—and, most of the time, genteel—oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. When a country like Indonesia or South Korea or Russia grows, so do the ambitions of its captains of industry. As masters of their mini-universe, these people make some investments that clearly benefit the broader economy, but they also start making bigger and riskier bets. They reckon—correctly, in most cases—that their political connections will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise.

Just as with the S&L crisis of the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, where 747 Savings & Loans collapsed at the cost to the Federal Government of a little over $160 billion, private investors took increasingly risky gambles with their money in the (justified) confidence that the government would bail them out. The group Wall Street Watch put together a 231 page PDF detailing just why the current crisis occurred. Following are their 12 main reasons:

1. In 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had prohibited the merger of commercial banking and investment banking.
2. Regulatory rules permitted off-balance sheet accounting — tricks that enabled banks to hide their liabilities.
3. The Clinton administration blocked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating financial derivatives — which became the basis for massive speculation.
4. Congress in 2000 prohibited regulation of financial derivatives when it passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.
5. The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 adopted a voluntary regulation scheme for investment banks that enabled them to incur much higher levels of debt.
6. Rules adopted by global regulators at the behest of the financial industry would enable commercial banks to determine their own capital reserve requirements, based on their internal “risk-assessment models.”
7. Federal regulators refused to block widespread predatory lending practices earlier in this decade, failing to either issue appropriate regulations or even enforce existing ones.
8. Federal bank regulators claimed the power to supersede state consumer protection laws that could have diminished predatory lending and other abusive practices.
9. Federal rules prevent victims of abusive loans from suing firms that bought their loans from the banks that issued the original loan.
10. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expanded beyond their traditional scope of business and entered the subprime market, ultimately costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
11. The abandonment of antitrust and related regulatory principles enabled the creation of too-big-to-fail megabanks, which engaged in much riskier practices than smaller banks.
12. Beset by conflicts of interest, private credit rating companies incorrectly assessed the quality of mortgage-backed securities; a 2006 law handcuffed the SEC from properly regulating the firms.

No, Republicans are not entirely to blame. Yes the roots of the crisis began on Bill Clinton's watch, but note that deregulation is a Republican specialty. Democrats usually prefer more regulation and trust businespeople less than their friends across the aisle do. Does the Republican Party have any idea how to fix the mess? Well currently, they can't even produce a competing budget blueprint. Republican Party leaders claim that the Democrats didn't produce a competing budget in 2005 & 2006. True, but there was no apparent crisis back then, so that criticism is beside the point.

Does the Obama Administration appear to have things under control? Paul Krugman looks at the plans to spend multiple hundreds of billions of dollars and how it will impact "Mr. Obama’s promise that his plan will create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010." Krugman states: "It’s a credible promise — his economists used solidly mainstream estimates of the impacts of tax and spending policies." Krugman's worry is just that the stimulus is too small, that Obama doesn't plan to spend enough to offset the jobs that have already been lost. So there are certainly problems, but it appears that our government is at least headed in the right direction.

The economist Dean Baker agrees that the stimulus plan is a good one, but that a third stimulus is needed. Baker is the fellow whose constant refrain, whenever the traditional media touts a "mainstream" economist, is to point out that the particular economist "Didn't see an $8 trillion housing bubble developing (And in many cases, they still haven't acknowledged that the bubble ever existed in the first place)!" Baker adds (PDF) that the insistence of many Administration economists that they encourage the payment of bubble-inflated prices for housing continues to complicate the picture.

The problem with American auto companies is also quite serious, but various bloggers seem pretty happy about the Administration's response. Yes, the Administration is being tougher on the auto companies than on the bankers and financial companies, but there doesn't appear to have been much choice in the matter.

The one really sour, disappointing, hugely frustrating part of the picture has been the response of the traditional media. Relentlessly concerned with trivia, focused on personalities and not upon policy, the media seems determined to not finger the last Administration as being in any way responsible for anything.

The media's refusal to involve the Bush administration in any of a wide array of stories about the economy deprives their consumers of the very analysis of policies that would help them understand and evaluate proposals to address the crisis.

If you don't know where you came from, how are you supposed to know where you're going?

UFPJ-DVN's economics blog

President Obama reaches out to Iran

President Obama reached out to Iran on the 20th of March with a video message where he made it clear that the US was knowledgeable of, and respected, Iran's people and culture. He offered Iran the chance for the "Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations" and offered some conditions for that to happen. Basically, Iran must be a responsible world citizen. WorldTribune.com says "Israel has sought a U.S. commitment to limit its dialogue with Iran" but that the "White House and the senior echelon of the Obama administration have refused a dialogue with Israel on the Iranian threat."

Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi had no difficulty getting access to all manner of US officials upon his visit last year with the Bush Administration, but didn't find his reception very warm with the Obama Administration. He was able to get a meeting with only National Security Advisor James Jones and Jones only wanted to discuss Israeli relations with the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Obama Administration refused to "make it clear that the military option against Iran's nuclear program exists."

