Friday, July 29, 2005
Democracy Now! - Headlines for July 29, 2005
"GAO Report Says US Diverting Iraq Humanitarian Funds for Security
A new report by the Government Accountability Office released yesterday shows that millions of dollars designated for reconstruction and humanitarian projects in Iraq are being diverted for so-called security operations, draining money from efforts to rebuild water, electricity and health networks. In many cases, security accounts for more than a third of the budget for individual projects and the US is paying individual security contractors up to $33,000 a month. That's nearly $400,000 a year per individual guard. In some cases, humanitarian projects were cancelled to free up funds for security operations elsewhere.
State Department Admits Bolton Didn’t Disclose CIA Interview
The State Department admitted yesterday that President Bush's nominee for UN ambassador, John Bolton, inaccurately told Congress he had not been interviewed or testified in any investigation over the past five years. Bolton was interviewed by the State Department inspector general as part of a joint investigation with the Central Intelligence Agency related to alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger. When Bolton filled out a Senate questionnaire in connection with his nomination, Bolton said he didn't recall being interviewed. The response came after Sen. Joseph Biden wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asserting Bolton had been interviewed and suggesting he had not been truthful in his questionnaire. For weeks, there has been speculation that president Bush may try to appoint Bolton after the Senate goes into recess today, thus avoiding his nomination being defeated.
Judge Blasts Bush Policies: We Don’t Need a ‘Secret Military Tribunal’
This week, a US District Court Judge in Seattle sentenced Algerian Ahmed Ressam to 22 years in prison. Ressam was convicted of bringing bomb making materials across the Canadian border in December 1999 in an alleged plot to attack the Los Angeles International Airport. The Judge, John Coughenour, who was a Reagan appointee, used Ressam's sentencing as an opportunity to speak out against Bush administration policies. The Judge said, 'We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant or deny the defendant the right to counsel.' He continued, 'The message to the world from today's sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart.' He added that September 11th made Americans realize they are vulnerable to terrorism and that some believe 'this threat renders our Constitution obsolete ... If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won,' the judge said..."
"GAO Report Says US Diverting Iraq Humanitarian Funds for Security
A new report by the Government Accountability Office released yesterday shows that millions of dollars designated for reconstruction and humanitarian projects in Iraq are being diverted for so-called security operations, draining money from efforts to rebuild water, electricity and health networks. In many cases, security accounts for more than a third of the budget for individual projects and the US is paying individual security contractors up to $33,000 a month. That's nearly $400,000 a year per individual guard. In some cases, humanitarian projects were cancelled to free up funds for security operations elsewhere.
State Department Admits Bolton Didn’t Disclose CIA Interview
The State Department admitted yesterday that President Bush's nominee for UN ambassador, John Bolton, inaccurately told Congress he had not been interviewed or testified in any investigation over the past five years. Bolton was interviewed by the State Department inspector general as part of a joint investigation with the Central Intelligence Agency related to alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger. When Bolton filled out a Senate questionnaire in connection with his nomination, Bolton said he didn't recall being interviewed. The response came after Sen. Joseph Biden wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asserting Bolton had been interviewed and suggesting he had not been truthful in his questionnaire. For weeks, there has been speculation that president Bush may try to appoint Bolton after the Senate goes into recess today, thus avoiding his nomination being defeated.
Judge Blasts Bush Policies: We Don’t Need a ‘Secret Military Tribunal’
This week, a US District Court Judge in Seattle sentenced Algerian Ahmed Ressam to 22 years in prison. Ressam was convicted of bringing bomb making materials across the Canadian border in December 1999 in an alleged plot to attack the Los Angeles International Airport. The Judge, John Coughenour, who was a Reagan appointee, used Ressam's sentencing as an opportunity to speak out against Bush administration policies. The Judge said, 'We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant or deny the defendant the right to counsel.' He continued, 'The message to the world from today's sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart.' He added that September 11th made Americans realize they are vulnerable to terrorism and that some believe 'this threat renders our Constitution obsolete ... If that view is allowed to prevail, the terrorists will have won,' the judge said..."
Thursday, July 28, 2005
The U.S.'s Militarized Supply-Side Energy Policy:
Bob Herbert: Oil and Blood
"...You can run through all the wildly varying rationales for this war: the weapons of mass destruction (that were never found), the need to remove the unmitigated evil of Saddam (whom we had once cozied up to), the connection to Al Qaeda (which was bogus), and one of President Bush's favorites, the need to fight the terrorists 'over there' so we won't have to fight them here at home.
All the rationales have to genuflect before 'The Prize,' which was the title of Mr. Yergin's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book.
It's the oil, stupid.
What has so often gotten lost in all the talk about terror and weapons of mass destruction is the fact that for so many of the most influential members of the Bush administration, the obsessive desire to invade Iraq preceded the Sept. 11 attacks. It preceded the Bush administration. The neoconservatives were beating the war drums on Iraq as far back as the late 1990's.
Iraq was supposed to be a first step. Iran was also in the neoconservatives' sights. The neocons envisaged U.S. control of the region (and its oil), to be followed inevitably by the realization of their ultimate dream, a global American empire. Of course it sounds like madness, which is why we should have been paying closer attention from the beginning.
The madness took a Dr. Strangelovian turn in the summer of 2002, before the war with Iraq was launched. As The Washington Post first reported, an influential Pentagon advisory board was given a briefing prepared by a Rand Corporation analyst who said the U.S. should consider seizing the oil fields and financial assets of Saudi Arabia if it did not stop its support of terrorism.
Mercifully the briefing went nowhere. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it did not represent the 'dominant opinion' within the administration.
The point here is that the invasion of Iraq was part of a much larger, long-term policy that had to do with the U.S. imposing its will, militarily when necessary, throughout the Middle East and beyond. The war has gone badly, and the viciousness of the Iraq insurgency has put the torch to the idea of further pre-emptive adventures by the Bush administration..."
Bob Herbert: Oil and Blood
"...You can run through all the wildly varying rationales for this war: the weapons of mass destruction (that were never found), the need to remove the unmitigated evil of Saddam (whom we had once cozied up to), the connection to Al Qaeda (which was bogus), and one of President Bush's favorites, the need to fight the terrorists 'over there' so we won't have to fight them here at home.
All the rationales have to genuflect before 'The Prize,' which was the title of Mr. Yergin's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book.
It's the oil, stupid.
What has so often gotten lost in all the talk about terror and weapons of mass destruction is the fact that for so many of the most influential members of the Bush administration, the obsessive desire to invade Iraq preceded the Sept. 11 attacks. It preceded the Bush administration. The neoconservatives were beating the war drums on Iraq as far back as the late 1990's.
Iraq was supposed to be a first step. Iran was also in the neoconservatives' sights. The neocons envisaged U.S. control of the region (and its oil), to be followed inevitably by the realization of their ultimate dream, a global American empire. Of course it sounds like madness, which is why we should have been paying closer attention from the beginning.
The madness took a Dr. Strangelovian turn in the summer of 2002, before the war with Iraq was launched. As The Washington Post first reported, an influential Pentagon advisory board was given a briefing prepared by a Rand Corporation analyst who said the U.S. should consider seizing the oil fields and financial assets of Saudi Arabia if it did not stop its support of terrorism.
Mercifully the briefing went nowhere. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it did not represent the 'dominant opinion' within the administration.
The point here is that the invasion of Iraq was part of a much larger, long-term policy that had to do with the U.S. imposing its will, militarily when necessary, throughout the Middle East and beyond. The war has gone badly, and the viciousness of the Iraq insurgency has put the torch to the idea of further pre-emptive adventures by the Bush administration..."
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Bush's Hasty Pick To Replace Supreme Court Justice:
Democracy Now! - Headlines for July 27, 2005
"Released Documents Shed Light on Roberts Conservative Views
The battle over Supreme Court nominee John Roberts is heating up. On Tuesday, the White House released 15,000 pages of documents stemming from Roberts service as an attorney for the Reagan administration. But the administration is refusing to hand over documents related to his work as deputy solicitor general under the first President Bush.
According to the Washington Post, the newly released documents show that Roberts was a significant backstage player in the legal policy debates of the early Reagan administration.
* Roberts presented a defense of bills in Congress that would have stripped the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over abortion, busing and school prayer cases.
* He argued for a narrow interpretation of Title IX, the landmark law that bars sex discrimination in intercollegiate athletic programs.
* And he even counseled his boss on how to tell the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow that the administration was cutting off federal funding for the Atlanta center that bears his name.
* Other documents show that Roberts argued for restrictions on the rights of prisoners to litigate their grievances.
* He depicted as 'judicial activism' a lower court's order requiring a sign-language interpreter for a hearing-impaired public school student who had already been given a hearingaid and tutors.
* And he argued for wider latitude for prosecutors and police to question suspects out of the presence of their attorneys.
According to the Washington Post, in the rare instances revealed in the documents in which Roberts disagreed with his superiors on the proper legal course to take on major social issues of the day, he advocated a more conservative tack.
White House: Senators Won't Have Access to Roberts' Tax Return
The Washington Post reports the Bush administration will not give Senate investigators access to recent federal tax returns of Roberts. Instead the IRS will produce a one-page summary of Roberts' tax returns. Historically nominees to the high court were required to provide their three most recent annual tax forms, but the Bush administration quietly changed that policy in 2001. The Washington Post reports that some senior Republicans and Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are only learning now that the policy had ever been changed..."
Democracy Now! - Headlines for July 27, 2005
"Released Documents Shed Light on Roberts Conservative Views
The battle over Supreme Court nominee John Roberts is heating up. On Tuesday, the White House released 15,000 pages of documents stemming from Roberts service as an attorney for the Reagan administration. But the administration is refusing to hand over documents related to his work as deputy solicitor general under the first President Bush.
According to the Washington Post, the newly released documents show that Roberts was a significant backstage player in the legal policy debates of the early Reagan administration.
* Roberts presented a defense of bills in Congress that would have stripped the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over abortion, busing and school prayer cases.
* He argued for a narrow interpretation of Title IX, the landmark law that bars sex discrimination in intercollegiate athletic programs.
* And he even counseled his boss on how to tell the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow that the administration was cutting off federal funding for the Atlanta center that bears his name.
* Other documents show that Roberts argued for restrictions on the rights of prisoners to litigate their grievances.
* He depicted as 'judicial activism' a lower court's order requiring a sign-language interpreter for a hearing-impaired public school student who had already been given a hearingaid and tutors.
* And he argued for wider latitude for prosecutors and police to question suspects out of the presence of their attorneys.
According to the Washington Post, in the rare instances revealed in the documents in which Roberts disagreed with his superiors on the proper legal course to take on major social issues of the day, he advocated a more conservative tack.
White House: Senators Won't Have Access to Roberts' Tax Return
The Washington Post reports the Bush administration will not give Senate investigators access to recent federal tax returns of Roberts. Instead the IRS will produce a one-page summary of Roberts' tax returns. Historically nominees to the high court were required to provide their three most recent annual tax forms, but the Bush administration quietly changed that policy in 2001. The Washington Post reports that some senior Republicans and Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are only learning now that the policy had ever been changed..."
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
The So-Called War On Terror:
One thing is sure, Bush is committed to this war's very expensive prosecuction. The notion of making a significant shift away from the permanent war-time economy the US has maintained since WW II is obviously unpalatable to the people who tell Bush what to say. But if fear works so well as a political tool, and his cronies make war profits hand over fist, why change?
San Francisco Chronicle Editorial: The real costs of U.S. war policy
"Even the most strident hawks in Washington could not have anticipated the stunning costs of the war in Iraq, but that is no reason to keep blindly throwing money to fund what has become an elusive and questionable campaign. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost American taxpayers more than $314 billion so far and the Bush's administration's open-ended commitment has rightly raised concerns, even among war supporters.
At the rate the United States is spending to fund the war efforts, the military campaigns could become the most expensive operations in the past 60 years, far exceeding the costs of the Korean and Vietnam wars. One nonpartisan Washington think tank estimates that the cost of the war in Iraq could exceed $700 billion - a remarkable sum considering that polls show a majority of American believe that the war wasn't worth starting and feel that they are no safer today than they were before Sept. 11, 2001.
Such mind-numbing spending on wars with no discernible exit strategy is all the more troublesome because it has occurred outside the normal budget process, with a series of pay-as-you-go supplemental appropriations. The stealth-funding approach has come without comparable reductions in other government programs, thus saddling the country with an enormous debt burden that exceeded more than $400 billion last year.
President Bush's recent efforts to sell the war to the American people have never been accompanied by solid fiscal policy. The Congressional Budget Office estimated three years ago that the wars would cost between $1.5 billion to $4 billion per month, when in fact the campaigns are costing up to $8 billion per month. Given that the astonishing spending levels have done little to curb the insurgency that has claimed the lives of 1,763 U.S. soldiers and wounded more than 13,000, it's no wonder that many lawmakers in Washington are questioning whether the cost of these wars has grown far too high.
Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska has termed the military spending priorities as 'dangerously irresponsible.' That's the only reasonable response to a war policy that lacks a coherent plan for bringing stability to Iraq.
At least the Bush administration should be forthright enough to include the cost of the Iraq mission in the budget."
Killing The Messenger:
Washington Post: Gonzales Admits Giving Plame Warning to Key Bush Aide
"Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday that he spoke with White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. immediately after learning that the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity. But Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time, waited 12 hours before officially notifying the rest of the staff of the inquiry.
Many details of the investigation led by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald are unknown. Sources close to the case have said Fitzgerald is looking into possible conflicts between what President Bush's senior adviser Karl Rove and vice presidential staff chief I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby told a grand jury, and the accounts of reporters who spoke with the two men.
Gonzales said yesterday on 'Fox News Sunday' that he is among the group of top current and former Bush administration officials who have testified to the grand jury about the unmasking of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative. Gonzales, who has recused himself from the case, would not discuss details of his testimony but said he learned about Plame's work from newspaper accounts.
In the New York Times yesterday, columnist Frank Rich reported that when Gonzales was notified about the investigation on the evening of Monday, Sept. 29, 2003, he waited 12 hours before telling the White House staff about the inquiry. Official notification to staff is meant to quickly alert anyone who may have pertinent records to make sure they are preserved and safeguarded.
Asked on CBS's 'Face the Nation' about the report, Gonzales said the Justice Department had informed his office around 8 p.m. and that White House lawyers said he could wait until the next morning before notifying the staff. He did not say why he called Card..."
One thing is sure, Bush is committed to this war's very expensive prosecuction. The notion of making a significant shift away from the permanent war-time economy the US has maintained since WW II is obviously unpalatable to the people who tell Bush what to say. But if fear works so well as a political tool, and his cronies make war profits hand over fist, why change?
San Francisco Chronicle Editorial: The real costs of U.S. war policy
"Even the most strident hawks in Washington could not have anticipated the stunning costs of the war in Iraq, but that is no reason to keep blindly throwing money to fund what has become an elusive and questionable campaign. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost American taxpayers more than $314 billion so far and the Bush's administration's open-ended commitment has rightly raised concerns, even among war supporters.
At the rate the United States is spending to fund the war efforts, the military campaigns could become the most expensive operations in the past 60 years, far exceeding the costs of the Korean and Vietnam wars. One nonpartisan Washington think tank estimates that the cost of the war in Iraq could exceed $700 billion - a remarkable sum considering that polls show a majority of American believe that the war wasn't worth starting and feel that they are no safer today than they were before Sept. 11, 2001.
Such mind-numbing spending on wars with no discernible exit strategy is all the more troublesome because it has occurred outside the normal budget process, with a series of pay-as-you-go supplemental appropriations. The stealth-funding approach has come without comparable reductions in other government programs, thus saddling the country with an enormous debt burden that exceeded more than $400 billion last year.
President Bush's recent efforts to sell the war to the American people have never been accompanied by solid fiscal policy. The Congressional Budget Office estimated three years ago that the wars would cost between $1.5 billion to $4 billion per month, when in fact the campaigns are costing up to $8 billion per month. Given that the astonishing spending levels have done little to curb the insurgency that has claimed the lives of 1,763 U.S. soldiers and wounded more than 13,000, it's no wonder that many lawmakers in Washington are questioning whether the cost of these wars has grown far too high.
Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska has termed the military spending priorities as 'dangerously irresponsible.' That's the only reasonable response to a war policy that lacks a coherent plan for bringing stability to Iraq.
At least the Bush administration should be forthright enough to include the cost of the Iraq mission in the budget."
Killing The Messenger:
Washington Post: Gonzales Admits Giving Plame Warning to Key Bush Aide
"Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday that he spoke with White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. immediately after learning that the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity. But Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time, waited 12 hours before officially notifying the rest of the staff of the inquiry.
Many details of the investigation led by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald are unknown. Sources close to the case have said Fitzgerald is looking into possible conflicts between what President Bush's senior adviser Karl Rove and vice presidential staff chief I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby told a grand jury, and the accounts of reporters who spoke with the two men.
Gonzales said yesterday on 'Fox News Sunday' that he is among the group of top current and former Bush administration officials who have testified to the grand jury about the unmasking of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative. Gonzales, who has recused himself from the case, would not discuss details of his testimony but said he learned about Plame's work from newspaper accounts.
