No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

Missing Security Tapes and Rick Perry's Aide in case of Feds asked to Chase Democrats

Did Rick Perry direct the the DPS to call the Homeland Security Agency to track the missing Democratic Legislators? It's possible.

The Houston Chronicle reported that there were security tapes of the hall leading into the Texas DPS Command Center controlling the chase of the errant Democratic Legislators, and that when requested, the DPS provided copies - but of the crucial six hours, only fifteen minutes were on the first tape delivered last Friday. The DPS blamed a glitch in copying, and delivered a new copy with all six hours on Tuesday. Question - were they trying to run out the clock? The Texas Constitution gives the Texas Legislature only 120 days every two years to act on the business that needs to be dealt with - that includes investigating the DPS and Impeaching any officials who should be removed. The question was whether any of Tom Daley's Aides had entered the Command Center during the period when the DPS requested the Department of Homeland Security Federal Air Interdiction Service to track Pete Delay's plan. [Pete Delay is the ex-Speaker of the House and a Democratic Legislator.]

The Houston Chronicle reported today that the new tape shows that Rick Perry and his main aide on anti-Terrorism were in the DPS Command Center during the period in question. Apparently none of Delay's aides were there during that period. Rep. Kevin Bailey, D-Houston, chairman of the House General Investigating Committee has gone through the tapes that the DPS belatedly turned over.

Bailey's committee is looking into how the Texas Department of Public Safety coordinated its search for 55 missing legislators on May 12, whether anyone associated with U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay helped direct the search and why DPS officials ordered some records on the issue destroyed on May 14.

The Travis County district attorney, the federal Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Aviation Administration also are conducting investigations into the search. Travis County includes the State Capital, Austin, and the DA there frequently investigates activities of the State Government and the Legislature.

Personally, I think someone in the Republican Party or the Texas DPS used the Feds to track the Democrats, but the DPS order to destroy all records of the search succeeded in eliminating any record of such clear violation of law. The best any of the investigators at the State level will get is a he said vs he said type testimony. Since the feds are under control of Tom Ridge and George Bush, there will be no real revelations from them, and any records will be classified so that no one can get at them.

The Houston Chronicle has consistently carried the best information on this situation of any publication, including the Austin American Statesman. They are also the source to go to for news on the Enron situation. I wish there were more newspapers who did that kind of reporting.
posted by Richard at 10:05 PM

 

Tom Delay used his office to cause the feds to track the Democrats

Josh Marshall Thinks that the story of Tom Delay's (alleged) abuse of power to track the errant Texas Democratic lawmakers may have "legs". More and more facts are coming out each day, by more media outlets. He also reports that Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta has opened an investigation into the contacts to see if "...anything untoward..." occurred. The issue is whether Tom Delay abused his office in obtaining the information he then shared with Tom Craddick. If you wonder whether Delay was honest when he reported yesterday that he got nothing that was not available to anyone who had the plane tail number, he wasn't. This is similar to the way Nixon tried to use the IRS to get at his enemies, and if true, is a violation of law. Delay cannot legally use the federal government to get at his political enemies.

Marshall also references the Houston Chronicle story today with its focus on what Tom Delay's office really did to get information from the FAA. The Chronicle article is an excellent overview of what has gone on so far. The Chronicle is the newspaper of record for Tom Delay's Sugarland Congressional District, so it is important to the Editors of the Chronicle to get it right.

Regarding the destruction of the records of the search by the Texas Department of Public Safety, Rep Lon Burnham (D. Fort Worth) "...has filed a Public Information Act request for a record of all documents destroyed by the DPS. Among the documents destroyed, he believes, were dossiers on the Democrats who staged the walkout. "

Remember, Texas is a Republican-dominated state. Are the Republicans using the state troopers to keep track of Democratic lawmakers? Or do ambitious state troopers believe that they can improve their career possibilities by pleasing the Republican politicians? Or both?

Also, today the Dallas Morning News reported that the Texas State Trooper who asked the Department of Homeland Security Air Intervention Task force gave them the impression that the plane with state legislators on it might have crashed. The DPS officer who made the request was Lt. Will Crais, who at the time was working with Tom Craddick, the Texas Speaker of the House, to locate the missing Democrats. Lt. Crais
is "...a veteran fugitive-hunter."
posted by Richard at 5:37 AM

 

More on SARS

CBS News reports that the SARS virus has been found in civet cats, a badger and a raccoon dog in China. The article points out that the animals may have caught the virus from humans rather than the reverse, so this does not explain where the virus came from.

However, a recent study also indicates that 30% of the early SARS cases in China were in food handlers, which causes them to think the SARS virus may have originated in wildlife that was prepared as food.
posted by Richard at 9:05 PM

 

The Great Media Gulp

When WILLIAM SAFIRE opposes the likely decision of the Republicans in charge of the FCC, you might really wonder what American conservatism has come to. This is a guy who got his job with the New York Times because he had been a conservative writer for Richard Nixon in the President's office. But he is right. If the corporations get the media ownership restrictions removed, then we are going to end up like radio is right now. Three companies currently own 50% of all the radio stations in the US. The FCC wants to permit that kind of concentration for radio, TV and newspapers.

These are the sources of public opinion in this nation, and they have already failed to let us know what is really going on in the Florida Presidential election, in the invasion of Iraq, In Afghanistan, in the Intelligence failures that led to 9/11, in the tax cuts and the economy, and much, much more.

Surely no one believes that they will present MORE news and analysis if only three or four companies own all the media in every major city.

Read Safire's editorial. Then contact your congressperson. Then pray.

posted by Richard at 6:55 AM

 

The Mists of Falsehoods

Charley Reese describes how I feel about the Bush administration.

I see one set of facts, but if I listen to what Bush and Fleisher say, none of what I see exists. Instead, everything is great, except when its not and then it will be. All we need is another tax cut to put more money into the economy so people can spend more. Unless they don't have jobs in the first place, as is more and more true.

Arianna Huffington offers an explanation. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and Wolfowitz are fanatics who will ignore any evidence that contradicts what they know must be true.


I didn't think anyone would ever elect neocon ideologues to office in numbers large enough to actually try out their ideas. ~No one~ could be that crazy! Well, I was wrong.

January 2005 needs to get here quickly before the damage gets too bad to repair.
posted by Richard at 6:34 AM

 

The Plot Thickens - Tom Delay was more involved than he previously admitted.

The Houston Chronicle has further information about Delay's role in hunting for Democrats. His office forwarded a request to the Federal Attorney General's Office about what federal action could be taken to apprehend "...Texas Legislators who have warrants for their arrest and who have crossed state lines."

While the Republican Speaker of the Texas House, Tom Craddick, had signed an order to arrest the Democratic Legislators, that order was not a "warrant". A warrant is an order by court to arrest someone for criminal activity. Craddick is a Legislative Officer, not a judicial one, and the actions of the Democratic Legislators was not a crime. For Delay to tell the Attorney General's Office that there were "warrants" out for the Democrats is to tell the feds that a crime had been committed. Since no crime was committed, the feds should not have been involved.

Josh Marshall asks if this is enough to set off a media feeding frenzy. I wonder. It will certainly be a test of the administration's ability to control what appears in the media.

We definitely live in interesting times.
posted by Richard at 5:52 AM

 

Ever Find that Everything You Say digs the Hole Deeper? See the Texas DPS for an Example.

Josh Marshal points out the idiocy of the explanation the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has offered for destroying the records of the search for the Democratic Legislators.

The DPS appears to have violated Texas state law by destroying the records. To justify this, they point to a federal regulation which a legal expert says is plainly inapplicable. And the very regulation they're trying to hang their hat on seems to bar the original conduct itself.

So how does the DPS argue it's way out of this? Well, you can't say they aren't creative. According to DPS spokesman Tom Vinger, it was a criminal investigation. So they were entitled to conduct it. But only for a while! When they discovered that the legislators were out of state and couldn't be arrested, then it stopped being a criminal investigation. As Vinger told the Austin American-Statesman, "That's when this (federal code) kicked in, because clearly we had records now that were of a noncriminal variety."

Since the flight of the Democrats to Oklahoma was NOT a violation of any law, the search for them was clearly not a criminal investigation. To be criminal, there must be at least a suspected violation of law. No law - No crime. It's that simple The DPS was merely acting as a sergeant-at-arms for the Speaker of the House, Republican Tom Craddick. It is clear, however, that they should retain the records of their activities so that those activities can be properly audited and evaluated! Destruction of those records is extremely suspicious, and in fact nothing short of idiocy.

OK. So the Texas DPS shouldn't have called the feds to locate Pete Laney's plane, and they REALLY shouldn't have destroyed the records of what they had done.

Now, far be it from me to provide an excuse for what appears to be inappropriate use of the government by Republicans, especially Tom Delay. But let me speculate as to what probably really happened.

