I promised the economic picture today and I’m including that, last — times ain’t good; they’re going to get worse. Creating a “new thing” cannot happen if you’re still trying to give mouth-to-mouth to the old thing … and that’s all a learning/experience curve that lies ahead. I don’t know how it will all shake out but shake it will … so I think getting our financial sea legs will become more a matter of learning how to manage the shakeout than how to cushion against it.
Metaphysically, there is no lack … THAT is a truth we can depend on, and proceed individually to experience a universe that meets our needs. Wobbly finances will create more fear than Osama … we do NOT have to participate in that consciousness, but we DO have to listen and know when to adjust ourselves to whatever comes up to meet our feet, as we step confidently ahead.
The visionaries will rise to the top — they must; be sure to read the last piece on a “restorative economy.” We’ve come to that place where our old illusions about what the US of A is all about are melting down to actual facts … and that will free us to actually CREATE that dream. But first, it will be messy … and make no mistake, it will be Divine.
To counterpoint “bad news,” you’ll find a couple of Morford reads first — laugh out loud, as I did with the first. It’ll do you good. Get fired up, as I did with the second. Also good … also REQUIRED.
We’re moving right along … welcome to the adventure!
Jude
ps — here’s the link to my weekly piece, On The Playground
Bush Death Watch: Countdown!
It’s official: Less than one year until history slaps Dubya to the curb. Can you feel the tingle?
Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, November 16, 2007
It’s just that kind of feeling, that sense of hesitant, embryonic optimism, the sense that says, oh my God, we as a culture and a smash-mouthed, war-hammered society really are fast approaching something possibly, potentially, heart-achingly new and different and — because it cannot get any worse — just a little bit better.
Here is my suggestion: Mark your calendars, set your watch, program a celebratory ringtone well in advance, because the countdown has officially begun.
It is now less than one calendar year until the next presidential election. It is less than one year until the country finally takes a deep breath and flexes its atrophied muscles and opens its bloody, Cheney-punched mouth and lets it be known to the world, to the universe, to its own numb and dejected soul just exactly how unwell it has felt, how much pain has raked its heart, lo, these past seven (eight, by then) years, by ushering in an entirely new political era, as we all exhale a massive sigh of long overdue relief that — praise Jesus, Allah, Buddha and the devil all at once — the long national nightmare of George W. Bush is finally over.
It is now safe to imagine. It is now becoming increasingly easy to actually dare to think that, in less than one year’s time, Dubya will begin packing his bags, jamming into his Spongebob duffel his map of the world coloring book, English-to-English translation dictionaries, mangled pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution, Bibleman action figure set and a “Mission Accomplished!” sweatshirt, and heading off to face his destiny as one of the bleakest, most morally repellent chapters in all of American history.
You think maybe it’s too soon? Too early to let the tingle of positivism and hope take hold? Far from it. After all, the signs of decay and utter GOP desperation keep pouring in. For example, it has now been officially recorded in history what everyone already knows: Bush is nearly exactly as unpopular as Richard Nixon was at his lowest point, and no president in history has had as long a streak at the bottom of the job-approval rankings as Dubya. Heckuva job, Bushie!
What’s more, the glorious collapse of the evangelical Christian right marches on apace, as Pat Robertson, now a dejected, lonely widower after the death of secret boy-toy husband Jerry Falwell, has officially endorsed pro-choice, pro-gay, thrice-married, massively unbalanced moral pit bull Rudy Giuliani for president, which is a bit like a militant vegan endorsing Hot Dog on a Stick for the title of Lord of the Food Court. Desperate times indeed.
But wait, it gets better. While it’s easy to focus on Shrub and Cheney and to gleefully, achingly imagine their dreary march out of office on that happy day, it is also vital and heartwarming to note that this time next year will also mark the demise of an entire army of toxic leaders, federal department heads, gay-bashing appointees and misogynist directors of every stripe and scandal and spittle, a simply huge array of right-wing Bushies who are still entrenched in all manner of powerful federal bureaus and organizations and policy-making bodies.
It’s true. Despite how a huge hunk of hideous GOP policymakers lost their seats during the last congressional election, plenty more appointees are still around to poison the well. From Kevin Martin, the lackey who oversees the FCC, to noxious Idahoan and rabid anti-environmentalist Dick Kempthorne of the Department of the Interior, to anti-choice Republican Mormon knucklehead charity scammer and Department of Health and Human Services overseer Mike Leavitt, and on and on — in a year, all on their way out.
Oh, and one more deserves special attention. Because one year from now will also be the glorious political end of one Dr. David W. Hager, the rabid evangelical Christian gynecologist (I know, so wrong) who currently advises the FDA on women’s health issues and who was largely responsible for delaying the approval of Plan B, opposed RU-486, is in fact against all contraception, stem-cell research, premarital sex, and (quite naturally) women’s choice, and whose own ex-wife claims he anally raped her, over and over again, in her sleep.
Intelligent women nationwide still shudder that this man is allowed anywhere near a living vagina, much less permitted to touch and probe and offer advice. But there is one noteworthy aspect to Hager; he is the perfect incarnation of the Christian right’s view of women as subordinate, lesser-intelligent sluts who cannot control their own bodies and therefore need men, God, and the government to do it for them. Hager is a deep shame to the male gender, and his return to the private practice of ruining the sex lives of unfortunate women in Kentucky cannot come soon enough.
But why write this column now, so far in advance of Bush’s limp-tailed departure? Simple enough: Because it will take a full year to get ready.
It will take every month and every week and every single day from the moment you read this until November 2008 to compile, to gather, to list all the names and all the horrors and all the deeply entrenched policies that are still clawing at the face of America as a result of Bush’s reign, to fully get your mind around just how deep is the disease and how widely it has spread, so we may begin to excise the policies one by one like the malignant tumors they so very much are.
What, too strong? Not even close. Go read up on Hager, and get back to me.
Ah, but perhaps you are one of the jaded ones, the non-believers, that certain type of political bitterball who says, oh please, what does it matter, they’re all criminals and cretins and powermongers anyway, no matter which party or president they work for? Get rid of BushCo and a new slew of cronies and cretins take their place, and who can tell the difference?
To which I say, well, yes. But also, no. Sure, the system is corrupt and lopsided and full of backstabbing and backslapping and backroom deal-making. So what? Has been since the first cavemen voted to see who gets to run the mammoth hunt.
Truth is, it’s just far too easy to let the ennui wash over and not give a damn, to lump all politics into a phlegmball of nasty negativity and be done with it, thus entirely disregarding the efficacious issues, the things that truly effect change and affect lives and improve or degrade the health of the planet.
Outrage fatigue is simply unacceptable. Intellectual apathy is the refuge of the lazy and the spiritually malnourished. Do not let it happen to you.
Now is the time. The coming year will slide by rather quickly and the feeling of urgent change and upheaval will only build and it doesn’t really matter if it’s Hillary or Obama or Edwards leading the shift, because no matter who gets the nod, they will require — from me, from you, from anyone who professes to care — a roiling tidal wave of progressive momentum behind them to help them cleanse and haul away the overwhelming mountain of moral fecal matter Bush has left behind.
Mark your calendar. Set your ringtone. Take a deep breath, feel the wave build, and then dive the hell in. Right now, it’s the only option that really matters.
Outrage fatigue? Get over it
Are you sick of being sick? Suffering way too much Bush-induced nausea? Well, tough
Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
I know how it is. You’ve had it up to here. There are only so many stories about blood and death and pain you can take, only so many times you can hear about random shootings and corporate malfeasance and how BushCo’s squad of scabrous flying monkeys have, say, supported torture or endorsed wiretapping or gouged the nation for another $200 billion to pay for a failed war. Your nerves are raw and your heart is tired and the media will just not shut the hell up already about the sadness and the war and the mayhem and the Cheney and the doom doom doom.