In the New York Times yesterday, columnist Frank Rich reported that when Gonzales was notified about the investigation on the evening of Monday, Sept. 29, 2003, he waited 12 hours before telling the White House staff about the inquiry. Official notification to staff is meant to quickly alert anyone who may have pertinent records to make sure they are preserved and safeguarded.
Asked on CBS's 'Face the Nation' about the report, Gonzales said the Justice Department had informed his office around 8 p.m. and that White House lawyers said he could wait until the next morning before notifying the staff. He did not say why he called Card..."
Monday, July 25, 2005
John Roberts: Not The Man America Thinks He Is
Democracy Now! Headlines The Federalist (Society) Papers: John Roberts and the Right's Move to Take Control of the Judiciary
"Ever since President Bush announced in prime time that his nominee to the Supreme Court would be John Roberts, momentum has been building for a showdown at Robert's confirmation hearings scheduled for September. At this point it seems unlikely that Roberts is in any great risk of not being confirmed, but Democrats have made clear that they intend to ask him to publicly state his views on some of the most politically divisive issues on Capitol Hill - most prominent among them, a woman's right to choose.
The White House has painted Roberts as a candidate made for the Supreme Court and his resume has gained praise from both sides of the aisle. But John Roberts has left a rather short paper trail. What we do know is drawn largely from his career as a lawyer, where he has defended Operation Rescue, has made the argument that Roe v. Wade has no constitutional basis. We know that he advised Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during the 2000 election showdown and that as a Bush appointed judge, he sat on a 3 judge panel that a week and a half ago handed the Bush administration a key propaganda victory by allowing military trials to go ahead at Guantanamo instead of giving prisoners access to the rights guaranteed under the US constitution. We also know that he is described as a solid conservative who worked for President Bush's father and Ronald Reagan. We also know that the Bush administration lobbied conservative groups to support Roberts for a year leading up to his nomination.
As the TV ad war continues, the Roberts story has taken a new twist. There is growing focus today on an organization that Roberts claims he cannot remember if he joined or not: the Federalist Society. Roberts and the White House say the nominee has no recollection about his possible membership. But yesterday, the Washington Post reported that it had obtained a 1997-98 Federalist Society leadership directory listing Roberts, then a partner in a private law firm, as being a steering committee member in the group's Washington chapter..."
Killing The Messenger:
Frank Rich: Eight Days in July
"...the scandal has metastasized so much at this point that the forgotten man Mr. Bush did not nominate to the Supreme Court is as much a window into the White House's panic and stonewalling as its haste to put forward the man he did. When the president decided not to replace Sandra Day O'Connor with a woman, why did he pick a white guy and not nominate the first Hispanic justice, his friend Alberto Gonzales? Mr. Bush was surely not scared off by Gonzales critics on the right (who find him soft on abortion) or left (who find him soft on the Geneva Conventions). It's Mr. Gonzales's proximity to this scandal that inspires real fear.
As White House counsel, he was the one first notified that the Justice Department, at the request of the C.I.A., had opened an investigation into the outing of Joseph Wilson's wife. That notification came at 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2003, but it took Mr. Gonzales 12 more hours to inform the White House staff that it must 'preserve all materials' relevant to the investigation. This 12-hour delay, he has said, was sanctioned by the Justice Department, but since the department was then run by John Ashcroft, a Bush loyalist who refused to recuse himself from the Plame case, inquiring Senate Democrats would examine this 12-hour delay as closely as an 18½-minute tape gap...
...Most fertile - and apparently ground zero for Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation - is the period at the very outset when those plotting against Mr. Wilson felt safest of all: those eight days in July 2003 between the Wilson Op-Ed, which so infuriated the administration, and the retaliatory Novak column. It was during that long week, on a presidential trip to Africa, that Colin Powell was seen on Air Force One brandishing the classified State Department memo mentioning Valerie Plame, as first reported by The New York Times.
That memo may have been the genesis of an orchestrated assault on the Wilsons. That the administration was then cocky enough and enraged enough to go after its presumed enemies so systematically can be found in a similar, now forgotten attack that was hatched on July 15, the day after the publication of Mr. Novak's column portraying Mr. Wilson as a girlie man dependent on his wife for employment...
...The second narrative to be unearthed in the scandal's early timeline is the motive for this reckless vindictiveness against anyone questioning the war. On May 1, 2003, Mr. Bush celebrated 'Mission Accomplished.' On May 29, Mr. Bush announced that 'we found the weapons of mass destruction.' On July 2, as attacks increased on American troops, Mr. Bush dared the insurgents to 'bring 'em on.' But the mission was not accomplished, the weapons were not found and the enemy kept bringing 'em on. It was against this backdrop of mounting desperation on July 6 that Mr. Wilson went public with his incriminating claim that the most potent argument for the war in the first place, the administration's repeated intimations of nuclear Armageddon, involved twisted intelligence.
Mr. Wilson's charge had such force that just three days after its publication, Mr. Bush radically revised his language about W.M.D.'s. Saddam no longer had W.M.D.'s; he had a W.M.D. 'program.' Right after that George Tenet suddenly decided to release a Friday-evening statement saying that the 16 errant words about African uranium 'should never have been included' in the January 2003 State of the Union address - even though those 16 words could and should have been retracted months earlier. By the next State of the Union, in January 2004, Mr. Bush would retreat completely, talking not about finding W.M.D.'s or even W.M.D. programs, but about 'weapons of mass destruction-related program activities,'..."
Democracy Now! Headlines The Federalist (Society) Papers: John Roberts and the Right's Move to Take Control of the Judiciary
"Ever since President Bush announced in prime time that his nominee to the Supreme Court would be John Roberts, momentum has been building for a showdown at Robert's confirmation hearings scheduled for September. At this point it seems unlikely that Roberts is in any great risk of not being confirmed, but Democrats have made clear that they intend to ask him to publicly state his views on some of the most politically divisive issues on Capitol Hill - most prominent among them, a woman's right to choose.
The White House has painted Roberts as a candidate made for the Supreme Court and his resume has gained praise from both sides of the aisle. But John Roberts has left a rather short paper trail. What we do know is drawn largely from his career as a lawyer, where he has defended Operation Rescue, has made the argument that Roe v. Wade has no constitutional basis. We know that he advised Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during the 2000 election showdown and that as a Bush appointed judge, he sat on a 3 judge panel that a week and a half ago handed the Bush administration a key propaganda victory by allowing military trials to go ahead at Guantanamo instead of giving prisoners access to the rights guaranteed under the US constitution. We also know that he is described as a solid conservative who worked for President Bush's father and Ronald Reagan. We also know that the Bush administration lobbied conservative groups to support Roberts for a year leading up to his nomination.
As the TV ad war continues, the Roberts story has taken a new twist. There is growing focus today on an organization that Roberts claims he cannot remember if he joined or not: the Federalist Society. Roberts and the White House say the nominee has no recollection about his possible membership. But yesterday, the Washington Post reported that it had obtained a 1997-98 Federalist Society leadership directory listing Roberts, then a partner in a private law firm, as being a steering committee member in the group's Washington chapter..."
Killing The Messenger:
Frank Rich: Eight Days in July
"...the scandal has metastasized so much at this point that the forgotten man Mr. Bush did not nominate to the Supreme Court is as much a window into the White House's panic and stonewalling as its haste to put forward the man he did. When the president decided not to replace Sandra Day O'Connor with a woman, why did he pick a white guy and not nominate the first Hispanic justice, his friend Alberto Gonzales? Mr. Bush was surely not scared off by Gonzales critics on the right (who find him soft on abortion) or left (who find him soft on the Geneva Conventions). It's Mr. Gonzales's proximity to this scandal that inspires real fear.
As White House counsel, he was the one first notified that the Justice Department, at the request of the C.I.A., had opened an investigation into the outing of Joseph Wilson's wife. That notification came at 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2003, but it took Mr. Gonzales 12 more hours to inform the White House staff that it must 'preserve all materials' relevant to the investigation. This 12-hour delay, he has said, was sanctioned by the Justice Department, but since the department was then run by John Ashcroft, a Bush loyalist who refused to recuse himself from the Plame case, inquiring Senate Democrats would examine this 12-hour delay as closely as an 18½-minute tape gap...
...Most fertile - and apparently ground zero for Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation - is the period at the very outset when those plotting against Mr. Wilson felt safest of all: those eight days in July 2003 between the Wilson Op-Ed, which so infuriated the administration, and the retaliatory Novak column. It was during that long week, on a presidential trip to Africa, that Colin Powell was seen on Air Force One brandishing the classified State Department memo mentioning Valerie Plame, as first reported by The New York Times.
That memo may have been the genesis of an orchestrated assault on the Wilsons. That the administration was then cocky enough and enraged enough to go after its presumed enemies so systematically can be found in a similar, now forgotten attack that was hatched on July 15, the day after the publication of Mr. Novak's column portraying Mr. Wilson as a girlie man dependent on his wife for employment...
...The second narrative to be unearthed in the scandal's early timeline is the motive for this reckless vindictiveness against anyone questioning the war. On May 1, 2003, Mr. Bush celebrated 'Mission Accomplished.' On May 29, Mr. Bush announced that 'we found the weapons of mass destruction.' On July 2, as attacks increased on American troops, Mr. Bush dared the insurgents to 'bring 'em on.' But the mission was not accomplished, the weapons were not found and the enemy kept bringing 'em on. It was against this backdrop of mounting desperation on July 6 that Mr. Wilson went public with his incriminating claim that the most potent argument for the war in the first place, the administration's repeated intimations of nuclear Armageddon, involved twisted intelligence.
Mr. Wilson's charge had such force that just three days after its publication, Mr. Bush radically revised his language about W.M.D.'s. Saddam no longer had W.M.D.'s; he had a W.M.D. 'program.' Right after that George Tenet suddenly decided to release a Friday-evening statement saying that the 16 errant words about African uranium 'should never have been included' in the January 2003 State of the Union address - even though those 16 words could and should have been retracted months earlier. By the next State of the Union, in January 2004, Mr. Bush would retreat completely, talking not about finding W.M.D.'s or even W.M.D. programs, but about 'weapons of mass destruction-related program activities,'..."
Sunday, July 24, 2005
The Dollar:
Greg Palast: China Floats, America Sinka - Yuan Kicks Dollar Butt By Rejecting "Free Market"
"In case you haven't the least idea what the heck it means for China to 'float' its currency, let me put it in the language we economists use: China's float don't mean squat.
Yet our President, a guy whose marks in Economics 101 are too embarrassing to publish here, ran out to hail the fact that buying Chinese money will now cost more dollars.
The White House line to the media, swallowed whole, is that by making Chinese money (yuan) more expensive to buy with dollars, Americans will buy fewer computers and toys from China -- and US employment will rise.
This will happen when we find Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Economics Lesson #1: You can't change the value of goods by changing the value of the currency on the price tag. As my comrade Art Laffer wrote me, 'If cheap currency makes your products more competitive, all automobiles would be made in Russia.' Driven a Lada lately?
Economics Lesson #2: Don't take economics lessons from George Bush. Or Milton Friedman. Or Thomas Friedman. What that means, class, is don't believe the big, hot pile of hype that China's zooming economy is the result of that Red nation's adopting free market economic policies.
If China is now a capitalist free-market state, then I'm Mariah Carey. China's economy has soared because it stubbornly refused the Free – and Friedman-Market mumbo-jumbo that government should stop controlling, owning and regulating industry...
...Yes, China is adopting elements of 'capitalism.' And that's the ugly part: real estate speculation in Shanghai making millionaires of Communist party boss relatives and bank shenanigans worthy of a Neil Bush.
It is not the Guangdong skyscrapers and speculative bubble which allows China to sell us $162 billion more goods a year than we sell them. It is that China's government, by rejecting free-market fundamentalism, can easily conquer American markets where protection is now deemed passé.
And that is why the yuan has kicked the dollar's butt.
America’s only response is to have Alan Greenspan push up real interest rates so we can buy back our own dollars the Chinese won in the export game. The domestic result: US wages drifting down to Mexican maquiladora levels.
Am I praising China? Forget about it. This is one evil dictatorship which jails union organizers and beats, shackles and tortures those who don't kowtow to the wishes of Chairman Rob -- Wal-Mart chief Robson Walton. (Funny how Mr. Bush never mentions the D-word, Democracy, to our Chinese suppliers.)
Class dismissed."
Raiding The Public Coffers:
The Toledo Blade: Petro: Noe stole millions
"Tom Noe stole millions of dollars from the state and used a 'Ponzi' scheme to fabricate profits within the state’s $50 million rare-coin investment, Ohio’s attorney general said yesterday...
...Mr. Petro said yesterday that he had amended the state’s civil filing against Mr. Noe to include charges of negligence, unjust enrichment, and breach of contract for his conduct while managing the state’s rare-coin funds for seven years.
The attorney general said he expects Mr. Noe to attend an Aug. 30 deposition, when he would have to answer questions under oath.
The news conference occurred the same day The Blade reported about a flurry of activity in the coin funds in the days and weeks before May 24, the day the state froze coin-fund assets and two days before Mr. Noe’s attorneys said up to $13 million of the state’s money is missing..."
The So-Called War On Terror:
Tom Engelhardt: The Spies Who Came In from the Hot Tub
"Like so much else in our moment, it contravened laws the US had once signed onto, pretzeled the English language, went directly to the dark side, was connected to various administration lies and manipulations that preceded the invasion of Iraq, and was based on taking the American taxpayer to the cleaners. I'm talking about a now-notorious Bush administration 'extraordinary rendition' in Italy, the secret kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan in early 2003, his transport via US airbases in Italy and Germany to Egypt, and there, evidently with the CIA station chief for Italy riding shotgun, directly into the hands of Egyptian torturers. This was but one of an unknown number of extraordinary-rendition operations - the estimate is more than 100 since September 11, 2001, but no one really knows - that have been conducted all over the world and have delivered terror suspects into the custody of Uzbeki, Syrian, Egyptian, and other hands notorious for their use of torture. It just so happens that this operation took place on the democratic soil of an ally that possessed an independent judiciary, and that the team of 19 or more participants, some speaking fluent Italian, passed through that country not like the undercover agents of our imagination, but, as former CIA clandestine officer Melissa Boyle Mahle told Reuters, 'like elephants stampeding through Milan. They left huge footprints.'
Those gargantuan footprints - and some good detective work by the Italian police based on unsecured cell phones (evidently from a batch issued to the US diplomatic mission in Rome), hotel bills, credit card receipts, and the like - have given us a glimpse into the unexpectedly extravagant 'shadow war' being conducted on our behalf by the Bush administration through the Central Intelligence Agency. So let me skip the normal discussions of kidnappings, torture, or whether we violated Italian sovereignty, and just concentrate on what those footprints revealed. If the President's Global War on Terror has been saddled with the inelegant acronym GWOT, the Italian rendition operation should perhaps be given the acronym LDVWOT or La Dolce Vita War on Terror.
Of course, if Vice President Dick Cheney could say of administration tax cuts, 'We won the [2002] midterms. This is our due'; if House Majority Leader Tom DeLay could charge his transatlantic airfare to Great Britain on an American Express card issued to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and food and phone calls at a Scottish golf-course hotel on a credit card issued to Washington lobbyist, Edwin A. Buckham; if Halliburton could slip a reputed $813 million extra in 'costs' into a contract to provide logistical support for US troops (including '$152,000 in 'movie library costs' [and] a $1.5 million tailoring bill'); then why shouldn't the Spartan warriors of the intelligence community capture a few taxpayer bucks while preparing a kidnapping in Italy?
Here's what we know at present about this particular version of La Dolce Vita:
* The CIA agents took rooms in Milan's 5-star hotels, including the Principe di Savoia ('one of the world's most luxuriously appointed hotels') where they rang up $42,000 in expenses; the Westin Palace, the Milan Hilton, and the Star Hotel Rosa as well as similar places in the seaside resort of La Spezia and in Florence, running up cumulative hotel bills of $144,984.
* They ate in the equivalent of 5-star restaurants in Milan and elsewhere, evidently fancying themselves gourmet undercover agents.
* As a mixed team - at least 6 women took part in the operation - men and women on at least two occasions took double rooms together in these hotels. (There is no indication that any of them were married - to each other at least.)
* After the successful kidnapping was done and the cleric dispatched to sunny Egypt, they evidently decided they deserved a respite from their exertions; so several of them left for a vacation in Venice, while four others headed for the Mediterranean coast north of Tuscany, all on the taxpayer dole.
* They charged up to $500 a day apiece, according to Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post, to 'Diners Club accounts created to match their recently forged identities'; wielded Visa cards (assumedly similarly linked to their fake identities); and made sure they got or used frequent flier miles. (The Diner's Club, when queried by Tomdispatch, refused to comment on any aspect of the case.) Our master spies 'rarely paid in cash,' adds Whitlock, 'gave their frequent traveler account numbers to desk clerks and made dozens of calls from un-secure phones in their rooms.'
*To move their captive in comfort - for them - they summoned up not some grimy cargo plane but a Learjet to take him to Germany and a Gulfstream V to transport him to Egypt, the sorts of spiffy private jets normally used by CEOs and movie stars..."