The last time the DPS had to perform this sergeant-at-arms function was about a quarter of a century ago. The DPS is a crime-fighting organization. They normally investigate crimes, including a lot of drug and immigrant smuggling since Texas is a border state next to Mexico. Most of what any organization does is routine. That is, what you do today will normally be very much like what you did yesterday. They were told to bring in the Democratic Lawmakers. What I am sure they heard was "Apprehend those Scofflaws." I seriously doubt that the DPS has prominent procedures for this function, and I am certain that the supervisors are not trained in how to handle it.

Also, Tom Craddick has just been elected Speaker of the House for the first time. The Republicans have not been in the majority in the Texas House of representatives since the end of Reconstruction in the 1870's. Both Tom Craddick and the Republicans are new at the job and are learning it as they go along. Craddick should have made it clear to the DPS that they were simply to bring the errant lawmakers to the House Chambers, but that they were NOT to treat them as criminals. I seriously doubt that it ever occurred to him that the DPS would not have established procedures and training in that function.

So Tom Craddick told the DPS to bring in the Democratic Lawmakers, and the DPS treated the job as they normally would, as apprehending fugitives. Then someone called the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to track Pete Laney's plane. When that reached the news, someone in the DPS suddenly realized - oops. That was a real no - no. Then someone panicked and told the troopers to destroy all records of what they had done. It comes down to a DPS error in contacting the DHS as would have been routine in apprehending fugitives, then a clearly criminal effort to cover up the mistake by destroying the records so that the mistake would be more difficult to audit.

While I would personally prefer for the actions to be pinned on a Republican politician somehow, I really doubt they were directly to blame. But someone in the DPS should be fired, not for the error of contacting the DHS about the aircraft, but for the decision to destroy the records.
posted by Richard at 3:48 PM

 

Arrest Those Dems!

More about the 51 escaping Democratic Texas Legislators last week. First, keep in mind that there is no law against what they did. However, if there is no quorum of the House, then the Speaker of the House may request that the Department of Public Safety (DPS) apprehend missing Legislators and return them to the House in order to meet the quorum requirements. That is all. There is no crime involved, and the issue is entirely the responsibility of the House of Representatives of the State of Texas.

The DPS apparently did not understand their function in this issue. They have been reported to have harassed the families of the missing Legislators, and to have requested the assistance of the federal Department of Homeland Security in apprehending them. The separation of powers between the federal and state governments does not give the federal government any legal function in this issue. This is one case that belongs entirely to the State of Texas and no one else. Neither the DPS officers nor Tom Delay were willing to accept this, it appears.

Tom Delay is the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives and has no state function, even though the legislation that the Texas Democratic Legislators were leaving to stop the passage of legislation that without any doubt originated in Tom Delay's office.

Two interesting articles on the case appeared today: The first in The Hill and the second in Fort Worth Star-Telegram . The first is a description of the actions of Tom Delay, and the second is the story broken today about the fact that the Texas DPS destroyed all records of their actions in attempting to apprehend the missing Legislators.

Tom Delay and Tom Craddick (the latter is Speaker of the House in Texas) are new in their jobs, and the DPS has not had this issue to deal with for over two decades. It appears to me that both Speakers and the DPS went well beyond the legal scope permitted in their jobs. They should all be held to account, and the DPS should be investigated to see if the destruction of the records of their actions is a crime.
posted by Richard at 8:29 AM

 

Per Tom Delay: Numbers Don't Mean Anything

Did we really elect our "Representatives" to go to Washington and lie to us?

From the New York Times : By DAVID FIRESTONE with DAVID E. ROSENBAUM

"WASHINGTON, May 20 — House Republican leaders agreed today to go along with the White House and the Senate and eliminate the tax on stock dividends, if only briefly, and Congressional Republican leaders promised to move swiftly to complete action on the bill this week.

The agreement, which represents a concession by the House which had earlier voted to reduce but not eliminate the tax, comes as Majority Leader Tom DeLay acknowledged that the total tax cut would have to stay under the limit imposed by the Senate: $350 billion over 10 years.

Though Mr. DeLay's acknowledgement seemed to be a bow to the Senate, which sought a tax cut far less than many House Republicans would like, he said he hoped unusual methods could make the actual tax cut much higher, while nominally remaining less than the Senate limit.

"Numbers don't mean anything," Mr. DeLay said. "In the tax code and dealing with a jobs-and-growth package, you can be very creative and still have a major impact."
posted by Richard at 5:55 AM

 

NYT and Washington Post Agree: Bush Can't Handle the Middle East

The bush administration clearly failed to plan for an Iraq that had no effective government, and is unwilling to commit the troops needed to get control of that anarchy. But they DID plan to use the defeat of Iraq to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to talk to each other and bring about a cessation of the low level war that has gone on there for the last 31 months. That is why the presented the Roadmap to peace.

Of course, neither side there trusts the other to live up to any agreement and the extremists don't want peace unless it means the total destruction of the other side. So we have had five suicide bombings in 48 hours and the Israeli military has the West Bank and Gaza Strip both so totally locked down militarily that even if the PLO wants to stop the suicide bombers, they are unable to act. They are literally locked into a deadly embrace that only some extremely effective diplomacy by an outsider (The US is the only candidate.) can break.

Fortunately, the Bush administration is famed for the effective diplomacy that the Bush administration has demonstrated in the last two years. Oh, wait. That is in some alternate universe, isn't it? Bush hasn't even ~tried~. He has promised, but done nothing to act on those promises. Can they even attempt to do two things at the same time?

Here are the two editorials: New York Times and Washington Post
posted by Richard at 5:34 AM

 

Changes Resulting from the Saudi Arabian Bombings

Here are some changes that the recent bombings in Saudi Arabia seem to be causing:

Officers from the Saudi Arabian National Guard (a military force which has as one purpose, preventing a takeover by the Army) have been selling weapons to al Quada. This seems to be for money, not ideology. In the past, such actions have been swept under the rug and ignored. Now: MSNBC

The article also refers to better relations between the FBI and the Saudis - the FBI agents are being more diplomatic.

Also, the Democrats are beginning to decide how to attack Bush on Security issues. MSNBC Bush was saying that his administration had al Quada on the run, with many of the top leaders caught and the rest disorganized. Then almost immediately after that, al Quada bombed the locations in Saudi Arabia and Morocco.

As I have written before, that was impossible. Al Quada can't attack westerners anymore, because we have conquered and occupied both Afghanistan and Iraq. Right?
posted by Richard at 1:36 AM

 

How Do You Defeat Terrorism?

Let me start off by admitting that I don't like Bush, I don't like Cheney, and I consider Ashcroft someone who should be in a mental asylum. Rumsfield seems to me to simply be so full of himself that no one can talk sense to him. But I merely don't like or don't trust them. I hate terrorists. That is a different level from mere dislike. I have never seen a terrorist organization which offered an explanation that justified what they do. For the most part, terrorists seem to be hopeless individuals who perform extreme, odious actions in behalf of someone else who is using them.

I would happily .... no, let's say, willingly .... support the Bush administration in any ~effective~ war against terrorism, especially when the terrorism is aimed against Americans, but also anywhere else. Unfortunately, the Bush administration seems to be using the ~so-called~ war against terrorism as a weapon with which to politically defeat their Democratic opponents, not as a real war to stop terrorism. The Bush administration's goal seems to be to get Bush re-elected in 2004, and the war against terrorism simply provides another source of sound-bytes with which to accomplish that goal.

So here is a description of what seems to be the manner in which the war against terrorism is being fought.

"The IISS [the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies] estimates that while 10 senior leaders and some two thousand rank-and-file members of al-Qaeda have been killed or captured since Sept. 11, at least 20 senior leaders and 18,000 followers who went through the training camps in Afghanistan are still at large -- and the flow of new recruits, many of them driven towards extremism by US policy in the Middle East, almost certainly far exceeds the rate of losses.

Operations like the attacks in Bali and Mombasa last autumn are planned and carried out by local sympathisers who may have little contact with al Qaeda's leadership: all they need is approval in principle and perhaps some financial help. "The only physical infrastructure al Qaeda required (after Afghanistan) were safe houses to assemble bombs and weapons caches," said the IISS report. "Otherwise, notebook computers, encryption, the internet, multiple passports, and the ease of global transportation enabled al Qaeda to function as a `virtual' entity that leveraged local assets -- hence local knowledge -- to full advantage in coordinating attacks in many 'fields of jihad."

In other words: the Islamist terrorists are here to stay, and they cannot be stamped out by military force. The `war on terrorism' should be seen in the same way that we view the often-proclaimed `war on crime': merely a militaristic metaphor for an operation that is really statistical. Nobody imagines that the `war on crime' will one day end like a real war, with an absolute victory where all the criminals come out with their hands up and then there is no more crime. Success is a matter of keeping the crime rate down, not eliminating all the criminals.

Terrorism is exactly the same. As Stella Rimington, former head of Britain's MI5, said last year: "Terrorism did not begin on September 11 and it will not end there...The history of terrorism in the 20th century shows that a `war on terrorism' cannot be won, unless the causes of terrorism are eradicated by making the world a place free of grievances, something that will not happen. Terrorism has proved so effective in catching the world's attention and even, ultimately, in achieving the terrorists' objectives, that it will continue to appeal to extremists. However good our counter measures, some of it will succeed, but it can be made more difficult."