It is outrage fatigue, and it is epidemic. It’s that feeling that we are being hammered unlike any time in recent history with so many appalling and disgusting and violently un-American incidents and scandals and manipulations that our b.s.-detectors are smoking like an old V-8 engine on a hot summer’s day and it’s all we can do to get up every day without screaming.
What’s more, it’s not the mere quantity of moral insults, either. It’s the bizarre absurdity of the subject matter, the things we are being forced to consider, or reconsider, that seem to make it all so horrific.
Torture? Are you kidding? Allegedly the most civilized, the most morally aware nation on the planet and we are still debating, in the highest courts and government offices in the land, about whether the United States should strap human beings to gnarled metal benches in rancid foreign bunkers and inflict such inexplicable terror and fear upon them that they confess to things they didn’t even do just to get us to stop? Is this the Middle Ages? Are we regressing back to the goddamn cave?
Oh my, yes, plethoric are the reasons you should be outraged indeed, and torture just might be one of the most incendiary reasons in the past few years. If nothing else, its disgusting return to U.S. political dialogue certainly means it’s no time to be laying down arms in exhaustion, no matter how tempting it might be.
Take this fine example: Keith Olbermann, as is his wont, executed another pitch-perfect bout of outrage recently on his excellent MSNBC show, taking BushCo to task on the issue of waterboarding like you never hear in major on-air media anymore.
Olbermann only barely held on to his trademark fierce hyper-articulation against the sheer disgust he/we have to endure at the idea that a sitting American president obviously thinks medieval torture is a gul-dang swell idea, no matter what psychologists, military experts, ethicists, the United Nations, the Geneva Convention and Jesus himself all say.
It was wonderful, powerful stuff, a razor-sharp, highly informed media pundit who dares to presume an unusually high level of intelligence among his viewers, speaking truth to power in a way most liberal media-haters complain never really happens anymore. And of course, his subject was one of the most deserving of our moral outrage in recent history.
But then I read some of the reaction to Olbermann’s diatribe on various political blogs and on some news-aggregate sites, with many saying, gosh Keith, lighten up already, who cares, enough with all the outrage and the spittle, wow I’m so sick of all this ranting and raving and gosh I’m tired of these smarty media people telling me how to think and hey maybe torture is good let’s kill us some more, haw haw haw snort.
On the one hand, it is, you can argue, generally the way of the meaner-than-thou blogosphere, with all but the most professional and intelligent and positive-minded of outposts seeming to suffer an undue percentage of reactionary chyme in their comment areas, hordes of Net-drunk twentysomethings and extremists and shut-ins who have way too much free time and merely chime in to see their sneers “published” and to prove how much more jaded and apathetic they are than the next person, while adding zero to the conversation.
But maybe it’s worse than that. Because this is where it can happen, where you can get sucked into the vortex of whining and bitterness and where you might feel part of yourself wanting to wallow too, desiring to avoid doing the actual moral and spiritual work of dissecting and researching and analysing something as politically messy and morally ugly as torture for yourself, opting instead for the easy path, for closing your eyes and sticking your fingers in your ears and going, nyah nyah nyah shut up shut up SHUT UP! Hey, it sure beats thinking.
Or maybe we can flip it around. Maybe, with the right intent, the exact reverse can happen, and you see this ocean of nasty ennui, this pile of oft-misspelled, poorly punctuated reactionary effluvia as, in and of itself, something to be a bit livid about.
Maybe, in other words, you can enjoy, as one blogger put it, a big dose of “fatigue outrage,” the feeling of disgust you get when faced with all those people who think mental lethargy and laziness is, like, way funny, dude.
In other words, enough with the childish, frat-boy-grade complaints about media overload and too many rants and outrage fatigue. You have to earn that sort of thing. If you never give a crap about engaging the world, if you never want to think deeply about complex issues and care about ramifications and see what truly resonates with your own informed spirit and then stand up for what you believe, this pretty much eliminates your right to sneer at others who do.
It is, for me, all about modulation. It is about remembering that outrage does not necessarily equal misery. Outrage does not mean you must wallow in fear and fatalism and yank out your hair and wake up every morning hating the world and hating yourself and hating humanity for being so stupid/numb/blind and wondering how the hell you can escape it all.
Outrage is rich with humanistic understanding. It is not some evangelical Christian parent “outraged” that her kid saw a woman’s nipple on TV. It is not some right-wing Family Council “outraged” that someone put S&M outfits on Barbie, or that some art gallery is displaying Jesus as a woman, or that scientists dared to say that stem cell research does not equal abortion, or that the mayor isn’t taking care of all the potholes and stray kitties. That’s not outrage, that’s reactionary whining.
True outrage, like Olbermann’s, like (occasionally, hopefully) this column’s, like what you should ideally be experiencing on a daily basis while Bush is in office, is honed and sharp and poignant. It contains a powerful sense of deeply informed decency, and therefore has a true feel for when that sense has been violated. Outrage has meat and substance and intellectual nourishment. It is actually healthy.
Smart, informed outrage engages you and fires your heart, your mind. It is fuel. It is the reason you claim you enjoy being an American, to question malevolent government actions and take a stand and demand accountability where there has, for the past seven years, been none. Bottom line: We simply cannot let them convince us, by way of an all-out assault on science, sex, love, et al, that the good fight just ain’t worth fighting.
After all, the flying monkeys are far from done raiding the closet and stealing your babies and making a mockery of everything wise and calm and open-hearted people hold dear. And baby, if you ain’t outraged about that, something is very wrong indeed.
‘Storm On The Horizon’
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, and Ali Frick, The Progress Report
November 13, 2007
Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified to Congress that the economy would “slow noticeably” this year and likely get worse before getting better. Yesterday on ABC News’s This Week, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said of a possible recession: “[I]t’s certainly pointing in that direction. We hope that’s not the case, but there are many people who watch this minute to minute and would have drawn that conclusion.” America’s economic fundamentals have been weak for some time now. Since 2000, investment growth has been anemic, productivity growth has declined, and income growth has stagnated. Weak income and job growth and the decline of health care and retirement benefits have already squeezed the middle class and made Americans more vulnerable to economic downturns. When these trends are combined with the subprime mortgage crisis and the ensuing slowing of the housing market, the collapsing dollar, and the enormous cost of the Iraq war adding to the country’s ever-growing debt, the economic slowdown is likely to hit Americans quite hard. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) found Bernanke’s testimony disquieting. “I’m very concerned that there may be a bigger storm on the horizon,” he said. Approximately 48 percent of Americans feel that the economy is already in recession, including 69 percent of black Americans. Another poll found that two-thirds of Americans worry that economic conditions are getting worse, “by far the highest number since 1992,” and four in ten say recession is likely next year.
THE HOUSING FALLOUT: Last spring, Bernanke downplayed the broader effects of the subprime mortgage crisis, suggesting that the effects seemed “likely to be contained” to the housing sphere. Last week, Bernanke admitted that “[a]lthough the problems with subprime mortgages initiated the financial turmoil, credit concerns quickly spilled over into a number of other areas.” He added, “A sharp increase in foreclosed properties for sale could also weaken the already struggling housing market and thus, potentially, the broader economy.” An October real estate report showed that U.S. home prices fell nationwide in August for the eighth consecutive month, in the ten largest cities falling five percent from a year ago, the biggest monthly drop since June 1991. Remarking on the falling housing sales, Dodd noted that it was “the first time since the Great Depression we’ve had two successive years of predictions of housing sales declines.” Housing had been the one sector through which many middle class families could get ahead through investment. A report released late last month by the congressional Joint Economic Committee, however, stated that “families, neighborhood property values, and state and local government will lose billions of dollars as two million subprime mortgage homes are foreclosed.” The housing crunch, dragging the whole economy down with it, demands the government’s full attention. The most President Bush will admit thus far is that “housing is soft.”