William Rivers Pitt: Bush's Soviet State
"...In short, George W. Bush and his administration are pursuing a course of determined unreality that mirrors the delusional fantasies that ultimately consigned the Soviet Union to the dustbin of history. This Rove-Plame thing is but one small aspect of the main.
Valerie Plame's career as a covert CIA operative was spent keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists. Her career was destroyed by the White House because her husband, Joseph Wilson, had the gall to publicly contradict Bush and his people regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was so important for the Bush administration to maintain the fiction that Iraq possessed these weapons that they were willing to torpedo a vital intelligence network set up to protect us all. That fiction was more important than the truth.
It seems clear that Rove was central to this action, regardless of all the arguments over the definition of 'is.' It is likewise becoming clear that Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was also in on this action. However, focusing only on which laws these two may have violated in wrecking Plame's ability to do her job does not encompass the totality of the issue. Valerie Plame is not a central character in all this, but only another casualty.
George W. Bush and his people spent months telling the American public that Iraq was a direct threat to our security. They invaded based upon false pretenses. They maintain the fiction that the war was necessary when it has become manifestly clear that it was not. They maintain the fiction that freedom has been brought to Iraq when it has become manifestly clear that it has not. Perhaps worst of all, they maintain the fiction that the United States and the world are safer because of the invasion. Recent events in London rip this fantasy to shreds, and never mind the reports from the French news media that the London explosives may have been made from materials stolen from the unsecured Al-Qaqaa facility in Iraq.
A recent article from the Associated Press titled 'Experts Fear Endless Terror War' noted, 'An Associated Press survey of longtime students of international terrorism finds them ever more convinced, in the aftermath of London's bloody Thursday, that the world has entered a long siege in a new kind of war. They believe that al-Qaida is mutating into a global insurgency, a possible prototype for other 21st-century movements, technologically astute, almost leaderless. And the way out is far from clear. In fact, says Michael Scheuer, the ex-CIA analyst, rather than move toward solutions, the United States took a big step backward by invading Iraq.'
The article continues, 'Scheuer, who headed the CIA's bin Laden unit for nine years, sees a different way out - through US foreign policy. He said he resigned last November to expose the US leadership's 'willful blindness' to what needs to be done: withdraw the US military from the Mideast, end 'unqualified support' for Israel, sever close ties to Arab oil-state 'tyrannies.''
Willful blindness is an appropriate phrase. It captures not only the fact that we are manufacturing threats to our security every day we remain in Iraq, but the fact that virtually everything associated with Bush administration policy depends on self-delusion and the manipulation of data to fulfill political desires. Even the most fundamental underpinnings of conservative political philosophy have been ground up in the gears of this grand fantasy.
Truth no longer matters. Ethics no longer matter. Facts are there for the twisting. Decades-old conservative ideals regarding the budget and the size of the Federal government have been thrown under the bus because they are no longer convenient, and get in the way of the manufacture of reality. Soviet self-delusion led that nation into Afghanistan and disaster. The Bush administration’s self-delusion has led us into Iraq. Res ipsa loquitor.
The parallel between this Bush administration and the old, failed Soviet regime can be taken one step further. One of the main reasons the Soviet government was able to stagger on for years making up facts out of whole cloth was that the leaders of that regime were accountable to no one. The Politburo said it, and so it must be true, and if it wasn't true, there was no authority or check to their power that could blow a whistle, throw a flag or demand an investigation. The old Soviet government lived in a bubble, free from the fear that they might be called to the carpet for lying, getting a lot of people killed and putting the State in mortal danger.
Sound familiar? Bush and his people have managed to walk through the raindrops since 2001, managed to pull off more than a few impeachable crimes, for no other reason than that they are accountable to no one in government ... or, more properly, no one in government who has the power to call them to account has done so. Congress is run by Bush allies, the Justice Department is run by his longest-standing hatchet man, and all of them prefer to maintain the pleasant fictions over any attempt to fix what has gone so drastically and demonstrably wrong..."
Greg Palast: China Floats, America Sinka - Yuan Kicks Dollar Butt By Rejecting "Free Market"
"In case you haven't the least idea what the heck it means for China to 'float' its currency, let me put it in the language we economists use: China's float don't mean squat.
Yet our President, a guy whose marks in Economics 101 are too embarrassing to publish here, ran out to hail the fact that buying Chinese money will now cost more dollars.
The White House line to the media, swallowed whole, is that by making Chinese money (yuan) more expensive to buy with dollars, Americans will buy fewer computers and toys from China -- and US employment will rise.
This will happen when we find Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Economics Lesson #1: You can't change the value of goods by changing the value of the currency on the price tag. As my comrade Art Laffer wrote me, 'If cheap currency makes your products more competitive, all automobiles would be made in Russia.' Driven a Lada lately?
Economics Lesson #2: Don't take economics lessons from George Bush. Or Milton Friedman. Or Thomas Friedman. What that means, class, is don't believe the big, hot pile of hype that China's zooming economy is the result of that Red nation's adopting free market economic policies.
If China is now a capitalist free-market state, then I'm Mariah Carey. China's economy has soared because it stubbornly refused the Free – and Friedman-Market mumbo-jumbo that government should stop controlling, owning and regulating industry...
...Yes, China is adopting elements of 'capitalism.' And that's the ugly part: real estate speculation in Shanghai making millionaires of Communist party boss relatives and bank shenanigans worthy of a Neil Bush.
It is not the Guangdong skyscrapers and speculative bubble which allows China to sell us $162 billion more goods a year than we sell them. It is that China's government, by rejecting free-market fundamentalism, can easily conquer American markets where protection is now deemed passé.
And that is why the yuan has kicked the dollar's butt.
America’s only response is to have Alan Greenspan push up real interest rates so we can buy back our own dollars the Chinese won in the export game. The domestic result: US wages drifting down to Mexican maquiladora levels.
Am I praising China? Forget about it. This is one evil dictatorship which jails union organizers and beats, shackles and tortures those who don't kowtow to the wishes of Chairman Rob -- Wal-Mart chief Robson Walton. (Funny how Mr. Bush never mentions the D-word, Democracy, to our Chinese suppliers.)
Class dismissed."
Raiding The Public Coffers:
The Toledo Blade: Petro: Noe stole millions
"Tom Noe stole millions of dollars from the state and used a 'Ponzi' scheme to fabricate profits within the state’s $50 million rare-coin investment, Ohio’s attorney general said yesterday...
...Mr. Petro said yesterday that he had amended the state’s civil filing against Mr. Noe to include charges of negligence, unjust enrichment, and breach of contract for his conduct while managing the state’s rare-coin funds for seven years.
The attorney general said he expects Mr. Noe to attend an Aug. 30 deposition, when he would have to answer questions under oath.
The news conference occurred the same day The Blade reported about a flurry of activity in the coin funds in the days and weeks before May 24, the day the state froze coin-fund assets and two days before Mr. Noe’s attorneys said up to $13 million of the state’s money is missing..."
The So-Called War On Terror:
Tom Engelhardt: The Spies Who Came In from the Hot Tub
"Like so much else in our moment, it contravened laws the US had once signed onto, pretzeled the English language, went directly to the dark side, was connected to various administration lies and manipulations that preceded the invasion of Iraq, and was based on taking the American taxpayer to the cleaners. I'm talking about a now-notorious Bush administration 'extraordinary rendition' in Italy, the secret kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan in early 2003, his transport via US airbases in Italy and Germany to Egypt, and there, evidently with the CIA station chief for Italy riding shotgun, directly into the hands of Egyptian torturers. This was but one of an unknown number of extraordinary-rendition operations - the estimate is more than 100 since September 11, 2001, but no one really knows - that have been conducted all over the world and have delivered terror suspects into the custody of Uzbeki, Syrian, Egyptian, and other hands notorious for their use of torture. It just so happens that this operation took place on the democratic soil of an ally that possessed an independent judiciary, and that the team of 19 or more participants, some speaking fluent Italian, passed through that country not like the undercover agents of our imagination, but, as former CIA clandestine officer Melissa Boyle Mahle told Reuters, 'like elephants stampeding through Milan. They left huge footprints.'
Those gargantuan footprints - and some good detective work by the Italian police based on unsecured cell phones (evidently from a batch issued to the US diplomatic mission in Rome), hotel bills, credit card receipts, and the like - have given us a glimpse into the unexpectedly extravagant 'shadow war' being conducted on our behalf by the Bush administration through the Central Intelligence Agency. So let me skip the normal discussions of kidnappings, torture, or whether we violated Italian sovereignty, and just concentrate on what those footprints revealed. If the President's Global War on Terror has been saddled with the inelegant acronym GWOT, the Italian rendition operation should perhaps be given the acronym LDVWOT or La Dolce Vita War on Terror.
Of course, if Vice President Dick Cheney could say of administration tax cuts, 'We won the [2002] midterms. This is our due'; if House Majority Leader Tom DeLay could charge his transatlantic airfare to Great Britain on an American Express card issued to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and food and phone calls at a Scottish golf-course hotel on a credit card issued to Washington lobbyist, Edwin A. Buckham; if Halliburton could slip a reputed $813 million extra in 'costs' into a contract to provide logistical support for US troops (including '$152,000 in 'movie library costs' [and] a $1.5 million tailoring bill'); then why shouldn't the Spartan warriors of the intelligence community capture a few taxpayer bucks while preparing a kidnapping in Italy?
Here's what we know at present about this particular version of La Dolce Vita:
* The CIA agents took rooms in Milan's 5-star hotels, including the Principe di Savoia ('one of the world's most luxuriously appointed hotels') where they rang up $42,000 in expenses; the Westin Palace, the Milan Hilton, and the Star Hotel Rosa as well as similar places in the seaside resort of La Spezia and in Florence, running up cumulative hotel bills of $144,984.
* They ate in the equivalent of 5-star restaurants in Milan and elsewhere, evidently fancying themselves gourmet undercover agents.
* As a mixed team - at least 6 women took part in the operation - men and women on at least two occasions took double rooms together in these hotels. (There is no indication that any of them were married - to each other at least.)
* After the successful kidnapping was done and the cleric dispatched to sunny Egypt, they evidently decided they deserved a respite from their exertions; so several of them left for a vacation in Venice, while four others headed for the Mediterranean coast north of Tuscany, all on the taxpayer dole.
* They charged up to $500 a day apiece, according to Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post, to 'Diners Club accounts created to match their recently forged identities'; wielded Visa cards (assumedly similarly linked to their fake identities); and made sure they got or used frequent flier miles. (The Diner's Club, when queried by Tomdispatch, refused to comment on any aspect of the case.) Our master spies 'rarely paid in cash,' adds Whitlock, 'gave their frequent traveler account numbers to desk clerks and made dozens of calls from un-secure phones in their rooms.'
*To move their captive in comfort - for them - they summoned up not some grimy cargo plane but a Learjet to take him to Germany and a Gulfstream V to transport him to Egypt, the sorts of spiffy private jets normally used by CEOs and movie stars..."
William Rivers Pitt: Bush's Soviet State
"...In short, George W. Bush and his administration are pursuing a course of determined unreality that mirrors the delusional fantasies that ultimately consigned the Soviet Union to the dustbin of history. This Rove-Plame thing is but one small aspect of the main.
Valerie Plame's career as a covert CIA operative was spent keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists. Her career was destroyed by the White House because her husband, Joseph Wilson, had the gall to publicly contradict Bush and his people regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was so important for the Bush administration to maintain the fiction that Iraq possessed these weapons that they were willing to torpedo a vital intelligence network set up to protect us all. That fiction was more important than the truth.
It seems clear that Rove was central to this action, regardless of all the arguments over the definition of 'is.' It is likewise becoming clear that Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was also in on this action. However, focusing only on which laws these two may have violated in wrecking Plame's ability to do her job does not encompass the totality of the issue. Valerie Plame is not a central character in all this, but only another casualty.
George W. Bush and his people spent months telling the American public that Iraq was a direct threat to our security. They invaded based upon false pretenses. They maintain the fiction that the war was necessary when it has become manifestly clear that it was not. They maintain the fiction that freedom has been brought to Iraq when it has become manifestly clear that it has not. Perhaps worst of all, they maintain the fiction that the United States and the world are safer because of the invasion. Recent events in London rip this fantasy to shreds, and never mind the reports from the French news media that the London explosives may have been made from materials stolen from the unsecured Al-Qaqaa facility in Iraq.
A recent article from the Associated Press titled 'Experts Fear Endless Terror War' noted, 'An Associated Press survey of longtime students of international terrorism finds them ever more convinced, in the aftermath of London's bloody Thursday, that the world has entered a long siege in a new kind of war. They believe that al-Qaida is mutating into a global insurgency, a possible prototype for other 21st-century movements, technologically astute, almost leaderless. And the way out is far from clear. In fact, says Michael Scheuer, the ex-CIA analyst, rather than move toward solutions, the United States took a big step backward by invading Iraq.'
The article continues, 'Scheuer, who headed the CIA's bin Laden unit for nine years, sees a different way out - through US foreign policy. He said he resigned last November to expose the US leadership's 'willful blindness' to what needs to be done: withdraw the US military from the Mideast, end 'unqualified support' for Israel, sever close ties to Arab oil-state 'tyrannies.''
Willful blindness is an appropriate phrase. It captures not only the fact that we are manufacturing threats to our security every day we remain in Iraq, but the fact that virtually everything associated with Bush administration policy depends on self-delusion and the manipulation of data to fulfill political desires. Even the most fundamental underpinnings of conservative political philosophy have been ground up in the gears of this grand fantasy.
Truth no longer matters. Ethics no longer matter. Facts are there for the twisting. Decades-old conservative ideals regarding the budget and the size of the Federal government have been thrown under the bus because they are no longer convenient, and get in the way of the manufacture of reality. Soviet self-delusion led that nation into Afghanistan and disaster. The Bush administration’s self-delusion has led us into Iraq. Res ipsa loquitor.
The parallel between this Bush administration and the old, failed Soviet regime can be taken one step further. One of the main reasons the Soviet government was able to stagger on for years making up facts out of whole cloth was that the leaders of that regime were accountable to no one. The Politburo said it, and so it must be true, and if it wasn't true, there was no authority or check to their power that could blow a whistle, throw a flag or demand an investigation. The old Soviet government lived in a bubble, free from the fear that they might be called to the carpet for lying, getting a lot of people killed and putting the State in mortal danger.
Sound familiar? Bush and his people have managed to walk through the raindrops since 2001, managed to pull off more than a few impeachable crimes, for no other reason than that they are accountable to no one in government ... or, more properly, no one in government who has the power to call them to account has done so. Congress is run by Bush allies, the Justice Department is run by his longest-standing hatchet man, and all of them prefer to maintain the pleasant fictions over any attempt to fix what has gone so drastically and demonstrably wrong..."
Friday, July 22, 2005
The So-Called War on Terror:
Sidney Blumenthal: Tunnel Vision
"'The war on terror goes on,' proclaimed President Bush on the day of the London bombings. Throughout the 2004 campaign Bush's winning theme was terror. He achieved the logic of a unified field theory connecting Iraq to Afghanistan by threading terror through both despite the absence of evidence. In almost every city and town, Bush insisted that if we didn't fight the terrorists there, we would be fighting them at home. In January of this year, the CIA's think tank, the National Intelligence Council, issued a report describing Iraq as the magnet, training and recruiting ground for international terrorism. The false rationale for the invasion had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But with his popularity flagging, Bush returned to the formulations that had succeeded in his campaign..."
Challenging The Right:
David Corn: The Anti-Neocon
" 'I'm the anti-neocon.' That's how Robert Merry recently described himself to me. After reading his new book-Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition -I have to say: He got that right.
His book is the most scorching mainstream critique of the neocons and their misadventure in Iraq that I have encountered. Merry, the publisher of Congressional Quarterly and a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, rips apart that small band of ideologically driven chickenhawks and leaves their bones scattered on the floor of a Council of Foreign Relations conference room. Merry is a hard-ass practitioner of global realpolitik. There is not a smidgeon of sentiment in a single sentence of this book. He's certainly not keeping company with one-worlders and those who would identify (or misidentify, in his view) American national security interests with feel-good global humanitarianism. But in a classic example of that old Middle East cliché-the enemy of my enemy is my friend-he has produced a book that liberal-minded foreign policy folks ought to gobble up. And I would dare the neocons to enter Merry's knife-throwing gallery...
...Out of all this, he notes, American history has yielded four basic strains of foreign policy: conservative interventionism (the hard-headed Cold War policy that came out of World War II), conservative isolationism (poster boy: Pat Buchanan), liberal interventionism (sending U.S. troops to help troubled countries such as Haiti), and liberal isolationism (think of the movement against the Vietnam War). His descriptions invite the charge that he is being overly simplistic. For instance, he claims Reagan's use of force in Central America in the 1980s-which he points to as an example of conservative interventionism-was necessary to 'save Western civilization from the threat of Soviet expansionism.' No, it wasn't. But the real question for him-and for us-is, which of these four teams is essentially right?..."