The US intelligence services understand all this, too, but it's a hard sell politically in a country that expects instant solutions and glories in its military power. To people who have only a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

It was not the Central Intelligence Agency that pushed to keep American troops in Saudi Arabia after 1991, thus creating the original grievance that brought al Qaeda into existence, but they couldn't get the generals to listen.

It was not the CIA that concocted stories about Saddam Hussein's fabulous `weapons of mass destruction' and his fictional links with al Qaeda as a pretext for conquering Iraq, but they couldn't get the political ideologues to listen.

No military victory over terrorism is possible anyway, but it really does not help to go around manufacturing more grievances. "

Bush the daddy defeated Saddam Hussein in 1991, but his military victory was not one that was able to override the angst caused by the poor economy in 1992, so he lost the election. The 1991 war ~against Iraq~ had been long over, and did not carry into November of 1992.

Bush junior and his eminence gris, Karl Rove, have repackaged the new war against Iraq into the (eternal and unwinnable) war against terrorism. In furtherance of this war they have used our unmatched military power to conquer and occupy two middle eastern nations so far, and every terrorist action around the world keeps their actions in the forefront of the 2004 voters' minds. When the voters make a decision between national security and a poor economy, the Bush people are betting they will vote for national security no matter how bad the economy is.

The second arrow in their quiver is that this nation is currently set up so that the wealthy determine who gets elected. This is the entire issue of campaign finance. So the tax cuts are specifically designed to buy the majority of these votes. The middle class is swayed by TV ads and TV news, so if they can get the big donors to donate to their campaign they get a major advantage. This is aided by the centralization of the media and the unwillingness of most major media to question or effectively analyze the activities of the government. Then there is the conservative-dominated media such as that owned by Rupert Murdoch, Richard Mellon Scaife, Gaylord, and the Moonies (UPI and the Washington Times). There is no equivalent concentration of liberal-dominated media. The rest try to present both sides.

The third arrow in their quiver is that the only large organizations which can effectively compete against the wealthy and the large corporations for votes are the Unions. The laws which used to allow unions to function effectively have gradually been gutted since the Nixon era, and especially since Reagan destroyed the Air Traffic Controllers Union. The unions today are comparatively powerless.

The result of all this is that the so-called war on terrorism is really a PR stunt used to elect conservative Republicans, much as the war on drugs was intended to be from the Nixon era on. Frankly, I think that if the war on terrorism were to start being effective, the current administration would have to hide that fact from us, much as conservatives glossed over the fact that the largest single source of financial contributions to the US Communist Party by 1960 was the dues paid by FBI infiltrators.

In short, the war on terrorism inspired by 9/11 is a shame. Any brief look at the federal budget recommended by the White House will clearly establish that.
Which is one reason I really dislike the Bush administration.

posted by Richard at 4:20 AM

 

Did Defeating Iraq make us Safer from Terrorism?

Paul Krugman again points out that the President has no clothes on.

"Still, we defeated Saddam. Doesn't that make us safer? Well, no.

Saddam wasn't a threat to America — he had no important links to terrorism, and the main U.S. team searching for weapons of mass destruction has packed up and gone home. Meanwhile, true to form, the Bush team lost focus as soon as the TV coverage slackened off. The first result was an orgy of looting — including looting of nuclear waste dumps that, incredibly, we failed to secure. Dirty bombs, anyone? Now, according to an article in The New Republic, armed Iraqi factions are preparing for civil war.

That leaves us facing exactly the dilemma war skeptics feared. If we leave Iraq quickly it may well turn into a bigger, more dangerous version of Afghanistan. But if we stay for an extended period we risk becoming, as one commentator put it, "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land" — just the recruiting tool Al Qaeda needs. Who said that? President George H. W. Bush, explaining his decision not to go on to Baghdad back in 1991. "

The entire editorial is worth reading.

I keep looking for positive things to come out of the invasion of Iraq - beyond the obvious, that is. The obvious is that Saddam and the Ba'ath Party of Iraq no longer oppress the Iraqi people and that the US Army and the military in general has had a superb live-fire exercise allowing them to try out a lot of new technology that should have worked, but hadn't been really tested yet. I don't believe that any real democracy will be possible without also the breakup of Iraq. Then the pieces will be subject to fundamentalist Islam rather than any democracy. And I don't think that we will be able to pull out many troops without leaving something similar to Lebanon or Yugoslavia. Remember, Iraq is between Iran and Syria, neither of which is known for its dedication to democracy or its good will towards Iraq.

I think that the Bush administration, against the advice of most of the rest of the world, has grabbed the tarbaby and will find it very difficult to let go. Of course, it will be easier if they were lying to us and the only reason they had for invading Iraq was to convince the rest of the world that there is no more Viet Nam syndrome and we would really use military force and every other reason they have offered for invading Iraq was a lie.
posted by Richard at 9:01 AM

 

Texas chicken D's - The Underdogs

There are no State-wide offices held by Democrats in Texas. In 2001 they lost the State House and the Governor and Senate have been Republican for several years. So when Tom Delay (Republican Majority Leader in the Federal House of Representatives) had a State Rep submit a bill to redistrict the State of Texas to eliminate about four more Federal Congressional Districts, it should have simply run right through. Except - The Texas Constitution (written after the Reconstruction during a very populist and anti-Yankee period) requires that two-thirds of the 150 member House must be present in order to conduct business.

The results of the 2000 federal census were considered in the 2001 legislative session, and the Legislature could not redistrict the State. The Federal Courts then stepped in in and made a decision that should have given conservative Republicans 20 of the 32 Congressional Districts. Some Democrats are so conservative that in 2002 the results were 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans. Tom Delay, the pest-control man from Sugarland who is also the federal House Republican Leader is unhappy at how small the federal Republican majority is, so he had a Republican lackey submit a beautifully gerrymandered bill submitted in the state legislature to redraw the federal congressional districts the Federal courts had already established.

The last time a bill in the House could be considered and submitted to the State Senate was midnight, Thursday May 15th. So last weekend, 53 State Representatives of the Democratic Party headed for Ardmore, Oklahoma, and notified the Republican House Majority Leader, Tom Craddick, to lock their House voting machines as they would not be there. No quorum - no House action. The Republicans were stopped dead.

Tom Craddick refused to stop the redistricting bill or to negotiate in any way. Why should he? The Republicans have the majority in the Texas House of Representative for the first time since the 1870's - the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War. So the Democrats have stayed in Oklahoma through Thursday. The Republicans have been criticizing the Democrats for not showing up in the Legislature to do State business, but the Democrats have been getting national press - all of it positive.

Essentially, the Democrats in Texas have been demonstrating why the Republicans cannot be trusted in the majority. The Republicans are extremist true-believers who have no respect for the minorities in the nation (or in this case, the State of Texas).

The Republican's can't come out and say they are trying to lock up total control of the federal House of Representatives no matter what the voters say, so they call the Democrats the "Chicken D's". Personally, I think the Republicans have overreached and screwed up. Americans generally support the underdog. Tom Craddick and Tom Delay have pretty much established the Texas Democrats as the underdogs.
posted by Richard at 7:30 PM

 

Universal Healthcare vs Cost

Japan and Great Britain both cover 100% of their population for health care for a cost of about 7% to 8% of the Gross Domestic Product. The US covers about 86% of its population at a cost of about 15 to 16% of the annual GDP, and gets no better results according to statistics. Every effort to use the 'Free Market' to lower costs has failed to change the inefficiencies that produce those strange results, except the introduction of HMOs.

HMOs reduced the increase in healthcare costs from about 1995 to 1999, but that was because of the lower initial costs of HMOs and their willingness to reduce profits to build market share. By 1999, with 75% of the nation's insured in HMOs, medical costs returned to their normal increase of 8 to 9% per year. The problem is that demand always exceeds supply, and that an uncontrolled market will always encourage suppliers to increase the available supply as long as there is someone who will pay for it. Since someone with a fatal or miserable illness can always be induced to pay for a cure, the inflation of medical cost will always be with us. There is no alternative to which we can switch. The question is, how do we get the needed medical care to those who need it most when they need it.

I don't see any reasonable alternative to a single payer system, but that clearly does involve a certain limitation of demand. Any single payer system must allow some people to pay for care that is new and exploratory, beyond what the official system pays for.

This is the best brief description I have seen of the overall problem:
Slate Magazine
posted by Richard at 4:35 PM

 

Violence Escalating in Baghdad - US wants More Troops to Bring Control

The Washington Post reports that the situation in Baghdad is deteriorating.

Reports of carjackings, assaults and forced evictions grew today, adding to an impression that recent improvements in security were evaporating. Fires burned anew in several Iraqi government buildings and looting resumed at one of former president Saddam Hussein's palaces. The sound of gunfire rattled during the night; many residents said they were keeping their children home from school during the day. Even traffic was affected, as drivers ignored rules in the absence of Iraqi police, only to crash and cause tie-ups.

