Harold Meyerson - A flawed American political model aids China - washingtonpost.com

Harold Meyerson - A flawed American political model aids China - washingtonpost.com: "
I don't mean to sound nostalgic for the Cold War, but we've got to stop conducting ourselves as if nobody is looking.

The Senate has shriveled into a body that routinely thwarts majority rule. The Supreme Court has ruled that big money can dominate our elections as never before. Do we think that no one outside our borders has noticed? Do Senate Republicans realize that we now have a rival superpower, China, that mocks the inability of our democracy to create the jobs that would restore our economy, which they adduce as evidence of the superiority of authoritarianism? Do Supreme Court conservatives realize that China disparages our elections as controlled by big money?

In short, don't conservatives realize that China is making hay in the developing world through a combination of throwing its wealth around and arguing that American democracy is little more than a veneer for plutocracy?

As The Post's Andrew Higgins reported on Monday, a bizarre gathering of theocratic Indonesian Islamists and secular Indonesian nationalists came together in Jakarta last week to hail China and condemn the United States. China may seem an unlikely object of affection for Islamists, well, anywhere. But U.S.-backed neoliberal economics devastated the Indonesian economy in the '90s and the American economy today. To many Indonesians, China's stunning economic successes argue for its own brand of authoritarian mercantilism.

The Cold War at least compelled us to pay attention to the things our adversaries said about us. Contesting the Soviets for the allegiance of postwar Europe and the newly post-colonial nations of Africa and Asia involved more than economic aid, intelligence operations and military might. It also required us to live up to our ideals, to be that 'city on a hill' that Ronald Reagan frequently evoked.

Enactment of the civil rights legislation of the '60s (which, ironically, Reagan opposed) immeasurably bolstered our claim that in the United States all men were created equal. Our assertion that the United States was a land of mass prosperity was surely strengthened by the three-decade boom that followed World War II, during which vastly more Americans went to and graduated from college than ever before, and median household incomes increased at the same rate as productivity. At the height of the Cold War, the whole world was watching us, and we rose to the occasion by expanding equality and prosperity.

The achievements of the postwar era were driven by domestic pressures, of course: the demands of African Americans for equality, the high rate of unionization, the ascendance of manufacturing over banking. But our foreign policy operatives took care to market our achievements and our culture -- the American model -- to a model-shopping world.

With the collapse of Soviet communism, the idea that we were in some kind of systemic competition with another nation or system died for lack of a competitor. Radical Islam may pose the threat of terrorism, but it's hardly a rival for the world's allegiance. And in the halcyon days of the 1990s, China's mix of authoritarian communism and boomtown capitalism clearly struck America's business and political elites more as an investment opportunity than a systemic challenge -- an asinine misjudgment of globally historic dimensions.

But that was then. Today, China has emerged as a global economic powerhouse and political competitor. Unlike the Soviet Union, it does not seek to remake the world in its image, but neither is it a friend of democracy. Its booming economy -- in contrast to those of the wheezing West -- may be viewed as validating state industrial policy, which can help build national prosperity, but China also sees it as an endorsement of authoritarian efficiency. Increasingly, the Chinese are leveling the kinds of attacks the Soviets used to make against the imperfections of our democracy. Li Pen, a leading figure in China's National People's Congress, was quoted in China Daily, an official newspaper, this month on the shortcomings of our political system. 'Western-style elections,' he said, 'are a game for the rich. They are affected by the resources and funding that a candidate can utilize. Those who manage to win elections are easily in the shoes of their parties or sponsors.'

Like the old Soviet criticisms of Jim Crow, Li's allegations have power because they're considerably -- though not entirely -- true. And many American conservatives behave as though eager to prove them right. The Supreme Court's January decision in Citizens United, allowing corporations to make limitless investments in election campaigns, reads as if crafted to validate Li's point. The Senate's descent into dysfunction, into a body bent on thwarting majority rule, mocks our democratic values for all the world to see.

In our intensifying contest with China, with much of the world still at stake, our first task is to demonstrate that democracy works. When we don't do so -- and John Roberts and Mitch McConnell, I'm talking to you and your fellow conservatives -- China wins"

(Via .)

Quit trying to blame China for American decline

Quit trying to blame China for American decline: "

Here's an idea for how the U.S. can finally get a handle on its increasingly fraught relationship with China. Unlike other ideas gaining momentum -- such as pressuring China to revalue its currency upward, as insistently favored by New York Sen. Charles Schumer, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and others -- it doesn't involve threatening or cajoling the nascent Asian superpower into doing anything."

(Via Salon.)

Mike McConnell, the WashPost & the dangers of sleazy corporatism

Mike McConnell, the WashPost & the dangers of sleazy corporatism: "

In a political culture drowning in hidden conflicts of interests, exploitation of political office for profit, and a rapidly eroding wall separating the public and private spheres, Mike McConnell stands out as the perfect embodiment of all those afflictions. Few people have blurred the line between public office and private profit more egregiously and shamelessly than he. McConnells behavior is the classic never-ending 'revolving door' syndrome: public officials serve private interests while in office and are then lavishly rewarded by those same interests once they leave. He went from being head of the National Security Agency under Bush 41 and Clinton directly to Booz Allen, one of the nations largest private intelligence contractors, then became Bushs Director of National Intelligence, then went back to Booz Allen, where he is now Executive Vice President.

But thats the least of what makes McConnell such a perfect symbol for the legalized corruption that dominates Washington. Tellingly, his overarching project while at Booz Allen and in public office was exactly the same: the outsourcing of Americas intelligence and surveillance functions (including domestic surveillance) to private corporations, where those activities are even more shielded than normal from all accountability and oversight and where they generate massive profit at the public expense. Prior to becoming Bushs DNI, McConnell, while at Booz Allen, was chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, the primary business association of NSA and CIA contractors devoted to expanding the privatization of government intelligence functions.

Then, as Bushs DNI, McConnell dramatically expanded the extent to which intelligence functions were outsourced to the same private industry that he long represented, and worse, became the leading spokesman for demanding full immunity for lawbreaking telecoms for their participation in Bushs illegal NSA programs -- in other words, he exploited 'national security' claims and his position as DNI to win the dismissal of lawsuits against the very lawbreaking industry he represented as INSA Chairman, including, almost certainly, Booz Allen itself. Having exploited his position as DNI head to lavishly reward and protect the intelligence industry, he then returns to its loving arms to receive from them lavish personal rewards of his own.

Its vital to understand how this really works: it isnt that people like Mike McConnell move from public office to the private sector and back again. That implies more separation than really exists. At this point, its more accurate to view the U.S. Government and these huge industry interests as one gigantic, amalgamated inseparable entity -- with a public division and a private one. When someone like McConnell goes from a top private sector position to a top government post in the same field, its more like an intra-corporate re-assignment than it is changing employers. When McConnell serves as DNI, hes simply in one division of this entity and when hes at Booz Allen, hes in another, but its all serving the same entity (its exactly how insurance giant Wellpoint dispatched one of its Vice Presidents to Max Baucus office so that she could write the health care plan that the Congress eventually enacted).

In every way that matters, the separation between government and corporations is nonexistent, especially (though not only) when it comes to the National Security and Surveillance State. Indeed, so extreme is this overlap that even McConnell, when he was nominated to be Bushs DNI, told The New York Times that his ten years of working 'outside the government,' for Booz Allen, would not impede his ability to run the nations intelligence functions. Thats because his Booz Allen work was indistinguishable from working for the Government, and therefore -- as he put it -- being at Booz Allen 'has allowed me to stay focused on national security and intelligence communities as a strategist and as a consultant. Therefore, in many respects, I never left.'

As the NSA scandal revealed, private telecom giants and other corporations now occupy the central role in carrying out the governments domestic surveillance and intelligence activities -- almost always in the dark, beyond the reach of oversight or the law. As Tim Shorrock explained in his definitive 2007 Salon piece on the relationship between McConnell, Booz Allen, and the intelligence community, where (to no avail) he urged Senate Democrats to examine these relationships before confirming McConnell as Bush's DNI:

[Booz Allen's] website states that the Booz Allen team 'employs more than 10,000 TS/SCI cleared personnel.' TS/SCI stands for top secret-sensitive compartmentalized intelligence, the highest possible security ratings. This would make Booz Allen one of the largest employers of cleared personnel in the United States.