Sidney Blumenthal: Tunnel Vision
"'The war on terror goes on,' proclaimed President Bush on the day of the London bombings. Throughout the 2004 campaign Bush's winning theme was terror. He achieved the logic of a unified field theory connecting Iraq to Afghanistan by threading terror through both despite the absence of evidence. In almost every city and town, Bush insisted that if we didn't fight the terrorists there, we would be fighting them at home. In January of this year, the CIA's think tank, the National Intelligence Council, issued a report describing Iraq as the magnet, training and recruiting ground for international terrorism. The false rationale for the invasion had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But with his popularity flagging, Bush returned to the formulations that had succeeded in his campaign..."
Challenging The Right:
David Corn: The Anti-Neocon
" 'I'm the anti-neocon.' That's how Robert Merry recently described himself to me. After reading his new book-Sands of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards of Global Ambition -I have to say: He got that right.
His book is the most scorching mainstream critique of the neocons and their misadventure in Iraq that I have encountered. Merry, the publisher of Congressional Quarterly and a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, rips apart that small band of ideologically driven chickenhawks and leaves their bones scattered on the floor of a Council of Foreign Relations conference room. Merry is a hard-ass practitioner of global realpolitik. There is not a smidgeon of sentiment in a single sentence of this book. He's certainly not keeping company with one-worlders and those who would identify (or misidentify, in his view) American national security interests with feel-good global humanitarianism. But in a classic example of that old Middle East cliché-the enemy of my enemy is my friend-he has produced a book that liberal-minded foreign policy folks ought to gobble up. And I would dare the neocons to enter Merry's knife-throwing gallery...
...Out of all this, he notes, American history has yielded four basic strains of foreign policy: conservative interventionism (the hard-headed Cold War policy that came out of World War II), conservative isolationism (poster boy: Pat Buchanan), liberal interventionism (sending U.S. troops to help troubled countries such as Haiti), and liberal isolationism (think of the movement against the Vietnam War). His descriptions invite the charge that he is being overly simplistic. For instance, he claims Reagan's use of force in Central America in the 1980s-which he points to as an example of conservative interventionism-was necessary to 'save Western civilization from the threat of Soviet expansionism.' No, it wasn't. But the real question for him-and for us-is, which of these four teams is essentially right?..."
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Killing The Messenger:
Washington Post: Plame's Identity Marked as Secret
"A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked '(S)' for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials..."
Ray McGovern: Cheney Wasn't Involved Either... Right
"By now it should be clear that the White House assault on former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife had much less to do with personalities than with the 'particular lie' that Wilson exposed. I believe this helps to explain the highly unusual role Vice President Dick Cheney played regarding the forged 'intelligence' about Iraq seeking to acquire uranium from Niger - the source of that particular lie.
Our Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) writings provide contemporaneous insight into the major flap that hit the White House two years ago, when it was discovered that the 'intelligence' was based on a forgery. It was clear at that time that the first item on the White House list of talking points was: 'It wasn't Dick.'
Plus ça change. Investigative journalist Robert Parry, writing yesterday in consortiumnews.com, has noted that atop the Republican National Committee's current list of 'Joe Wilson's Top Ten Worst Inaccuracies and Misstatements' sits this priority item: 'Wilson insisted that the Vice President's office sent him to Niger.'
This is a deliberate distortion of what Wilson has said, but if we were to address all such distortions we would be here all day. Besides, the RNC would very much like us to focus on the distortions, and our media have allowed themselves to be led by the nose. So let's leave this one aside for the moment. What strikes me more and more is the rather transparent two-year-old campaign to dissociate Cheney from L'Affaire Iraq-Niger..."
Matthew Cooper: "What I Told The Grand Jury"
"...The grand jurors wanted to know what was on my mind, and I told them. The White House had done something it hardly ever does: it admitted a mistake. Shortly after Wilson's piece appeared, the White House said that the African uranium claim, while probably still true, should not have been in the President's State of the Union address because it hadn't been proved well enough. That was big news as the media flocked to find out who had vetted the President's speech. But at the same time, I was interested in an ancillary question about why government officials, publicly and privately, seemed to be disparaging Wilson. It struck me, as I told the grand jury, as odd and unnecessary, especially after their saying the President's address should not have included the 16-word claim about Saddam and African uranium.
I told the grand jurors that I was curious about Wilson when I called Karl Rove on Friday, July 11. Rove was an obvious call for any White House correspondent, let alone someone trying to prove himself at a new beat. As I told the grand jury - which seemed very interested in my prior dealings with Rove - I don't think we had spoken more than a handful of times before that. I recalled that when I got the White House job a couple of weeks earlier, I left a message for him trying to introduce myself and announce my new posting.
As I told the grand jury - and we went over this in microscopic, excruciating detail, which may someday prove relevant - I recall calling Rove from my office at TIME magazine through the White House switchboard and being transferred to his office. I believe a woman answered the phone and said words to the effect that Rove wasn't there or was busy before going on vacation. But then, I recall, she said something like, 'Hang on,' and I was transferred to him. I recall saying something like, 'I'm writing about Wilson,' before he interjected. 'Don't get too far out on Wilson,' he told me. I started taking notes on my computer, and while an e-mail I sent moments after the call has been leaked, my notes have not been.
The grand jury asked about one of the more interesting lines in that e-mail, in which I refer to my conversation with Rove as being on 'double super secret background,' a line that's raised a few eyebrows ever since it leaked into the public domain. I told the grand jury that the phrase is not a journalistic term of art but a reference to the film Animal House, in which John Belushi's wild Delta House fraternity is placed on 'double secret probation.' ('Super' was my own addition.) In fact, I told the grand jury, Rove told me the conversation was on 'deep background.' I explained to the grand jury that I take the term to mean that I can use the material but not quote it, and that I must keep the identity of my source confidential.
Rove went on to say that Wilson had not been sent to Niger by the director of the CIA and, I believe from my subsequent e-mails--although it's not in my notes - that Rove added that Dick Cheney didn't send him either. Indeed, the next day the Vice President's chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, told me Cheney had not been responsible for Wilson's mission..."
Iraq:
Sunday Times (UK) - How 'Britain's Deep Throat' Leaked the Memos
Ray McGovern: Stay the Crooked Course
"The editors of the New York Times this morning feign shock that in his speech at Fort Bragg yesterday evening President George W. Bush would 'raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks.' Kudos for that insight! Better three years late than never, I suppose.
Forget the documentary evidence (the Downing Street minutes) that the war on Iraq was fraudulent from the outset. Forget that the US and UK started pulverizing Iraq with stepped-up bombing months before president or prime minister breathed a word to Congress or Parliament. Forget that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his merry men - his co-opted, castrated military brass - have no clue regarding what US forces are up against in Iraq. The president insists that we must stay the course.
As was the case in Vietnam, the Iraq war is being run by civilians innocent of military experience and disdainful of advice from the colonels and majors who know which end is up. Aping the president's practice of surrounding himself with sycophants, Rumsfeld has promoted a coterie of yes-men to top military ranks - men who 'kiss up and kick down,' in the words of former Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford, describing UN-nominee John Bolton's modus operandi at the State Department. So when the president assures us, as he did yesterday, that he will be guided by the 'sober judgment of our military leaders' he is referring to the castrati.
This is all lost on doting congresspeople like Sen. John Warner (R-VA), who has been around long enough to know better than to recite oxymorons. Most striking last week was his quixotic appeal to the military's top brass to give a candid assessment of the situation..."
Energy Policy:
Kelpie Wilson: The Tragic Abuse of Corn
"...Corn production uses tremendous amounts of fossil fuel for mechanized labor, irrigation, drying, transport and fertilizer. I sincerely doubted that corn as a fuel could be renewable on a sustainable basis.
Almost one quarter of America's farmland grows corn - maize. At nine billion bushels a year, it is our single largest crop and uses vast amounts of water, pesticides and fertilizer. Erosion and toxic runoff from the fields pollute waterways and kill fish in the Gulf of Mexico where a plume of pollution from the Mississippi Delta creates an ever-expanding dead zone. Raising corn the way we do it today depletes the soil of nutrients and creates an addiction to nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas.
Since natural gas prices went up a few years ago, we are producing less and less fertilizer here and importing more of it from the Persian Gulf. Now we must worry about food security as well as energy security.
Burning corn in a stove may seem bizarre, but it is no more bizarre than fermenting and distilling it into ethanol to burn in our cars. As gas prices go up, people are looking to ethanol and other biofuels to substitute for oil. Unfortunately, it is a bad bargain - one that is being encouraged by giant agribusiness firms like Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto that reap huge profits from corn and taxpayer's wallets.
Corn is already America's most heavily subsidized crop, sucking up about $10 billion a year (according to OXFAM) along with all that water and fertilizer..."
The Environment:
Cornell U.:Organic farming success
"Organic farming produces the same yields of corn and soybeans as does conventional farming, but uses 30 percent less energy, less water and no pesticides, a review of a 22-year farming trial study concludes.
David Pimentel, a Cornell University professor of ecology and agriculture, concludes, 'Organic farming offers real advantages for such crops as corn and soybeans.' Pimentel is the lead author of a study that is published in the July issue of Bioscience (Vol. 55:7) analyzing the environmental, energy and economic costs and benefits of growing soybeans and corn organically versus conventionally. The study is a review of the Rodale Institute Farming Systems Trial, the longest running comparison of organic vs. conventional farming in the United States.
'Organic farming approaches for these crops not only use an average of 30 percent less fossil energy but also conserve more water in the soil, induce less erosion, maintain soil quality and conserve more biological resources than conventional farming does,' Pimentel added.
The study compared a conventional farm that used recommended fertilizer and pesticide applications with an organic animal-based farm (where manure was applied) and an organic legume-based farm (that used a three-year rotation of hairy vetch/corn and rye/soybeans and wheat). The two organic systems received no chemical fertilizers or pesticides..."
Environmental News Network: Unborn Babies Soaked in Chemicals, Survey Finds
"Unborn U.S. babies are soaking in a stew of chemicals, including mercury, gasoline byproducts and pesticides, according to a report to be released Thursday.
Although the effects on the babies are not clear, the survey prompted several members of Congress to press for legislation that would strengthen controls on chemicals in the environment.
The report by the Environmental Working Group is based on tests of 10 samples of umbilical cord blood taken by the American Red Cross. They found an average of 287 contaminants in the blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and the Teflon chemical PFOA.
'These 10 newborn babies ... were born polluted,' said New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, who planned to publicize the findings at a news conference Thursday.
'If ever we had proof that our nation's pollution laws aren't working, it's reading the list of industrial chemicals in the bodies of babies who have not yet lived outside the womb,' Slaughter, a Democrat, said..."
Washington Post: Plame's Identity Marked as Secret
"A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked '(S)' for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials..."
Ray McGovern: Cheney Wasn't Involved Either... Right
"By now it should be clear that the White House assault on former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife had much less to do with personalities than with the 'particular lie' that Wilson exposed. I believe this helps to explain the highly unusual role Vice President Dick Cheney played regarding the forged 'intelligence' about Iraq seeking to acquire uranium from Niger - the source of that particular lie.
Our Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) writings provide contemporaneous insight into the major flap that hit the White House two years ago, when it was discovered that the 'intelligence' was based on a forgery. It was clear at that time that the first item on the White House list of talking points was: 'It wasn't Dick.'
Plus ça change. Investigative journalist Robert Parry, writing yesterday in consortiumnews.com, has noted that atop the Republican National Committee's current list of 'Joe Wilson's Top Ten Worst Inaccuracies and Misstatements' sits this priority item: 'Wilson insisted that the Vice President's office sent him to Niger.'
This is a deliberate distortion of what Wilson has said, but if we were to address all such distortions we would be here all day. Besides, the RNC would very much like us to focus on the distortions, and our media have allowed themselves to be led by the nose. So let's leave this one aside for the moment. What strikes me more and more is the rather transparent two-year-old campaign to dissociate Cheney from L'Affaire Iraq-Niger..."
Matthew Cooper: "What I Told The Grand Jury"
"...The grand jurors wanted to know what was on my mind, and I told them. The White House had done something it hardly ever does: it admitted a mistake. Shortly after Wilson's piece appeared, the White House said that the African uranium claim, while probably still true, should not have been in the President's State of the Union address because it hadn't been proved well enough. That was big news as the media flocked to find out who had vetted the President's speech. But at the same time, I was interested in an ancillary question about why government officials, publicly and privately, seemed to be disparaging Wilson. It struck me, as I told the grand jury, as odd and unnecessary, especially after their saying the President's address should not have included the 16-word claim about Saddam and African uranium.
I told the grand jurors that I was curious about Wilson when I called Karl Rove on Friday, July 11. Rove was an obvious call for any White House correspondent, let alone someone trying to prove himself at a new beat. As I told the grand jury - which seemed very interested in my prior dealings with Rove - I don't think we had spoken more than a handful of times before that. I recalled that when I got the White House job a couple of weeks earlier, I left a message for him trying to introduce myself and announce my new posting.
As I told the grand jury - and we went over this in microscopic, excruciating detail, which may someday prove relevant - I recall calling Rove from my office at TIME magazine through the White House switchboard and being transferred to his office. I believe a woman answered the phone and said words to the effect that Rove wasn't there or was busy before going on vacation. But then, I recall, she said something like, 'Hang on,' and I was transferred to him. I recall saying something like, 'I'm writing about Wilson,' before he interjected. 'Don't get too far out on Wilson,' he told me. I started taking notes on my computer, and while an e-mail I sent moments after the call has been leaked, my notes have not been.
The grand jury asked about one of the more interesting lines in that e-mail, in which I refer to my conversation with Rove as being on 'double super secret background,' a line that's raised a few eyebrows ever since it leaked into the public domain. I told the grand jury that the phrase is not a journalistic term of art but a reference to the film Animal House, in which John Belushi's wild Delta House fraternity is placed on 'double secret probation.' ('Super' was my own addition.) In fact, I told the grand jury, Rove told me the conversation was on 'deep background.' I explained to the grand jury that I take the term to mean that I can use the material but not quote it, and that I must keep the identity of my source confidential.
Rove went on to say that Wilson had not been sent to Niger by the director of the CIA and, I believe from my subsequent e-mails--although it's not in my notes - that Rove added that Dick Cheney didn't send him either. Indeed, the next day the Vice President's chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, told me Cheney had not been responsible for Wilson's mission..."
Iraq:
Sunday Times (UK) - How 'Britain's Deep Throat' Leaked the Memos
Ray McGovern: Stay the Crooked Course
"The editors of the New York Times this morning feign shock that in his speech at Fort Bragg yesterday evening President George W. Bush would 'raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks.' Kudos for that insight! Better three years late than never, I suppose.
Forget the documentary evidence (the Downing Street minutes) that the war on Iraq was fraudulent from the outset. Forget that the US and UK started pulverizing Iraq with stepped-up bombing months before president or prime minister breathed a word to Congress or Parliament. Forget that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his merry men - his co-opted, castrated military brass - have no clue regarding what US forces are up against in Iraq. The president insists that we must stay the course.
As was the case in Vietnam, the Iraq war is being run by civilians innocent of military experience and disdainful of advice from the colonels and majors who know which end is up. Aping the president's practice of surrounding himself with sycophants, Rumsfeld has promoted a coterie of yes-men to top military ranks - men who 'kiss up and kick down,' in the words of former Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford, describing UN-nominee John Bolton's modus operandi at the State Department. So when the president assures us, as he did yesterday, that he will be guided by the 'sober judgment of our military leaders' he is referring to the castrati.
This is all lost on doting congresspeople like Sen. John Warner (R-VA), who has been around long enough to know better than to recite oxymorons. Most striking last week was his quixotic appeal to the military's top brass to give a candid assessment of the situation..."
Energy Policy:
Kelpie Wilson: The Tragic Abuse of Corn
"...Corn production uses tremendous amounts of fossil fuel for mechanized labor, irrigation, drying, transport and fertilizer. I sincerely doubted that corn as a fuel could be renewable on a sustainable basis.
Almost one quarter of America's farmland grows corn - maize. At nine billion bushels a year, it is our single largest crop and uses vast amounts of water, pesticides and fertilizer. Erosion and toxic runoff from the fields pollute waterways and kill fish in the Gulf of Mexico where a plume of pollution from the Mississippi Delta creates an ever-expanding dead zone. Raising corn the way we do it today depletes the soil of nutrients and creates an addiction to nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas.
Since natural gas prices went up a few years ago, we are producing less and less fertilizer here and importing more of it from the Persian Gulf. Now we must worry about food security as well as energy security.
Burning corn in a stove may seem bizarre, but it is no more bizarre than fermenting and distilling it into ethanol to burn in our cars. As gas prices go up, people are looking to ethanol and other biofuels to substitute for oil. Unfortunately, it is a bad bargain - one that is being encouraged by giant agribusiness firms like Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto that reap huge profits from corn and taxpayer's wallets.
Corn is already America's most heavily subsidized crop, sucking up about $10 billion a year (according to OXFAM) along with all that water and fertilizer..."