The Wall Street Journal makes it clear that conservative pro-Israelis have something to worry about.

The Obama administration is considering lifting a ban on regular diplomatic contacts with Iran and looking at ways to develop a direct line of communication to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said officials briefed on the deliberations.

It was wryly noted that the competition was hot and heavy, but Robert Spencer of "Jihad Watch" was the first right-wing blogger "out of the gate" to deploy words like "appeasement" and "aggression." And the Rosett Report of Pajamas Media was the first to bring up Neville Chamberlain and Munich in 1938. Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, a group that supports U.S. engagement with Tehran, notes that: "[Obama is] signaling he’s not looking for regime change; he’s recognizing Iran’s system." That's a pretty darn huge difference between this president and the last one.

Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment evaluates Obama's efforts in the following way:

Ultimately it takes two to tango, and at the moment, hardliners in Tehran who are not interested in having an amicable relationship with the United States have an inordinate amount of influence.

Rather than strengthen these hardliners, Obama’s overtures will put pressure on them to justify their often gratuitous enmity toward the United States. Most Iranians recognize that, in 2009, the “death to America” culture of 1979 is obsolete—it only prevents the country from fulfilling its enormous potential.

Whereas the Bush administration united Iran’s disparate political actors against a common external threat, the Obama administration, I believe, is going to deepen the divisions and incongruities among Iran’s political elites.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei sounds very unimpressed with Obama's overture, showing that it's far too early to judge the results.

Glenn Beck becoming increasingly unstable

Okay, Glenn Beck brings up what appears to be a reasonable point: "If you're a conservative, you're called a racist. You want to starve children."

Now, the Governor of South Carolina is Mark Sanford and he wants to reject (On behalf of SC) $700 million is stimulus money from the Federal Government. The youngster Ty'Sheoma Bethea wrote a letter to the President asking for money for South Carolina's schools. Well, the money from the AR&R Act would do precisely that, it would pay to keep 7500 teachers on the job and cover new construction.

Beck is not precisely correct, people aren't saying conservatives want people to starve (Though one has to wonder what Limbaugh meant when he said he wants our president to fail), but to not want South Carolina schools to stay in operation, that sounds an awful lot like a distinction without a difference.

Yet, Beck says that "the American people...feel disenfranchised right now. That feel like nobody's hearing their voice. The government isn't hearing their voice. Even if you call, they don't listen to you on both sides."

But one of those "sides" appears to be completely deranged! One of those "sides" seems to hate the American citizenry!

Beck goes on: "And every time they do speak out, they're shut down by political correctness. How do you not have those people turn into [Michael McLendon, the killer of 10 people in Alabama]?"

Glenn Beck appears to be going further and further away from reality and further towards justifying violence carried out on a mass scale.

Fox News is becoming increasingly irresponsible by allowing this lunatic a public platform. Fox really needs to fire this guy.

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The sad case of the WaPo media critic

And then we have the very sad case of the WaPo media critic Howard Kurtz not understanding a really basic, fundamental issue concerning the media. Radio ratings technology is stuck back in the 1960s, with really outdated methods and technology. There's simply no way to accurately measure a radio hosts' audience. This problem could be solved with enough money, but there's no motivation for anyone to spend that money as advertisers really aren't all that concerned with exact audience figures and no one else really cares very much at all.
So when Kurtz claimed that Rush Limbaugh's ratings had doubled since January, he really wasn't basing that claim on anything more than guesswork. Neither Limbaugh nor the Limbaugh-backer who provided the original guesstimate would go on record to say that the claim that Kurtz quoted was anything more than a wild guess.
The suggestion has been made that Limbaugh's audience is probably comparable to that of Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC. That would make sense as that would be consistent with "Bell Curve" theory, which holds that the audience for the extremes on the political spectrum would be about the same. That's not to say that the hosts are at all alike. Maddow is a cheerful, polite, humorous and well-spoken host. It appears that Limbaugh similarly appeals to the base of his party.
The traditional media sticks with the figure of 20 million for Limbaugh's audience because Limbaugh put that figure out many years ago and no one has spent the money necessary to authoritatively say otherwise. Maddow and Keith Olbermann both get about 1.4 million viewers for an average show. So instead of Limbaugh's audience jumping from 20 million to 40 million as Kurtz suggests, it's more likely to have jumped from 1.4 million to something short of 3 million. Of course, the very high probability is that it only jumped to 1.6 or 1.7 million.
Sadly Kurtz, who again is a media critic, is still defending his original estimate. So I guess we need a media critic to keep an eye on the media critic.

Sanity returns to US-Russia relations

Six months ago, the US confronted Russia over the much smaller state of Georgia in the South Ossetian War. The US Establishment was trying to present the war as an heroic "David vs Goliath" tale of the brave and noble Georgians standing up to their much bigger and stronger neighbor, Russia. The liberal blogger Juan Cole caught Fox News in a D'oh! moment when Fox interviewed "an Ossetian-American 12-year-old girl who thanks Russian troops for saving her from Georgian aggression." As Georgia had indeed started the war, the Fox News people frowned and sputtered and fumed, but couldn't come out and flatly contradict the girl.