Among those on Booz Allen's payroll are former CIA Director and neoconservative extremist James Woolsey, George Tenets former Chief of Staff Joan Dempsey, and Keith Hall, the former director of the National Reconnaissance Office, the super-secret organization that oversees the nations spy satellites. As Shorrock wrote: 'Under McConnells watch, Booz Allen has been deeply involved in some of the most controversial counterterrorism programs the Bush administration has run, including the infamous Total Information Awareness data-mining scheme' and 'is almost certainly participating in the agencys warrantless surveillance of the telephone calls and e-mails of American citizens.' For more details on the sprawling and overlapping relationships between McConnell, Booz Allen, the INSA, the Government and the private intelligence community, see Shorrocks interview with Democracy Now and his 2008 interview with me.

Aside from the general dangers of vesting government power in private corporations -- this type of corporatism (control of government by corporations) was the hallmark of many of the worst tyrannies of the last century -- all of this is big business beyond what can be described. The attacks of 9/11 exploded the already-huge and secret intelligence budget. Shorrock estimates that 'about 50 percent of this spending goes directly to private companies' and 'spending on intelligence since 2002 is much higher than the total of $33 billion the Bush administration paid to Bechtel, Halliburton and other large corporations for reconstruction projects in Iraq.'

* * * * *

All of that is crucial background for understanding just how pernicious and deceitful is the Op-Ed published this weekend by The Washington Post and authored by McConnell. The overarching theme is all-too-familiar: we face a grave threat from Terrorists and other Very Bad People ('cyber wars'), and our only hope for protection is to vest the Government with massive new powers. Specifically, McConnell advocates a so-called 'reeingeer[ing] of the Internet' to allow the Government and private corporations far greater capability to track what is being done over the Internet and who is doing it:

The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing. It's that simple. . . . If an enemy disrupted our financial and accounting transactions, our equities and bond markets or our retail commerce -- or created confusion about the legitimacy of those transactions -- chaos would result. Our power grids, air and ground transportation, telecommunications, and water-filtration systems are in jeopardy as well.

Scary! And what do we need to submit to in order to avoid these calamaties? This:

The United States must also translate our intent into capabilities. We need to develop an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options -- and we must be able to do this in milliseconds. More specifically, we need to reengineer the Internet to make attribution, geolocation, intelligence analysis and impact assessment -- who did it, from where, why and what was the result -- more manageable.

In one sense, this is just typical fear-mongering of the type the National Security State has used for decades to beat frightened Americans into virtually full-scale submission: you are in grave danger and you can be safe only by vesting in us far greater power, which well operate in secret: here, allowing us to 'reengineer' the Internet so we can control it.

Think about how dangerous that power is in relationship to the war I wrote about this weekend being waged on WikiLeaks, which allows the uploading of leaked, secret documents that expose the corruption of the worlds most powerful interests. This 'reengineering of the Internet' proposed by McConnell would almost certainly enable the easy tracing of anyone who participates. It would, by design, destroy the ability of anyone to participate or communicate in anyway on the Internet under the shield of anonymity. But theres something even worse going on here. Wireds Ryan Singel -- noting that 'the biggest threat to the open internet is . . . Michael McConnell' -- documents the dangers from this 'cyber-war' monitioring policy and how much momentum there now is in the Executive and Legislative branches for legislation to implement it (as a result of initiatives that began during the Bush era, under McConnell, and which continue unabated).

Worse still, McConnell doesnt merely want to empower the Government to control the Internet this way; he wants to empower private corporations to do so -- the same corporations which pay him and whose interests he has long served. He notes that this 'reengineering' is already possible because 'the technologies are already available from public and private sources,' and explicitly calls for a merger of the NSA with private industry to create a sprawling, omnipotent network for monitoring the Internet:

To this end, we must hammer out a consensus on how to best harness the capabilities of the National Security Agency, which I had the privilege to lead from 1992 to 1996. The NSA is the only agency in the United States with the legal authority, oversight and budget dedicated to breaking the codes and understanding the capabilities and intentions of potential enemies. The challenge is to shape an effective partnership with the private sector so information can move quickly back and forth from public to private -- and classified to unclassified -- to protect the nation's critical infrastructure.

We must give key private-sector leaders (from the transportation, utility and financial arenas) access to information on emerging threats so they can take countermeasures. For this to work, the private sector needs to be able to share network information -- on a controlled basis -- without inviting lawsuits from shareholders and others. . . .

[T]the reality is that while the lion's share of cybersecurity expertise lies in the federal government, more than 90 percent of the physical infrastructure of the Web is owned by private industry. Neither side on its own can mount the cyber-defense we need; some collaboration is inevitable. Recent reports of a possible partnership between Google and the government point to the kind of joint efforts -- and shared challenges -- that we are likely to see in the future.

No doubt, such arrangements will muddy the waters between the traditional roles of the government and the private sector. We must define the parameters of such interactions, but we should not dismiss them. Cyberspace knows no borders, and our defensive efforts must be similarly seamless.

In other words, not only the Government, but the private intelligence corporations which McConnell represents (and which are subjected to no oversight), will have access to virtually unfettered amounts of information and control over the Internet, and there should be 'no borders' between them. And beyond the dangerous power that will vest in the public-private Surveillance State, it will also generate enormous profits for Booz Allen, the clients it serves and presumably for McConnell himself -- though The Washington Post does not bother to disclose any of that to its readers. The Post basically allowed McConnell to publish in its Op-Ed pages a blatant advertisement for the private intelligence industry while masquerading as a National Security official concerned with Keeping America Safe.

Its not an exaggeration to say that the 'cyber-war' policies for which McConnell is shilling is the top priority of the industry he serves. Right this very minute, the front page of the intelligence industrys INSA website (previously chaired by McConnell) trumpets the exact public-private merger for 'cyber-war' policies which McConnell uses the Post to advocate:

The Report just published by that that industry group (.pdf) is entitled 'Addressing Cyber Security Through Public-Private Partnership.' The industrys Report sounds like a virtually exact replica of what McConnell just published in the Post: America is under grave threat and can Stay Safe only by transferring huge amounts of public funds to these private corporations in order to restructure the Internet to allow better detection and monitoring. And look at the truly Orwellian and unintentionally revealing logo under which the Report is written: showing a complete linkage of Government institutions (such as Congress and regulatory agencies), the Surveillance State, private intelligence corporations, and the Internet (click on image to enlarge):

Readers of The Washington Post, exposed to McConnells Op-Ed, would know none of this. They would think that they were reading the earnest National Security recommendations of a former top military and government official, and would have no idea about the massive profit motives driving him. Although the Op-Ed, at the end, identifies McConnell as 'executive vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, which consults on cybersecurity for the private and public sector' (as well as a former NSA head, DNI, and retired Admiral), theres no hint that Booz Allen, its multiple clients, and the industry it represents (along with McConnell himself) would stand to benefit greatly from the very policies he advocates in The Post. Indeed, just like the INSA, the Booz Allen website, at the very top, this very minute promotes the very policies McConnell advocates:

So here we have a perfect merger of (a) exploiting public office for personal profit, (b) endless increases in the Surveillance State achieved through rank fear-mongering, (c) the rapid elimination of any line between the public and private sectors, and (d) individuals deceitfully posing as 'objective commentators' who are, in fact, manipulating our political debates on behalf of undisclosed interests.

And, as usual, it is our nation's largest media outlets -- in this case The Washington Post -- which provide the venue for these policies to be advocated and glorified, all the while not only failing to expose -- but actively obscuring from its readers -- the bulging conflicts of interests that drive them. While 'news' outlets distract Americans with the petty partisan dramas of the day, these factions -- whose power is totally impervious to changes in party control -- continue to expand their stranglehold on how the Government functions in ways that fundamentally alter our core privacy and liberties, and radically expand the role private corporations and government power play in our lives."

(Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.)

Les Leopold: Slaughterhouse 10: The Gutting of State and Local Government

Les Leopold: Slaughterhouse '10: The Gutting of State and Local Government: "

The Jeffersonian anti-federalists feared that a strong national government would lead our fledgling nation back towards monarchy. Instead they wanted government closer to the people where it would better serve their interests rather than interests of the moneyed merchants and traders.

That not good enough for Tea Party and other conservative activists today: They're against all government, at all levels. They don't want government to provide much of anything except maybe a vast military industrial complex. But public schools, environmental protection, social services for low and moderate income people? Fugetaboutit!

The Wall Street-led crash has created the perfect climate for this crusade to eviscerate the public sector, especially at the state and local level. It's ugly and getting uglier.

With 29 million American unemployed or forced into part-time jobs, tax receipts have plummeted more steeply than any time since the Great Depression. State and local governments are slashing their services--at the very moment when people most desperately need them. This is the very definition of a fiscal crisis.