IRAQ EATING UP DOLLARS: A new report by the Joint Economic Committee estimates that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost the average American family of four more than $20,000. The government is spending $2 billion per week to wage war in Iraq, and a Congressional Budget Office report estimated that the total cost of the war in Iraq could equal $2.4 trillion. Though the White House has asserted that it is “not worried” about the cost of war, it should be. The war is draining finite resources away from needed programs at home and abroad. Approximately $2.4 trillion is enough to “provide every college freshman in the country with a free, four year education at a private college or university; provide health care coverage to every American for one year; [or] pay off 26% of our current national debt.”
THE COLLAPSING DOLLAR: The dollar fell to a new low against the euro on Friday, propelled by Bernanke’s glum economic forecast and by signals from the Chinese government that it would “readjust” some of its U.S. Treasuries holdings from dollars to other currencies. A weak dollar is likely to affect average Americans at the gas pump, since “crude oil is priced in dollars, and oil producers, especially members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, want to be compensated for the dollar’s decline.” As oil approaches the unprecedented price of $100 a barrel, the average cost of gasoline continues to rise, surpassing $3 per gallon last week, a rise of over 81 cents from last year. Gas prices are expected to rise another 20 cents over the next two to three weeks, making holiday travel more expensive. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) said, “When those gas prices get up to $3 a gallon, it seems to hit some sort of psychological point in consumer’s mind that ‘I have less to spend,’ and that’s a reality for them.” Before the holiday recess, Congress should pass a final energy bill that will establish a 35 mpg standard and require utilities to draw 15 percent of their electricty from renewable sources by 2020.
U.S. could face $2 trillion lending shock: Goldman
Reuters via Yahoo
Fri Nov 16
LONDON (Reuters) - The impact of the U.S. mortgage market crisis on the underlying economy could be “dramatic” as leveraged investors may need to scale back lending by up to $2 trillion, according to investment bank Goldman Sachs ( GS.N).
In a report dated November 15, Goldman’s chief U.S. economist Jan Hatzius said a “back-of-the-envelope” estimate of credit losses on outstanding mortgages, based on past default experience, was around $400 billion.
But unlike stock market losses, which are typically absorbed by “long-only” investors, this mortgage-related hit is mostly borne by leveraged investors such as banks, broker-dealers, hedge funds and government-sponsored enterprises.
And leveraged investors react to losses by actively cutting back lending to keep capital ratios from falling — A bank targeting a constant capital ratio of 10 percent, for example, would need to shrink its balance by $10 for every $1 in losses.
“The macroeconomic consequences could be quite dramatic,” Hatzius said in the note to clients. “If leveraged investors see $200 billion of the $400 billion aggregate credit loss, they might need to scale back their lending by $2 trillion.”
“This is a large shock,” he said, adding the number equates to 7 percent of total debt owed by U.S. non-financial sectors.
Hatzius said such a shock could produce a “substantial recession” if it occurred over one year, or a long period of sluggish growth if it occurred over two-to-four years.
One of a number of caveats outlined in the report was that baseline economic forecasts may already include significant reductions in the pace of mortgage lending.
But the conclusion remained a gloomy one regardless.
“The likely mortgage credit losses pose a significantly bigger macroeconomic risk than generally recognized,” he wrote. “While the uncertainty is large, the associated downward pressure on lending raises the risk of significant weakness in economic activity.”
Reporting by Mike Dolan, editing by Mike Peacock
‘Hidden Costs’ Double Price Of Two Wars, Democrats Say
Josh White, Washington Post
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new study by congressional Democrats that estimates the conflicts’ “hidden costs”– including higher oil prices, the expense of treating wounded veterans and interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.
That amount is nearly double the $804 billion the White House has spent or requested to wage these wars through 2008, according to the Democratic staff of Congress’s Joint Economic Committee. Its report, titled “The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War,” estimates that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have thus far cost the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000.
“The full economic costs of the war to the American taxpayers and the overall U.S. economy go well beyond even the immense federal budget costs already reported,” said the 21-page draft report, obtained yesterday by The Washington Post.
The report argues that war funding is diverting billions of dollars away from “productive investment” by American businesses in the United States. It also says that the conflicts are pulling reservists and National Guardsmen away from their jobs, resulting in economic disruptions for U.S. employers that the report estimates at $1 billion to $2 billion.
The committee, which includes House and Senate members from both parties and is chaired by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), is expected to present the report this morning on Capitol Hill. Democratic leaders plan to use the report as evidence that the wars are far costlier than most realize and that a change of course could save taxpayers billions of dollars in the coming decade.
“What this report makes crystal clear is that the cost to our country in lives lost and dollars spent is tragically unacceptable,” Schumer said in a statement last night.
Brian Hart, a spokesman for Sam Brownback (Kan.), the committee’s senior Republican senator, said, “The Democrats didn’t bother to run this report by any of their Republican JEC colleagues or staff.”
“We’ll see what they come up with, but it sure seems that the Senate leadership is trying to protect their continual proclamations of defeat instead of working for bipartisan progress,” Hart added.
War funding experts said that the committee’s Democrats raise viable arguments but that some of the numbers should be met with skepticism. For example, it is difficult to calculate the precise impact of the Iraq war on global oil prices, and it is speculative to estimate how much the war will cost over time, as situations change daily on the battlefield.
Robert D. Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (International) and a member of the National Security Council staff under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, said he agrees that the war is far costlier than the publicly stated price tag but said some of the report’s measures are problematic. He said he thinks it would be hard to show that the Iraq war has caused oil prices to skyrocket or oil producers in the Middle East to falter, and he said he does not think there has been a closing-off of U.S. investment because of the war.
Oil prices have more than tripled since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the report notes, to a peak of more than $90 per barrel. “The war in Iraq is certainly not responsible for all of this increase,” the report states, but it estimates that declining Iraqi production “has likely raised oil prices in the U.S. by between $4 and $5 a barrel.” The report added that “because of the many factors affecting oil markets, this should be seen as a highly approximate estimate.”
Hormats said he agrees with the report’s finding that the United States is dangerously increasing its reliance on foreign debt and that Americans will be paying the price for generations. Hormats, author of “The Price of Liberty: Paying for America’s Wars,” said that in every other major war, the United States has financed the conflict.
“The wars will cost a lot more than the appropriated sums, and it’s certainly true our children will be paying for this for a long, long time,” he said. “I’m very critical of the way they have financed the war, but I always hesitate to try to quantify any of these things, to make these numerical judgments.”
The committee’s Democrats estimated that injuries due to the wars could add more than $30 billion in future disability and medical care costs, including billions in lost earnings for veterans who cannot work because of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Although war costs have risen each year and the fiscal 2008 funding request is the highest so far, the direct and indirect costs of Iraq and Afghanistan are much lower than the costs of World War II and are just passing those of the Vietnam War. World War II is estimated to have cost $4.9 trillion in today’s dollars. According to Congressional Research Service reports, the Vietnam War cost $600 billion in today’s dollars and the 1991 Persian Gulf War cost $80 billion.
The economic difference is also sizable, Hormats said, as the annual cost of today’s wars is less than 2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, a fraction of the cost of World War II. The nation’s economy is so large that it “disguises the costs and doesn’t impose any hardship on the American people,” allowing the government to sidestep normal budgeting processes, Hormats said. He said the country has borrowed all the money it has needed for the wars because taxes have been lowered and the wars have been funded largely by supplemental appropriations, with few budgetary sacrifices.
Jason H. Campbell, a researcher at the Brookings Institution who maintains the think tank’s “Iraq Index,” said it is clear that the costs of the Iraq war are higher than what Congress has appropriated but said they are often hard to quantify. He said he is unsure whether the costs of both wars total $1.5 trillion.