The Environment:
Cornell U.:Organic farming success
"Organic farming produces the same yields of corn and soybeans as does conventional farming, but uses 30 percent less energy, less water and no pesticides, a review of a 22-year farming trial study concludes.
David Pimentel, a Cornell University professor of ecology and agriculture, concludes, 'Organic farming offers real advantages for such crops as corn and soybeans.' Pimentel is the lead author of a study that is published in the July issue of Bioscience (Vol. 55:7) analyzing the environmental, energy and economic costs and benefits of growing soybeans and corn organically versus conventionally. The study is a review of the Rodale Institute Farming Systems Trial, the longest running comparison of organic vs. conventional farming in the United States.
'Organic farming approaches for these crops not only use an average of 30 percent less fossil energy but also conserve more water in the soil, induce less erosion, maintain soil quality and conserve more biological resources than conventional farming does,' Pimentel added.
The study compared a conventional farm that used recommended fertilizer and pesticide applications with an organic animal-based farm (where manure was applied) and an organic legume-based farm (that used a three-year rotation of hairy vetch/corn and rye/soybeans and wheat). The two organic systems received no chemical fertilizers or pesticides..."
Environmental News Network: Unborn Babies Soaked in Chemicals, Survey Finds
"Unborn U.S. babies are soaking in a stew of chemicals, including mercury, gasoline byproducts and pesticides, according to a report to be released Thursday.
Although the effects on the babies are not clear, the survey prompted several members of Congress to press for legislation that would strengthen controls on chemicals in the environment.
The report by the Environmental Working Group is based on tests of 10 samples of umbilical cord blood taken by the American Red Cross. They found an average of 287 contaminants in the blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and the Teflon chemical PFOA.
'These 10 newborn babies ... were born polluted,' said New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, who planned to publicize the findings at a news conference Thursday.
'If ever we had proof that our nation's pollution laws aren't working, it's reading the list of industrial chemicals in the bodies of babies who have not yet lived outside the womb,' Slaughter, a Democrat, said..."
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Business Ethics:
Why COSTCO does not emulate the exploitation of workers WalMart celebrates.
NY Times: How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart
"...Combining high quality with stunningly low prices, the shirts appeal to upscale customers - and epitomize why some retail analysts say Mr. Sinegal just might be America's shrewdest merchant since Sam Walton.
But not everyone is happy with Costco's business strategy. Some Wall Street analysts assert that Mr. Sinegal is overly generous not only to Costco's customers but to its workers as well.
Costco's average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam's Club. And Costco's health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco 'it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder.'
Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street's assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street's profit demands.
Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco's customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers' expense. 'This is not altruistic,' he said. 'This is good business.'
He also dismisses calls to increase Costco's product markups. Mr. Sinegal, who has been in the retailing business for more than a half-century, said that heeding Wall Street's advice to raise some prices would bring Costco's downfall..."
Why COSTCO does not emulate the exploitation of workers WalMart celebrates.
NY Times: How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart
"...Combining high quality with stunningly low prices, the shirts appeal to upscale customers - and epitomize why some retail analysts say Mr. Sinegal just might be America's shrewdest merchant since Sam Walton.
But not everyone is happy with Costco's business strategy. Some Wall Street analysts assert that Mr. Sinegal is overly generous not only to Costco's customers but to its workers as well.
Costco's average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam's Club. And Costco's health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco 'it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder.'
Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street's assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street's profit demands.
Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco's customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers' expense. 'This is not altruistic,' he said. 'This is good business.'
He also dismisses calls to increase Costco's product markups. Mr. Sinegal, who has been in the retailing business for more than a half-century, said that heeding Wall Street's advice to raise some prices would bring Costco's downfall..."
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Killing The Messenger:
Ray McGovern: Plame Case Is about Iraq
"The key issue in the affair has little directly to do with former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson; or his wife, Valerie Plame; or Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby; or even President George W. Bush's alter ego, Karl Rove. White House v. Wilson/Plame is about Iraq, where our sons and daughters - and many others - are daily meeting violent death in an unwinnable war.
And it's about manipulation.
It's about how our elected representatives were deceived into voting for an unprovoked war and what happened when one man stood up and called the administration's bluff. And it's about the perfect storm now gathering, as:
* more lies are exposed (whether in journalists' e-mails or in the minutes of high-level meetings at 10 Downing Street),
* the guerrilla war escalates in Iraq, and
* more and more Americans find themselves agreeing with Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., that administration leaders seem to be 'making it up as they go along.'
It wasn't envisaged this way by the naïve 'neoconservative' ideologues that got us into the quagmire in Iraq. Actually they still seem to believe that all will be well if the Iraqi people can only get it into their heads that we are liberators, not occupiers..."
The Observer (UK) - No 10 blocks envoy's book on Iraq
"A controversial fly-on-the wall account of the Iraq war by one of Britain's most senior former diplomats has been blocked by Downing Street and the Foreign Office.
Publication of The Costs of War by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK ambassador to the UN during the build-up to the 2003 war and the Prime Minister's special envoy to Iraq in its aftermath, has been halted. In an extract seen by The Observer, Greenstock describes the American decision to go to war as 'politically illegitimate' and says that UN negotiations 'never rose over the level of awkward diversion for the US administration'. Although he admits that 'honourable decisions' were made to remove the threat of Saddam, the opportunities of the post-conflict period were 'dissipated in poor policy analysis and narrow-minded execution'.
Regarded as a career diplomat of impeccable integrity, during his time in post-invasion Iraq, Greenstock became disillusioned with the Coalition Provisional Authority, led by Paul Bremer. Their relationship had deteriorated by the time Greenstock returned to Britain.
The decision to block the book until Greenstock removes substantial passages will be interpreted as an attempt by ministers to avoid further embarrassing disclosures over the conduct of the war and its aftermath from a highly credible source..."
Energy Policy Via Military Means:
Robert Dreyfuss: Oil-Control Formula
"George W. Bush's war in Iraq may not be going as planned. But for those who've stopped believing the myth that prewar Iraq represented any sort of threat to the United States, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence mounting that the real reason for the American invasion of Iraq was the most obvious one: Oil. In this case, 'oil' doesn't mean that we went to war for the commercial benefit of U.S. oil companies-and in fact, as I reported in Mother Jones magazine in early 2003, before the war, most U.S. oil firms and their executives were against the war. But in Iraq, 'oil' means the strategic commodity that is the single most important world resource. Even a novice geostrategist knows that who controls oil controls the world. And in this case, America's rival for control of oil is, first and foremost, China..."
Robert Scheer: Iraq's Dangerous New Friend
"On Sunday, George W. Bush's war against terror was turned upside down - and this time the president might even notice. That's because when 'our guys' in Iraq start firmly allying with an 'axis of evil' nation, its got to ring some warning bells, no?
I am referring to the joint declaration issued in Tehran by the leaders of Iraq and Iran: 'Today, we need a double and common effort to confront terrorism that may spread in the region and the world,' said Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, visiting Iran along with 10 of his ministers, following a similar visit from his defense minister. The statement he and his Iranian counterparts produced heralds mutual cooperation between the two neighbors, which will include a cross-border oil pipeline, joint security proposals and shared intelligence information.
Suddenly everyone's against terror!..."
Our (Fleeting) Civil Liberties:
NY Times: Large Volume of F.B.I. Files Alarms U.S. Activist Groups
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration.
The F.B.I. has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies, and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace, an environmental group that has led acts of civil disobedience in protest over the administration's policies, the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing this month in a federal court in Washington.
The filing came as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act brought by the A.C.L.U. and other groups that maintain that the F.B.I. has engaged in a pattern of political surveillance against critics of the Bush administration. A smaller batch of documents already turned over by the government sheds light on the interest of F.B.I. counterterrorism officials in protests surrounding the Iraq war and last year's Republican National Convention..."
Ray McGovern: Plame Case Is about Iraq
"The key issue in the affair has little directly to do with former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson; or his wife, Valerie Plame; or Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby; or even President George W. Bush's alter ego, Karl Rove. White House v. Wilson/Plame is about Iraq, where our sons and daughters - and many others - are daily meeting violent death in an unwinnable war.
And it's about manipulation.
It's about how our elected representatives were deceived into voting for an unprovoked war and what happened when one man stood up and called the administration's bluff. And it's about the perfect storm now gathering, as:
* more lies are exposed (whether in journalists' e-mails or in the minutes of high-level meetings at 10 Downing Street),
* the guerrilla war escalates in Iraq, and
* more and more Americans find themselves agreeing with Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., that administration leaders seem to be 'making it up as they go along.'
It wasn't envisaged this way by the naïve 'neoconservative' ideologues that got us into the quagmire in Iraq. Actually they still seem to believe that all will be well if the Iraqi people can only get it into their heads that we are liberators, not occupiers..."
The Observer (UK) - No 10 blocks envoy's book on Iraq
"A controversial fly-on-the wall account of the Iraq war by one of Britain's most senior former diplomats has been blocked by Downing Street and the Foreign Office.
Publication of The Costs of War by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK ambassador to the UN during the build-up to the 2003 war and the Prime Minister's special envoy to Iraq in its aftermath, has been halted. In an extract seen by The Observer, Greenstock describes the American decision to go to war as 'politically illegitimate' and says that UN negotiations 'never rose over the level of awkward diversion for the US administration'. Although he admits that 'honourable decisions' were made to remove the threat of Saddam, the opportunities of the post-conflict period were 'dissipated in poor policy analysis and narrow-minded execution'.
Regarded as a career diplomat of impeccable integrity, during his time in post-invasion Iraq, Greenstock became disillusioned with the Coalition Provisional Authority, led by Paul Bremer. Their relationship had deteriorated by the time Greenstock returned to Britain.
The decision to block the book until Greenstock removes substantial passages will be interpreted as an attempt by ministers to avoid further embarrassing disclosures over the conduct of the war and its aftermath from a highly credible source..."
Energy Policy Via Military Means:
Robert Dreyfuss: Oil-Control Formula
"George W. Bush's war in Iraq may not be going as planned. But for those who've stopped believing the myth that prewar Iraq represented any sort of threat to the United States, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence mounting that the real reason for the American invasion of Iraq was the most obvious one: Oil. In this case, 'oil' doesn't mean that we went to war for the commercial benefit of U.S. oil companies-and in fact, as I reported in Mother Jones magazine in early 2003, before the war, most U.S. oil firms and their executives were against the war. But in Iraq, 'oil' means the strategic commodity that is the single most important world resource. Even a novice geostrategist knows that who controls oil controls the world. And in this case, America's rival for control of oil is, first and foremost, China..."
Robert Scheer: Iraq's Dangerous New Friend
"On Sunday, George W. Bush's war against terror was turned upside down - and this time the president might even notice. That's because when 'our guys' in Iraq start firmly allying with an 'axis of evil' nation, its got to ring some warning bells, no?
I am referring to the joint declaration issued in Tehran by the leaders of Iraq and Iran: 'Today, we need a double and common effort to confront terrorism that may spread in the region and the world,' said Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, visiting Iran along with 10 of his ministers, following a similar visit from his defense minister. The statement he and his Iranian counterparts produced heralds mutual cooperation between the two neighbors, which will include a cross-border oil pipeline, joint security proposals and shared intelligence information.
Suddenly everyone's against terror!..."
Our (Fleeting) Civil Liberties:
NY Times: Large Volume of F.B.I. Files Alarms U.S. Activist Groups
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration.
The F.B.I. has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies, and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace, an environmental group that has led acts of civil disobedience in protest over the administration's policies, the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing this month in a federal court in Washington.
The filing came as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act brought by the A.C.L.U. and other groups that maintain that the F.B.I. has engaged in a pattern of political surveillance against critics of the Bush administration. A smaller batch of documents already turned over by the government sheds light on the interest of F.B.I. counterterrorism officials in protests surrounding the Iraq war and last year's Republican National Convention..."
Monday, July 18, 2005
Killing The Messenger:
Frank Rich: Follow the Uranium
Why should this Neandethal get away with encouraging violence?
Editor & Publisher: In Interview, Rep. King Says Russert and Others in Media Should 'Be Shot,' Not Karl Rove
"SCARBOROUGH: The last thing you want to do at a time of war is reveal the identity of undercover CIA agents.
KING: No. Joe Wilson, she recommended - his wife recommended him for this. He said the vice president recommended him. To me, she took it off the table. Once she allowed him to go ahead and say that, write his op-ed in 'The New York Times,' to have Tim Russert give him a full hour on 'Meet the Press,' saying that he was sent there as a representative of the vice president, when she knew, she knew herself that she was the one that recommended him for it, she allowed that lie to go forward involving the vice president of the United States, the president of the United States, then to me she should be the last one in the world who has any right to complain.
And Joe Wilson has no right to complain. And I think people like Tim Russert and the others, who gave this guy such a free ride and all the media, they're the ones to be shot, not Karl Rove."
'Free and Fair' Elections Iraq, Bush-style:
Seymour Hersh: Get Out The Vote - Did Washington try to manipulate Iraq’s election?
"...the White House promulgated a highly classified Presidential 'finding' authorizing the C.I.A. to provide money and other support covertly to political candidates in certain countries who, in the Administration's view, were seeking to spread democracy. 'The finding was general,' a recently retired high-level C.I.A. official told me. 'But there's no doubt that Baghdad was a stop on the way. The process is under the control of the C.I.A. and the Defense Department.'
It is not known why the President would reject one program to intervene in the election and initiate another, more covert one....
...A Pentagon consultant who deals with the senior military leadership acknowledged that the American authorities in Iraq 'did an operation' to try to influence the results of the election. 'They had to,' he said. 'They were trying to make a case that Allawi was popular, and he had no juice.' A government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon’s civilian leaders said, 'We didn’t want to take a chance.'
I was informed by several former military and intelligence officials that the activities were kept, in part, 'off the books' - they were conducted by retired C.I.A. officers and other non-government personnel, and used funds that were not necessarily appropriated by Congress. Some in the White House and at the Pentagon believed that keeping an operation off the books eliminated the need to give a formal briefing to the relevant members of Congress and congressional intelligence committees, whose jurisdiction is limited, in their view, to officially sanctioned C.I.A. operations. (The Pentagon is known to be running clandestine operations today in North Africa and Central Asia with little or no official C.I.A. involvement.)
'The Administration wouldn’t take the chance of doing it within the system,' the former senior intelligence official said. 'The genius of the operation lies in the behind-the-scenes operatives—we have hired hands that deal with this.' He added that a number of military and intelligence officials were angered by the covert plans. Their feeling was 'How could we take such a isk, when we didn’t have to? The Shiites were going to win the election anyway.'
In my reporting for this story, one theme that emerged was the Bush Administration’s increasing tendency to turn to off-the-books covert actions to accomplish its goals. This allowed the Administration to avoid the kind of stumbling blocks it encountered in the debate about how to handle the elections: bureaucratic infighting, congressional second-guessing, complaints from outsiders..."
Frank Rich: Follow the Uranium
Why should this Neandethal get away with encouraging violence?
Editor & Publisher: In Interview, Rep. King Says Russert and Others in Media Should 'Be Shot,' Not Karl Rove
"SCARBOROUGH: The last thing you want to do at a time of war is reveal the identity of undercover CIA agents.
KING: No. Joe Wilson, she recommended - his wife recommended him for this. He said the vice president recommended him. To me, she took it off the table. Once she allowed him to go ahead and say that, write his op-ed in 'The New York Times,' to have Tim Russert give him a full hour on 'Meet the Press,' saying that he was sent there as a representative of the vice president, when she knew, she knew herself that she was the one that recommended him for it, she allowed that lie to go forward involving the vice president of the United States, the president of the United States, then to me she should be the last one in the world who has any right to complain.
And Joe Wilson has no right to complain. And I think people like Tim Russert and the others, who gave this guy such a free ride and all the media, they're the ones to be shot, not Karl Rove."
'Free and Fair' Elections Iraq, Bush-style:
Seymour Hersh: Get Out The Vote - Did Washington try to manipulate Iraq’s election?
"...the White House promulgated a highly classified Presidential 'finding' authorizing the C.I.A. to provide money and other support covertly to political candidates in certain countries who, in the Administration's view, were seeking to spread democracy. 'The finding was general,' a recently retired high-level C.I.A. official told me. 'But there's no doubt that Baghdad was a stop on the way. The process is under the control of the C.I.A. and the Defense Department.'
It is not known why the President would reject one program to intervene in the election and initiate another, more covert one....
...A Pentagon consultant who deals with the senior military leadership acknowledged that the American authorities in Iraq 'did an operation' to try to influence the results of the election. 'They had to,' he said. 'They were trying to make a case that Allawi was popular, and he had no juice.' A government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon’s civilian leaders said, 'We didn’t want to take a chance.'
I was informed by several former military and intelligence officials that the activities were kept, in part, 'off the books' - they were conducted by retired C.I.A. officers and other non-government personnel, and used funds that were not necessarily appropriated by Congress. Some in the White House and at the Pentagon believed that keeping an operation off the books eliminated the need to give a formal briefing to the relevant members of Congress and congressional intelligence committees, whose jurisdiction is limited, in their view, to officially sanctioned C.I.A. operations. (The Pentagon is known to be running clandestine operations today in North Africa and Central Asia with little or no official C.I.A. involvement.)