U.S. commanders have described Baghdad's security as their top priority and have assigned several thousand troops to guard 200 sites and patrol neighborhoods. But they have also said they do not have enough troops to police the sprawling city or guard every facility that could be targeted by looters.

Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of ground troops in Iraq, said the roughly 150,000 soldiers under his command are focusing on many assignments simultaneously, including hunting for weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's missing leaders while also imposing order on a country the size of California.

"Imagine spreading 150,000 soldiers in the state of California and then ask yourself could you secure all of California all the time with 150,000 soldiers," McKiernan told reporters last week. "The answer is no. So we're focused on certain areas, on certain transportation networks we need to make sure are open."

What was the estimate the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave before the War started? Two hundred thousand troops for an indefinite period of time? As I recall, the White House shut him up and disavowed the estimate, stating that it was much too high. Looks like it wasn't. And I am wondering how many troops we have on the 740 mile long Iran-Iraq border - or the Turkey-Iraq border, or Syria-Iraq border.
posted by Richard at 5:51 PM

 

Europe Won't Be Fooled Again

Oliver Roy of the New York Times has written an editorial today that clearly explains what the Bush administration intended and intends with the War in Iraq. For anyone, like myself, who did not think the rationale for regime change in Iraq we were being given made sense, he agrees. Then he explains why.

"To understand the problem, one has to consider what the Europeans were presented with in the build-up to war. Beyond polemics and misgivings, the basic problem was that Washington's stated war goals were not logically coherent, and its more intellectually compelling arguments were usually played down or denied.

"The official war objectives given to the allies were these: destruction of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction; fighting terrorism; getting rid of a tyrant. The Europeans responded that there were no operational weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that the inspections could have maintained the status quo at a lesser cost than a military campaign; Saddam Hussein was in no way integral to Al Qaeda, which had shifted to Pakistan (as shown by all the recent arrests); and, yes, Saddam Hussein was a bloody tyrant, but who decided not to finish him off in 1991?

"For Old Europe, the poverty of the official American arguments gave rise to suspicion that there was a hidden agenda. European public opinion endorsed the idea that the war was about oil, a claim that fed into the good old anti-imperialist reflex from Cairo to Paris.

"That oil argument was of course wrong. But that is not to say these Europeans were mistaken about the United States having a broader agenda. And, in fact, there had always been a not-so-hidden agenda, one explicitly expressed by many professional thinkers at the American Enterprise Institute, for example. The idea is that the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate is America's most worrisome foreign entanglement, and can be broken only if the overall existing order in the Middle East is shaken up first. "

He continues later in the editorial: "Washington has claimed that it can create a friendly, democratic and stable Iraq within two years. Forget it: achieve two of those adjectives [sic] and consider yourselves lucky. There is no democracy without nationalism, and the Iraqis will sooner or later challenge the American presence. The United States cannot stand alone when dealing with the driving force in the Middle East. This is neither Islamism nor the appetite for democracy, but simply nationalism — whether it comes in the guise of democracy, secular totalitarianism or Islamic fervor. "

So which two of the three objectives do we want? The choices are a 1. friendly, 2. democratic, and 3. stable Iraq. Personally, I consider "democratic" to be the least likely. It will, however, be the one most talked about by the various interest groups involved.
posted by Richard at 3:37 PM

 

Redistricting in Texas, Colorado

Josh Marshal offers a bit of perspective on the redistricting efforts by the Republicans in Texas and Colorado. I both states, the effort has come from Washington. The Colorado effort is being pushed by Karl Rove, and the Texas effort by Tom Delay. Also, in both cases the bill was presented at the last minute in a state legislative session in a state which has newly come under Republican control.

Josh also says he is writing an article on the subject, but hasn't yet finished editing it. I am looking forward to the article.
posted by Richard at 1:17 PM

 

A Readable Analysis of the Proposed Tax Cuts

This is the Brookings Institutes' analysis of the tax cuts, with which I agree. It is the most reasonable economic analysis - as opposed to the political ones normally seen recently.

Our overarching conclusion is that the Administration, House, and Senate Finance Committee proposals are seriously flawed and are strikingly removed from the economy's current and long-term problems. Although each of the proposals would provide a short-term economic boost, almost any increase in government spending or cut in tax revenues would stimulate a sluggish economy (assuming the Federal Reserve cooperates). The three proposals on the table, though, would provide their stimulus at an unnecessarily high cost: they would reduce long-term growth, exacerbate looming budget problems, and impose significant burdens on future generations. In addition, they would be regressive and would not only fail to meet their ostensible goal of integrating the personal and corporate taxes, but could also open up new sheltering activity. Better alternatives would include substantial aid to the states, an extension of unemployment insurance benefits, and reform of the alternative minimum tax.

See a summary of the paper at Thinking Through the Tax Options for the specific findings.
posted by Richard at 12:45 PM

 

More about Ahmed Chalabi

The Daily Star of Lebanon printed an interesting < a href = "http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/30_04_03_e.asp">defense of Ahmed Chalabi on April 30, 2003. Here is the part I found particularly interesting:

"“Convicted felon:” Chalabi’s Jordanian bank, Petra Bank, collapsed in 1989 amid allegations of financial impropriety and Chalabi was convicted in absentia of embezzlement and fraud. At the time, the late King Hussein was Saddam’s closest Arab ally and Chalabi, based in Jordan, his most creative Iraqi opponent. A few weeks before the bank was closed ­ oddly, by military law ­ a major American auditing firm gave it a clean bill of health. In the same year Chalabi was convicted, King Hussein paid him the first of several secret visits and asked him what was the cause of his anger toward an old friend. Chalabi replied: “Because you made me out to be a thief and my family a family of thieves.” He refused a royal pardon, since pardon implies guilt.
The Wall Street Journal recently produced evidence that the State Department has attempted to perpetuate this bank robber image by putting pressure on government auditors to produce evidence that would enable it to “shut down the INC.” The auditors gave the INC a clean bill of health and said it was “impossible” for them to comply with various State Department demands.

"“A catspaw of Washington.” A catspaw, however, who is loathed by the CIA and the State Department. Not only because he has consistently pushed for action rather than words ­ and action by Iraqis rather than, as now, by Americans. But also because, as his friend, the American columnist Anthony Lewis, says: “When you hear Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage maligning Chalabi, you hear the institutional voices of Saudi Arabia and Egypt speaking through him.” Many in the US administration would prefer to see Saddam replaced by former Baathists, who would get along just fine with their friends in Riyadh and Cairo. "

This article offered thanks to the assistance of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IPWR). Using Google on IPWR I found this about them. IPWR. I was looking for a reason to consider the Daily Star of Lebanon somewhat credible. Make your own judgement.

Of course, even Al Jazeera is more credible than the Bush administration now. The Daily Star CAN'T have sunk THAT low, can it?

posted by Richard at 10:40 PM

 

Roadbump for Tom Delay

Tom Cradick, the newly elected Republican Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, has been wearing a heavy frown in the last few days. Last night, he railed against the "Chicken D's", the 53 Democratic Representatives who have left the State and stopped the House from passing any further legislation. Cradick has asked the Texas Rangers to arrest any of the missing Democratic Representatives and drag them to the House building in Austin if they can, but the Governor of Oklahoma is not going to cooperate by letting them act as police officers in their state. There is (of course) a story behind this.

The federal census was completed in 2000 and the Texas legislature failed to redistrict the Federal House Congressional districts. So the Federal Courts made the necessary decision.

Tom Delay, Republican from Sugarland, TX and now the leader of the Republicans in the House, is unhappy with the fact that only 14 of Texas' 32 Represebntatives are Republican when the last election (2002) gave the State House and Senate to the Republicans along with the Governorship. So Delay has offered a new districting plan to Texas, and the Republicans were set to pass it in the House and Senate. This is the guy who owns a pest control business and is known as "The Hammer" because of his heavy-handed methods of requiring political donations before he will talk to you about legislation. The Republican Governor, Rick Perry would be happy to sign it. He can say that it is simply what the legislature wants him to do. He need not take any responsibility that will cost him votes. This would be the first time in fifty years that a state has reopened redistricting after the disricts required by the ten-year census have been established. The Democrats in the legistature felt steamrolled.

But the Texas Constitution has a provision that says the House cannot conduct business unless a quorum of at least 100 Representatives out of 150 are present. So 53 Texas Democrats have asked the House to lock their voting terminals since they will not be there. The Legislature meets for 120 days every two years, and Thursday (May 15) is the last day in this session that completed legislation can be sent to the Senate for action. If they were in Texas, then the Texas Rangers could arrest them and drag them to the House to complete the quorum, so they have moved to the Holiday Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

It isn't as bad as it sounds. The Governor was already going to require a special session to deal with school finance, but a special session cannot, by law, deal with any legislation that the Governor does not specifiy. That means if the Governor specifies redistricitng, then his hands are all over the redistricting issue. That WILL cost him votes.