“It’s much higher than other estimations I have seen,” Campbell said. “A lot of it is debatable, but there are costs that will in the near future be attributable to Iraq that haven’t been accounted for yet.”
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Bulletins from the Titanic
Mike Whitney, Smirking Chimp
Nov 14 2007
On Monday, Asian stock markets took another beating, on fears that the credit squeeze which began in the United States will continue to worsen in the months ahead. Every index from Tokyo to Sidney fell sharply continuing the “self-reinforcing” cycle of losses started last week on Wall Street. The Nikkei 225 average fell 3.3 per cent, India’s Sensex 2.9 per cent, Taiwan’s 3.5 per cent, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slumped 4.5 per cent. The subprime tsunami is presently headed towards downtown Manhattan, where nervous traders are already hunkered-down in the trenches—ashen and wide-eyed.
Amid the deluge of bad news over the weekend; one story towers above all the others. The yen gained 1.5 per cent against the dollar. (9 per cent year-over-year) That means that Wall Street’s biggest swindle, the carry trade, is finally unwinding. The over-levered hedge funds will now be forced to sell their positions quickly before the interest-rate window shuts and they’re stuck with humongous bets they cannot cover. The faltering yen is the grease that lubricates the guillotine. $1 trillion in low interest loans–which keeps the trading whirring along in US markets–is about to get a haircut. Cheap Japanese credit is the hidden flywheel in Hedgistan’s main-cylinder. Once it is removed, the industry will seize up and clank to a halt. Fund managers can forget about the vacation rental in the Hamptons. It’ll be sloppy Joes and Schlitz Malt-liquor on Coney Island from here on out.
Over the weekend Deutsche Bank announced that losses from “securitized” subprime mortgages were likely to reach $400 billion. The news sparked a sell-off in the Asian markets where investors have become increasingly eager to pare down their holdings of US equities and dollar-backed assets. Overnight, the greenback has become the leper at the birthday party; everyone is steering clear for fear of contagion. Foreign central banks are looking for any opportunity to dump their stockpiles of dollars in a manner that doesn’t disrupt their economies or the global financial system. Their intentions may be prudent-even honorable-but it won’t forestall the inevitable blow-off of US dollars that is likely to commence as soon as the financial giants reveal the real size of their losses. New regulations have been put in place that will require the banks to provide “market prices” for their assets. This will expose the degree to which they are under-capitalized. When word gets out that the banking system is underwater; there’ll be a run on the dollar.
On Sunday, the AFP reported that the Group of Seven richest nations (G7) is considering direct “intervention” in the dollar’s decline to prevent a “disorderly correction”.
“It is not too early contemplating the risk of coordinated interventions by the G7,” said Stephen Jen and Charles St-Arnaud of investment bank Morgan Stanley. “History shows that multilateral, coordinated interventions have been key in establishing turning points in multi-year trends in major currencies in the past three decades.” On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, full fathom five under the waves on the poop deck of the Titanic communicated through speaker tube the news that “A strong dollar is in our nation’s interest and should be based on economic fundamentals.”
According to Bloomberg News: “More than $350 billion of collateralized debt obligations comprising asset-backed securities may become ‘distressed’ because of credit rating downgrades.”
What’s clear is that the situation is getting worse, not better. Honesty must at least be considered as one of many options, although the Treasury Dept avoids that choice like the plague. Eventually, the public will have to be told about what is going on. Last week, the Financial Times reported:
“In recent days, investors have been presented with a stream of high-profile signs that sentiment in the financial world is deteriorating. However, deep in one esoteric corner of finance, another, little-known set of numbers is provoking growing concern. So-called correlation - a concept that shows how slices of complex pools of credit derivatives trade relative to each other - has been moving in unusual ways ‘What we are seeing in the synthetic [derivative] markets is that there is a serious fear of systemic risk,’ says Michael Hampden-Turner, credit strategist at Citigroup. ‘This is not just about price correlation within the collateralized debt obligation market, but about a potential rise in default correlation and asset correlation.’ Until recently, traders often tended to assume that there was relatively little correlation between different chunks of debt, because they thought that the biggest risk to the world was idiosyncratic in nature - meaning that while one company, say, might suddenly default, it was unlikely that numerous companies would default at the same time. However, some regulators have been warning for some time that in times of stress correlation does not always behave as traders might expect.”
The multi-trillion dollar derivatives industry-which has never been tested in down-market conditions—is now moving sideways. No one really knows what this means except that the most opaque and volatile debt-instruments are now threatening to unravel, triggering a cascade of unanticipated defaults and a colossal loss of market capitalization. Credit default swaps (CDS) are rarely thrashed out in market commentary. They are counterparty options which provide hedging against the prospect of default. They are, in fact, a financial equivalent of the San Andreas faultline which is quivering menacingly as foreclosures mount and mortgage-backed bonds continue to implode. As the Financial Times suggests, the shock waves should be sweeping through the Wall Street trading pits in the very near future.
There are also new developments on the sale of “marked to model” CDOs-the red-haired stepchild of the new structured finance paradigm. “The trustee of a $1.5 billion collateralized debt obligation managed by State Street Global Advisors has started selling assets, apparently starting a process of liquidation,” Standard and Poor’s said. The sale is a red flag for the other holders of $1.5 trillion of CDOs who’ve been waiting for market conditions to change before they try to sell their mortgage-backed bonds. The liquidation will assign a “market price” to these complex structured investment vehicles. If the price at auction is mere pennies on the dollar, then the banks, pension funds, and insurance companies will have write down their losses or add to their reserves to cover their weakening assets. Simply put, the State Street sale could turn out to be doomsday for a number of under-capitalized investment banks. Their revenues are already down; this would be the last stake to the heart.
Finally, Greg Noland, at Prudent Bear.com reports on the “looming disaster” at Fannie Mae where, the best-known Government Sponsored Entity (GSE) has entered into the current housing slump with a “Book of Business of mortgages, MBS and other credit guarantees of $2.7 trillion” which is backed by a measly “$39.9 billion of Shareholder’s Equity”.
That’s all?
As Noland concludes, “A devastating housing bust will bankrupt the mortgage insurers, while the solvency of their derivatives counterparties going forward will be in doubt in any number of scenarios. The GSEs are now integrally linked to what I expect to be Credit insurance’s and “structured finance’s” astonishing downfall.”
Amen.
The only thing looking up are oil futures. And they’ll be denominated in euros soon enough.
Standards for the New Depression
Michael Fox, Smirking Chimp
Nov 15 2007
We all have our own way of seeing the world. This writer needs the news to have a score. A musical score.
A Song for the veteran:
Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell
Full of that Yankee-Doodly-dum
Half a million boots went sloggin’ through Hell
And I was the kid with the drum
Say, don’t you remember, they called me “Al”
It was “Al” all the time
Why don’t you remember, I’m your pal
Say buddy, can you spare a dime?
Gorney/ Harburg
CBS reports that for the last fully documented year, 2005, in a survey of 45 states, “there were at least 6,256 suicides among those who served in the armed forces. That’s 120 each and every week, in just one year… One age group stood out. Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the war on terror. They had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age. (The suicide rate for non-veterans is 8.3 per 100,000, while the rate for veterans was found to be between 22.9 and 31.9 per 100,000.)” Indeed… And, by the way, Brother, can you spare a Prozac? Evidently, the VA hasn’t got it in the budget.
A Song for the displaced:
A room is still a room
Even when there’s nothing there but gloom
But a room is not a house
And a house is not a home
When the two of us are far apart
And one of us has a broken heart
Now and then I call your name
And suddenly your face appears
But it’s just a crazy game
And when it ends, it ends in tears
Bachrach/David
Realty Trac, an online tracking survey of real estate statistics is reporting that there are, as of the end of October, 650,000 current foreclosure and preforeclosure homes in the United States. That number is growing every week, but right now, here are a few startling facts from a few random metropolitan areas:
In the Riverside/San Bernardino area, one in 43 homes is in foreclosure. Right now.