In a saner world it would be obvious to everyone that state and local governments are not to blame for this mess. They didn't cause the Great Recession--Wall Street did. And if you can't see that, then you're enveloped in an ideological cloud so thick that no facts can penetrate. Even Alan Greenspan, the life-long anti-government libertarian, has confessed that under his watch as Fed chair, Wall Street ran wild, touching off a global economic calamity. So let's not argue about this any more.

State and local governments are far from perfect, of course. More than a few got suckered into Wall Street's financial engineering schemes. Some foolishly invested their pension funds in toxic assets. Some allowed their debt to pile up, even while balancing their budgets. Many states, if not most, have been letting their super-wealthy residents pay too little at tax time. Even before the Great Recession, middle and lower income residents shouldered a heavier tax burden than the super-rich (who, of course, deduct their state and local taxes from their federal taxes -- assuming they pay any taxes at all).

These problems can be addressed without destroying state and local governments. But now that a genuine budgetary crisis has hit 42 out of 50 states, the knives are out. It's not just about fixing problems. It's about revenge.

In New Jersey, where I live, we're watching Governor Chris Christie try to devour the teachers union as if it were a slice of his favorite cheesecake. He's not worried that his plan to cut the state's education budget by a whopping $820 million might harm our children. No, he's loving the crisis because now he can stick it to teachers all over the state. You choose, he tells them: Do you want wage and benefit cuts, or layoffs? And sorry, parents: If your kid's after-school tutoring program closes, you know who to blame. It's those greedy teachers. (In our town the teachers union made concessions and 85 teachers still will lose their jobs.)

We'll feel the awful effects of state and local budget cuts all over the country, in virtually every area of public life. Parks will be closed and privatized. Libraries will cut hours or close altogether. And we'll all be trained like Pavlov's dogs to detest government as we wait on longer and longer lines for basic services and have to tangle with stressed out government employees whose jobs have become a living hell. (When you have a lot of time to kill, try getting your New Jersey license renewed.)

When you strip away all the loose talk about getting our fiscal house in order, Governor Christie and many other conservatives see this as a golden opportunity to crush the last bastion of trade unionism in America. Only 7.2 percent of private sector workers were in unions in 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pretty grim, from a union point of view. But in the public sector, 37.4 percent of workers are unionized -- with the teachers leading the way.

Christie's no dummy. But you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to use this financial crisis to gut public sector workers' wages and benefits. The argument is simple: Why should private sector workers who've lost most of their benefits have to pay taxes to support decent healthcare plans and pensions for those lazy public workers? Hey, those teachers even get the whole summer off!

It's certainly true that private sector workers' benefits are vanishing before their eyes. In 1991, 88 percent of Fortune 500 workers got medical coverage if they retired before Medicare kicked in. Now it's 33 percent. In 1998, 68 percent of Fortune 500 workers had pension plans. Now only 42 percent had them. Meanwhile, public workers not only have pensions, they have good pensions: 80 percent still have 'defined benefit' retirement plans. (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago) So at a time when other workers are watching their 401(k) retirements tank (assuming they have any at all), public workers are still slated to get a fixed monthly pension check. How dare they! Better that we all should have next to nothing than have those pampered teachers get more than we do!

It's a pathetic argument, but it works.

You hate government? You hate unions? Fine. But do you hate yourself as well? As this race to the bottom accelerates, the budget-cutting mania will act as a gigantic anti-stimulus program, sucking jobs out of the public and private sectors. It's estimated that in 2010 and 2011, the states' budget shortfalls will total $375 billion. That will just about wash out the positive job impact of the federal stimulus program.

Job loss leads to reduced tax revenues, which leads to more job loss. No wonder most economists predict we'll suffer through years and years of high unemployment. (And if you think that the private sector is going to pick up the slack as workers' purchasing power goes down, please pass me whatever you're imbibing.)

If we could just get over our blinding hatred of unions and public sector workers, we might see that we do in fact have the money we need to rebuild our ramshackle infrastructure, enhance public education and create a new green economy. It's right there--in the hands of the few. Since 1979 the wealth of the top 1/100th of one percent of all earners increased by 384 percent, while the median earner gained only 12 percent in real wages! (New York Times, ) And yet the effective federal income tax rate for the 400 top taxpayers with the very highest incomes has declined by nearly half over the past two decades--even as their pre-tax incomes have grown five times larger, according to new IRS data. The 400 wealthiest Americans alone have more than $1.3 trillion (not billion) in wealth - just 400 people!

A surcharge on these super-rich individuals could help fund our collapsing public sector. Plus, as a matter of simple justice we should have our Wall Street barons pay reparations for the damage they have done and still are doing. After all, they've just walked off with $150 billion in bonuses derived directly from our bailout money.

The moment is right for the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress to make a very simple case: Wall Street crashed our economy and knocked a giant hole in every state budget. Let's tax Wall Street's gambling and bonuses to make the states whole. Under Nixon, it was called revenue sharing. Let's do it again, and avoid a grim future of service cuts and job loss.

Dream on, you say? Maybe. But each of us actually has a choice. We can either sit and watch as our state and local governments are turned into slaughterhouses, or we can work together to compel the financial elites to pay their fair share. Those of us who are ready to tackle our billionaire bailout society need to form a progressive populist alternative to the Tea Party, and fast.

Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.
"

(Via Huffington Blog.)

A stark truth - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

A stark truth - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com: "One does not normally see this truth stated so starkly in places like Time Magazine -- from Michael Scherer's interesting article on AIPAC's current strategy to 'storm Congress':

The third 'ask' that AIPAC supporters will make of Congress on Tuesday is to once again pass the $3 billion in U.S. aid provided annually to Israel. 'It's a very tough ask this year,' [AIPAC lobbyist Steve] Aserkoff admitted, noting the U.S. domestic budgetary and economic challenges. Among other major purchases, the Israeli government has announced plans to replace its aging fleet of F-16 fighter jets with new, American-made F-35 fighters, a major cost that Israel hopes will be substantially born for [sic] by American taxpayers.

Those would be the same 'American taxpayers' who are now being told that they have to suffer cuts in Medicare and Social Security because of budgetary constraints, who are watching as the most basic social services (the hallmark of being a developed country) are being rapidly abolished (from the 12th Grade to basic care for children, the infirm and elderly), and are burdened with a national debt so large that America's bond ratings are being degraded by the minute. Why should those same American taxpayers bear the enormous costs of Israel's military purchases (as Israel enjoys booming economic growth)? Especially if the issue is presented as cleanly and honestly as Scherer did here, and especially if Israel continues to extend its proverbial middle finger to even the most basic U.S. requests that it cease activities that harm our interests, how much longer can this absurdity be sustained?

On a related note, a new Rasmussen Poll found that only 58% of Americans now view 'Israel as an ally' -- down from 70% just nine months ago. The same poll found that 49% of Americans believe Israel should be 'required' to stop building settlements, with only 22% disagreeing. That's why the primary objective now of AIPAC and its bipartisan cast of Congressional servants is -- as Scherer put it -- 'to pressure the Obama Administration to avoid airing disagreements publically [sic].' Indeed: you can't have the American people knowing anything about the U.S./Israel relationship and the ways in which the interests of the two countries diverge.

Having these issues discussed openly and having the American citizenry be informed might shatter all sorts of vital myths, which is exactly what has happened over the last month, which has, in turn, led to this change in public opinion (that, along with the fact that the Israeli Government, by being viewed as the opponent of Obama, has incurred the wrath of large numbers of Democrats who are loyal to Obama and automatically dislike any of his critics or opponents). That's why their overriding goal is to hide all these differences behind a wall of secrecy -- 'the Administration, to the extent that it has disagreements with Israel on policy matters, should find way[s] to do so in private,' demanded Democratic Rep. Steve Israel -- because an open examination of this 'special relationship,' how it really functions, and the costs and benefits it entails, is what they want most to avoid. It's common in a democracy for government officials to openly air their differences with allies; why should this be any different?"

(Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.)

Industry interests are not in their "twilight" - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Industry interests are not in their "twilight" - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com: "The Washington Post's Ezra Klein has an amazing post in which he trumpets what he calls the 'Twilight of the Interest Groups' reflected by likely passage of the health care bill (h/t). Why are Interest Groups -- once so powerful in Washington -- now banished to their 'twilight'? Because, says Ezra, 'the Obama administration succeeded at neutralizing every single industry.' If, by 'neutralizing,' Ezra means 'bribing and accommodating them to such an extreme degree that they ended up affirmatively supporting a bill that lavishes them with massive benefits,' then he's absolutely right. He himself notes what he calls the 'remarkable level of industry consensus' in support of the bill:

Pharma supports the bill. Insurers are incoherent on it, but there's not a ferocious and united campaign to kill the proposal. The American Medical Association has endorsed the Senate bill. The hospitals have endorsed the bill. Labor has endorsed the bill. The business community is split, with larger employers holding their fire.