Essentially, this is a case of a political minority who doesn't like being steamrolled by the Republicans who are impatient to gain total contol of the State of Texas.

I am rooting for the minority, of course.
posted by Richard at 3:00 PM

 

FBI Competancy Questioned

When the FBI was alerted by a wiretap in 1991 that Katrina Leung was passing classified information to the Chinese Communists, they instructed her handler, James Smith, to have her take a polygraph. She refused. Smith told his superiors that she had taken it, and that she had passed. She continued to be considered a reliable informant for the next decade.

The Christian Science Monitor suggests that beyond simply an intelligence failure, this leads to the question of whether the FBI is even able to do what is up to handling its job in the war against terrorism.

Smith is the third FBI counterintelligence agent since 1984 to be charged with crimes related to spying. The recent case of Robert Hanssen, who spied for the Soviet Union and Russia, also brought about needed internal reforms.

But a more systemic issue looms, and that's the larger problem with the FBI's culture. When serious mistakes occur - whether it's the mishandling of the Waco incident; the shootings at Ruby Ridge, Idaho; the cozy relationship between the Boston FBI office and local mob informants; bad testimony from the FBI lab; or espionage cases - senior officials rarely seem to pay a price. That record has some questioning whether the Bureau is up to the task in the war on terrorism.

The FBI is well known to be very effective at managing its press relations. They do not have as good a reputation for managing counterintelligence. It is really time for Congress to hold hearings and see what reforms can be applied.

I have a modest proposal.

They might consider not promoting anyone into FBI management positions in Washington except from other agencies for the next five or so years, and removing 90%of the top two levels of management there immediately, retaining only a few for institutional memory. The problem is the FBI culture. Bringing in managers from the Secret Service, ATF, DEA, and other law enforcement agencies (perhaps not limited to federal agencies) to replace the current managers would be a powerful step in bringing the agency into the current century. Field FBI agents who want to go into the Washington office should be given a two-year assignment outside the FBI first.

Just a thought.
posted by Richard at 11:40 PM

 

Terror in Afghanistan

Three days after they were kidnapped by the Taliban, the bodies of Janad Gul and his fellow Afghani soldier, Alif Jan, were returned. They had been killed very cruelly - their noses and ears chopped off, their bones crushed, their throats ceremonially cut.

Top Afghan officials believe these killings are no aberration, but rather part of a campaign to intimidate Afghan soldiers and families - and to carry out promises in Taliban propaganda to torture and kill those who support the government of President Hamid Karzai.

The Al Qaeda and the Taliban have not given up in Afghanistan. They have regrouped, rearmed, and are now beginning to pick off soldiers and other supporters of the Karzai government. We Americans may lose an occasional soldier or two in Afghanistan, but the Afghans themselves are losing dozens each month. It is a war of ambush and terror, something many a Viet Nam veteran will remember.

The US will not be able to pull out of Afghanistan quickly unless we want the nation to go back to what it was before we attacked. We are stuck to the tar-baby. We better plan on spending more there. More money and more blood.

Christian Science Monitor
posted by Richard at 10:59 PM

 

Interview with an Embedded Reporter

Someone finally wrote what I have felt since the beginning of this Iraq mess.

GS: What's struck me is that for a lot of the conservatives who supported this war, validation seems to be in the victory. We prosecute it successfully, we win, and the fact that we win validates us being there in the first place. That makes no rational sense at all. The purpose of our entrance was not to defeat another army but to accomplish a lot of more difficult tasks, none of which have been accomplished, save getting rid of some of the Ba'ath party of Saddam Hussein.

Still, I think what I thought before. I never thought the U.S. was going to lose the military conflict, but I thought that we were getting ourselves into a situation we would find incredibly difficult to resolve. I think few people are accepting the reservations on what American military power can accomplish in terms of the construction of a democratic society. There are great limits on the types of systems we can impose on other people.

This is from Mother Jones, an interview with Gareth Schweitzer by Michelle Chihara. There are also some interesting details on Schweitzer's view of what he embedding process did to reporting, but nothing that I found especially surprising.

Our use of military power has had rather unsurprising results. The really interesting part is what happens now and going forward. That's "interesting" as in the old Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times."
posted by Richard at 11:12 AM

 

Australian Strategist Discusses New Government of Iraq

Hugh White director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute believes that the idea of a democratic, pro-American government in Iraq is a contradiction in terms. Washington needs to build a government, and indeed an entire political system, that can hold Iraq's fractious regions together, retain at least a veneer of democratic legitimacy, deliver effective administration, and serve US strategic objectives.

The best hope may be to find an Iraqi strongman. Someone like President Mubarak of Egypt, who can play the politics of his own country without too much brutality and with sufficient agility to keep his internal opponents and foreign supporters at arm's length. There is a vacancy here. Find the right man, and the US will not need the UN. If he cannot be found, the UN won't be able to help.

I wonder if the need for this kind of government (which is probably obvious to the people on the ground and anathema to the Rumsfield and the ideologues in Washington) and estimates of a much longer American presence being required is why Jay Garner is being replaced?
posted by Richard at 12:34 AM

 

Rumsfields' Tame Intelligence Operation in Trouble over Failure to find WMDs.

The Observer reports that Rumsfields' new Intelligence operation, The Cabal (set up in the Office of Special Plans and reporting to him), may be to blame for the utter failure to find WMDs in Iraq.

In the brave new world of post-11 September America, this tight group of analysts deep in the heart of the Pentagon has been the driving force behind the war in Iraq. Numbering no more than a dozen, The Cabal is part of the Office of Special Plans, a new intelligence agency which has taken on the CIA and won. Where the CIA dithered over Iraq, the OSP pressed on. Where the CIA doubted, the OSP was firm. It fought a battle royal over Iraq and George Bush came down on its side.

The OSP is the brainchild of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who set it up after the 2001 terrorist attacks. It was tasked with going over old ground on Iraq and showing that the CIA had overlooked the threat posed. But its rise has caused massive ructions in the normally secretive world of intelligence gathering.

They argued a forceful case for war against Saddam before his weapons programmes came to fruition. More moderate voices in the CIA and DIA were drowned out. The result has been a flurry of leaks to the US press. One CIA official described The Cabal's members as 'crazed', on a 'mission from God'. But for the moment The Cabal and Rumsfeld's Pentagon have won and Powell's doveish State Department has lost. Tensions between the two are now in the open.

'Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence agency because he didn't like the intelligence he was getting,' said Larry Korb, director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. 'He doesn't like Powell's approach, a typical diplomat, too cautious.'

Former CIA officials are caustic about the OSP. Unreliable and politically motivated, they say it has undermined decades of work by the CIA's trained spies and ignored the truth when it has contradicted its world view.

'Their methods are vicious,' said Vince Cannistraro, former CIA chief of counter-terrorism. 'The politicisation of intelligence is pandemic, and deliberate disinformation is being promoted. They choose the worst-case scenario on everything and so much of the information is fallacious.' But Cannistraro is retired. His attacks will not bother The Cabal, firmly 'in the loop' of Washington's movers and shakers. Yet, even among them, continued failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a growing fear. The fallout from the war could bring them down.

I don't really blame the Cabal primarily. The fact is, the right-wingers currently in charge of our government have an ideology which they apply to all facts and events. Facts which conflict with the ideology are clearly wrong, so they are ignored. Their problem has been that the State Department, CIA and DIA have not been willing to discard information merely because it inconveniently does not tell Rumsfield and Bush what they want to hear. That is why Rumsfield had to set up the Cabal. And that is why the Cabal is failing.

You would think that 70 years of Soviet Communism would have shown the American right-wingers that when ideology is used to override facts, the programs attempted are much more likely to fail.

Addendum:
Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post provided this editorial Tuesday, May 13, 2003; Page A19. "The neos knew with existential certitude that the weapons were there. ... And that was the problem with the CIA and DIA: They were a bunch of vulgar empiricists. What the Bush administration wanted, it turns out, was faith-based intelligence. Thus the operation in the Office of Special Plans, headed by neocon Abram Shulsky, was born. Shulsky's shop didn't have agents in the field; indeed, it had just a handful of analysts. But what set them apart from the intelligence agencies was that they relied heavily on information from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) -- an organization of Iraqi exiles whose raison d'etre was to promote the overthrow of Hussein. As both Hersh and Dreyfuss document, a lot of the INC's information on weapons programs and other matters was considered patently absurd by veteran intelligence analysts. But that was the information that served as the basis of the administration's case for war."

The INC is the exile organization headed by Ahmed Chalabi (BBC News), the man Secretary of Defense Rumsfield is pushing to lead the Iraqi government and who the Department of State and CIA both detest. Among other things, he was a banker in Jordan until they tried to arrest him for criminal activity and he escaped the country. More about that later.


posted by Richard at 12:10 AM

 

U.S. Leadership Shake-Up In Baghdad

CBS News

Looks like the initial team wasn't cutting the mustard. Either they weren't producing results fast enough, or they were trying to tell the Washington bureaucracy (plus Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield and Wolfowitz) things they didn't want to hear. They've only been in country for about three weeks. I wonder what happened?
posted by Richard at 10:53 PM

 

Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq

Washington Post May 11, 2003
"BAGHDAD -- The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to participants."