The US had been supporting Georgia in the years before that to such an extent that the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili felt confident that if he attacked the ethnic Russian citizens of the Georgian province of South Ossetia, that the US would come to his rescue. Oops! The US promptly demonstrated that it was a paper tiger that was completely incapable of coming to the aid of an alleged ally.

Now it appears, the US has thought better of its earlier stance. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, didn't completely ignore Georgia, but said:

"We can and must find ways to work constructively with Russia where we share areas of common interest, including helping the people of Afghanistan," said Mrs Clinton.

The BBC adds:

US foreign policy is now very much a team game and US Vice-President Joe Biden will be in Brussels next Tuesday for a more detailed exchange of views on Afghanistan.

And that:

Mrs Clinton added that Nato "should continue to open Nato's door to European countries such as Georgia and Ukraine and help them meet Nato standards".

So Georgia is not entirely kicked to the curb but it's quite clear that good relations with Russia have taken priority over the previous, untenable, relationship with Georgia. Cole suggests that helping Afghanistan while maintaining hostility towards Russia was simply not a realistic option.

A member of the local NorthWest Greens, Arn Specter, has been documenting relations between Russia and the US, looking at the relationship through the view that "neo-cons aim to achieve full military domination over the rest of the world" via building a Missile Defense system and just generally taking a very hostile view of pretty much everything that Russia does. Of course, it's possible that a major reason that the Obama Administration has been unenthusiastic about neo-con ideas is that Missile Defense is a complete turkey of a system. It does the job of funneling billions in taxpayer dollars to defense contractors, but never did and probably never will actually defend America.

So, brava to Mrs Clinton! Pursuing better relations with Russia is the practical and sane thing to do.

Letter to Inky on newspaper bureaus

I agree with Trudy Rubin that newspaper bureaus are a very good thing. What does a newspaper provide for reporters that they can't get through the blogging experience? Well clearly, as Media Matters has been documenting in the case of George Will and the global warming issue, the editorial "layers of management" have been pretty useless when it comes to correcting a "star" writer with decades of experience.
Will and some junior "go-fer" editor disagree on some point and it's pretty clear that the star will prevail. Officially, technically, during the first years of the Bush Administration, Condoleezza Rice was the boss of Donald Rumsfeld, but looking back at how the National Security Advisor "managed" the Secretary of Defense, it's not at all clear that she ever did more than make a few meek and mild suggestions every now and then. Seems to me that Will and the layers of management at the Washington Post have a relationship similar to that of Rumsfeld and Rice.
I think, to use the economists' term, there's a definite "diminishing marginal utility" to being in a large news-gathering bureau. Resources spent on allowing a reporter the time, the travel and telephone expenses, the use of things like the LexisNexis service and the sheer utility of being able to tell a potential interview subject "Hi! I'm from the Daily Tribune of Oshkosh and we'd like to get your views on..." all have an upper limit beyond which adding resources is not very useful.
Still, those are all resources that aren't available to your average blogger. The Washington Post story on the Walter Reed Hospital and how wounded soldiers were being carelessly warehoused was clearly a story that required time and resources to collect. It also helped the cause of better care for those soldiers that a high-profile publication was able to use its megaphone to force changes in the system.
So yes, Rubin is correct. With the qualifications I've pointed out, newspapers are valuable institutions that should be preserved.

Is the Iraq War on a path to ending?

There was the guy at the Bureau of Indian Affairs who was found sobbing at his desk. What's the trouble? He raised his head. "My Indian died."

Ronald Reagan joke as related by Peggy Noonan

When we on the left comment on President Obama's speech concerning the winding down of the Iraq War, it's been a real fear of mine that we would be seen as defending our own interests by saying that nothing has changed and that the war continues. In the joke above, the bureaucrat at the BIA had a job for as long as a particular Native American remained alive. The bureaucrat was crying for himself because when the Native American perished, the bureaucrat had to go out, in Reagan's thinking, into the "real world" and find himself a "real job," he couldn't depend on some "cushy, taxpayer-funded job" anymore. Of course, the two situations are not the same in that being a member of the anti-war movement is not a job that pays anything. I listened to lots of accusations back before the war started that communists and/or foreigners were funding the anti-war movement.

Being unemployed at the time, I assured the accusers that if there was any money to be made in opposing the war, I would have found a way to make some.

In any event, I don't want us in the anti-war movement to be seen as defending "our turf" by saying "The war continues." The President certainly doesn't try to make it sound as though everything is peachy-keen and that the US can start drawdowns with ease or that all is smooth sailing ahead:

"But let there be no doubt: Iraq is not yet secure, and there will be difficult days ahead. Violence will continue to be a part of life in Iraq. Too many fundamental political questions about Iraq’s future remain unresolved. Too many Iraqis are still displaced or destitute. Declining oil revenues will put an added strain on a government that has had difficulty delivering basic services. Not all of Iraq’s neighbors are contributing to its security. Some are working at times to undermine it. And even as Iraq’s government is on a surer footing, it is not yet a full partner – politically and economically – in the region, or with the international community."