'The Administration wouldn’t take the chance of doing it within the system,' the former senior intelligence official said. 'The genius of the operation lies in the behind-the-scenes operatives—we have hired hands that deal with this.' He added that a number of military and intelligence officials were angered by the covert plans. Their feeling was 'How could we take such a isk, when we didn’t have to? The Shiites were going to win the election anyway.'
In my reporting for this story, one theme that emerged was the Bush Administration’s increasing tendency to turn to off-the-books covert actions to accomplish its goals. This allowed the Administration to avoid the kind of stumbling blocks it encountered in the debate about how to handle the elections: bureaucratic infighting, congressional second-guessing, complaints from outsiders..."
Friday, July 15, 2005
On Torture:
Washington Post: Abu Ghraib Torture Tactics First Used at Gitmo
"Interrogators at the US detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, forced a stubborn detainee to wear women's underwear on his head, confronted him with snarling military working dogs and attached a leash to his chains, according to a newly released military investigation that shows the tactics were employed there months before military police used them on detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The techniques, approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for use in interrogating Mohamed Qahtani - the alleged '20th hijacker' in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - were used at Guantánamo Bay in late 2002 as part of a special interrogation plan aimed at breaking down the silent detainee.
Military investigators who briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday on the three-month probe, called the tactics 'creative' and 'aggressive' but said they did not cross the line into torture.
The report's findings are the strongest indication yet that the abusive practices seen in photographs at Abu Ghraib were not the invention of a small group of thrill-seeking military police officers. The report shows that they were used on Qahtani several months before the United States invaded Iraq..."
Election Fraud:
The Baltimore Chronicle: Team Bush Paid $8 Million for Dirty Tricks to Suppress Votes
"In the months before the 2004 presidential election, a firm called Sproul & Associates launched voter registration drives in at least eight states, most of them swing states. The group - run by Nathan Sproul, former head of the Arizona Christian Coalition and the Arizona Republican Party - had been hired by the Republican National Committee.
Sproul got into a bit of trouble last fall when, in certain states, it came out that the firm was playing dirty tricks in order to suppress the Democratic vote: concealing their partisan agenda, tricking Democrats into registering as Republicans, surreptitiously re-registering Democrats and Independents as Republicans, and shredding Democratic registration forms.
The scandal got a moderate amount of local coverage in some states - and then the election was over. Now anyone who brought up Nathan Sproul, or any of the other massive crimes and improprieties committed on or prior to Election Day, was shrugged off as a dealer in 'conspiracy theory.'
It seems that Sproul did quite a lot of work for the Republicans. Exactly how much did he do? More specifically, how much did the RNC pay Sproul & Associates?
If you went online last week to look up how much money Sproul received from the Republicans in 2004, you would have found that, according to the party (whose figures had been posted by the Center for Responsive Politics), the firm was paid $488,957.
In fact, the RNC paid Sproul a great deal more than that. From an independent study of the original data filed by the Republicans with the Federal Election Commission, it is clear that Sproul was paid a staggering $8.3 million for its work against the Democrats..."
Focus on Mr. Rove:
Sidney Blumenthal: Rove's War
"This is Karl Rove's war. From his command post next to the Oval Office in the West Wing of the White House, he is furiously directing the order of battle. The Republican National Committee lobs its talking points across Washington, its chairman forays the no-man's-land of CNN. Rove's lawyer, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial board are sent over the top. Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay man the ramparts, defending Rove's character..."
NY Times: Rove Reportedly Held Phone Talk on C.I.A. Officer
"...This is not the first time Mr. Rove has been linked to a leak reported by Mr. Novak. In 1992, Mr. Rove was fired from the Texas campaign to re-elect the first President Bush because of suspicions that he had leaked information to Mr. Novak about shortfalls in the Texas organization's fund-raising. Both Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove had been the source.
Mr. Novak's July 14, 2003, column was published against a backdrop in which White House officials were clearly agitated by Mr. Wilson's assertion, in his Op-Ed article, that the administration had 'twisted' intelligence about the threat from Iraq.
But the White House was also deeply concerned about Mr. Wilson's suggestion that he had gone to Africa to carry out a mission that originated with Mr. Cheney. At the time, Mr. Cheney's earlier statements about Iraq's banned weapons were coming under fire as it became clearer that the United States would find no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons and that Mr. Hussein's nuclear program was not far advanced.
Mr. Novak wrote that the decision to send Mr. Wilson 'was made at a routinely low level' and was based on what later turned out to be fake documents that had come to the United States through Italy.
Many aspects of Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation remain shrouded in secrecy. It is unclear who Mr. Novak's other source might be or how that source learned of Ms. Wilson's role as a C.I.A. official. By itself, the disclosure that Mr. Rove had spoken to a second journalist about Ms. Wilson may not necessarily have a bearing on his exposure to any criminal charge in the case..."
Paul Krugman: Karl Rove's America
"...What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.
I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals..."
Washington Post: Abu Ghraib Torture Tactics First Used at Gitmo
"Interrogators at the US detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, forced a stubborn detainee to wear women's underwear on his head, confronted him with snarling military working dogs and attached a leash to his chains, according to a newly released military investigation that shows the tactics were employed there months before military police used them on detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The techniques, approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for use in interrogating Mohamed Qahtani - the alleged '20th hijacker' in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - were used at Guantánamo Bay in late 2002 as part of a special interrogation plan aimed at breaking down the silent detainee.
Military investigators who briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday on the three-month probe, called the tactics 'creative' and 'aggressive' but said they did not cross the line into torture.
The report's findings are the strongest indication yet that the abusive practices seen in photographs at Abu Ghraib were not the invention of a small group of thrill-seeking military police officers. The report shows that they were used on Qahtani several months before the United States invaded Iraq..."
Election Fraud:
The Baltimore Chronicle: Team Bush Paid $8 Million for Dirty Tricks to Suppress Votes
"In the months before the 2004 presidential election, a firm called Sproul & Associates launched voter registration drives in at least eight states, most of them swing states. The group - run by Nathan Sproul, former head of the Arizona Christian Coalition and the Arizona Republican Party - had been hired by the Republican National Committee.
Sproul got into a bit of trouble last fall when, in certain states, it came out that the firm was playing dirty tricks in order to suppress the Democratic vote: concealing their partisan agenda, tricking Democrats into registering as Republicans, surreptitiously re-registering Democrats and Independents as Republicans, and shredding Democratic registration forms.
The scandal got a moderate amount of local coverage in some states - and then the election was over. Now anyone who brought up Nathan Sproul, or any of the other massive crimes and improprieties committed on or prior to Election Day, was shrugged off as a dealer in 'conspiracy theory.'
It seems that Sproul did quite a lot of work for the Republicans. Exactly how much did he do? More specifically, how much did the RNC pay Sproul & Associates?
If you went online last week to look up how much money Sproul received from the Republicans in 2004, you would have found that, according to the party (whose figures had been posted by the Center for Responsive Politics), the firm was paid $488,957.
In fact, the RNC paid Sproul a great deal more than that. From an independent study of the original data filed by the Republicans with the Federal Election Commission, it is clear that Sproul was paid a staggering $8.3 million for its work against the Democrats..."
Focus on Mr. Rove:
Sidney Blumenthal: Rove's War
"This is Karl Rove's war. From his command post next to the Oval Office in the West Wing of the White House, he is furiously directing the order of battle. The Republican National Committee lobs its talking points across Washington, its chairman forays the no-man's-land of CNN. Rove's lawyer, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial board are sent over the top. Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay man the ramparts, defending Rove's character..."
NY Times: Rove Reportedly Held Phone Talk on C.I.A. Officer
"...This is not the first time Mr. Rove has been linked to a leak reported by Mr. Novak. In 1992, Mr. Rove was fired from the Texas campaign to re-elect the first President Bush because of suspicions that he had leaked information to Mr. Novak about shortfalls in the Texas organization's fund-raising. Both Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove had been the source.
Mr. Novak's July 14, 2003, column was published against a backdrop in which White House officials were clearly agitated by Mr. Wilson's assertion, in his Op-Ed article, that the administration had 'twisted' intelligence about the threat from Iraq.
But the White House was also deeply concerned about Mr. Wilson's suggestion that he had gone to Africa to carry out a mission that originated with Mr. Cheney. At the time, Mr. Cheney's earlier statements about Iraq's banned weapons were coming under fire as it became clearer that the United States would find no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons and that Mr. Hussein's nuclear program was not far advanced.
Mr. Novak wrote that the decision to send Mr. Wilson 'was made at a routinely low level' and was based on what later turned out to be fake documents that had come to the United States through Italy.
Many aspects of Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation remain shrouded in secrecy. It is unclear who Mr. Novak's other source might be or how that source learned of Ms. Wilson's role as a C.I.A. official. By itself, the disclosure that Mr. Rove had spoken to a second journalist about Ms. Wilson may not necessarily have a bearing on his exposure to any criminal charge in the case..."
Paul Krugman: Karl Rove's America
"...What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.
I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals..."
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
The Budget:
Paul Krugman: Un-Spin the Budget
"...To understand where the budget deficit came from, you can't do better than the Jan. 18, 2001, issue of the satirical newspaper The Onion, which predicted the future with eerie precision. 'We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent,' the magazine's spoof had the president-elect declare. 'And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.'
And so it has turned out. President Bush has presided over the transformation of a budget surplus into a large deficit, which threatens the government's long-run solvency. The principal cause of that reversal was Mr. Bush's unprecedented decision to cut taxes, especially on the wealthiest Americans, while taking the nation into an expensive war.
Where's the good news? Well, for the past four years actual tax receipts have consistently come in below expectations, so that the deficit is even bigger than one might have predicted given the administration's don't-tax-but-spend-anyway policies. Recent tax numbers, however, finally offer a positive surprise. The Congressional Budget Office suggests in its latest monthly budget review that the deficit in fiscal 2005 will be 'significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.' Last year the deficit was $412 billion.
The usual suspects on the right are already declaring victory over the deficit, and proclaiming vindication for the Laffer Curve - the claim that tax cuts pay for themselves, because they have such a miraculous effect on the economy that revenue actually goes up.
But the fact is that revenue remains far lower than anyone would have predicted before the tax cuts began. In January 2001 the budget office forecast revenues of $2.57 trillion in fiscal 2005. Even with the recent increase in receipts, the actual number will be at least $400 billion less.
And nonpartisan budget experts, such as Ed McKelvey of Goldman Sachs, believe that even the limited good news on the budget is a temporary blip, not a turning point. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, warns us to take the new revenue figures with a 'grain of salt,' and declares that 'if you take yourself to 2008, 2009 or 2010, that vision is the same today as it was two months ago.'
A close look at the tax data explains why these experts believe that we're seeing a temporary uptick in revenues, not a sustained change in the trend. Taxes that are closely tied to the number of jobs and the average wage, such as payroll taxes and income taxes automatically withheld from paychecks, aren't showing any big pickup. This confirms other data showing that the economy as a whole is, if anything, doing worse than one would expect at this stage of an economic recovery.
It turns out that all of the upside surprise in tax receipts is coming from two sources. One is tax payments from corporations, up both because last year corporate profits grew much more rapidly than the rest of the economy and because the effective tax rate on corporations went up when a temporary tax break, introduced in 2002, expired. Both are one-time events
The other source of increased revenue is nonwithheld income taxes - taxes that aren't deducted from paychecks but are instead paid by people receiving additional, nonsalary income. The bounce in nonwithheld taxes probably reflects mainly capital gains on stocks and real estate, together with bonuses paid in the finance and real estate industries. Again, this revenue boost looks like a temporary blip driven by rising stocks and the housing bubble.
In other words, we're still deep in the fiscal quagmire, with federal revenues far below what's needed to pay for federal programs. And we won't get out of that quagmire until a future president admits that the Bush tax cuts were a mistake, and must be reversed."
Deregulation:
Molly Ivins: There goes the electrical grid
"The trouble with deregulation is that it always takes some disaster like Enron before we realize there was a reason for the regulation to begin with.
We are about to repeat one of the huge mistakes of the 1920s and '30s because we have forgotten why PUHCA (pronounced Pooka) was instituted in the first place. PUHCA is the Public Utility Holding Company Act, passed in 1935, which prevents concentration of ownership of power plants. Both the House and Senate versions of the energy bill contain a repeal of PUHCA.
As Kelpie Wilson pointed out in an article for Truthout, 'For 50 years we have had reliable, cheap electric power that has allowed strong economic growth, and no PUHCA-regulated energy holding company has ever gone broke.'
PUHCA was partially repealed in the '90s, and even that much deregulation was part of what led to Enron, Westar and other slight mishaps.
PUHCA puts utilities under strict regulation by both state and federal governments. It restricts ownership of utilities to public or private companies that are in the business of producing power.
The most likely candidates to take over power companies are the big oil companies, now awash in cash. There goes the electrical grid: Why fix it when you can charge more for doing nothing?..."
Iraq:
Frank Rich: We're Not in Watergate Anymore
"...That the Bush administration would risk breaking the law with an act as self-destructive to American interests as revealing a C.I.A. officer's identity smacks of desperation. It makes you wonder just what else might have been done to suppress embarrassing election-season questions about the war that has mired us in Iraq even as the true perpetrators of 9/11 resurface in Madrid, London and who knows where else.
In his original Op-Ed piece in The Times, published two years to the day before Judy Miller went to jail, Mr. Wilson noted that 'more than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already,' before concluding that 'we have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.' As that death toll surges past 1,700, that sacred duty cannot be abandoned by a free press now."
NY Times: 10 Sunnis Suffocate in Iraqi Police Custody
"Iraq's widely feared police commandos were struggling on Tuesday to explain how at least 10 Sunni Arab men and youths, one only 17, suffocated after a commando unit seized them from a hospital emergency ward and locked them in a police van in summer temperatures exceeding 110 degrees..."
Secrecy in Government:
NY Times Editorial: The Dangerous Comfort of Secrecy
"The Bush administration is classifying the documents to be kept from public scrutiny at the rate of 125 a minute. The move toward greater secrecy has nearly doubled the number of documents annually hidden from public view - to well more than 15 million last year, nearly twice the number classified in 2001 - as bureaucrats have invented more amorphous categories like 'sensitive security information.' At the same time, the declassification of documents required under the Freedom of Information Act has been choked down to a fraction of what it was a decade ago, leaving the government working behind an ever darker, ever denser screen...
...The White House has also been increasing the number of offices empowered to classify information, extending the privilege to agencies like the Agriculture Department. Terrorist attacks on agriculture are a legitimate worry, but we somehow suspect that the power may prove more useful for cloaking nonlethal cases of mismanagement and bureaucratic embarrassment. The federal Information Security Oversight Office finds secrecy reaching such ludicrous levels as classifying information already in school textbooks and Supreme Court decisions.
The Senate has approved a measure that would at least notify the public when more of the currently subliminal exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act are approved. The sponsoring senators, John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, and Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, know that far more is needed, including an independent watchdog; faster responses to inquiries, most of which come from the public, not news organizations; and penalties for agencies that slough off requests.
No one questions the need for governments to keep secret things that truly need to be kept secret, especially in combating terrorists. But the government's addiction to secrecy is making an unnecessary casualty of the openness vital to democracy."
Energy Policy:
NY Times: The Oil Uproar That Isn't
"...The earlier oil shocks produced remarkable changes, including the rise of the Japanese auto industry as Americans turned to smaller, more efficient cars out of choice and necessity. With carrots and sticks, the United States managed to cut, temporarily, energy use per person and to scale back the share of oil in its overall energy mix.
The federal government established a strategic petroleum reserve as an insurance policy against global supply disruptions, set a national 55 m.p.h. speed limit and spent billions - much of it wasted, however, on alternatives like shale oil that proved far too costly, particularly after crude oil prices fell when economic recession tempered the demand for energy.
But this time around, the government has done almost nothing to reduce the nation's vulnerability to a sudden interruption in oil supplies. Even the advocates for the long-stalled energy bill that has finally passed both houses of Congress - though in radically different forms - acknowledge that neither version of the measure will be effective..."
What Business Values?
Departing Morgan Exec Takes Home $32 Million for Short Stint
"Loyalty is a prized commodity on Wall Street, and in the case of Stephen S. Crawford of Morgan Stanley, it has paid a $32 million dividend.
Mr. Crawford, a former investment banker who was appointed co-president by Philip J. Purcell in March amid a power struggle, left the firm yesterday. His contract cast a spotlight on the Morgan Stanley board, which remains under fire for its close ties to Mr. Purcell even weeks after his departure as chairman and chief executive.
Mr. Crawford's pay package is particularly unusual because he was co-president for only three months, yet he will take home a severance package that pays him as if he had been co-president for two years and allows his stock to vest - the executive-suite equivalent of hitting the lottery..."
Outing A CIA Operative:
It is imperative to remember that Karl Rove was fired from Bush Sr.'s 1992 campaign for engaging in dirty tricks by leaking information to journalist Bob Novak. Apparently Bush, the younger, has far fewer scrouples, or at least significantly different standards. So much for W's promise of restoring 'dignity to the White House.'