OK. So the hunt for WMD's is being shut down, with no success. What happened?

Did the US suffer a massive Intelligence failure that caused us to start a war we didn't need? Or did the Bush administration simply lie to everyone so they could get the war they wanted? Or were there really WMDs, but they were either destroyed before the war or so thoroughly hidden that they can't now be found? The third option should be considered an Intelligence failure also.

In any case, the horrors Saddam was inflicting on his people provide no excuse for such massive failure by the Bush administration. They are not why Bush said we were fighting. It was the war against terror and WMDs that Bush used to convince Congress and the People to go to war. Now he can't make a connection to terrorists, and can't find the WMDs.

Our government lied to us. Big time.
posted by Richard at 2:26 AM

 

Voting Rights Endangered for Party out of Power

Martin Luther King III and Greg Palast described the dangers to voting Rights that are becoming greater.

From the article

Jim Crow revived in cyberspace

By Martin Luther King III and Greg Palast
Originally published May 8, 2003

Excerpt follows:

Today, there is a new and real threat to minority voters, this time from cyberspace: computerized purges of voter rolls.The menace first appeared in Florida in the November 2000 presidential election. While the media chased butterfly ballots and hanging chads, a much more sinister and devastating attack on voting rights went almost undetected.

In the two years before the elections, the Florida secretary of state's office quietly ordered the removal of 94,000 voters from the registries. Supposedly, these were convicted felons who may not vote in Florida. Instead, the overwhelming majority were innocent of any crime, though just over half were black or Hispanic.

We are not guessing about the race of the disenfranchised: A voter's color is listed next to his or her name in most Southern states. (Ironically, this racial ID is required by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a King legacy.)

How did mass expulsion of legal voters occur? At the heart of the ethnic purge of voting rights was the creation of a central voter file for Florida placed in the hands of an elected, and therefore partisan, official. Computerization and a 1998 "reform" law meant to prevent voter fraud allowed for a politically and racially biased purge of thousands of registered voters on the flimsiest of grounds.

Voters whose name, birth date and gender loosely matched that of a felon anywhere in America were targeted for removal. And so one Thomas Butler (of several in Florida) was tagged because a "Thomas Butler Cooper Jr." of Ohio was convicted of a crime. The legacy of slavery -- commonality of black names -- aided the racial bias of the "scrub list."

Astonishingly, Congress adopted the absurdly named "Help America Vote Act," which requires every state to replicate Florida's system of centralized, computerized voter files before the 2004 election. The controls on the 50 secretaries of state are few -- and the temptation to purge voters of the opposition party enormous.

Our county has bought some of the touch-screen voting computers and tried them out in the early voting. When I used one, it was not programmed to bring up the Texas Constitutional Amendments after I voted for individuals, so I failed to vote on the amendments. I learned of the problem the next day. There is NO RECORD in hard copy showing my vote - ANYWHERE. The computer could easily be programmed to present - or not present - certain issues depending on how you already filled out the earlier part of the ballot. In this case, anyone who voted straight party Democrat was not presented the Constitutional Amendments to vote on, and the machine announced you were finished with the ballot.

The manner in which votes are counted will also depend on how the machine is programmed, and how it transmits the counts through the network. A good programmer could change the count of any vote, have the sub-routine that did it erase itself on a time basis, and no one would ever know or even know how it was done.

Paranoid? Just think Katherine Harris. She's already done it once.
posted by Richard at 1:05 AM

 

Rightwing "Journalism" = unmitigated Sleaze.

Chris Mathews, Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge have done it again, assisted by Kathleen Willey - she of the sexual accustations against on Bill Clinton.

From Salon, with thanks to Eschaton Saturday, May 10, 2003

"This disgraceful affair began last Tuesday night, when Kathleen Willey kicked off her latest round of media appearances as a featured guest on "Hardball." She is, of course, the Virginia socialite whose 1997 accusations of sexual assault in the Oval Office helped trigger the controversy that nearly consumed the Clinton presidency. Last January, she testified as a witness in the Paula Jones case and later told her much-disputed story on "60 Minutes."

Sometime last year, Willey told investigators for independent counsel Kenneth Starr that she had been threatened by an unidentified man two days before she testified in the Jones case. The man, sometimes known as "the jogger," approached her early in the morning outside her home, she says. She claims that he knew that her cat had disappeared and that her car tires had been riddled with nails. "You just aren't getting the message, are you?" the mystery man supposedly told her.

This tale of terror has been cited countless times since by Matthews, William Safire, the New York Post, the Washington Times, political consultant Dick Morris and others as damning evidence of a "secret police" apparatus employed by the White House to silence its critics. Those said to be involved in this conspiracy, aside from the president, have included Hillary Rodham Clinton; Clinton aides Sidney Blumenthal and Betsey Wright; private investigators Terry Lenzner and Jack Palladino; and the Pentagon press office. But until now, no specific date or place has been attached to the nefarious activities of the "secret police." All of the charges boiled down to rumor and innuendo based on anonymous sources who had heard something secondhand.

Flash forward to last week, when Willey publicly recounted the details of the "jogger" incident on "Hardball." The blustering Matthews, whose capacity to imagine Clintonian treachery knows no limits, strenuously induced his reluctant guest to admit that she had learned the jogger's identity.

"Who was that guy?" demanded Matthews. "I'm gonna ask you again, because I think you know who it was."

"I do know," said Willey. "I think I know."

"Is it someone in the president's family, friends?" Matthews pressed. "Is it somebody related to [Deputy Secretary of State] Strobe Talbott? Is it a Shearer?"

Willey resisted. "I can't say ... I've been asked not to dis--"

"You've been asked not to admit that?" interrupted the eager host.

"Yes, by the Office of Independent Counsel, because they are investigating this," she said.

Minutes later, Matthews said, "Let's go back to the jogger, one of the most colorful and frightening aspects of this story." Willey admitted that she had been showed a picture by Jackie Judd of ABC News, and had identified it "positively."

Matthews said, "So it's Cody Shearer."

"I can't tell you," Willey replied.

Before 11 p.m. EDT, Drudge had posted the Matthews "scoop" in his usual overheated style: "Willey was shown a picture of Cody Shearer -- the brother-in-law of Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and long-time friend of President Bill Clinton!"

The following afternoon, Limbaugh weighed in with his own review of Willey's "Hardball" debut: "She says Ken Starr asked her not to reveal the identity of the man who she says threatened her two days before her testimony in the Paula Jones case. Here's who it is. It's Cody Shearer, S-H-E-A-R-E-R ..." (Presumably the radio reactionary spelled out the name so that anyone wanting to call or visit Shearer would be able to find him more easily.)

Wondering whether any of this was true, I did what Matthews should have done and called Shearer. He told me that on the date cited by Willey, Jan. 8, 1998, he was far from her house in the leafy suburbs of Richmond, Va. He can prove that he stayed at the Hyatt Regency hotel in San Francisco on the night of Jan. 7 and that at 2:53 p.m. on Jan. 8, he withdrew money from a cash machine at the Embarcadero Center in that same city. In fact, he can show that he flew to Los Angeles before Christmas 1997 and didn't return until Jan. 11, 1998, the day Willey testified in the Jones case. By chance, he sat next to former Secretary of State Warren Christopher on the United Airlines flight back east.

Those are inconvenient facts for Chris Matthews, not to mention the credibility of Kathleen Willey, Ken Starr and all the pundits, pols and reporters who have promoted hysteria about the Clinton "secret police."

To anyone keeping track of leaks from the Office of Independent Counsel, it is interesting to note that ABC's Judd and her producer, Chris Vlasto, would know the identity of someone Starr is investigating. Apparently the ABC team has unusual access to Starr's ongoing investigations and to his witness Willey, who has been granted broad immunity despite her admission that she lied about certain matters to the OIC.

For a prosecutor to leak the name of someone being investigated is disgusting, even more so when that person is innocent. But Judd didn't broadcast Shearer's name. That distinction belongs to Chris Matthews, who didn't return several phone calls seeking his comment about this matter. Matthews opened his program on Monday with a quick, half-hearted apology to Shearer, whose denials he said he now finds "credible." He also said he now realizes he shouldn't have mentioned Shearer's name without having "vetted" Willey's allegation.

No one expects Limbaugh or Drudge to behave any differently than they did, although in all decency they should. (Limbaugh's slurs emanate from WABC radio in New York, evidently immune from any standards that govern ABC News.) But Matthews writes a column for the San Francisco Examiner and carries the title of "Washington bureau chief." In other words, he fancies himself a journalist. The first thing journalists learn to do is pick up the telephone. He should try it the next time he thinks he has a big story.salon.com | May 18, 1999"

Rightwing Journalism, such as Fox 'News' isn't journalism. It is rightwing propaganda and lies. But where is the REST of Journalism? don't hey dare question bad alleged 'journalism'?
posted by Richard at 4:38 PM

 

How Bad was US News of the Iraq War?