As a veteran, I appreciated his words for the troops:

"For the men and women of America’s armed forces – and for your families – this war has been one of the most extraordinary chapters of service in the history of our nation. You have endured tour after tour after tour of duty. You have known the dangers of combat and the lonely distance of loved ones. You have fought against tyranny and disorder. You have bled for your best friends and for unknown Iraqis. And you have borne an enormous burden for your fellow citizens, while extending a precious opportunity to the people of Iraq. Under tough circumstances, the men and women of the United States military have served with honor, and succeeded beyond any expectation."

The drawdown is clearly split up into two distinct pieces, and after 31 August 2010, we'll get to the second part of it:

"After we remove our combat brigades, our mission will change from combat to supporting the Iraqi government and its Security Forces as they take the absolute lead in securing their country. As I have long said, we will retain a transitional force to carry out three distinct functions: training, equipping, and advising Iraqi Security Forces as long as they remain non-sectarian; conducting targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our ongoing civilian and military efforts within Iraq. Initially, this force will likely be made up of 35-50,000 U.S. troops."

Obama promises to work with the region as a whole, including Iran and Syria.

"This reflects a fundamental truth: we can no longer deal with regional challenges in isolation – we need a smarter, more sustainable and comprehensive approach. That is why we are renewing our diplomacy, while relieving the burden on our military. That is why we are refocusing on al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan; developing a strategy to use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon; and actively seeking a lasting peace between Israel and the Arab world."

Concerns here, but a generally sound and sensible policy. And yes, this speech is absolute music to my ears after Bush's lies and nonsense and straw-man arguments and simplistic verities. The liberal blogger Juan Cole asks: "So has Obama been reduced to 'Bush Lite' on the Tigris?" commenting that Obama "has made the left of his party as nervous as a vegan in a butcher shop." Cole points out that producing a navy and an air force are developments that will take an independent Iraq many, many years to accomplish, so we shouldn't expect any quick drawdown of either. Cole swats aside the claim that Bush's policies prepared the way for Obama to achieve such a success. He makes it clear that staying out of Iraq to begin with would have been the better, less destructive policy.

John McCain, like an Arizonan Cassandra, harped on the small terrorist movement that styled itself "al-Qaida in Mesopotamia," and predicted that "If we leave Iraq there will be chaos, there will be genocide, and they will follow us home." Obama's compromise decisively rejects McCain-style fear-mongering and his quixotic quest for long-term bases.

The new president forcefully rejected Bushian mission creep. Obama admitted, "We cannot rid Iraq of all who oppose America or sympathize with our adversaries. We cannot police Iraq's streets until they are completely safe, nor stay until Iraq's union is perfected." In other words, he is prepared to depart Iraq even if it remains somewhat divided, even if a drumbeat of subdued violence continues in its cities, and even if anti-Americanism retains a certain purchase on the population.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) feels that as the US has been training Iraqis since the war began, then there's really very little hope that their training will be completed any time soon. The interviewer pointed that he called Obama's speech a "step in the right direction" four times in four minutes. Siun of firedoglake points out that:

At the same time, the level of control Obama has granted the Petraues/Odierno team over the withdrawal is worrying– in particular, his willingness to allow them to keep the bulk of US forces in Iraq through the next election – and then some.

Here’s why:

Nowhere in the speech (nor in the various commentaries) have I seen a mention of our plans for withdrawing US forces to bases this June as required by the SOFA. This requirement - meant to get US forces out of the day to day active involvement in Iraq security seems to be forgotten – and given Odierno’s statements even as the SOFA was being signed that we could ignore that requirement – why not?

 

The SOFA is the Status Of Forces Agreement that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki insisted that President Bush agree to. Bush clearly agreed because he saw no alternative.

Askari said the United States didn't give in to Iraqi demands for the power to prosecute American soldiers but that Maliki decided this was the best deal Iraq could get.

Maliki may have felt that he had to settle for the details of the final deal, but clearly, the deal was not simply dictated by the US. It was the result of intense bargaining between the US and Iraq.

It's troubling that the SOFA was not spoken of as the final word on the deal. Cole agrees that large-scale troop withdrawals might have to wait until after the Parliamentary elections of December 2009. March to December is an awfully long time to wait and still keep up political pressure to see to it that withdrawals happen on schedule.

It's also troubling that there appears to be some mission creep going on.

"But I think that we can say without equivocation that our military was successful, and if we get it right over the next few months and years, that there is the strong possibility that we can leave Iraq as a stable, peaceful partner in the region."

If this is indeed a redefinition of the mission, then it could turn out to cause very major problems down the road. If the US is determined to withdraw, period, that's one thing. If the country adopts the goal of leaving Iraq in a particular shape, then it's very hard to say when, or even if, we'll see a withdrawal occur.