Indeed, PhRMA is so in favor of this bill that, over the last week, they've spent $6 million on an ad campaign aimed at undecided House Democrats to try to pressure them to vote for the bill. And while the most hackish Obama loyalists (echoing the administration) have been claiming that the health insurance industry is vehemently opposed to and working to defeat this bill, Ezra commendably acknowledges the reality that they have done little in that regard (Marcia Angell -- Professor at Harvard Medical School and the former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine -- said a few weeks ago of the health insurance industry: 'What they're fighting for is the individual mandate. And if they get that mandate [which the final bill contains], if everyone does have to buy their commercial products, then they're going to be extremely happy with it').

Now, if someone wants to argue (as Kevin Drum has) that sleazily bribing these industry interests with secret deals was a necessary evil -- a shrewd, pragmatic way to get a health care bill passed, without which it could not have happened -- that's one thing. I think that's debatable -- after all, the central promise of the Obama campaign was that it would circumvent those factions by appealing directly to the armies of citizen-supporters they had lined up -- but at least that's an honest, rational argument. Bribing these industries was ugly and sleazy but necessary.

But to pretend that this bill represents the 'Twilight of the Interest Groups,' that special interests have been 'neutralized,' that this bill is some sort of great victory over the health insurance and drug lobbies, is just hagiography and propaganda. Being able to force the Government to bribe and accommodate you is not a reflection of your powerlessness; quite the opposite. Everyone would love to be forced into a 'twilight' like that. It's one thing for the Obama administration and the DNC to issue self-serving claims like this (we've stood up to the insurance and drug companies!), but those who hold themselves out as independent commentators ought to keep their feet on the ground.

As for the related Obama defense that the way this bill was crafted fulfilled his campaign promises because he said he would include these industries 'at the table': please. It's true that Obama did say that, and that this clearly meant he intended to try to accommodate some of their concerns so that they didn't wage jihad against his bill. That's fair enough. But it's also true that he repeatedly railed against the Washington practice of crafting bills by negotiating in secret with lobbyists and industry interests, and his whole I'll-put-these-negotations-on-C-SPAN promise was specifically designed, he said, to prevent a health care bill from being negotiated based on secret deals with the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

But that's exactly how he ended up negotiating this bill -- using the exact secret processes that he railed against and which he swore he would banish. It was only because The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim uncovered the secret memo-deal the White House had entered into with PhRMA -- a deal they had publicly denied until then and until PhRMA demanded they publicly affirm it -- did we know that the administration had agreed to oppose drug re-importation and bulk price negotiations, measures Obama (and the Democrats generally) repeatedly promised to enact. Indeed, when it came time to vote on drug re-importation, the administration concocted false 'safety concerns' about re-importation in order to whip against Byron Dorgan's re-importation amendment, rather than admit that they really opposed it because they secretly promised they would to PhRMA, which hates drug re-importation because it lowers prices. And it was only two days ago that we finally had confirmed what (at least to me) was obvious all along: namely, the White House had agreed in secret with health care industry representatives that there would be no public option in a final bill, even as the President publicly feigned support for it and pretended to be fighting for it.

In other words, this bill was negotiated using the standard, secret, sleazy Beltway lobbyist/industry practices that candidate Obama frequently condemned and vowed to defeat. And these industries extracted such huge benefits as a result of these secret deals -- a bill shaped to their liking and profit objectives -- that they are essentially in favor of it.

Again, none of this is proof that the health care bill is a bad idea -- it's possible that a bill which pleases these industries also produces, on balance, more good than harm (by expanding coverage and restricting some industry abuses). But being in favor of the bill is not a justification for making misleading claims to try to glorify what it achieves or, worse, claiming that it represents a change in the way Washington works and a fulfillment of Obama's campaign pledges. The way this bill has been shaped is the ultimate expression -- and bolstering -- of how Washington has long worked. One can find reasonable excuses for why it had to be done that way, but one cannot reasonably deny that it was. And one can truthfully say many things about the political power of industry interests in Washington after this is all done; that they were 'neutralized' and are in their 'twilight' is most assuredly not among them.

UPDATE: Matt Yglesias also says Ezra Klein's claims about interest groups are 'wrong' and that the reality is the 'reverse' of what Klein wrote: 'interest groups were able to get their way on most key points without needing to seriously attempt to deliver votes in exchange. . . . the interest groups were able to get 85 percent of what they wanted in exchange for absolutely nothing.' Does that sound like their having been 'neutralized' and sent to their 'twilight'? This highlights a primary point I'm making here: Yglesias is as enthusiastic a supporter of this bill as one can find, yet, at least in this regard, is still able to be realistic about what it actually is and is not."

(Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.)

Courting Trouble With China

Courting Trouble With China: "Washington's campaign to get Beijing to revalue its currency risks a trade war-and another recession. Jeffrey E. Garten talks to Chinese officials about America's dangerous game.
Even in highly partisan Washington, group think can drive policy,..."

(Via The Daily Beast - Blogs and Stories.)

Douglas Holtz-Eakin: The Real Arithmetic of Health Care Reform

Op-Ed Contributor: The Real Arithmetic of Health Care Reform: "Take away the budgetary gimmicks and games, and it’s clear that health care reform raises, not lowers, federal deficits."

(Via NYT > Opinion.)

Joe Trippi: The Election is Being Stolen in Iraq -- Dont Sit Back and Watch

Joe Trippi: The Election is Being Stolen in Iraq -- Don't Sit Back and Watch: "

This morning I posted on my blog about the fraud taking place in the Iraqi election:

After countless Iraqi citizens, American soldiers and NGO workers have put their lives on the line to build democracy in Iraq, the election is being stolen right under our eyes - and the international community is just standing by to watch.

Some of you may have read the article by Michael Hastings about my involvement in the Iraqi elections. I got involved to support an upstart party called Ahrar (Freedom), whose leader Ayad Jamal Aldin was one of the only people truly calling for an end to sectarianism, corruption, and Iranian influence in the country. He has been a strong voice against Iran's meddling in the Iraqi government, despite several attempts against his life.

And now his warnings are proving all too accurate... read more

Today - the 7 year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq - I forwarded an appeal from Ayad Jamal Aldin to Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and General David Petraeus, urging them to take action and support a full recount of votes cast in the election.

If you believe in preserving democracy around the world please join me today and call on the international community to intervene.

Read my letter to Vice President Joe Biden below:

Dear Mr. Vice President,

I am forwarding an appeal from current Iraqi MP and leader of the Ahrar (Freedom) Party, Ayad Jamal Aldin, regarding allegations of fraud in the recent election. Ahrar is among the many smaller parties in Iraq that are urging the international community to intervene and support an independently monitored recount of all the votes cast.

Over the past few months, I have made several short trips to Baghdad and northern Iraq, and I have met with a number of candidates, volunteers, and Iraqi voters. As you know much better than I do, they have risked their lives in the hope of a free and fair election. I respectfully urge you to support their efforts by demanding a full, internationally monitored recount.

It is my observation from years of work in domestic and foreign democratic efforts that the large scale allegations of fraud are true. Based on my experience as well as looking at polling data and hearing reports on the ground, I strongly believe that this election is being stolen. It is my view that all allegations should be treated as true until an honest recount is held under the strictest international standards.

Thank you for your attention on this matter.

Sincerely,

Joe Trippi

"

(Via Huffington Blog.)

Fact Sheet: The Truth About the Health Care Bill

Fact Sheet: The Truth About the Health Care Bill: "

click for a PDF of our health care reform fact sheet

I’ll be on the new CNN show with Jon King that premieres at noon ET, available for live stream here — jh

Direct link to King’s flash stream here. (Show now over–sorry.) –ed.

The Firedoglake health care team has been covering the debate in congress since it began last year. The health care bill will come up for a vote in the House on Sunday, and as Nancy Pelosi works to wrangle votes, we’ve been running a detailed whip count on where every member of Congress stands, updated throughout the day.

We’ve also taken a detailed look at the bill, and have come up with 18 often stated myths about this health care reform bill.

Real health care reform is the thing we’ve fought for from the start. It is desperately needed. But this bill falls short on many levels, and hurts many people more than it helps.