It was so bad that many people were tuning into the BBC World News to find out what wasn't being reported here. The Madison Capital Times offers this story (not otherwise printed in the US) about the sharp rise in listeners to the BBC World News.

I'm old enough to remember stories about people in Communist countries sitting around battered radios at night listening to Radio Free Europe to find out what wasn't being printed in Pravda. Now it has happened here in the US - under a conservative Republican administration.

What's next? Will Ashcroft start jamming the radio waves and threatening to arrest anyone listening to illegal broadcasts?

That was supposed to be pushing the image to its extreme for humor purposes - but in the back of your mind, are you really wondering if that's impossible?
posted by Richard at 12:27 AM

 

Why Eliminating Tax on Dividends is Anti-Growth.

Harry Schwartz in The Hill explains why this is an especially bad time to eliminate the tax on dividends. It means that stocks which pay large dividends will go up and stocks which pay small or no dividends will go down.

Stocks that pay large dividends are older, large, mature companies. They pay larger dividends because they do not need additional funds to grow, or if they do, they can borrow the money. When the economy gets bad, they reduce costs by laying off employees.

Stocks which do not pay dividends or pay low dividends are new companies and companies which are retaining profits to finance growth. Their stock will drop, making it more difficult to obtain equity money to finance growth. These are also the companies that are adding jobs and tend to deal with a bad economy by creating new business prospects.

In other words, eliminating taxes on dividends would protect large, already successful companies while making start-ups and growing companies more difficult. That does NOT sound like a good idea to me.
posted by Richard at 8:43 PM

 

Bush Military Service(?)

He acts like this Military Victory is HIS and that he is one of them!

This is from the History News Network blogs:
"GENE LYONS: "WELCOME TO THE VIRTUAL U.S.A." 05-07-03

Here's this week's Gene Lyons column!


Welcome to the Virtual U.S.A.
George W. Bush's swaggering, cinematic landing aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln last week dramatized more than the end of the Iraq war and the beginning of Bush's 2004 campaign. It also represented the triumph of symbol over substance in American politics. The president's handlers appear to believe that a public giddy with TV images of U.S. military omnipotence can no longer distinguish between reality and make-believe.

Evidently, Bush will run as a one-man reunion of the Village People, the dreadful disco act. Having previously costumed himself as a Businessman (his ventures mostly failed), and Owner of the Texas Rangers (he had a one percent share), he's added Cowboy and Fighter Pilot to his repertoire. In reality, his Texas ranch was acquired in 1999; Bush's time in the saddle is limited to golf carts.

The Fighter Jock pose has more substance, as Bush did learn to fly F-102s during his foreshortened service in the Texas Air National Guard's renowned "Champagne Brigade" 30 years ago. The White House seemed to hint that the president himself would perform the landing aboard the Abraham Lincoln hundreds of miles at sea--far beyond helicopter range, Ari Fleischer assured the press.

That would have been a reckless stunt. Formally grounded for failure to take a required medical exam soon after completing his pilot's training, Bush hasn't flown a military aircraft since. As you'd think Junior's handlers wouldn't want to remind anybody, the Boston Globe pretty conclusively proved in May 2000 that Bush went AWOL for more than a year during 1972-73-arranging a transfer from the Texas to the Alabama Air National Guard, but never showing up for duty.

The commanding officer of the Alabama unit, Gen. William Turnipseed, unequivocally told the newspaper that Bush failed to report. Back in Texas, Walter Robinson wrote, "his two superior officers at Ellington Air Force Base could not perform his annual evaluation covering the year from May 1, 1972 to April 30, 1973 because, they wrote, 'Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report.'"

Having falsely assured the press that his Guard enlistment involved no preferential treatment (former Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes has since admitted making phone calls on Junior's behalf) Bush also claimed to have done light duty in Alabama, but could provide neither documentary evidence nor witnesses.

This is a dead giveaway. As somebody roughly Bush's age with no eminent connections, I could easily prove my whereabouts, job or institutional affiliations at any time since entering kindergarten. The conclusion is inescapable: Bush took a powder.

Speaking of powder, there's been considerable speculation, based on what he says and doesn't say that Junior took may have experimented with the drug known as "Peruvian marching powder" or cocaine. His failure to submit to a physical exam coincided with the Pentagon's decision to begin drug testing. He's denied using illegal drugs only since 1974, by which time he'd returned to Houston and been granted an honorable discharge.

Does it matter thirty years later? Not much, unless you consider the lying important. Many people did things 30 years ago they wouldn't want in the newspapers. Even so, national media's eagerness to protect Junior from his youthful folly approaches the pathological. Amply documented, the Globe article was all but ignored during the 2000 campaign by a Washington press clique obsessed with made-up tales about Al Gore "inventing the internet" and such.

So does it matter that the Abraham Lincoln was only 39 miles out to sea, and that the Navy admits turning the ship so as to afford President Fighter Jock a backdrop of open ocean instead of the San Diego skyline for his speech? Or, as Paul Krugman points out in the New York Times, that Bush's posturing in military garb breaks an American tradition dating back to the Revolutionary War? Presidents George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower never did. Real soldiers, they emphasized their civilian status as commander-in-chief.

Not so ex-Lt. Junior of the Champagne Brigade. Meanwhile, cable TV pundits swooned. Bob Somerby's dailyhowler.com lampoons the way Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball" gushed over Bush's rugged masculinity. Casting the presidency in purely cinematic terms, Matthews doubted that a Democratic "casting director" could match Junior: "Nobody looks right in the role Bush has set for the presidency--commander-in-chief, medium height, medium build, looks good in a jet pilot's costume--or uniform, rather--has a certain swagger, not too literary, certainly not too verbal, but a guy who speaks plainly and wins wars."

The enraptured Matthews specifically derided Sen. John Kerry, who won the Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts in Vietnam, and George McGovern, whose heroic exploits as a WWII bomber pilot are documented in Stephen Ambrose's book "Wild Blue Yonder."

Reality sucks. Welcome to the Virtual U.S.A. "
posted by Richard at 4:57 PM

 

More Failure of the Media

Josh Marshal has an excellent short essay today. First he discusses the FBI informant, Republican fundraiser and Chinese agent Katrina Leung. He points out that "Now it seems clear that higher-ups at the FBI suspected or knew Leung was a double agent as early as 1991. " Through her sexual relationship with here FBI handler, James J. smith, she "managed to compromise not only the campaign finance investigation but perhaps also a great deal of US espionage against China over the last two decades."

ABC News, Fox, AP, the Los Angeles Times, and CNN have all run stories on the spy scandal, without mentioning the fact that Leung has been a major Republican activist and fund-raiser. "Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, said in a letter delivered Wednesday to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the panel's ranking Democrat, and Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, that the committee was "too busy" to hold hearings in the spy case. Washington Times "

Marshall goes on to point out "Now, one could go on about this and note that all the while that the FBI was investigating the Democrats, and all the while the Republicans were hyperventilating and milking the whole thing for political gain, one of the lead agents in the investigation was carrying on with a Republican fundraiser who also happened to be a PRC double-agent, probably helping to compromise and misdirect the investigation in various ways.

Here, though, is the deeper problem. What does it say about the Republican party that one of their activists was a spy? Not much. At least, not necessarily. It's embarrassing that one of their fund-raisers, someone who gave money to GOP politicians and no doubt rubbed shoulders with many of them, was a spy. But does it mean the Republicans are traitors? That they're compromised in some way? That they're soft on China?

The real issue, as nearly as I can see it, is the terrible, persistent failure at the FBI to deal with counter-intelligence. But, then, this isn't exactly the standard the Republicans followed, is it? "

Then he goes on to discuss the dilemma faced by democrats regarding how to handle this issue publicly. Respond as the Republicans did by creating a major scandal out of not much in terms of evidence (but a lot more here than the Republicans had) or rise above it, approach it as a real problem that needs resolving and go on, in effect disarming themselves in the face of normal Republican demagoguery?

As usual, he presents an excellent essay. Go read it.

Oh, and if you wonder why the media went wild with the much weaker evidence that the Democrats were being used by the Red Chinese, yet ignore this real connection to the Republican Party, go read David Brock's book "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-conservative". It sets out the massive right-wing set of institutions designed to publicize right-wing causes and attack their opponents in an organized (and well-financed) manner.

posted by Richard at 12:40 PM

 

The Republican-Red China Spy Connection

Josh Marshall points out that the spy connection to Red China runs through the Republican Party's fund raising apparatus.