And it's not like things will be quiet here on the domestic front until after the Parliamentary elections in Iraq. Obama seems to be taking a seriously positive, progressive approach to the economic mess that the last president left us. NY Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman explains how the housing crisis happened. And concerning the televised rant on the Chicago trading floor a little while ago:

Commodity trader Rick Santelli made himself into a national hero of sorts with his televised diatribe about being forced to pay the mortgages of "losers" who could not afford, or would not pay, the full cost of their mortgage. Santelli apparently hit a chord among those who want to blame deadbeat homeowners for the country's economic woes.

Was his rant a hit among "The Village," the Washington DC-based press corps? Oh my, yes!

In terms of revealing deep truths about the corporate media, I'd suggest Santelli's off-kilter tirade, followed by his puffed-up prancing around, and the press corps that cheered him on, told us a helluva lot more abut the press than did Matthews' split-second "Oh God" utterance.

The historical parallel appears to be that of Lyndon Johnson trying to have both guns and butter and ultimately having to "go all in" on Vietnam. Obama has proven himself to be a very smart fellow, see his proposed approach to handling further Republican obstructionism on the budget (He's threatening to use the budget reconciliation process to make the 60-vote margin for Senate votes irrelevant) and I'm unwilling to say flat-out that he'll end up as badly as Johnson did.

Progressives on the left can certainly make a convincing case that Obama intends to allow the Iraq War to continue, but it's certainly a harder sell than it was under Bush.There are many open questions and Obama's a lot smarter than the last guy was.

The economic expertise of Republicans

Back during the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan got lots of political mileage out of the sloganeering description of much government spending as "Waste, fraud and abuse," making it appear that our government had a single line item "WFA" that could be easily eliminated. Well, investigators have concluded that Iraqi reconstruction accounts for at least $125 billion worth of "WFA."

He said bribes of tens of thousands of dollars were regularly delivered in pizza boxes sent to US contracting officers.
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In one case, an American soldier put in charge of reviving Iraqi boxing gambled away all the money but he could not be prosecuted because, although the money was certainly gone, nobody had recorded if it was $20,000 or $60,000.
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In many cases, contractors never started or finished facilities they were supposedly building.

As Digby points out about those who are criticizing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:

The people who are now keening over "reckless spending" are the same ones who blindly sent pallet-loads of shrink wrapped hundred dollar bills to a war zone and didn't bother to keep any records.

Even if we put aside the arguments of WFA, the pure, blatant plunder involved in the war, there is still the constantly escalating cost of the Iraq War. It's not entirely clear what the increase in money is for, whether it's for the greater use of airpower or payments for mercenaries, but the cost-per-month has been rising steadily, from nearly $5 billion per month in 2003 to over $11 billion per month in 2007.

The Bush Administration has had other financially-suspicious problems.

When reviewing the record of July and August of 2001, Bill Bergman noticed a $5 billion surge in the currency component of the M1 money supply—the third largest such increase since 1947. Bergman asked about this anomaly—and was removed from his investigative duties.
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Those who follow the history of the 9/11 fact-finding movement know that there is a laundry-list of unanswered questions that are just as compelling as those put forth by Bergman.

George W. Bush ran two oil companies as a private citizen back during the 1980s, Arbusto and Spectrum 7 and was on the board of directors for Harken Energy, altogether equaling about four years of deep involvement with energy production. Oil prices remained relatively stable until he took office and then really started rising about the beginning of 2003 and reaching a peak at the end of 2008. They then dropped precipitously. Apparently, Bush never had a clue as to why that was. In April 2008, he said:

"I think that if there was a magic wand to say, "OK, drop price,' I'd do that. ... But there is no magic wand to wave right now."

The idea that Bush couldn't fix the high price of oil is something I find entirely credible. What I do not find credible is that someone so deeply involved in energy somehow didn't have a clue as to why oil prices were as high as they were. My own suspicion is that his constant saber-rattling towards Iran had an absolutely huge amount to do with it. As to the effect that the oil price rise had on the economy, a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) paper from July 2006 (PDF) showed that

Households’ income and spending were both affected by the rise in energy prices. The growth of real hourly compensation slowed (the result of a slowdown in nominal wage growth combined with the increase in inflation). At the same time, the average household’s annual spending on energy goods and services rose by about $1,700 between 2003 and mid-2006, and their saving rate dropped sharply.

Other, macroeconomic effects were more modest, effecting the US economy by a quarter to a half of a percentage point. Corporations were significantly less affected than households were. The CBO study lists a few foreign problems and adds:

In addition, worries about the potential consequences of international objections to Iran’s nuclear program may have caused some oil businesses to stockpile part of their supply in recent months rather than sell it.

In his State of the Union Address for 2007, Bush announced:

For too long, our nation has been dependent on foreign oil. And this dependence leaves us more vulnerable to hostile regimes and to terrorists who could cause huge disruptions of oil shipments and raise the price of oil and do great harm to our economy.

This entirely accurate assessment was, unfortunately, not followed up with any significant action. A year and a half later, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman described Bush's energy policy thusly:

It is hard for me to find the words to express what a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy this is.