A middle class family of four making $66,370 will be forced to pay $8,628 per year for insurance. After basic necessities, this leaves them with $8,307 in discretionary income — out of which they would have to cover clothing, credit card and other debt, child care and education costs, in addition to $5,882 in annual out-of-pocket medical expenses for which families will be responsible. Many families who are already struggling to get by would be better off saving the $8,628 in insurance costs and paying their medical expenses directly, rather than being forced to by coverage they can’t afford the co-pays on.

In addition, there is already a booming movement across the country to challenge the mandate. Thirty-three states already have bills moving through their houses, and the Idaho governor was the first to sign it into law yesterday. In Virginia it passed through both a Democratic House and Senate, and the governor will sign it soon. It will be on the ballot in Arizona in 2010, and is headed in that direction for many more. Republican senators like Dick Lugar are already asking their state attorney generals to challenge it. There are two GOP think tanks actively helping states in their efforts, and there is a booming messaging infrastructure that covers it beat-by-beat.

Whether Steny Hoyer believes the legality of the bill will prevail in court or not is moot, it could easily become the ‘gay marriage’ of 2010, with one key difference: there will be no one on the other side passionately opposing it. The GOP is preparing to use it as a massive turn-out vehicle, and it not only threatens representatives in states like Florida, Colorado and Ohio where these challenges will likely be on the ballot — it threatens gubernatorial and down-ticket races as well. Artur Davis, running for governor of Alabama, is already being put on the spot about it.

While details are limited, there is apparently a ‘Plan B’ alternative that the White House was considering, which would evidently expand existing programs — Medicaid and SCHIP. It would cover half the people at a quarter of the price, but it would not force an unbearable financial burden to those who are already struggling to get by. Because it creates no new infrastructure for the purpose of funneling money to private insurance companies, there is no need for Bart Stupak’s or Ben Nelson’s language dealing with abortion — which satisfies the concerns of pro-life members of Congress, as well as women who are looking at the biggest blow to women’s reproductive rights in 35 years with the passage of this bill. Both programs are already covered under existing law, the Hyde amendment.

But perhaps most profoundly, the bill does not mandate that people pay 8% of their annual income to private insurance companies or face a penalty of up to 2% — which the IRS would collect. As Marcy Wheeler noted in an important post entitled ‘Health Care on the Road to NeoFeudalism,’ we stand on the precipice of doing something truly radical in our government, by demanding that Americans pay almost as much money to private insurance companies as they do in federal taxes:

When this passes, it will become clear that Congress is no longer the sovereign of this nation. Rather, the corporations dictating the laws will be.

I understand the temptation to offer 30 million people health care. What I don’t understand is the nonchalance with which we’re about to fundamentally shift the relationships of governance in doing so.

We started down a dangerous road with Wall Street banks in the early 90s, allowing them to flood our political system with money and write our laws so that taxpayers would subsidize their profits, assume their losses and remove themselves from the necessity of competition. By funneling so much money into the companies who created the very problems we are now attempting to address, we further empower them to hijack our legislative process and put more than just our health care system at risk. We risk our entire system of government.

Congress may be too far down the road with this bill to change course and save themselves — and us. But before Democrats cast this vote, which could endanger not only their Congressional majority but their ability to ‘fix’ things later on, they should consider the first rule of patient safety: first, do no harm.

The FDL health care team has been covering the health care debate in Congress since it began last year. They have put together a fact sheet to help readers sort through the myths and facts of the health care bill [full fact sheet after the jump--check it out!]. . .:

*Cost of premiums goes up somewhat due to subsidies and mandates of better coverage. CBO assumes that cost of individual policies goes down 7-10%, and that people will buy more generous policies.

Documentation:

1. March 11, Letter from Doug Elmendorf to Harry Reid (PDF)


2. The AHIP Plan in Context, Igor Volsky; The Max Baucus WellPoint/Liz Fowler Plan, Marcy Wheeler


3. CBO Score, 11-30-2009


4. ‘Affordable’ Health Care, Marcy Wheeler


5. Gruber Doesn’t Reveal That 21% of Massachusetts Residents Can’t Afford Health Care, Marcy Wheeler; Massachusetts Survey (PDF)


6. Health Care on the Road to Neo-Feudalism, Marcy Wheeler


7. CMS: Excise Tax on Insurance Will Make Your Insurane Coverage Worse and Cause Almost No Reduction in NHE, Jon Walker


8. Employer Health Costs Do Not Drive Wage Trends, Lawrence Mishel


9. CBO Estimates Show Public Plan With Higher Savings Rate, Congress Daily; Drug Importation Amendment Likely This Week, Politico; Medicare Part D IAF; A Monopoloy on Biologics Will Drain Health Care Resources, Lancet Student


10. MaxTax Is a Plan to Use Our Taxes to Reward Wal-Mart for Keeping Its Workers in Poverty, Marcy Wheeler


11. Estimated Financial Effects of the ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009,’ as Proposed by the Senate Majority Leader on November 18, 2009, CMS (PDF)


12. ibid


13. ibid


14. ibid


15. Health insurance companies hang onto their antitrust exemption, Protect Consumer Justice.org


16. What passage of health care reform would mean for the average American, DC Examiner


17. How to get a State Single Payer Opt-Out as Part of Reconciliation, Jon Walker


18. Medical bills prompt more than 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies, CNN.com; The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Section‐by‐Section Analysis (PDF)

Tags: fact sheet, Health care, individual mandate, myth vs. facts, public option, whip count

"

(Via Firedoglake.)

What’s the Matter With Democrats?

What’s the Matter With Democrats?: "By David Sirota

Democrats are now preposterously selling giveaways to insurance and pharmaceutical executives as a middle-class agenda."

(Via Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines.)

Hands Off the Yuan

Hands Off the Yuan: "The escalating calls for China to rebalance its currency are based on deeply flawed assumptions and will only make Americans pay more for their favorite products -- like iPhones."

(Via Foreign Policy.)

Robert Scheer: Lame Bill from a Lame Duck

Robert Scheer: Lame Bill from a Lame Duck: "

If you think health care reform has been an unsatisfying test of the government's ability to deal with our pressing problems, brace yourself for bigger disappointment in its attempt to bridle Wall Street. This is when the true heavies go to work and, as opposed to the medical industry lobby, the moneychangers fear not the wrath of their clients or, as Scripture tells, any higher power.

Certainly not that of the Congress or the president whose powers they have so confidently purchased. That is how we got into this mess. The bankers wrote the rules of the road that allowed them to exceed all reasonable limits when Democrat Bill Clinton was in the White House. And when the crash came, it was the Republican George W. Bush who made their problems go away. Having survived that disaster of their own creation, they are not about to let anyone make them change their ways.

It will definitely take more than the likes of Connecticut's lame-duck Sen. Christopher Dodd, a likely candidate for more lucrative employment in the financial sector that he has served so faithfully. On Monday he made a big show of introducing legislation to rein in Wall Street, having failed to elicit a single Republican vote after months of caving in. He has abandoned his earlier proposal for a truly independent regulatory agency that would challenge the Fed, which got us into this jam. His bill rejects a public audit of the Fed, where he would house what remains of the president's proposed consumer protection agency.

There is only a nod in the direction of a return to the Glass-Steagall Act's separation of investment and banking firms, a regulation that Dodd, along with New York Democrat Charles Schumer, helped kill a decade ago. As The New York Times reported on Oct. 23, 1999: 'Dodd, whose state is home to the nation's largest insurance companies, and Schumer, with strong ties to Wall Street, have long sought legislation to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act.'

That's what legally made possible the too-big-to-fail mergers of insurance giants like Travelers and AIG with banking companies. As Peter Eavis pointed out in Monday's Wall Street Journal, Dodd's current bill 'still flunks the AIG test,' in that 'if the Senate bill became law, it looks like the government could still find itself making the sort of payments it made to AIG counterparties.' And that's before the lobbyists go to work.

The most glaring failure of his proposal is to fully come to grips with the enduring threat of unregulated derivatives. In this area the bill's text is an unparalleled exemplar of the use of the run-on sentence in the pursuit of obfuscation. But what is clear is that the out-of-control derivatives market, which Dodd helped engineer 10 years ago when he supported the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, will be at best tempered somewhat. Obviously aware that his current bill provides no serious answer to this most pressing of our financial industry problems, Dodd holds up the wan hope that 'Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) are working on a substitute amendment to this title that may be offered in full committee.' Yes, we know what such bipartisan efforts bring, and it does not bode well for getting a grip on a derivatives market that threatens to do us all in.

Warren Buffett wasn't kidding when he called them 'financial weapons of mass destruction,' and by now most Americans are aware that the innocuous-sounding derivatives that he was referring to have done great damage to our way of life. It extends from foreclosed homes in Florida that are collected in collateralized debt obligations to credit default swaps on Greek airport revenue, and, as The New York Times reported Monday, massive corporate collateralized loan obligations that are 'a potential financial doomsday.'