Campaign role by spy suspect investigated "Leung, 49, is a Los Angeles businesswoman and Republican activist who became an FBI informant code-named "Parlor Maid" in 1982 and was paid $1.7 million for her information on China. At the same time, prosecutors allege, she was carrying on affairs with Smith and with a second FBI agent while feeding information obtained from Smith to Chinese intelligence agents.
"

Joe Lieberman has asked that the Senate have hearings on the possibility that Communist Chinese money was funneled to the Republican Party, but Senator Orin Hatch, Chair of the Committee, rejected that saying that the committee already had too much to do. Lieberman Seeks Donations Probe Why? "The FBI apparently believes that Ms. Leung acted as a spy for the Chinese government, including during the period PRC officials apparently were trying to influence American political campaigns," Lieberman wrote. "The prospect of a foreign government illegally influencing our political campaigns is a truly troubling one, and any evidence that may have occurred must be vigilantly investigated and pursued," he said.

FBI officials have said investigators would revisit the earlier fundraising probe to see if Leung's ties to the bureau and the Chinese government may have impeded the search for wrongdoing. But FBI and Justice Department officials have not described any plan to pursue a full-fledged investigation of Leung's political activities, including her donations to Republicans "

Personally, I find the efforts to manipulate the US political process by a foreign government as a covert action to be extremely disturbing. Even more, I find the repeated failures of the FBI to be dangerous to the US. I objected to the effort by the Republicans to use the earlier investigation of campaign contributions from Red China as a tactical ploy against the Democrats, especially since they investigated ONLY contributions to the Democrats. This strongly suggests that to limit the investigation only to contributions to Democrats simply failed to objectively determine what was happening. As Josh Marshall said "For all the politics, the real issue here is the FBI and its series of disasters in the field of counter-intelligence. I suspect Louis Freeh's much blackened reputation will get several shades darker over this (security lapses he ascribed with no evidence to the Clinton White House now seem to have come from his own shop). But the problem is clearly institutional and not at all limited to his inglorious tenure. Ames, Hanssen, now this. "

By the way, why is the White House fighting to prevent any significant public investigation of the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies prior to 9/11? Clearly the FBI sufferers from a systematic problem. Ames, Hanssen, now this. Do you think that any of the other Intelligence agencies might also have similar problems? I do. So why does this administration want to cover them up? Do they think they go back to Reagan-Bush I?

Even if they did, they could spin that. The problems in the FBI go back to J. Edgar Hoover, who was appointed by a Republican in 1922. Or are the Republicans afraid of another destructive investigation like that of Senator Church in the 70's? The problems in the CIA are rather likely to go back to the Casey period under Reagan.

I'd like to see a public investigation of the Intelligence agencies that I can trust. At least one I can trust as much as the Warren commission. With this administration being so secretive, I don't expect it.

Since it IS so secretive, though, I have to keep asking - what are they trying to hide? Did THEY get Chinese money for their campaign?
posted by Richard at 2:48 PM

 

Don't Like the Intelligence? Set up your own Agency!

Rumsfield and Wolfowitz knew what they wanted to do - Invade Iraq and set up a secular state there. But the Intelligence from CIA, DIA and State didn't show a connection of Iraq to terrorism or to 9/11. So Wolfowitz set up an Intelligence analysis agency of their own in the Pentagon that gave them the reports they needed to convince the public and Congress that Iraq had the WMD and was likely to use them on us. Seymour Hersh describes the process.

Former Senator Bob Kerrey, a Democrat who served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been a strong supporter of the President’s decision to overthrow Saddam. “I do think building a democratic secular state in Iraq justifies everything we’ve done,” Kerrey, who is now president of New School University, in New York, told me. “But they’ve taken the intelligence on weapons and expanded it beyond what was justified.” Speaking of the hawks, he said, “It appeared that they understood that to get the American people on their side they needed to come up with something more to say than ‘We’ve liberated Iraq and got rid of a tyrant.’ So they had to find some ties to weapons of mass destruction and were willing to allow a majority of Americans to incorrectly conclude that the invasion of Iraq had something to do with the World Trade Center. Overemphasizing the national-security threat made it more difficult to get the rest of the world on our side. It was the weakest and most misleading argument we could use.” Kerrey added, “It appears that they have the intelligence. The problem is, they didn’t like the conclusions.”
posted by Richard at 7:26 AM

 

The Liquidity Trap or Why Lower Interest Rates Won't Cure the Recession

I was going to post a blog referring to Krugman's article on the liquidity trap (remember the IS-LM curve from macoreconomics?), discussed it with Syniel, and then he got to it before I did. So go read his. Inflation or Liquidity Trap?

Also, this CAN DEFLATION BE PREVENTED? This relates deflation to the Liquidity Trap.

The short description is that you can increase the money supply by lowering the interest rate. This is a quick way of 'fine tuning' the economy when it starts into recession. However, when the interest rate gets very close to zero, then when people get more money they have no incentive to invest it because the return is not significantly different from simply holding it as cash, and the default risk of investment in bonds, whatever, is still there.

The Bush administration is listening to politicians, not Economists, about solutions to the economic situation. The last of the original economic team bush brought in two years ago just resigned (Daniels at the Office of Management and Budget.) Apparently they can't find people who will tell them what they want to hear - unlike the analysts at the CIA, NSA, etc.
posted by Richard at 11:22 PM

 

More about Bush as Job Destroyer

This is an excellent article showing the average jobs created or destroyed per month in the terms of each President since Truman. Every other President except Bush is in the 'jobs created' column, though I notice that Republican Presidents almost always create fewer jobs than do Democratic Presidents.
Top Gun at Job Destruction
posted by Richard at 11:00 PM

 

Enron Economics for Government

Warren Buffet does not approve of the tax cuts, nor does he approve of the excessive paychecks received by CEOs - even when they fail at their jobs.
Capitalism & Conscience
posted by Richard at 10:49 PM

 

Senator Bob Graham of Florida

Senator Graham has recently announced for the Democratic nomination for President. I'll admit that I don't have a clue who he is or what to think about him. So here is an article describing his life and political career in the Washington Post
posted by Richard at 4:18 AM

 

Tax Cut and Deficit Lies

The Washington Post offers an excellent editorial on the trickery that is going into the Tax Cut proposals currently being considered by the Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Have I mentioned that the Administration is lying to us? So are the House Republicans. This tax cut proposal sunsets in three years so that it will not appear to go over the spending ceiling of $550 billion through 2013.

Do you really believe that they will pass a tax cut for three years and then let it jump back up to current levels?? I don't. But the PR flacks will say "This is not a budget-buster. It stays within the limits we have set for the period until 2013.
posted by Richard at 10:02 PM

 

The Bush Lies

Read this NYT Editorial

" May 6, 2003
Missing in Action: Truth
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


When I raised the Mystery of the Missing W.M.D. recently, hawks fired barrages of reproachful e-mail at me. The gist was: "You *&#*! Who cares if we never find weapons of mass destruction, because we've liberated the Iraqi people from a murderous tyrant."

But it does matter, enormously, for American credibility. After all, as Ari Fleischer said on April 10 about W.M.D.: "That is what this war was about."

I rejoice in the newfound freedoms in Iraq. But there are indications that the U.S. government souped up intelligence, leaned on spooks to change their conclusions and concealed contrary information to deceive people at home and around the world.

Consider the now-disproved claims by President Bush and Colin Powell that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger so it could build nuclear weapons. As Seymour Hersh noted in The New Yorker, the claims were based on documents that had been forged so amateurishly that they should never have been taken seriously.

I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.

The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade. In addition, the Niger mining program was structured so that the uranium diversion had been impossible. The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted — except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway.

"It's disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this for a year," one insider said.

Another example is the abuse of intelligence from Hussein Kamel, a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein and head of Iraq's biological weapons program until his defection in 1995. Top British and American officials kept citing information from Mr. Kamel as evidence of a huge secret Iraqi program, even though Mr. Kamel had actually emphasized that Iraq had mostly given up its W.M.D. program in the early 1990's. Glen Rangwala, a British Iraq expert, says the transcript of Mr. Kamel's debriefing was leaked because insiders resented the way politicians were misleading the public.

Patrick Lang, a former head of Middle Eastern affairs in the Defense Intelligence Agency, says that he hears from those still in the intelligence world that when experts wrote reports that were skeptical about Iraq's W.M.D., "they were encouraged to think it over again."

"In this administration, the pressure to get product `right' is coming out of O.S.D. [the Office of the Secretary of Defense]," Mr. Lang said. He added that intelligence experts had cautioned that Iraqis would not necessarily line up to cheer U.S. troops and that the Shiite clergy could be a problem. "The guys who tried to tell them that came to understand that this advice was not welcome," he said.

"The intelligence that our officials was given regarding W.M.D. was either defective or manipulated," Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico noted. Another senator is even more blunt and, sadly, exactly right: "Intelligence was manipulated."

The C.I.A. was terribly damaged when William Casey, its director in the Reagan era, manipulated intelligence to exaggerate the Soviet threat in Central America to whip up support for Ronald Reagan's policies. Now something is again rotten in the state of Spookdom. "
posted by Richard at 9:02 PM