Bush accurately identified the problem, but did nothing to solve it.

Bush's big priority upon taking office in 2001 was tax cuts. Throughout the debate over the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, "tax cuts" were the Republican answer to everything. How did that 2001 tax cut work out? Paul Krugman put together a chart showing the effects of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and also of 2003. The effects of the tax cuts? Negligible. If Krugman didn't mark where the tax cuts occurred, we'd never have known that anything had been done. And actually, the Clinton tax increase of 1993 appears to have had a serious positive effect.

What's the really primary economic problem of the day? Economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) tells Congress (PDF) that the housing bubble is. He dates it from 1996 to 2006, so yes, the problem originated during the Clinton Administration. In a round table with CNBC (Video), Baker places the bulk of the blame squarely on Alan Greenspan's shoulders. And what was Republican Senator John McCain's opinion of Greenspan's expertise?

“I want to set up a committee headed by Alan Greenspan, whether he’s alive or dead, it doesn’t matter,” he said, prompting laughter from the crowd. “If he’s dead, we’ll prop him up and put dark glasses on him, like in ‘Weekend at Bernie’s.’”

So, do Republicans have any credibility when it comes to the economy? Can the party make the slightest claim to expertise? Sorry, but no.

James Gilligan and the 3rd Presidential Debate

James Gilligan was in a front-line unit that headed into Iraq as part of the initial assault. His unit went all the way into Baghdad and then turned their responsibilities over to follow-on Coalition forces. The plan from that point was to "Reconstruct and reconstitute and rebuild the government from the ground up." Gilligan's unit rotated back to Camp LeJeune, within weeks he was sent on to Guantanamo Bay for a 6 month rotation in May of 2003. After six months in Cuba, he was deployed again for six months in OEF (Operation Enduring Freedom) in Afghanistan. His unit between May and November 2004 watched over a dam at an FOB (Forward Operating Base) and provided election security and other vehicle convoy operations on other FOBs. He then rotated back to "the real world." Six jobs and year and a half later he found himself down and out. In March 2008, he joined the IVAW veterans in a semi-formal panel of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan in order to gather information on and speak out about the experiences of their deployments in the War on Terror, in an event that dubbed "Winter Soldier."

While taking part in the initial invasion of Iraq, traveling from Basra to Baghdad, Gilligan's unit didn't deal with any IEDs or any vehicle-borne IEDs, but his unit did deal with mortar attacks and snipers. His unit was expected to go in and, once Iraq was liberated, to go right out again. He emphasized how serious the chain of command was about how short the Iraq War was expected to be. He had a beret insignia with a picture of Saddam Hussein which he wasn't permitted to keep because he was told that all uniform items were to be confiscated and used for rebuilding the country and government.

He and his fellow Marines were not supposed to talk with reporters outside of the official mission parameters which others invoked. Some would badger the reporters and yet others would give reporters the "straight party line" of "everything's fine," "glad to be here," "glad to help."

Some would talk to reporters and then be incredulous as the reporters would focus on menial factoids about their personal lives. Reporters generally stayed away from details about the mission.

CEB Main (Combat Engineer Battalion Main) took part in an airstrip seizure. Constructing one of the first field expedient airstrips that was used for flying in supplies. While pulling perimeter security, Gilligan was interviewed by a newspaper reporter from New York. The reporter talked with all of the Marines for the afternoon. None of the details from the talks ever made it into the paper.

Gilligan:

"I'm confident about this because had the journalist reported on the operational tempo and shortcomings, this would have violated our operational security.
"So, basically, a reporter flew 2800 miles from New York to Baghdad to sit down on a hot, dusty afternoon and reported back on fishing in Missouri, snowboarding in Vermont and the local Manhattan Marine."

In Gilligan's Humvee were not just your average Marines. Gilligan rode with two members of S-2 (Intelligence) and a Warrant Officer for NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical warfare). The assortment of radios in his vehicle which squelched out voices of "Chaos" and other call signs all across the battlefield, reporting back data on the results of their search for WMD and encounters with small-arms resistance.

His role in the vehicle as a Corporal would be to man the radios from time to time and maintain proper security for the vehicle whether moving or stationery. Within his platoon he was one of several Marines selected to be on the NBC reconnaissance team, which would provide security for the Warrant Officer in his search for WMD or other evidence while searching bunkers and other facilities.

"We never really went about our procedures by the book. Within a few days, we were underneath the SCUD FAN (Meaning we were so close to the Iraqi population centers that any SCUDs launched would have impacted the civilian population). Because SCUDs were no longer a serious possibility of danger, we ditched our protective suits and carried our masks on our hips while searching bunkers, looking for WMD. It seemed that if it was such a real threat, we would have continued to wear the masks. After a while, the focus shifted from searching for WMD to collecting war trophies. At one point, it got so out of hand, the CO (Commanding Officer of the unit) ordered a company inspection for all items to be amnestied and turned in. But even the focus of this was on dangerous items, pistols, swords, etc."