The dubious security bundles are as vast as they are obscure and their notational value is staggering. As Dodd's committee's fact sheet stated, 'The over-the-counter derivatives market has exploded--from $91 trillion in 1998 to $592 trillion in 2008.' The current figure is $605 trillion and still growing.

As Dodd's press release put it, 'Because the derivatives market was considered too big and too interconnected to fail, taxpayers had to foot the bill for Wall Street's bad bets.'

Now he tells us. But let's hope there's more to this bill than meets my eye and that the lobbyists don't get to gut it further. It's still a work in progress with some good points, the House bill is better, and it is time that Congress hears much more from the suffering public."

(Via Huffington Blog.)

Michael Moore: The Green They Steal, the Greed They Wear ...a St. Patricks Day Lamentation

Michael Moore: The Green They Steal, the Greed They Wear ...a St. Patrick's Day Lamentation: "

Friends,

It was amazing. Every story on the front page of Monday's New York Times told the story of the Age of Greed during which a system known as capitalism is slowly, but surely, killing us:

Insurance company greed: 'Millions Spent to Sway Democrats on Health Care'

War profiteers: 'Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants'

There's no profit in repairing our infrastructure: 'Repair Costs Daunting as Water Lines Crumble'
China, the bank: 'China Uses Rules on Global Trade to Its Advantage'
You mean NAFTA didn't improve life in Mexico: 'Two Drug Slayings in Mexico Rock US Consulate'

What happens when Big Food profits from hurting kids: 'Forget Goofing Around: Recess Has New Boss'

There's now a daily parade of news like this -- well, not really 'news,' more like the media division of large corporations shoving your face into the dirt that is your life. You already know the schools are a disaster and the war is a boon for the Halliburtons and a bust for you. You don't need a newspaper to tell you the roads and electrical lines and the local sewage plant is in miserable disrepair.

And by now youve figured out that you dont really have any say in this, that what we call the 'democratic process' is mostly a sham, pretty words that get repeated in the hopes we will all still fall for it. But the fix is in and we dont fall for it anymore. Admit it: Wall Street owns 'our' Congress lock, stock and big barrel o campaign cash. You want a say in this? Well, I dont see you on the Forbes 400, so shut the f@*& up and go fetch me another bottle of bubbly.

Within days, the House of Representatives will vote to pass the Senate health care 'reform' bill. This bill is a joke. It has NOTHING to do with 'health care reform.' It has EVERYTHING to do with lining the pockets of the health insurance industry. It forces, by law, every American who isn't old or destitute to buy health insurance if their boss doesn't provide it. What company wouldn't love the government forcing the public to buy that company's product?! Imagine a bill that ordered every citizen to buy the extended warranty on all their appliances? Imagine a law that made it illegal not to own an iPhone? Or how 'bout I get a law passed that makes it compulsory for every American to go see my next movie? Woo-hoo! Who wouldn't love a sweet set-up like this windfall?

Well, the insurance companies -- get this -- don't like the Democrats' bill! That alone should be reason enough to vote for it.

Now, you would think these thieves would love this bill -- but they are actually fighting it. Why? Because it doesn't give them ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the what they want. It only gives them... 90%! YOU SEE, pure greed demands all or nothing

The insurance industry hates this bill because it puts a few minor restrictions on them. Six months after its passage they won't be able to deny children coverage if they have a pre-existing condition. How awful! Government interference! SOCIALISM!

But, hey, they'll still be able to deny these children's parents coverage until 2014! So if a parent gets sick and dies in the next four years, I'm sure someone will step in and raise these already-insured orphans.

And how big will the fines be if the insurance companies do deny someone coverage for having a pre-existing condition? Are you sitting down? A hundred dollars a day! That's it! So if you're the insurance company, and Judy is a customer of yours, and Judy needs an operation that will cost $100,000, what do you do? You take the fine! Let's say Judy lives another year after you've sentenced her to death, your $100-a-day fine will only cost you $36,500! That's a savings of $63,500! And trust me, my friends, that's EXACTLY what's going to happen.

There are some good things in this bill. Parents will be able to keep their children on their policy until the kids turn 26. A few things like that. So, yes, pass that.

But don't insult me and 300 million Americans by calling this 'health care reform.' At least you've stopped calling it 'universal health care.' We will not have universal health care or anything close to it. I wish the president and the Democratic leadership would just stand up and say, 'We're sorry, America. We didn't get the job done you sent us here to do. We're weak and scared and unable to communicate the simplest of messages to the American people. Therefore, our bill will guarantee that 12 million of you will still have NO health insurance. And that's because we have decided to leave the greedy, private insurance industry in charge of our system. Forgive us for this and for continuing to allow profit to be the determining factor as to whether a patient gets the help she or he needs.'

Please, Democrats -- just say that -- then pass this poor excuse of a bill. Pass it because, if President Obama takes a fall on this one, I don't know if he'll be able to get back up. And then NOTHING will get done. We can't have that. (And thank you Dennis Kucinich for hanging in there right up to the end and being the only one out of the 435 members to speak the awful truth.)

On the front page of yesterday's New York Times, the dateline was, sadly, once again, 'Flint, Michigan.' The story was about how doctors are no longer accepting Medicaid patients. Which means tens of thousands of poor can no longer go to the doctor. Last year, the State of Michigan also prohibited doctors from accepting Medicaid patients who had anything wrong with their vision, their hearing, their feet or their teeth. In a 16-county area northwest of Flint, there will soon be not one single hospital that will allow you to give birth there if you're on Medicaid. The official unemployment rate in Flint is 27% (unofficially, closer to 40%).

This is an American tragedy. And, as I've warned you for years, this tsunami is heading your way -- if it's not there already.

I've just turned on my new iPhone and it informs me that it has 'apps' it would like to suggest I buy. One is called 'Scanner.' It will allow me to listen in on police scanners anywhere across the country. I buy the app. I see that the Flint police scanner is part of this. I turn it on out of curiosity. And this is what I hear, at one in the morning: A woman is being beaten by her husband... A home invasion is taking place ('16-year-old black male, wearing a white skull cap')... A child has been missing since noon today... Another woman is being beaten by her boyfriend... A diabetic, obese man is having trouble breathing and needs to be rushed to the hospital (there will be three more of these obese diabetics in the hours to come; the entire town is ill)... One more woman calling, screaming for help, 'officers urged to use caution...'

...And on and on and on. This is what I have listened to before going to bed. I am filled with despair and helplessness as I hear my former neighbors crying out for help. I hate it. I have to turn it off. I start to cry. Thank you, iPhone. Thank you, Democrats. I'll sleep better knowing that you're looking out for all of us.

Bastards.

Michael Moore

MMFlint@aol.com

MichaelMoore.com

P.S. I'll continue my jihad today on Dylan Ratigan (MSNBC, 4pm ET) and, for the first time together in the same studio since our, um, 2007 debate, I'll join Wolf Blitzer live in his CNN Studio (5-8pm, ET). I'll also be on live for the entire 11am hour this morning on the wonderful Diane Rehm Show on NPR. You can listen live online here.

The rest of the day I'll spend wandering the halls of Congress with my shillelagh and shamrocks, doing my best impersonation of St. Patrick as I try to drive the snakes out of Capitol Hill. Wish me luck...

Join Mike's Mailing List | Follow Mike on Twitter | Join Mike's Facebook Group | Become Mike's MySpace Friend

"

(Via Huffington Blog.)

Eliot Spitzer: Time for Truth: Three Card Monte Is for Suckers

Eliot Spitzer: Time for Truth: Three Card Monte Is for Suckers: "

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

In December, we argued the urgent need to make public A.I.G.'s emails and 'key internal accounting documents and financial models.' A.I.G.'s schemes were at the center of the economic meltdown. Three months later, a year-long report by court-appointed bank examiner Anton Valukas makes it abundantly clear why such investigations are critical to the recovery of our financial system. Every time someone takes a serious look, a new scandal emerges.

The damning 2,200-page report, released last Friday, examines the reasons behind Lehman's failure in September 2008. It reveals on and off balance-sheet accounting practices the firm's managers used to deceive the public about Lehman's true financial condition. Our investigations have shown for years that accounting is the 'weapon of choice' for financial deception. Valukas's findings reveal how Lehman used $50 billion in 'repo' loans to fool investors into thinking that it was on sound financial footing. As our December co-author Frank Partnoy recently explained as part of a major report of the Roosevelt Institute, 'Make Markets Be Markets,' such abusive off-balance accounting was and is endemic. It was a major cause of the financial crisis, and it will lead to future crises.