In Las Vegas, that number right now is one of every 48.
In Miami, the statistic right now is one out of every 60.
There are many communities throughout the nation where the statistics are worse, but anything less than one per 1,000 is worrisome. One per 100 is a red flag.
At Foreclosurepulse, an industry site, the following understatement caught my eye:
“As foreclosures multiply in Los Angeles and Orange counties, it is too early to gauge the effect these properties will have on home values there, said Patrick Veling, president of Real Data Strategies Inc., a Brea real estate consulting firm.”
I suppose, like every realtor or mortgage broker I’ve ever known, Mr. Veling must – in order to wake up and do their jobs - keep some degree of optimism. But I’d bet that deep inside, he’s got to know the jig’s up, wouldn’t you?
And some ruthless banker is showing someone the door every minute of every day, taking the keys, and cynically suggesting that you remember what’s important, after all is being with your loved ones (even if that’s under a bridge).
Song for the foreclosed-upon:
The way you hold your knife
The way we danced till three
The way you changed my life
No, no, they can’t take that away from me
No, they can’t take that away
Can’t take that away
Can’t take that away from me
(Gershwin/Gershwin)
Lyrics provided by www.songlyrics.com
$1 trillion to the rescue
If Iraq is worth $1 trillion, let’s allot just as much to benefit humanity.
Woody Tasch, Christian Science Monitor
November 15, 2007
San Francisco - Economists project that the cost of the war in Iraq, when all is said and done, will come in at $1 trillion or more.
I say: Let’s do it again!
Let’s allocate another trillion dollars – but this time for the good of all humanity and all species. Let’s do it with the same moral urgency and vision that has made America great at so many critical junctures in history.
There’s an emergency and an opportunity out there that calls for The Next Trillion.
It’s about more than geopolitics and petrodollars. It’s about more than the science of climate change.
It’s about the need for global economic institutions to evolve in response to the social and environmental challenges of our time: growth in population, accelerating technological change, accelerating capital flows, growth in consumption, increasing pollution, widening wealth gaps.
Today’s global economy creates a thousand billionaires and a billion thousandaires. It has created what venture capitalist John Doerr calls “the greatest legal accumulation of wealth in history.”
But it also drives China to add 65 gigawatts to its electric grid each year, most of which is produced by highly polluting coal-fired power plants.
And today’s global economy is driven by Americans, who use more energy, put more carbon into the atmosphere, and generate more waste than any citizen in history – and by a shameful margin.
The financial returns of the 20th century depended upon environmental and social trends that are unsustainable. The old worldviews and economic institutions are no longer adequate. We must begin to move, and move boldly, in a new direction.
The good news is that out of the current military, political, and environmental quagmire arises an unprecedented opportunity for America to leap into a new era of economic leadership.
Here’s how The Next Trillion should be invested:
• $250 billion for clean energy and energy efficiency;
• $250 billion for carbon sequestration and bioremediation;
• $250 billion for sustainable food and forests; and
• $250 billion for community development.
This is a wildly important moment. A tectonic shift is occurring beneath the culture of conquest and consumption. A tectonic shift is occurring in the consciousness of the consumer, the entrepreneur, and the investor.
We must seize the opportunity to accelerate the transition past “sustainable development” all the way to a full-fledged restorative economy, in which jobs, wealth, and economic vitality are created by enterprises that restore and preserve the common good.
For 15 years, I’ve been helping investors steer capital toward “triple-bottom-line” private companies, which aim to produce strong financial, social, and environmental results.
We at Investors’ Circle have begun to see the power of “patient capital” to support entrepreneurs whose companies are leading the way toward the restorative economy. Such companies include Farmers Diner, building new, local connections between organic-food producers and consumers. Or Verdant Power, pioneering submersible turbines for tidal electricity generation. Or United Villages, providing wireless internet access for villages in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Slowing money down, bringing it back down to earth, thinking longer term, recapturing money, and redeploying it as an agent of community and bioregional health, creating what some have called “virtuous globalization” or, even, localization – this is the next great work.
Let The Next Trillion, then, be the most urgently deployed patient capital in history.
If $1 trillion over five years seems like a lot, view it against the $2 trillion that speeds through Wall Street daily or America’s $14 trillion gross domestic product.
If we can spend $1 trillion on an Iraqi nightmare, then we can invest $1 trillion in a new American Dream.
The New Deal, Marshall Plan, Manhattan Project, Apollo Program – when America sets its mind to it, anything is possible.
Let us set our mind to The Next Trillion.
Deployed with requisite vision and courage, it will unleash forces of reconstruction, restoration, and healing, the likes of which the world has never seen.
Woody Tasch is the chairman of Investors’ Circle, a network that since 1992 has connected patient-capital investors with early-stage companies and venture funds that promote sustainability.
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
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November 16th, 2007
Here in California, the big news is mostly about the construction companies going bankrupt — the company my son-in-law works for is hanging on by the tips of their fingers, apparently “safe” for a bit and attempting to survive the biggest dip in housing costs in twenty years; when the financial wobble finally gets to the coasts, we’re all in trouble. [We'll talk $$ tomorrow; bummer.]
Today, I want to post a few excellent reads about Federalism [which sounds a lot like Feudalism ... and feels like it, too.]
Jeff Toobin’s book, “The Nine,” revealed the determination of the Republicans to get back to “basics” … their own brand of literalism, and the years years YEARS of plotting and scheming to put their own people in the Supreme chairs, swing the country back into the dark ages. They’ve done too good a job in these last Bush years — and one more judicial appointment will sink any hope of a progressive future, no matter who becomes president.
Roberts and Alito are Federalists — so it’s important to review the implications because Bush will go in a few months, hopefully replaced by someone with a grasp on all that’s happened during the coup and a desire to turn it around, but these jerks will stay put; to cut them loose, they must be impeached from their lifetime appointments and that’s unlikely.
The salting of the judiciary is the Crowning Achievement of the Dub’s regime — it’s the legacy he’ll leave, and it’s so vast in its implication the Pubs might even forgive him all his other gaffs and failures.
The kind of tight-fist’ed control the Federalists enjoy is reflected in the new [old, Orwellian] definition of “privacy.” Having the Fed crawl up your butt with a microscope will keep you safe and protected; is that a definition of insanity or what? Makes me crazy — and I can’t believe the public will swallow it whole. You’ll find good reads on that, below, too.
I’m sandwiching this collection between two hopeful bits — first, a Youtube that was released just after the 2004 election … pass it around; it’s where we’re going. The last read is about John Edwards and his latest attack on status quo … I love this guy, he’s on the offensive and what a relief THAT is. He not only recognizes the bullshit, he jabs it with a stick.
If we don’t have him, or someone like him, in office by January 2009, this country will implode. WaDC has distanced from us for years now — if the public sees no recourse, it will distance from government in the only way it knows how, violence and covert, often criminal, activity. Bush, the “history major,” should know that.
“Authority” brags that it can keep us safe and well — Bush’s systemic corruption of authority is bringing the change we know is coming; it would be Dharmic Blessing if we didn’t have to rip the country apart to claim it.
So — here’s a long post, for a change: the Federalist agenda, the Bush coup, the redefinition of privacy and John Edwards on health care.
Jude
The Battle for America
Youtube
Is 2008 a 1932 moment?
John Zogby, the Observer-Dispatch, Utica, NY.
November 14, 2007
UTICA, New York – At this point in 1931, Franklin Roosevelt did not have a New Deal. He was running against a Hoover presidency and a country that had gone haywire.
The New Deal developed after Roosevelt was elected and was based not on ideology, but on a simple principle that Roosevelt himself underscored. To paraphrase: “I’m not sure what we’re going to do, but we have to try something.”