Greg Palast: Tell us your "source," Judy
"The only thing more evil, small-minded and treasonous than the Bush Administration's jailing Judith Miller for a crime the Bush Administration committed, is Judith Miller covering up her Bush Administration 'source.'
Judy, Karl Rove ain't no 'source.' A confidential source -- and I've worked with many -- is an insider ready to put himself on the line to blow the whistle on an official lie or hidden danger. I would protect a source's name with my life and fortune as would any journalist who's not a craven jerk (the Managing Editor of Time Magazine comes to mind).
But the weasel who whispered 'Valerie Plame' in Miller's ear was no source. Whether it was Karl Rove or some other Rove-tron inside the Bush regime (and no one outside Bush's band would have had this information), this was an official using his official info to commit a crime for the sole purpose of punishing a real whistleblower, Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband, for questioning our President's mythological premise for war in Iraq.
New York Times reporter Miller and her paper would rather she go to prison for four months than identify their 'source.' Why?..."
Paul Krugman: Un-Spin the Budget
"...To understand where the budget deficit came from, you can't do better than the Jan. 18, 2001, issue of the satirical newspaper The Onion, which predicted the future with eerie precision. 'We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent,' the magazine's spoof had the president-elect declare. 'And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.'
And so it has turned out. President Bush has presided over the transformation of a budget surplus into a large deficit, which threatens the government's long-run solvency. The principal cause of that reversal was Mr. Bush's unprecedented decision to cut taxes, especially on the wealthiest Americans, while taking the nation into an expensive war.
Where's the good news? Well, for the past four years actual tax receipts have consistently come in below expectations, so that the deficit is even bigger than one might have predicted given the administration's don't-tax-but-spend-anyway policies. Recent tax numbers, however, finally offer a positive surprise. The Congressional Budget Office suggests in its latest monthly budget review that the deficit in fiscal 2005 will be 'significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.' Last year the deficit was $412 billion.
The usual suspects on the right are already declaring victory over the deficit, and proclaiming vindication for the Laffer Curve - the claim that tax cuts pay for themselves, because they have such a miraculous effect on the economy that revenue actually goes up.
But the fact is that revenue remains far lower than anyone would have predicted before the tax cuts began. In January 2001 the budget office forecast revenues of $2.57 trillion in fiscal 2005. Even with the recent increase in receipts, the actual number will be at least $400 billion less.
And nonpartisan budget experts, such as Ed McKelvey of Goldman Sachs, believe that even the limited good news on the budget is a temporary blip, not a turning point. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, warns us to take the new revenue figures with a 'grain of salt,' and declares that 'if you take yourself to 2008, 2009 or 2010, that vision is the same today as it was two months ago.'
A close look at the tax data explains why these experts believe that we're seeing a temporary uptick in revenues, not a sustained change in the trend. Taxes that are closely tied to the number of jobs and the average wage, such as payroll taxes and income taxes automatically withheld from paychecks, aren't showing any big pickup. This confirms other data showing that the economy as a whole is, if anything, doing worse than one would expect at this stage of an economic recovery.
It turns out that all of the upside surprise in tax receipts is coming from two sources. One is tax payments from corporations, up both because last year corporate profits grew much more rapidly than the rest of the economy and because the effective tax rate on corporations went up when a temporary tax break, introduced in 2002, expired. Both are one-time events
The other source of increased revenue is nonwithheld income taxes - taxes that aren't deducted from paychecks but are instead paid by people receiving additional, nonsalary income. The bounce in nonwithheld taxes probably reflects mainly capital gains on stocks and real estate, together with bonuses paid in the finance and real estate industries. Again, this revenue boost looks like a temporary blip driven by rising stocks and the housing bubble.
In other words, we're still deep in the fiscal quagmire, with federal revenues far below what's needed to pay for federal programs. And we won't get out of that quagmire until a future president admits that the Bush tax cuts were a mistake, and must be reversed."
Deregulation:
Molly Ivins: There goes the electrical grid
"The trouble with deregulation is that it always takes some disaster like Enron before we realize there was a reason for the regulation to begin with.
We are about to repeat one of the huge mistakes of the 1920s and '30s because we have forgotten why PUHCA (pronounced Pooka) was instituted in the first place. PUHCA is the Public Utility Holding Company Act, passed in 1935, which prevents concentration of ownership of power plants. Both the House and Senate versions of the energy bill contain a repeal of PUHCA.
As Kelpie Wilson pointed out in an article for Truthout, 'For 50 years we have had reliable, cheap electric power that has allowed strong economic growth, and no PUHCA-regulated energy holding company has ever gone broke.'
PUHCA was partially repealed in the '90s, and even that much deregulation was part of what led to Enron, Westar and other slight mishaps.
PUHCA puts utilities under strict regulation by both state and federal governments. It restricts ownership of utilities to public or private companies that are in the business of producing power.
The most likely candidates to take over power companies are the big oil companies, now awash in cash. There goes the electrical grid: Why fix it when you can charge more for doing nothing?..."
Iraq:
Frank Rich: We're Not in Watergate Anymore
"...That the Bush administration would risk breaking the law with an act as self-destructive to American interests as revealing a C.I.A. officer's identity smacks of desperation. It makes you wonder just what else might have been done to suppress embarrassing election-season questions about the war that has mired us in Iraq even as the true perpetrators of 9/11 resurface in Madrid, London and who knows where else.
In his original Op-Ed piece in The Times, published two years to the day before Judy Miller went to jail, Mr. Wilson noted that 'more than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already,' before concluding that 'we have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.' As that death toll surges past 1,700, that sacred duty cannot be abandoned by a free press now."
NY Times: 10 Sunnis Suffocate in Iraqi Police Custody
"Iraq's widely feared police commandos were struggling on Tuesday to explain how at least 10 Sunni Arab men and youths, one only 17, suffocated after a commando unit seized them from a hospital emergency ward and locked them in a police van in summer temperatures exceeding 110 degrees..."
Secrecy in Government:
NY Times Editorial: The Dangerous Comfort of Secrecy
"The Bush administration is classifying the documents to be kept from public scrutiny at the rate of 125 a minute. The move toward greater secrecy has nearly doubled the number of documents annually hidden from public view - to well more than 15 million last year, nearly twice the number classified in 2001 - as bureaucrats have invented more amorphous categories like 'sensitive security information.' At the same time, the declassification of documents required under the Freedom of Information Act has been choked down to a fraction of what it was a decade ago, leaving the government working behind an ever darker, ever denser screen...
...The White House has also been increasing the number of offices empowered to classify information, extending the privilege to agencies like the Agriculture Department. Terrorist attacks on agriculture are a legitimate worry, but we somehow suspect that the power may prove more useful for cloaking nonlethal cases of mismanagement and bureaucratic embarrassment. The federal Information Security Oversight Office finds secrecy reaching such ludicrous levels as classifying information already in school textbooks and Supreme Court decisions.
The Senate has approved a measure that would at least notify the public when more of the currently subliminal exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act are approved. The sponsoring senators, John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, and Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, know that far more is needed, including an independent watchdog; faster responses to inquiries, most of which come from the public, not news organizations; and penalties for agencies that slough off requests.
No one questions the need for governments to keep secret things that truly need to be kept secret, especially in combating terrorists. But the government's addiction to secrecy is making an unnecessary casualty of the openness vital to democracy."
Energy Policy:
NY Times: The Oil Uproar That Isn't
"...The earlier oil shocks produced remarkable changes, including the rise of the Japanese auto industry as Americans turned to smaller, more efficient cars out of choice and necessity. With carrots and sticks, the United States managed to cut, temporarily, energy use per person and to scale back the share of oil in its overall energy mix.
The federal government established a strategic petroleum reserve as an insurance policy against global supply disruptions, set a national 55 m.p.h. speed limit and spent billions - much of it wasted, however, on alternatives like shale oil that proved far too costly, particularly after crude oil prices fell when economic recession tempered the demand for energy.
But this time around, the government has done almost nothing to reduce the nation's vulnerability to a sudden interruption in oil supplies. Even the advocates for the long-stalled energy bill that has finally passed both houses of Congress - though in radically different forms - acknowledge that neither version of the measure will be effective..."
What Business Values?
Departing Morgan Exec Takes Home $32 Million for Short Stint
"Loyalty is a prized commodity on Wall Street, and in the case of Stephen S. Crawford of Morgan Stanley, it has paid a $32 million dividend.
Mr. Crawford, a former investment banker who was appointed co-president by Philip J. Purcell in March amid a power struggle, left the firm yesterday. His contract cast a spotlight on the Morgan Stanley board, which remains under fire for its close ties to Mr. Purcell even weeks after his departure as chairman and chief executive.
Mr. Crawford's pay package is particularly unusual because he was co-president for only three months, yet he will take home a severance package that pays him as if he had been co-president for two years and allows his stock to vest - the executive-suite equivalent of hitting the lottery..."
Outing A CIA Operative:
It is imperative to remember that Karl Rove was fired from Bush Sr.'s 1992 campaign for engaging in dirty tricks by leaking information to journalist Bob Novak. Apparently Bush, the younger, has far fewer scrouples, or at least significantly different standards. So much for W's promise of restoring 'dignity to the White House.'
Greg Palast: Tell us your "source," Judy
"The only thing more evil, small-minded and treasonous than the Bush Administration's jailing Judith Miller for a crime the Bush Administration committed, is Judith Miller covering up her Bush Administration 'source.'
Judy, Karl Rove ain't no 'source.' A confidential source -- and I've worked with many -- is an insider ready to put himself on the line to blow the whistle on an official lie or hidden danger. I would protect a source's name with my life and fortune as would any journalist who's not a craven jerk (the Managing Editor of Time Magazine comes to mind).
But the weasel who whispered 'Valerie Plame' in Miller's ear was no source. Whether it was Karl Rove or some other Rove-tron inside the Bush regime (and no one outside Bush's band would have had this information), this was an official using his official info to commit a crime for the sole purpose of punishing a real whistleblower, Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband, for questioning our President's mythological premise for war in Iraq.
New York Times reporter Miller and her paper would rather she go to prison for four months than identify their 'source.' Why?..."
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Finally, The Press Grows A Spine:
NY Times: At White House, a Day of Silence on Rove's Role in C.I.A. Leak
"In two contentious news briefings, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, would not directly address any of a barrage of questions about Mr. Rove's involvement, a day after new evidence suggested that Mr. Rove had discussed the C.I.A. officer with a Time magazine reporter in July 2003 without identifying her by name.
Under often hostile questioning, Mr. McClellan repeatedly declined to say whether he stood behind his previous statements that Mr. Rove had played no role in the matter, saying he could not comment while a criminal investigation was under way. He brushed aside questions about whether the president would follow through on his pledge, repeated just over a year ago, to fire anyone in his administration found to have played a role in disclosing the officer's identity. And he declined to say when Mr. Bush learned that Mr. Rove had mentioned the C.I.A. officer in his conversation with the Time reporter.
When one reporter, David Gregory of NBC News, said that it was 'ridiculous' for the White House to dodge all questions about the issue and pointed out that Mr. McClellan had addressed the same issues in detail in the past, Mr. McClellan replied, 'I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said, and I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time.'
A moment later, Terry Moran of ABC News prefaced his question by saying Mr. McClellan was 'in a bad spot here' because he had spoken from the same podium on Oct. 10, 2003, after the Justice Department began its formal investigation into the leak, and specifically said that neither Mr. Rove nor two other officials - Elliot Abrams, a national security aide, and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff - were involved.
Mr. McClellan disputed the characterization of the question but did not directly address why the White House had appeared now to have adopted a new policy of not commenting on the matter.
Mr. Rove made no public comment..."
NY Times: At White House, a Day of Silence on Rove's Role in C.I.A. Leak
"In two contentious news briefings, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, would not directly address any of a barrage of questions about Mr. Rove's involvement, a day after new evidence suggested that Mr. Rove had discussed the C.I.A. officer with a Time magazine reporter in July 2003 without identifying her by name.
Under often hostile questioning, Mr. McClellan repeatedly declined to say whether he stood behind his previous statements that Mr. Rove had played no role in the matter, saying he could not comment while a criminal investigation was under way. He brushed aside questions about whether the president would follow through on his pledge, repeated just over a year ago, to fire anyone in his administration found to have played a role in disclosing the officer's identity. And he declined to say when Mr. Bush learned that Mr. Rove had mentioned the C.I.A. officer in his conversation with the Time reporter.
When one reporter, David Gregory of NBC News, said that it was 'ridiculous' for the White House to dodge all questions about the issue and pointed out that Mr. McClellan had addressed the same issues in detail in the past, Mr. McClellan replied, 'I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said, and I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time.'
A moment later, Terry Moran of ABC News prefaced his question by saying Mr. McClellan was 'in a bad spot here' because he had spoken from the same podium on Oct. 10, 2003, after the Justice Department began its formal investigation into the leak, and specifically said that neither Mr. Rove nor two other officials - Elliot Abrams, a national security aide, and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff - were involved.
Mr. McClellan disputed the characterization of the question but did not directly address why the White House had appeared now to have adopted a new policy of not commenting on the matter.
Mr. Rove made no public comment..."
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Bush Continues to Distort the Cost of Curbing Carbon Emissions:
Nicholas Kristof: A Livable Shade of Green
"When President Bush travels to the Group of 8 summit meeting this week, he'll stiff Tony Blair and other leaders who are appealing for firm action on global warming. 'Kyoto would have wrecked our economy,' Mr. Bush told a Danish interviewer recently, referring to the accord to curb carbon emissions. Maybe that was a plausible argument a few years ago, but now the city of Portland is proving it flat wrong.
Newly released data show that Portland, America's environmental laboratory, has achieved stunning reductions in carbon emissions. It has reduced emissions below the levels of 1990, the benchmark for the Kyoto accord, while booming economically.
What's more, officials in Portland insist that the campaign to cut carbon emissions has entailed no significant economic price, and on the contrary has brought the city huge benefits: less tax money spent on energy, more convenient transportation, a greener city, and expertise in energy efficiency that is helping local businesses win contracts worldwide.
'People have looked at it the wrong way, as a drain,' said Mayor Tom Potter, who himself drives a Prius hybrid. 'Actually it's something that attracts people. It's economical; it makes sense in dollars.'
I've been torn about what to do about global warming. But the evidence is growing that climate change is a real threat: I was bowled over when I visited the Arctic and talked to Eskimos who described sea ice disappearing, permafrost melting and visits by robins, for which they have no word in the local language..."
On Terror:
Robert Fisk: The Reality of This Barbaric Bombing
"...I remember, crossing the Atlantic on 11 September 2001 - my plane turned round off Ireland when the US closed its airspace - how the aircraft purser and I toured the cabins to see if we could identify any suspicious passengers. I found about a dozen, of course, totally innocent men who had brown eyes or long beards or who looked at me with 'hostility'. And sure enough, in just a few seconds, Osama bin Laden turned nice, liberal, friendly Robert into an anti-Arab racist.
And this is part of the point of yesterday's bombings: to divide British Muslims from British non-Muslims (let us not mention the name Christians), to encourage the very kind of racism that Tony Blair claims to resent.
But here's the problem. To go on pretending that Britain's enemies want to destroy 'what we hold dear' encourages racism; what we are confronting here is a specific, direct, centralised attack on London as a result of a 'war on terror' which Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara has locked us into. Just before the US presidential elections, Bin Laden asked: 'Why do we not attack Sweden?'
Lucky Sweden. No Osama bin Laden there. And no Tony Blair."
Norman Solomon; Beware the "War on Terror"
"When the French government suggested a diplomatic initiative that might interfere with the White House agenda for war, the president responded by saying that the proposed scenario would 'ratify terror.' The date was July 24, 1964, the president was Lyndon Johnson and the war was in Vietnam.
Four decades later, the anti-terror rationale is not just another argument for revving up the US war machinery. Fighting 'terror' is now the central rationale for war.
'The contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill, those who've got such evil in their hearts that they will take the lives of innocent folks,' President Bush said Thursday after the London bombings. 'The war on terror goes on.'
A key requirement of this righteous war is that all inconvenient history must be deemed irrelevant. 'By accepting the facile cliche that the battle under way against terrorism is a battle against evil, by easily branding those who fight us as the barbarians, we, like them, refuse to acknowledge our own culpability,' journalist Chris Hedges has observed. 'We ignore real injustices that have led many of those arrayed against us to their rage and despair.'
In the aftermath of 9/11, writer Joan Didion critiqued 'the wearying enthusiasm for excoriating anyone who suggested that it could be useful to bring at least a minimal degree of historical reference to bear on the event.' Overwhelmingly, politicians and pundits were quick to get in a groove of condemning any sensible assertions 'that events have histories, political life has consequences, and the people who led this country and the people who wrote and spoke about the way this country was led were guilty of trying to infantilize its citizens if they continued to pretend otherwise,'..."