According to emails described in the report, CEO Richard Fuld and other senior Lehman executives were aware of the games being played and yet signed off on quarterly and annual reports. Lehmans auditor Ernst & Young knew and kept quiet.

The Valukas report also exposes the dysfunctional relationship between the country's main regulatory bodies and the systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) they are supposed to be policing. The NY Fed, the regulatory agency led by then FRBNY President Geithner, has a clear statutory mission to promote the safety and soundness of the banking system and compliance with the law. Yet it stood by while Lehman deceived the public through a scheme that FRBNY officials likened to a 'three card monte routine' (p. 1470). The report states:

'The FRBNY discounted the value of Lehman's pool to account for these collateral transfers. However, the FRBNY did not request that Lehman exclude this collateral from its reported liquidity pool. In the words of one of the FRBNY's on-site monitors: 'how Lehman reports its liquidity is between Lehman, the SEC, and the world'' (p. 1472).

Translation: The FRBNY knew that Lehman was engaged in smoke and mirrors designed to overstate its liquidity and, therefore, was unwilling to lend as much money to Lehman. The FRBNY did not, however, inform the SEC, the public, or the OTS (which regulated an S&L that Lehman owned) of what should have been viewed by all as ongoing misrepresentations.

The Fed's behavior made it clear that officials didn't believe they needed to do more with this information. The FRBNY remained willing to lend to an institution with misleading accounting and neither remedied the accounting nor notified other regulators who may have had the opportunity to do so.

The Fed wanted to maintain a fiction that toxic mortgage products were simply misunderstood assets, so it allowed Lehman to maintain the false pretense of its accounting. We now know from Valukas and from former Treasury Secretary Paulson that the Treasury and the Fed knew that Lehman was massively overstating its on-book asset values: 'According to Paulson, Lehman had liquidity problems and no hard assets against which to lend' (p. 1530). We know from Valukas' interview of Geithner (p. 1502):

The challenge for the government, and for troubled firms like Lehman, was to reduce risk exposure, and the act of reducing risk by selling assets could result in 'collateral damage' by demonstrating weakness and exposing 'air' in the marks.

Or, in plain English, the Fed didn't want Lehman and other SDIs to sell their toxic assets because the sales prices would reveal that the values Lehman (and all the other SDIs) placed on their toxic assets (the 'marks') were inflated with worthless hot air. Lehman claimed its toxic assets were worth 'par' (no losses) (p. 1159), but Citicorp called them 'bottom of the barrel' and 'junk' (p. 1218). JPMorgan concluded: 'the emperor had no clothes' (p. 1140). The FRBNY acted shamefully in covering up Lehman's inflated asset values and liquidity. It constructed three, progressively weaker, stress tests -- Lehman failed even the weakest test. The FRBNY then allowed Lehman to administer its own stress test. Need we tell you the results?

We believe that the Valukas report cries out for an immediate Congressional investigation. As we did with A.I.G., we demand the release of the e-mails and internal documents from the New York Fed and Lehman executives that pertain to analyses of Lehman's financial soundness. What downside can there possibly be in making these records available for public analysis and scrutiny?
Three years since the collapse of the secondary market in toxic mortgage product, we have yet to see significant prosecutions of the kind of fraud exposed in the Valukas report. The SDIs, with Bernanke's open support, exorted the accounting standards board (FASB) to change the rules so that banks no longer need to recognize their losses. This has made the SDIs appear profitable and allows them to pay their executives massive, unearned bonuses based on fictional profits.

If we are to prevent another, potentially more devastating financial crisis, we must understand what happened and who knew what. Many SDIs are hiding debt and losses and presenting deceptive portraits of their soundness. We must stop the three card monte accounting practices that create the potential and reality of fundamental misrepresentation.

A.I.G.'s CEO, its board of directors, and the trustees that are supposed to represent the interests of the American people have failed to respond to our December letter calling on them to release to the public the A.I.G. documents that would be the treasure trove (along with other SDI documents) that would allow our nation to uncover and end the gamesmanship that caused this financial crisis and will bring us recurrent crises. We call on them to act."

(Via Huffington Blog.)

U.S.-Israel rift undermining some long-standing taboos

U.S.-Israel rift undermining some long-standing taboos: "

The rather extraordinary dust-up between the U.S. and Israel has, among other benefits, shined a light on two of the most taboo yet self-evidently true propositions: (1) our joined-at-the-hip relationship with Israel is a significant cause of anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, fuels attacks on Americans, and entails a very high price for the U.S. on multiple levels; and (2) many American neoconservatives have their political beliefs shaped by allegiance to Israel.

As for the first: not only did Joe Biden tell Prime Minister Netanyahu that Israel's actions are endangering U.S. troops in the region, but -- more important -- as Foreign Policy's Mark Perry reports, both Adm. Mike Mullen and Gen. David Petraeus within the last couple of months stressed the same causal connection to Obama officials: 'Israels intransigence could cost American lives.' Its rather difficult to maintain the fiction that only fringe Israel-haters see the connection between our support for Israel and Muslim hatred toward the U.S. when two of Americas most respected military officials are making that case explicitly. Moreover, the Mullen/Petraeus alarm is almost certainly what accounts for the Obama administrations sudden (and commendable) willingness to so publicly oppose Israel. As Perry says: 'There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA, the American Medical Association, the lawyers -- and the Israeli lobby. But no lobby is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S. military.'

As for the second point: Ive previously noted the glaring contradiction among neoconservatives, whereby they simultaneously (a) tell American Jewish voters to vote Republican because the GOP is better for Israel and (b) insist that its anti-Semitic to point out that neoconservatives are guided by their allegiance to Israel when forming their political beliefs about U.S. policy. Obviously, anyone who does (a) is, by logical necessity, endorsing the very premise in (b) which they want (when it suits them) to label anti-Semitic. Neoconservatives constantly make political appeals to Jewish voters expressly grounded in the premise that American Jews are guided by allegiance to Israel (vote Republican because it's better for Israel), yet then scream 'anti-Semite' at anyone who points this out. When faced with this glaring contradiction, their typical response -- as illustratively voiced by Commentary's Jennifer Rubin, after she argued in a 2008 Jerusalem Post column that American Jews should vote against Obama because hed be bad for Israel -- is to deny that 'that the interests of the U.S. and Israel are antithetical' and insist that 'support for Israel in no way requires sacrificing one’s concerns for America’s interests.' In other words: to advocate for Israel is to advocate for the U.S. because theyre interests are indistinguishable.

Yet here we have a major split between the U.S. and Israel, with key American military and political leaders explaining that the opposite is true: that Israeli actions are directly harming U.S. interests and jeopardizing American lives. And what is the reflexive, unambiguous response of virtually every American Israel-centric neocon? To side with Israel over the U.S. AIPAC, the ADL, Elliott Abrams, AIPAC-loyal Democrats in the House, Marty Peretz, Commentary, etc. etc. all quickly castigated the U.S. Government and defended Israel, notwithstanding the dangers to Americans posed by Israeli conduct and the massive price paid by the U.S. in so many ways for this relationship (by contrast, J Street called the administrations anger towards Israel both 'understandable and appropriate'). Theres nothing wrong with taking Israels side per se -- one is and should be free to criticize ones own government in its foreign policy -- but incidents like this make it increasingly futile to try to suppress what is glaringly visible: that (as is true for numerous groups in the U.S.) a significant segment of the neoconservative Right (which includes some evangelical Christians and some American Jews) are guided in their political advocacy by their emotional, religious, and cultural attachment to another country, and want U.S. policy shaped in order to advance that devotion.

On a related note: there has been a long-standing effort to equate those who make this observation with anti-Israeli hatred or even anti-Semitism. Two widely-cited reports did exactly that with regard to me recently: this pseudo-scholarly report from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and this post on the blog of the American Jewish Committee, both of which hurl all sorts of ugly though trite accusations at me for daring to suggest that some American Jews are guided in their political advocacy by allegiance to Israel. Ill just note that the author of both 'reports' is someone named Adam Levick, who -- with extreme, unintended irony -- lists this as his biography on his Twitter account:

I'm an American who just made Aliyah (moved to Israel), and love America and my new country.

If youre going to try to render unspeakable the observation that some American neocons are devoted to Israel, its probably best to have the crusade led by someone with a different biography. As Ive said many times, theres nothing wrong per se with harboring cultural affections for other countries -- many individuals in the culturally diverse U.S. do -- but stridently denying what is so obviously true, and smearing those who point it out, does more than anything else to make something innocuous seem nefarious.