At this same point in time in 1979, if Ronald Reagan thought that he was going to win the presidency, he was probably the only person in America who thought so. That victory was not assured until the weekend before the election, and again it was based less on ideology and more on the fact that the voters sensed things had gone haywire due to stagflation and the Iranian hostage crisis.
But Reagan took his victory and turned it into a major redefinition of federalism, just as Roosevelt had done 48 years earlier.
So what’s going on today? We have a president with a near record-low job performance rating – 24 percent. (The record lows were Harry Truman after he fired Douglas MacArthur, and Richard Nixon the day before he resigned. Both were at 23 percent. )
But the Democrats who run Congress have an 11 percent job approval rating. Let’s just note that in my polling in 1995, O.J. Simpson was at 16 percent.
Voters are angry and disillusioned. Their faith in governmental institutions is at a record low. Much of that has to do with failure in Iraq and our damaged image abroad, but even more it has to do with Katrina and a pervasive sense that government at all levels is disconnected from Americans’ needs and from the capability of handling a major catastrophe.
When Americans identify the issues they consider most important, they talk about Iraq, but that may be less of an issue next year than the combination of the economy and health care. Health care is the number one economic issue in the country today and health insurance is what separates many Americans between middle-class status and near poverty. In the past, Americans have not voted with a sense of urgency about health care. In 2008, with one in three voters who presently have employer-based insurance afraid of losing some or all of it, they will vote for universal health coverage.
There are other issues. Immigration is very intense. So is science — in the form of global warming and stem cell research. But overriding all of these issues will be the question of whether government can restore confidence. Can it get people to believe that it’s up to the task of insuring safety and security and meeting human needs?
That is what 2008 will be all about. Whether the final two candidates ever express these sentiments, during the campaign or not, once victory is in hand, the next president is going to have to redefine federalism – the proper role of the central government and its relationship to state and local governments, non-governmental organizations and faith-based institutions.
If the new president can do that, he or she will join the ranks of Roosevelt and Reagan. If not up to the task, his or her name may find itself near the bottom of the list of respected leaders. The stakes are very high.
BUSH TO GIVE KEYNOTE HONORING FEDERALIST SOCIETY
American Progress Report
In 1982, conservative legal scholars such as Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork held the Federalist Society’s first National Student Symposium, launching an organization meant to advance the “rule of law.” This week, the organization will celebrate its 25th anniversary with a three-day convention, featuring speakers such as Clarence Thomas and John Yoo, along with Scalia, Ted Olson, and Bork. The Federalist Society has experienced a golden era under President Bush, who will, not surprisingly, be giving the keynote address at the organization’s black tie gala on Thursday. The Federalist Society has served as a gateway for judges and legal aides who strive to work inside the administration, in effect promoting individuals who have dedicated themselves to enforcing a right-wing ideology rather than the law. When Bush took office, many of his top appointees were current and former Federalist Society members, including Gale Norton (Interior Secretary), John Ashcroft (Attorney General), and Spencer Abraham (Energy Secretary). In 2005, the White House seemed to recognize the dangers in associating too closely with the conservative society. It aggressively resisted media efforts to (accurately) characterize then-Supreme Court nominee John Roberts as a member of the group, going so far as to call and pressure reporters to report otherwise. Apparently, that’s all water under the bridge. Roberts is also speaking at the anniversary.
John Dean Challenges America: Fix This Broken Government
BuzzFlash Interview
11/13/2007
It’s quite a stunning explanation of how they feel the presidency should run. For example, they think that when Reagan left office with very high approval ratings, it was like dying rich. They think the president should be down to single digits if he’s doing things right, because he’s such an authoritarian figure, he’s not going to be terribly popular. Well, Bush looks like he’s trying to fulfill that image for them.
~ John Dean, author, Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches
BuzzFlash has been interviewing John Dean off and on for several years now. He’s a prolific writer and legal commentator on issues relating to executive branch authority, lawbreaking, and the balance of powers.
In short, John provides incisive analysis on issues of grave concern to our democracy. His point of departure for his insights is the Constitution.
Dean — unlike Antonin Scalia, for instance — doesn’t pay lip service to the original intent of the founding fathers. Rather, he takes the Constitution at its word, applying it to every American equally — including Cheney and Bush.
That makes John Dean a refreshing voice of justice amidst a mainstream media that de facto proceeds as if the key members of the Bush Administration are above the law.
His Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches comes from a man of great analytical abilities and conscience.
BuzzFlash: — Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches is the latest in a series of books you have written about the recent history of the federal government. Lay out for us a bit how this book fits in.
John Dean: It’s really the third in a trilogy about post-Watergate Washington. I’ve looked at what impact conservative rule has had. I open this book with a chapter on a topic that I thought really needs attention — process.
“Process” is now considered a bad word by political consultants. After writing Worse than Watergate in 2004, which was about the secrecy of the Bush administration, I learned that the Kerry campaign did not use the subject of secrecy because they thought it was a “process” issue. It seemed almost standard policy of Democrats to avoid process issues, with the Congressional leadership telling candidates not to use process issues because they’re wimpy. Well, the name of the game played in Washington is process.
Republicans are manipulating the process to their advantage.
Broken Government looks branch by branch at how their side has used, twisted, distorted, and manipulated the process for their pure political gain. It’s not been for the gain of the American people that they’ve written rules and regulations. Process is really the great machinery of government and how decisions are made. And they’re making decisions solely to benefit the Republican Party. That isn’t the way the system was designed.
BuzzFlash: Before we get into each branch of government, which is pretty much how your book is divided, is your basic premise in this particular book the system of checks and balances?
John Dean: That’s the bottom line. Rather than to try to catalog everything that has gone astray, I tried to look at what fundamental problem this manipulation of process was causing, the bottom line being how it was affecting the Constitution. The distortions that are most troublesome have to do with eliminating the checks and balances that were the very unique part of our Constitutional system.
That’s what the rest of the world has looked at and said: My goodness, the Founders of this country had some real wisdom in their designing system. In fact, I stuck an Appendix in for people who really don’t have any familiarity with the rudimentary separation of powers concept, explaining how it got there and how unique it really is.
BuzzFlash: Let’s talk about the basic premise of our constitutional democracy. We were a nation born of a revolt against a monarchy — King George. A system was constructed that put the power in the hands of the people, in essence, the citizens of the United States, to ensure that no one individual, point of view, religion, et cetera, could ever control the nation.
Beyond the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, this was assured by the system of three branches of government. Not any one of those could emerge supreme and potentially become tyrannical, or assert such authority that it would, in essence, become what America had rebelled against, which was a unitary authority, the monarchical system of government.
John Dean: That’s a nice thumbnail.
BuzzFlash: So here we are. And throughout our history, there’s always been at some level dirty politics. Look at Tammany Hall for the Democrats as an example, in New York a hundred years ago. Chicago also has had a history of stealing votes, and the debate’s still going on about whether the Richard J. Daley machine stole the 1960 election for Kennedy.
John Dean: Actually, I had a question about that the other night. Nixon took this noble stance, essentially: “Well, I didn’t want to disrupt the process of the election that Kennedy had won. And I didn’t want to contest that and delay it.” But I’ve learned by talking to people who had been around Nixon in those years, they actually found out there had been so much corruption downstate, that if they had won, and if they challenged the Chicago vote, they were likely to be haunted, and actually in even worse trouble, from the
downstate vote.
BuzzFlash: That just goes to show you, we’ve had bipartisan corruption. But aside from that, we’ve basically had a system in which both parties have more or less played by the rules. You fight to get elected. You state your case. You try to win. You appoint people who may be of your party’s ideological bent, but tend not to be extremists. And the checks and balances generally worked. Democracy has been a machine that’s functioned fairly well.
John Dean: It’s not pretty. It never has been. But you’re right — it has basically worked because of the structure that was there. This effort to manipulate the process is relatively new, where you are fundamentally changing the working of the system.