The third Presidential Debate between candidates Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) took place at Hofstra University. The veterans of IVAW decided well in advance to appear at the event in uniform and to question the candidates. McCain was going to be queried about his lack of support for veteran's health care (Never once has McCain risen to the challenge of really putting out an effort to support veteran's health care), Obama was going to be queried about whether and how he was going to support war resisters. In short, a small group of veterans of our Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts wanted to ask some highly pertinent and relevant questions to people who were in an excellent position to answer those questions. The IVAW supplied me with a copy:

Senator McCain, on July 9th 2008 you were quoted saying "I've received every award from every major veterans organization in America but the reason why I have a perfect voting record from organizations like Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and all the other Veterans Service Organizations is because of my support of them."
However, there are non-partisan Veterans Organizations such as the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), and the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) who've noted that you've consistantly voted against important issues such as increased VA funding in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. This summer, another Veterans Organization, Veterans for Common Sense filed suit against the VA and discovered that approximately 1000 Veterans under their care are attempting suicide each month, with an average of 17 succeeding every 30 days. Government surveys conclude that over 300,000 21st Century Warriors are currently suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, while only 67 thousand have been diagnosed with with PTSD, and less than half of those are collecting disablity benefits. Doctors and Nurses at the VA are struggling to treat the 2 million American Troops who've deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. What promises are you willing to make, as a Veteran, as a Senator, as a Presidential Candidate, to the Veterans of the United States to prove that you will ensure the VA is fully funded, staffed, and capable of preventing Troops from suffering as they are now, after they've served our great nation overseas?

-Sergeant Kristofer Goldsmith
Operation Iraqi Freedom III Veteran

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Senator Obama, you have said that the War and Occupation of Iraq is illegal. If by your words, it is illegal, then it is not only the right of service members such as myself to refuse deployment and participation in Iraq, it is also our responsibility. Sir, as President, are you willing to go by your own words and back them up, and support servicemembers refusing to participate in what you have, in your own words, termed an "Illegal Occupation"?

-Sergeant Matthis Chiroux
Operation Enduring Freedom Veteran

Gilligan reports that their approach to the hall where the debate was being held was really pretty exciting. There were people behind them waving all sorts of signs, from ones that advocated respect for the environment to signs expressing anti-abortion sentiments, to signs advocating the Palestinian cause to pretty much whatever one could think of. Being the only ones in uniform and with the crowd deferring to them as they marched forward to the entrance, Gilligan reports that he was confused for a split-second and as he heard a police officer ask "Are you coming in?" he thought that was a positive invitation to do just that "I honestly felt we were about to get into the Presidential Debate, that we'd actually get a forum to ask our questions of the candidates." But no, the police officers started slapping cuffs onto the veterans.

One veteran was badly injured by a police horse. As veterans were getting cuffed and led away, they were told to drop whatever they were holding. As one of them was carrying a flag, the flag got passed around. Gilligan managed to hold it up and, as he realized that no, they weren't going to be able to ask the candidates any questions, flipped it upside down (Which is universally understood in the military to be a distress signal).

After they had been transported to a police station, the vets were all brought into a large room and segregated by gender. They were asked for identification, the police then left and the vets conversed among themselves. What exactly were the police trying to do afterwards? Hard to say, as protesters have very rarely been arrested in the past few years and it's not like these veterans were breaking any laws or causing any sort of unlawful disruption. Unknown to the police until after the veterans had been in custody for about three hours, One of them, Adam Kokesh, had a body mike strapped to his chest. It transmitted everything that was spoken in his immediate vicinity to a remote location, so everything that took place next was clandestinely recorded.

One of the veterans decided that he would stay out of the way and not be arrested. He then volunteered to collect any items that people didn't want to be arrested with. He got cuffed and led away with the rest. As a result, one of the police officers came into the room with a confiscated knife that he had been carrying. The policeman was flicking the knife and didn't appear to have a very good grip on it. Gilligan: "I didn't feel comfortable and asked him 'Excuse me officer, could you please stop that?' " The officer responded "This is a gravity knife, I have to practice this because when we appear in court, I have to display that this is a concealable weapon and that I can open it with one hand." The officer continued to flick the weapon very close to Gilligan's face. Gilligan:

We're talking about a two-inch knife. Between a utility knife, a bayonet and a pocket knife, I carried up to four different blades with me into combat throughout my time in Iraq and Afghanistan, so it's not like I didn't know how to handle them. I was never once in a situation where I felt obliged to practice with a knife while in the presence of a prisoner. I felt far more annoyed than threatened by the situation.

One of the policemen spoke to the women on the other side of the room in a very low voice that we couldn't make out. The women reported later that he discussed subjects they felt were out of line, going into moral and personal values. The police tried to convince us that Nick Morgan, our fellow IVAW vet who had gotten trampled by the horse, that his injuries were our fault. They had no clue as to the relationships between us (Most of us had known each other for at least a year and many of us had served side-by-side) and tried hard to divide us. Unsuccessfully.