Finally, the reason Israel engages in this conduct is because it believes (with good reason) that U.S. officials will never (and cannot) take any real action against it, and the Obama administration -- as reflected by the excellent questions posed yesterday to David Axelrod by ABC News' Jake Tapper -- at this point still seems far from ready to do so. Still, theres no denying that the very public condemnation of Israel by the Obama administration is unprecedented at least over the last two decades, will produce benefits on its own (including sentiments like this and this being increasingly expressed even among those Obama supporters who dont typically speak out about this issue), and will subject Obama officials to serious political pressure and attacks, from which they ought to be defended. Its true that none of this will ultimately matter unless the administration is willing to back this up with meaningful action -- i.e., serious threats to change policy -- but this last week was an important and substantial first step toward that vital goal.

Many of the issues I write most about here -- from civil liberties erosions and radical, lawless National Security State policies to the wars that justify them -- have their roots in our involvement in the Middle East, and our self-destructive, blind support for Israel actions is a major (though not the only or even primary) factor in all of that. Its impossible to care about the former without wanting to do something substantial about the latter."

(Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.)

Rep. Alan Grayson: HR 4789 and The Public Option: The Way Forward

Rep. Alan Grayson: HR 4789 and The Public Option: The Way Forward: "

Health care reform -- here's where we are. The House of Representatives is about to vote on a Senate bill without a public option. It looks like the reconciliation amendment will not have a public option. The House bill had a public option, but once the House passes the Senate bill, that's history.

Which is why I introduced H.R. 4789, the Public Option Act. This simple four-page bill lets any American buy into Medicare at cost. You want it, you pay for it, you're in. It adds nothing to the deficit; you pay what it costs.

Let's face it. Health insurance companies charge as much money as possible, and they provide as little care as possible. The difference is called profit. You can't blame them for it; that's what a corporation does. Birds got to fly, fish got to swim, health insurers got to rip you off. And if you get really expensive, they've got to pull the plug on you. So for those of us who would like to stay alive, we need a public option.

In many areas of the country, one or two insurers have over 80% of the market. They can charge anything they want. And when you get sick, they can flip the bird at you. So we need a public option.

And they face no real competition because it costs billions of dollars just to set up a national health care network. In fact, the only one that's nationwide is . . . Medicare. And we limit that to one-eight of the population. It's like saying that only seniors can drive on federal highways. We really need a public option.

And to the right-wing loons who call it socialism, we say, 'if you want to be a slave to the insurance companies, that's fine. If you want 30% of your premiums to go to 'administrative costs' and billion-dollar bonuses for insurance CEOs who figure out new and creative ways to deny you the care you need to stay healthy and alive, that's fine. But don't you try to dictate to me that I can't have a public option!'

And there is a way left to get it. By insisting on a vote on H.R. 4789. Three votes on health care, not two. The Senate bill, the reconciliation amendments, and the Public Option Act.

We got 50 co-sponsors for this bill in two days. Including five powerful committee chairman. But we need more.

Sign our Petition at WeWantMedicare.com.

Call. Write. Visit. Do whatever you can do to get you Congressman to co-sponsor this bill, and push it to a vote. Right now, before it's too late.

Let's do it!

Update (4:30 pm): We're up to 64cosponsors on HR 4789! Call your member of Congress NOW at (202) 225-3121."

(Via Huffington Blog.)

Bill Moyers: Ask the Chamber of Commerce: Why Is Too Much Not Enough?

Bill Moyers: Ask the Chamber of Commerce: Why Is Too Much Not Enough?: "

Living in these United States, there comes a point at which you throw your hands up in exasperation and despair and ask a fundamental question or two: how much excess profit does corporate America really need? How much bigger do executive salaries and bonuses have to be, how many houses or jets or artworks can be crammed into a life?

After all, as billionaire movie director Steven Spielberg is reported to have said, when all is said and done, 'How much better can lunch get?'

But since greed is not self-governing, hardly anyone raking in the dough ever stops to say, 'That's it. Enough's enough! How do we prevent it from sweeping up everything in its path, including us?'

Look at the health care industry saying to hell with consumers and then hiking premiums -- by as much as 39% in the case of Anthem Blue Cross in California. According to congressional investigators, over a two-year period Anthem's parent company WellPoint spent more than $27 million dollars for executive retreats at luxury resorts. And in 2008, WellPoint paid 39 of its executives more than a million dollars each. Profit before patients.

This week, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the health insurance industry's lobby, announced they'd be spending more than a million dollars on new television ads justifying their costs.

Speaking at their annual policy meeting in Washington -- and without a trace of irony -- AHIP's president and CEO Karen Ignagni declared, 'The current debate about rising premiums has demonstrated that, in fact, we have a health care cost crisis in this country. Unfortunately, the path that has been followed is one of vilification rather than problem solving.'

Beg pardon? You're lamenting a health care cost crisis and raising your premiums? Isn't that like the guy complaining there's an obesity epidemic in America while ordering a double Big Mac with extra fries?

Of course, a million is a mere bagatelle in the shadow of the $544 million that was spent on lobbying by the health sector last year, plus more than $200 million in advocacy ads. And a million's just the curtain raiser to what will be spent in these final weeks of health care reform debate.

Two weeks ago, The Washington Post reported, 'Washington interest groups have burst back into action in hopes of bolstering or defeating a new Democratic push on health-care reform legislation, sparking another wave of rallies, lobbying efforts and costly advertising campaigns.'

This in spite of the projection that over ten years the Obama plan would plop an additional $336 billion into the insurance companies' pockets -- in the form of subsidies given to those who can't afford to buy health insurance on their own.

Okay, this is getting weird: We're going to help the poor by enriching their exploiters?

But apparently even that won't satisfy big business' voracious appetite for more. On Tuesday, Employers for a Healthy Economy, a coalition of 248 business groups, led by the U.S Chamber of Commerce, and including construction and manufacturing interests, as well as health insurance companies, said that over ten days they will spend up to $10 million on ads aimed at putting the screws on members of Congress to vote against health care reform.

Goodness knows, it isn't just because their profit margins may dwindle. No, according to Neil Trautwein, vice president of the National Retail Federation, one of the trade associations involved, 'These bills are job killers. Retail simply cannot afford any higher benefit costs or burdensome mandates.' (Never mind that extrapolating from baseline forecasts made by the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment Projections Program, the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, projects that health care reform possibly could create an average of as many as 400,000 new jobs a year.)

But beyond the health care fight, and perhaps far more significant in the long run, this effort is just one more example of life, Pandora-style. The Company has arrived, only it's called the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and it's got its sights on anything that moves, damn the natives, full speed ahead.

During 2008, 86% of contributions from the chamber's political action committee went to GOP candidates. The conservatives have found their Avatar, AKA Frankenstein.

Of course there is not actually a Chamber of Commerce, at least the way we might imagine it. This is no confederation of congenial, small town business groups that pass out maps of Main Street and souvenir key rings. The chamber in question is a front group. Yes, yes, it reports a membership of three million businesses, but tax records indicate that in 2008 a third of its contributions came from 19 companies paying between $1 million and $15.3 million. Don't hold your breath: the chamber is not required to reveal who those 19 are.

The March 8 edition of the Los Angeles Times reports that 'internal documents suggest the organization's treasury is filled in substantial part by contributions from a couple dozen major corporations most affected by Washington policymakers.'

Got it? Predators who prey together stick together.

With all that cash, the Times notes, 'The chamber spent more than $144 million on lobbying and grass-roots organizing last year, a 60% increase over 2008, and well beyond the spending of individual labor unions or the Democratic or Republican national committees. The chamber is expected to substantially exceed that spending level in 2010.'

This elite organization of oligarchs has been emboldened by the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case, which now allows corporations to spend freely on political campaigns right up until Election Day, and by the chamber's recent success contributing a million dollars for ads supporting Republican Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

What's more, writes the Los Angeles Times, 'Using trade associations such as the chamber as the vehicle for spending corporate money on politics has an extra appeal: These groups can take large contributions from companies and wealthy individuals in ways that will probably avoid public disclosure requirements.'

So with the spring comes anonymous greed run rampant. 'In the past a lot of companies and wealthy individuals stood on the sidelines' of politics, a corporate lawyer at Washingtons influential law firm Covington & Burling told the Times.

'That cloud has been lifted,' he said.

As the sun sets on democracy.

No wonder demonstrators outside that health insurance meeting in Washington this week surrounded the hotel with yellow crime scene tape. The entire country is being mugged.

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers."

(Via Huffington Blog.)