BuzzFlash: The United States together is a nation of diverse people, and what holds us together is an allegiance to the Constitution. We have loyalty to this constitutional structure itself. What makes us America is freedom, liberty. We swear allegiance to the system of checks and balances that ensures that everyone gets due process, the right to vote, the right to express their opinion, the right to practice their faith, and so forth.
So fast forward to now. I want to get your take on this. The Democrats briefly controlled the Senate under Tom Daschle. The issue of Bush federal judicial nominees came up, and whether they could be defeated in the Judiciary Committee, and therefore not advance to the Senate and go for an “up or down” vote. This was the mantra of the right. Then there was the emergence of the so-called “nuclear option” — that the Republicans would eliminate the filibuster. Now we see that under the Democrat-controlled Senate, the Republicans are filibustering almost everything that the Bush administration says no to. Yet when Bill Frist was Senate majority leader, he was saying we should eliminate the filibuster, and everything should have an “up or down” vote. Now the Republicans won’t allow much of anything that the Bush administration disagrees with to have an up or down vote. Is that manipulation of the process?
John Dean: Let me just clarify a couple of points. When the Democrats controlled the Senate, and they blocked or delayed some of Bush’s extreme judicial nominees, they were merely doing what the Republicans had done to Clinton in the extreme, and nothing close to what the Republicans had done in refusing to give judges a hearing. The Republicans wouldn’t even put them on the schedule — wouldn’t even consider the nominations, under Orrin Hatch and others. That was a total abuse.
During the brief time during the Bush administration when the Democrats controlled the Senate, they were still running a pretty steady calendar. The issue you’re raising is what happened on the floor when there was a threat of a filibuster requiring a super-majority — in other words, 60 votes — to get the nomination to be considered. Frist decided that they would call upon a change in the rules for what’s called the executive calendar. They weren’t initially saying let’s eliminate the filibuster across the board. They were just addressing things on the executive calendar — the things that the Constitution requires the Senate to consider, like treaties and matters of advice and consent.
People like Orrin Hatch were then saying, well, this is just unprecedented. They forget that Richard Nixon, back in ‘68 when he was on the campaign trail, convinced the Republicans in a Democratically controlled Senate to filibuster Lyndon Johnson’s selection of Abe Fortas as Chief Justice. This is the first time that a threat of filibuster was ever used to block a judicial nomination. The Republicans started the process. When it became clear that Fortas couldn’t ever get through that, he asked that his name be withdrawn. So, again, the Republicans were misstating what the actual facts were and what the actual precedents were.
It was not really as fundamental an attack on the Constitution as the issues that I deal with in Broken Government. I looked at things that were much more basic. This is really a manipulation of the rules, and I could have filled volumes with the difference between the two parties on the manipulation of the rules.
Ironically, it was the Southern Democrats in the Senate who invented a lot of this manipulation of the rules, or practicing the fine art of parliamentary misuse, I guess is the best word. They did it for racist reasons. They didn’t want civil rights legislation to get through the Senate, and the Senate has traditionally been a body that blocks everything.
The Southerners have always been the masters of these rules.
BuzzFlash: Clearly there’s an imbalance in the outrage that reaches through the mainstream media about this. With Bill Frist, this was a huge thing. He was going to drop the “nuclear” bomb. And with the Democrats and Harry Reid, it doesn’t seem to echo through the public discourse and the news media.
John Dean: Let me back up just a little bit, because this does fit in with what I explained as to how the Republicans won control of the House. It was through pure efforts to destroy the institution. They tore it down. They used every tactic they could think of to try to tarnish the House so they could gain control and then rebuild it in their own image. Now that they’ve lost control, what they’re trying to do is again destroy the institution with rather fundamental and crude actions, because the House is changing the rules. It is under repair. They are passing one item after another, only to see them tied up in the Senate.
The public generally doesn’t understand this. It may look like the Democrats aren’t any better than the Republicans at running these institutions. They’re not getting anything through Congress that is satisfying anybody. Most people are unaware that under current Senate procedures, all that has to happen is either for one member to request a hold on a piece of legislation and they can tie it up, or they can threaten a filibuster.
People don’t understand, for example, a motion to recommit in the House. They don’t understand a cloture vote in the Senate. But let me tell you what they do understand about process. They do know when they’re getting screwed.
BuzzFlash: The Republicans are probably very pleased with the recent polls showing Congressional approval at 18%.
John Dean: They are delighted because their strategy is working. This is how they won control of the House after Democrats had controlled it for forty years. When the Republicans got control, they would damn near destroy it and eliminate its fundamental functions. So, they are succeeding again. And they will go to the voters in 2008 and say: “Listen, Democrats can’t run this place.” But they won’t be confessing that their own actions are the ones resulting in the inability of the Democrats to run the Congress.
BuzzFlash: Let’s keep two threads in mind as we talk about the book. One, on pages 45 and 46, you mention the dilemma of the right wing — that they’re in an awkward position managing government, an agency whose missions and very existence they disagree with. That’s a paradox for them. They are the government, and yet they’re trying to dismantle the government. Then the second thing, on page 117, is that the separation of powers is a uniquely distinguishing feature of our democratic republic. With that in mind, let’s start with the legislative branch.
John Dean: If I had to give you a sound bite as to what’s gone astray under Republican rule in the legislative branch, it’s that they refuse to have deliberation. They eliminated the deliberative process and literally closed out the opposition party. And they did it in a remarkable array of ways — everything from the way they structured the body, where they appointed chairmen who are not necessarily particularly able, but were able to raise money to further the Republican majority, to the way they would write legislation outside the committee.
They would have lobbyists hand them the legislation. They would put it into a piece of legislation in the dead of the night. They would open votes which normally would take fifteen minutes, and run them for three hours. Bribery actually was done in some instances to get members to vote. But they were satisfied just with the one-vote majority.
They brought an instability into the body, the likes of which it had never been. I’ve had some historians tell me there were some times right after the Civil War where it was pretty rough. Yes, but that was before there was professional staff and before the Congress had fully institutionalized itself. That was the pre-modern Congress. I’m focusing on the modern
Congress and the drastic impact they have had on the Constitutional basis, the rules, the traditions. There’s something that’s called the regular order, which they refuse to follow.
There’s also good news, though. I do recognize that since they lost control in ‘06, the Democrats have been busy repairing. They have done things like change the ethics rules. They have gone to a longer work week. They have not done things like have conference committees, where they freeze the other party out. In fact, a lot of Republicans were surprised that Pelosi didn’t have a reign of retribution for what they’d done to them for the last ten years. To the contrary, she wants to see the people’s business done.
BuzzFlash: So you say the legislative branch is broken but under repair.
John Dean: Correct.
BuzzFlash: From an outcome standpoint, though, because of the lack of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, basically nothing of any consequence gets out of Congress.
John Dean: That is true. But they’ve actually brought the rules back. One example concerns earmarks. Now they have some level of transparency in both the House and the Senate. The executive calendar is actually moving again in the Senate. So it is being repaired. Of course, not all the things that the Americans had hoped for by turning over control to the Democrats, have happened, because of the obstructionism. I actually saw that coming. As I was finishing Broken Government, I noted in there that the Republicans still are hell-bent on busting the place up, notwithstanding the efforts to repair it.
BuzzFlash: The second branch of government you deal with is the Executive Branch. It is badly broken and certainly in need of repair. The question at this point is, is it repairable? You’ve written so much about the Executive Branch in your fine law columns and in your books, characterizing and documenting the authoritarian nature of the Executive Branch. It doesn’t seem repairable as long as Bush and Cheney are in power. They seem to be going for enhanced unitary executive authority.