The final result was that I was given an ACD (Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal), told to be good and that if I did nothing further, then the case would be closed in six months. I agreed and was dismissed without being able to make any statements.

Would I perform any arrestable actions again? Well, I didn't think of what I was doing as having been an arrestable action in the first place. It was a much-needed action that we undertook with a great sense of purpose and responsibility. Would I do it again? If the cause is there and it's something I believe in, nothing would stop me from doing it again, not a Nassau County judge, not a corrupt President and certainly not the fear of doing the right thing.

Broder's latest

David Broder accuses the Democratic majority in Congress ("The Votes Obama Truly Needs" Jan 30) of using

...the tight timetable and their control of legislative procedures to block virtually all efforts to open the [economic recovery] bill to compromise.

Sounds like a serious charge. What exactly were these oh-so-productive and highly useful "compromises" that the Republicans were generously and patriotically offering to "improve" the economic recovery bill? Broder doesn't say. This is a rather crucial point if Broder is to make the case that compromise is necessary. How can citizens decide whether compromise is needed if we have no idea what one of the sides is offering?

As it turns out, what was being offered was essentially tax cuts. On MSNBC Live, CNBC host Erin Burnett stated that conservative icon Rush Limbaugh offered "serious ideas" on the issue and proceeded to name " 'cutting the corporate tax' and 'slashing capital gains [taxes]' ", after which Media Matters quotes economists examining such ideas and awarding them a failing grade. Very usefully, the piece shows a chart giving us the relative efficacy of various proposals. Giving the proposal "Cut in corporate tax rate" a "score" of 1:0.30 means that if the US cuts the corporate tax rate, it will sacrifice one dollar that would otherwise go to the Treasury in return for 30 cents worth of economic stimulus. A "score" of 1:1.59 for "Increased infrastructure spending" means that for a dollar spent on that item, the US gets $1.59 worth of economic stimulus back.

A member of the American Enterprise Institute think tank made precisely the same point in a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer ("Obama must grab the U.S. mood" Feb 1), namely that Democrats should make unspecified compromises in order to get Republican support for the economic recovery bill. Nothing wrong with a columnist using Republican talking points without bothering to even talk to the majority party that dominates both chambers and runs the White House, but it's a rather obvious giveaway when blatantly partisan talking points are so seamlessly lifted from one source to another.

Broder also makes a very interesting statement later on in his piece when he talks about:

...the sickening economic slide that has gripped the country in the past five months.

Okay, so there's a real rush here and the rush is not entirely due to Democrats using their "control of legislative procedures" to hurry the other side along. Again, this gives the impression that this article is a hurried cut-and-paste job, copied almost verbatim from Republican talking points.

Nothing was more central to [Obama's] victory last fall than his claim that he could break the partisan gridlock in Washington.

Really? I don't remember any such promise. The closest I found to that was:

“I’ve always believed that you can only bring about real change when people come together across party lines, and I’ve seen what happens when folks put politics aside and get down to work,” Senator Obama said. “If you can’t bring people together across the old fault lines, you simply aren’t going to be able to make progress on the challenges we face.”

This certainly sounds to me like President Obama intended to try and "break the partisan gridlock," but he doesn't "promise" to do any such thing. He very definitely expresses it as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself.

What I really remember was Obama promising to do specific things that George W. Bush and John McCain were strongly opposed to, such as to get American troops out of Iraq, to fix America's then-looming economic crisis and to restore America's moral place in the world by stopping torture and closing Guantanamo. One of the more effective lines in the campaign was that McCain was seeking to do "Bush's third term." Obviously, this line was effective precisely because Americans were not looking for Democrats and Republicans to be nice to each other and agree with each other about everything. Sure, it'd be nice to get the other side of the aisle to vote for an effective economic recovery, but I think most Americans would rather see a good bill with no Republican votes than a bad bill with Republican votes. Broder then states that

[Obama] wants to be like Ronald Reagan, steering his first economic measures through a Democratic House in 1981, not Bill Clinton, passing his first budget in 1993 without a single Republican vote.

The first way leads to long-term success; the second foretells the early loss of control. 

Erm, Clinton "lost control" because Republicans under Newt Gingrich took an extraordinarily partisan approach to governing, spending enormous amounts of time investigating non-stories such as Whitewater and later demonstrating screeching hysteria over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, an extremely trivial, low-grade scandal that would not have warranted even being publicly mentioned a few short decades ago. Sorry, but the lessons history teaches often can't fit neatly onto a bumper sticker the way Broder clearly wants this example to.
Wow! A

...dozen or so House Republicans who wanted to vote yes before the process turned ugly...

sounds to me like these House Republican are guilty of the charge "Dereliction of Duty." If they voted against an urgently needed bill because they wanted to quibble over a few details or because their tender sensibilities were bruised, they need to simply quit their jobs and hand them over to people who are capable of doing them. To play such juvenile games with an economic crisis is...wow!

David Broder is obviously just cutting-and-pasting without any real thought or concern for what he's writing. Can he please retire now? There's a rocking chair on a porch with his name on it.