Dahr Jamail: The Zarqawi Phenomenon
"A remarkable proportion of the violence taking place in Iraq is regularly credited to the Jordanian Ahmad al-Khalayleh, better known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his organization Al Qaeda in Iraq. Sometimes it seems no car bomb goes off, no ambush occurs that isn't claimed in his name or attributed to him by the Bush administration. Bush and his top officials have, in fact, made good use of him, lifting his reputed feats of terrorism to epic, even mythic, proportions (much aided by various mainstream media outlets). Given that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be based upon administration lies and manipulations, I had begun to wonder if the vaunted Zarqawi even existed..."
Nicholas Kristof: A Livable Shade of Green
"When President Bush travels to the Group of 8 summit meeting this week, he'll stiff Tony Blair and other leaders who are appealing for firm action on global warming. 'Kyoto would have wrecked our economy,' Mr. Bush told a Danish interviewer recently, referring to the accord to curb carbon emissions. Maybe that was a plausible argument a few years ago, but now the city of Portland is proving it flat wrong.
Newly released data show that Portland, America's environmental laboratory, has achieved stunning reductions in carbon emissions. It has reduced emissions below the levels of 1990, the benchmark for the Kyoto accord, while booming economically.
What's more, officials in Portland insist that the campaign to cut carbon emissions has entailed no significant economic price, and on the contrary has brought the city huge benefits: less tax money spent on energy, more convenient transportation, a greener city, and expertise in energy efficiency that is helping local businesses win contracts worldwide.
'People have looked at it the wrong way, as a drain,' said Mayor Tom Potter, who himself drives a Prius hybrid. 'Actually it's something that attracts people. It's economical; it makes sense in dollars.'
I've been torn about what to do about global warming. But the evidence is growing that climate change is a real threat: I was bowled over when I visited the Arctic and talked to Eskimos who described sea ice disappearing, permafrost melting and visits by robins, for which they have no word in the local language..."
On Terror:
Robert Fisk: The Reality of This Barbaric Bombing
"...I remember, crossing the Atlantic on 11 September 2001 - my plane turned round off Ireland when the US closed its airspace - how the aircraft purser and I toured the cabins to see if we could identify any suspicious passengers. I found about a dozen, of course, totally innocent men who had brown eyes or long beards or who looked at me with 'hostility'. And sure enough, in just a few seconds, Osama bin Laden turned nice, liberal, friendly Robert into an anti-Arab racist.
And this is part of the point of yesterday's bombings: to divide British Muslims from British non-Muslims (let us not mention the name Christians), to encourage the very kind of racism that Tony Blair claims to resent.
But here's the problem. To go on pretending that Britain's enemies want to destroy 'what we hold dear' encourages racism; what we are confronting here is a specific, direct, centralised attack on London as a result of a 'war on terror' which Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara has locked us into. Just before the US presidential elections, Bin Laden asked: 'Why do we not attack Sweden?'
Lucky Sweden. No Osama bin Laden there. And no Tony Blair."
Norman Solomon; Beware the "War on Terror"
"When the French government suggested a diplomatic initiative that might interfere with the White House agenda for war, the president responded by saying that the proposed scenario would 'ratify terror.' The date was July 24, 1964, the president was Lyndon Johnson and the war was in Vietnam.
Four decades later, the anti-terror rationale is not just another argument for revving up the US war machinery. Fighting 'terror' is now the central rationale for war.
'The contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill, those who've got such evil in their hearts that they will take the lives of innocent folks,' President Bush said Thursday after the London bombings. 'The war on terror goes on.'
A key requirement of this righteous war is that all inconvenient history must be deemed irrelevant. 'By accepting the facile cliche that the battle under way against terrorism is a battle against evil, by easily branding those who fight us as the barbarians, we, like them, refuse to acknowledge our own culpability,' journalist Chris Hedges has observed. 'We ignore real injustices that have led many of those arrayed against us to their rage and despair.'
In the aftermath of 9/11, writer Joan Didion critiqued 'the wearying enthusiasm for excoriating anyone who suggested that it could be useful to bring at least a minimal degree of historical reference to bear on the event.' Overwhelmingly, politicians and pundits were quick to get in a groove of condemning any sensible assertions 'that events have histories, political life has consequences, and the people who led this country and the people who wrote and spoke about the way this country was led were guilty of trying to infantilize its citizens if they continued to pretend otherwise,'..."
Dahr Jamail: The Zarqawi Phenomenon
"A remarkable proportion of the violence taking place in Iraq is regularly credited to the Jordanian Ahmad al-Khalayleh, better known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his organization Al Qaeda in Iraq. Sometimes it seems no car bomb goes off, no ambush occurs that isn't claimed in his name or attributed to him by the Bush administration. Bush and his top officials have, in fact, made good use of him, lifting his reputed feats of terrorism to epic, even mythic, proportions (much aided by various mainstream media outlets). Given that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be based upon administration lies and manipulations, I had begun to wonder if the vaunted Zarqawi even existed..."
Saturday, July 09, 2005
A Lot To Digest:
William Rivers Pitt: t r u t h o u t | Interesting Times
"...Maybe ten thousand times in the last few years, someone has stated with profound assurance that the Bush administration is in trouble, that the hammer is coming down, that some form of accountability is in the offing. Maybe ten thousand times, these predictions have turned out to be wrong. Nowadays, it takes a special kind of fool to think this White House can be easily cashiered for its gross violations, lies and flat-out crimes.
But it is getting awfully crowded around here. Bush's numbers are still cratering, the nation has stopped buying into the idea that he is some kind of Great Protector, the Brits are bugging out of the chaos in Iraq, Afghanistan is heating up, the Jesus Brigades on Bush's right flank are preparing to wig out unless they get some kind of Falwell clone onto the court, and one of the journalists used to destroy the career of a CIA operative who worked to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction is cooperating with a prosecutor.
And then there's this from Dan Froomkin, published by the Washington Post: 'More than four in 10 Americans, according to a recent Zogby poll, say that if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment ... The impeachment question was part of a Zogby International poll conducted early last week, and released on Thursday. It found that Bush's job approval ratings had slipped a point from the previous week, to 43 percent. But the jaw-dropper was that 42 percent said they would favor impeachment proceedings if it is found that the president misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq.'
Don't blink this week. You might miss something."
William Rivers Pitt: t r u t h o u t | Interesting Times
"...Maybe ten thousand times in the last few years, someone has stated with profound assurance that the Bush administration is in trouble, that the hammer is coming down, that some form of accountability is in the offing. Maybe ten thousand times, these predictions have turned out to be wrong. Nowadays, it takes a special kind of fool to think this White House can be easily cashiered for its gross violations, lies and flat-out crimes.
But it is getting awfully crowded around here. Bush's numbers are still cratering, the nation has stopped buying into the idea that he is some kind of Great Protector, the Brits are bugging out of the chaos in Iraq, Afghanistan is heating up, the Jesus Brigades on Bush's right flank are preparing to wig out unless they get some kind of Falwell clone onto the court, and one of the journalists used to destroy the career of a CIA operative who worked to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction is cooperating with a prosecutor.
And then there's this from Dan Froomkin, published by the Washington Post: 'More than four in 10 Americans, according to a recent Zogby poll, say that if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment ... The impeachment question was part of a Zogby International poll conducted early last week, and released on Thursday. It found that Bush's job approval ratings had slipped a point from the previous week, to 43 percent. But the jaw-dropper was that 42 percent said they would favor impeachment proceedings if it is found that the president misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq.'
Don't blink this week. You might miss something."
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Outing A CIA Operative, So Far Without Consequence:
Rep. John Conyers Jr. writes to the White Hoiuse: Democrats Call for Rove to Come Clean or Resign
"We write in order to urge that you require your Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, to either come forward immediately to explain his role in the Valerie Plame matter or to resign from your Administration.
Notwithstanding whether Mr. Rove intentionally violated the law in leaking information concerning former CIA operative Valerie Plame, we believe it is not tenable to maintain Mr. Rove as one of your most important advisors unless he is willing to explain his central role in using the power and authority of your Administration to disseminate information regarding Ms. Plame and to undermine her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
We now know that e-mails recently turned over by Time, Inc. between writer Matthew Cooper and Time editors reveal that one of Mr. Cooper's principal sources in the Plame matter was Mr. Rove. This has been confirmed by Newsweek and two lawyers representing witnesses involved in the investigation. Mr. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, also has confirmed that Mr. Rove was interviewed by Mr. Cooper in connection with a possible article about Ms. Plame three or four days before Robert Novak wrote a column outing Ms. Plame as a CIA operative..."
Pushing The Limits of The Right To Petition Congress:
NY Times: Lawmakers Push to Widen Probe of DeLay Ally
"Criminal investigators at the Justice Department have been asked by a House committee to consider broadening their corruption investigation of a Washington lobbyist whose ties to Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader, and other prominent lawmakers are the subject of inquiries throughout the government, Congressional officials disclosed on Tuesday.
The request about the investigation of the lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, was made in a letter last week to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales from the Republican chairman and the senior Democrat on the House Resources Committee.
The letter, dated June 30, cited a flurry of accusations of wrongdoing involving Mr. Abramoff's multimillion-dollar lobbying on behalf of the Northern Mariana Islands, a small American commonwealth in the Pacific, and said that 'any allegations of criminal matters of this sort are best addressed to the Department of Justice.'
The Justice Department has refused to discuss details of its investigation of Mr. Abramoff, which began more than a year ago. Congressional officials who are trying to monitor the investigation say that it has focused until now on accusations that Mr. Abramoff defrauded Indian tribes who paid him millions of dollars in lobbying fees on behalf of their gambling operations..."
The Environment:
NY Times: Big Utility Goes to Trial Over Pollution
"The nation's biggest power generating company broke the Clean Air Act by failing to cut emissions at plants in four states and so fouling the air in the Northeast and harming health, the government argued Wednesday as the trial of a lawsuit against the utility began.
The case against the company, American Electric Power, based here in Columbus, is the biggest among several filed in the waning days of the Clinton administration against utilities in the Midwest and the South.
The government and eight states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, say the company violated the law when it made major modifications to nine coal-burning plants without installing equipment that would have drastically cut pollution. As a result, the plants, in Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia, continue to spew sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and soot, which cause acid rain, smog and haze downwind. The government says the pollutants lead to severe respiratory problems, including asthma and bronchitis.
The Bush administration has rewritten the clean-air regulations that the Clinton administration used to sue the utilities, but the new rules are under review by federal courts and consequently have yet to take effect..."
Democracy Now! - Headlines for July 6, 2005
"New Pentagon Plan Calls For Greater Domestic Role
The Pentagon has adopted a new homeland security plan that calls for the U.S. military to greatly expand its domestic role. The Washington Post reports the new plan expands the military's presence not only in the air and sea at home but also on the ground and in other less traditional areas including intelligence sharing with civilian law enforcement. According to the Post, the document does not ask for new legal authority to use military forces on U.S. soil, but it raises the likelihood that U.S. combat troops will take action in the event that civilian and National Guard forces are overwhelmed. The document also calls for military intelligence analysts to be teamed with civilian law enforcement to identify and track suspected terrorists. And it asserts the president's authority to deploy ground combat forces on U.S. territory to 'intercept and defeat threats.' The Post reports that in the area of intelligence, the document speaks of developing 'a cadre' of Pentagon terrorism specialists and of deploying a number of them domestically to work with the FBI and local police forces. Gene Healy of the Cato Institute said, 'The move toward a domestic intelligence capability by the military is troubling. The last time the military got heavily involved in domestic surveillance, during the Vietnam War era, military intelligence kept thousands of files on Americans guilty of nothing more than opposing the war,'...
...Central Asian Group Calls For U.S. To Withdraw From Region
A coalition of central Asian countries -- including Russia and China -- have called on the U.S. to withdraw its military presence from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and to stop meddling in the domestic affairs of the region. The coalition known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization passed a declaration that read, 'Considering that the active phase of the military anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan has finished, member states... consider it essential that the relevant participants in the anti-terrorist coalition set deadlines for the temporary use' of bases in Central Asia.' The coalition's move appeared to be an attempt to push the United States out of a region that Moscow regards as historically part of its sphere of influence and in which China seeks a dominant role because of its extensive energy resources. The U.S. has used military bases in both former Soviet Republics in the war against Afghanistan. The U.S. has also been accused of being behind recent uprisings in three former Soviet republics: Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan The President of Kazakhstan said 'There should be no place for interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states..."
Rep. John Conyers Jr. writes to the White Hoiuse: Democrats Call for Rove to Come Clean or Resign
"We write in order to urge that you require your Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, to either come forward immediately to explain his role in the Valerie Plame matter or to resign from your Administration.
Notwithstanding whether Mr. Rove intentionally violated the law in leaking information concerning former CIA operative Valerie Plame, we believe it is not tenable to maintain Mr. Rove as one of your most important advisors unless he is willing to explain his central role in using the power and authority of your Administration to disseminate information regarding Ms. Plame and to undermine her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
We now know that e-mails recently turned over by Time, Inc. between writer Matthew Cooper and Time editors reveal that one of Mr. Cooper's principal sources in the Plame matter was Mr. Rove. This has been confirmed by Newsweek and two lawyers representing witnesses involved in the investigation. Mr. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, also has confirmed that Mr. Rove was interviewed by Mr. Cooper in connection with a possible article about Ms. Plame three or four days before Robert Novak wrote a column outing Ms. Plame as a CIA operative..."
Pushing The Limits of The Right To Petition Congress:
NY Times: Lawmakers Push to Widen Probe of DeLay Ally
"Criminal investigators at the Justice Department have been asked by a House committee to consider broadening their corruption investigation of a Washington lobbyist whose ties to Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader, and other prominent lawmakers are the subject of inquiries throughout the government, Congressional officials disclosed on Tuesday.
The request about the investigation of the lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, was made in a letter last week to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales from the Republican chairman and the senior Democrat on the House Resources Committee.
The letter, dated June 30, cited a flurry of accusations of wrongdoing involving Mr. Abramoff's multimillion-dollar lobbying on behalf of the Northern Mariana Islands, a small American commonwealth in the Pacific, and said that 'any allegations of criminal matters of this sort are best addressed to the Department of Justice.'
The Justice Department has refused to discuss details of its investigation of Mr. Abramoff, which began more than a year ago. Congressional officials who are trying to monitor the investigation say that it has focused until now on accusations that Mr. Abramoff defrauded Indian tribes who paid him millions of dollars in lobbying fees on behalf of their gambling operations..."
The Environment:
NY Times: Big Utility Goes to Trial Over Pollution
"The nation's biggest power generating company broke the Clean Air Act by failing to cut emissions at plants in four states and so fouling the air in the Northeast and harming health, the government argued Wednesday as the trial of a lawsuit against the utility began.
The case against the company, American Electric Power, based here in Columbus, is the biggest among several filed in the waning days of the Clinton administration against utilities in the Midwest and the South.
The government and eight states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, say the company violated the law when it made major modifications to nine coal-burning plants without installing equipment that would have drastically cut pollution. As a result, the plants, in Ohio, Indiana, Virginia and West Virginia, continue to spew sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and soot, which cause acid rain, smog and haze downwind. The government says the pollutants lead to severe respiratory problems, including asthma and bronchitis.
The Bush administration has rewritten the clean-air regulations that the Clinton administration used to sue the utilities, but the new rules are under review by federal courts and consequently have yet to take effect..."
Democracy Now! - Headlines for July 6, 2005
"New Pentagon Plan Calls For Greater Domestic Role
The Pentagon has adopted a new homeland security plan that calls for the U.S. military to greatly expand its domestic role. The Washington Post reports the new plan expands the military's presence not only in the air and sea at home but also on the ground and in other less traditional areas including intelligence sharing with civilian law enforcement. According to the Post, the document does not ask for new legal authority to use military forces on U.S. soil, but it raises the likelihood that U.S. combat troops will take action in the event that civilian and National Guard forces are overwhelmed. The document also calls for military intelligence analysts to be teamed with civilian law enforcement to identify and track suspected terrorists. And it asserts the president's authority to deploy ground combat forces on U.S. territory to 'intercept and defeat threats.' The Post reports that in the area of intelligence, the document speaks of developing 'a cadre' of Pentagon terrorism specialists and of deploying a number of them domestically to work with the FBI and local police forces. Gene Healy of the Cato Institute said, 'The move toward a domestic intelligence capability by the military is troubling. The last time the military got heavily involved in domestic surveillance, during the Vietnam War era, military intelligence kept thousands of files on Americans guilty of nothing more than opposing the war,'...
...Central Asian Group Calls For U.S. To Withdraw From Region
A coalition of central Asian countries -- including Russia and China -- have called on the U.S. to withdraw its military presence from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and to stop meddling in the domestic affairs of the region. The coalition known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization passed a declaration that read, 'Considering that the active phase of the military anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan has finished, member states... consider it essential that the relevant participants in the anti-terrorist coalition set deadlines for the temporary use' of bases in Central Asia.' The coalition's move appeared to be an attempt to push the United States out of a region that Moscow regards as historically part of its sphere of influence and in which China seeks a dominant role because of its extensive energy resources. The U.S. has used military bases in both former Soviet Republics in the war against Afghanistan. The U.S. has also been accused of being behind recent uprisings in three former Soviet republics: Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan The President of Kazakhstan said 'There should be no place for interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states..."