John Dean: It’s true. In fact, the bottom line for this affair is going to be removing Republicans from the Executive Branch. They have embedded so many people, contrary to the Civil Service laws, that it’s going to take not just 2008, but 2012, 2016, and possibly 2020 and 2024 to clear this problem up. If the public ever becomes aware of this, it’s going to be a long time before they ever let another Republican back in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
BuzzFlash: Recently the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, was orchestrating not just the extension of the six-month FISA law, but even an expansion to provide more powers. McConnell is pushing for this extensively, with Bush and Cheney in the background. Why, at this late date in this administration, are they doing this, unless it’s that they believe a Republican will win the presidency in 2008? They certainly aren’t doing this for Hillary Clinton.
John Dean: That’s true. One has to understand how the conservative philosophy about executive powers has changed. They started strengthening the presidency during the Reagan administration. At one point, Newt Gingrich actually believed the Legislative Branch could become the dominant branch, but he was out-foxed by Clinton. During the government shutdown, Gingrich realized that he couldn’t be king of the hill and deal with a President of equal standing. That’s when they really went full bore and decided that we have to have a strong presidency.
With Clinton, they realized — we have all these presidential powers, and we don’t want to alter the powers of the presidency. We want to affect the person who is President. That’s when they went after Clinton relentlessly, attacking the man, trying to tie up his presidency, diluting his powers at any point. That’s been their consistent philosophy.
You see this if you read books like Terry Eastland’s Energy in the Executive, which is something of a handbook for Republicans and conservatives in understanding executive power. It’s quite a stunning explanation of how they feel the presidency should run. For example, they think that when Reagan left office with very high approval ratings, it was like dying rich. They think the president should be down to single digits if he’s doing things right, because he’s such an authoritarian figure, he’s not going to be terribly popular. Well, Bush looks like he’s trying to fulfill that image for them.
Bush is not a theorist; he is not a long-visioned man. It’s Cheney who is trying to get these powers in fast while they can, pushing the envelope constantly to build this enormously powerful presidency. He’s been convinced, even before 9/11, that we need a dominant president, this unitary executive theory. It doesn’t matter that they may well not have a Republican in power. In that case, they will then turn to the tactic of trying to see if they can destroy the person who’s actually there, while keeping those powers.
BuzzFlash: So if a Democrat gets in, they bring the Democrat down, as they tried to do with Clinton, beginning with the Arkansas project that resulted in the impeachment process.
John Dean: That’s exactly the game they play.
BuzzFlash: Even if a Democrat wins, the idea is to weaken them to the point they can’t use the powers we’ve created for the presidency — but the power will be there for when we return.
John Dean: That’s what they will attempt. That’s why a book like this is so important — so people will understand what in the hell they’re doing and why they’re doing it. They are gaming the system.
This is why I have such disgust with what they’re doing. They don’t give a damn about taking care of the general public and the broader public interest. They have one interest — what’s best for Republicans? That’s often big business. That’s often people who are in small business and successful. And it forgets over half the country. To me, it’s disgusting.
That’s why they call me a partisan to the Democrats. I say I am a partisan for good government, honest government, and you guys are screwing with the system. You’re gaming a process and creating a government that is quite unfair.
BuzzFlash: In many ways, you are a true conservative, and they are right wing. There’s a big difference. A conservative believes in states’ rights, in the right to privacy, in local community control. Now we have a government that says we can tap your phones at will without court order, and the federal government predominates in so many areas of our life. States’ rights are insignificant in comparison to executive order and federal decrees. That’s not conservative.
John Dean: Not at all.
BuzzFlash: That’s radical.
John Dean: That’s what it is.
BuzzFlash: Let’s move on to the third branch, which you probably are most pessimistic about. You describe the third branch as being near the breaking point.
John Dean: The most startling part of this analysis was looking at what authoritarians and Republicans have done to the judicial process. This was the stunner to me. I needed to explain to people how they’d actually done this, and how it goes back to my time in the White House. In a sense, I’m partially responsible, although I’ve apologized for their putting Bill Rehnquist on the Supreme Court.
BuzzFlash: You also wrote a book called The Rehnquist Choice in 2001.
John Dean: It was a different time, and I was looking at a very specific way that Nixon had of selecting Supreme Court justices. Thinking that I knew who Bill Rehnquist was, and Nixon wanting a conservative, I said, this is the man you want. And, boy, he got him in spades.
As I say, I have apologized for that. I thought I knew Rehnquist. Then I saw him literally just dissemble in front of the Senate about his past. He was never vetted, and it was a sorry chapter. Unfortunately it became a pattern — he is the first of what I call fundamentalist jurists. As most people know, all it takes is five votes by the Supreme Court to really control the federal law.
BuzzFlash: Or the presidency, as we saw in 2000.
John Dean: Conservatives will often swing and vote with what I called the fundamentalists. Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas are fundamentalists. It wasn’t clear initially exactly what Roberts was when he replaced Rehnquist, nor Alito. In my talking to people who literally make their living by practicing in front of that Court or teaching about that Court, I have
raised this question. It’s pretty clear that, while they’re a little bit more subtle, a little bit more nuanced, they too are fundamentalists. So we have four fundamentalists on the Court now.
If we get another vacancy on that Court, I think the Senate has absolutely got to put its foot down like they did with Ted Olson and say we will not confirm another fundamentalist to this Court. We want the American people to vote on this. This is too important. The polls show about 75% of the American people do not want a fundamentalist type of federal law.
In the book, I sort of project where the Court’s rulings would come out if they had five votes — and it’s devastating. It’s legal positions you could never get either of the political bodies of the federal government to approve. But yet you could now make them the law of the land if you had five fundamentalist jurists. This has implications for my grandchildren that I don’t want those little girls to have to live with.
BuzzFlash: I would venture to reframe what they’re called. I think they’re extremists and constitutional revisionists. Scalia talks about being a strict constructionist, but, basically, he promotes his notions. He claims they’re in the Constitution, but they aren’t. He believes that there basically is no separation of church and state. He believes, as Alito and Roberts and Thomas do, in the dramatic reduction of checks and balances by the assertion of a strong unitary authority — not just strong, but almost an all-powerful unitary authority. These are people, who, in the name of the Constitution, are actually radical revisionists of the Constitution.
John Dean: They are that. I call them fundamentalists because this term is widely known and used in the legal community. It’s term we really need people to understand.
BuzzFlash: We also have to consider the rest of the federal judiciary. Many, many decisions, which had gone against the assertion of authority by the Bush administration, have been overturned in the federal appellate courts by appointees of either Reagan, Bush I or Bush II. Key people like Laurence H. Silberman and David B. Sentelle seem to be around at key times. There’s a whole group of these people who sit in key positions in the federal courts.
John Dean: There is something called the Federalist Society that sees to the care and feeding of these people, and the breeding of them, and the development of their thinking, from law school to the federal bench.
BuzzFlash: Being a member of the Federalist Society is like their Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Whereas many people have at least a vague notion of what’s going on with the Executive Branch and Congress –
John Dean: — they know almost nothing about the federal judiciary.
BuzzFlash: Yes, that’s my point. If you talk to people about the judiciary, they say, What? They don’t know who’s involved, they don’t know what it does, they think the judiciary is somehow a neutral force or something. They don’t realize that judges are people with opinions. The law is an evolutionary process in this country, and that’s why you have a judicial system. Someone has to make a ruling based on their judgment of the law. There’s no way that their personal viewpoint on the law and their ideology do not enter into it.
John Dean: The federal judiciary probably affects them in their daily life more than the two political branches.
BuzzFlash: It really didn’t get keyed up until the Reagan administration.
John Dean: That’s when they formalized and institutionalized the process of finding cookie-cutter type candidates to put on the federal judiciary.
BuzzFlash: They were tenacious in trying to pack the bench, and they have been that way under Bush II. They realize the importance of packing the federal bench, not only at the Supreme Court level. There are just too few opportunities there.
John Dean: If you noticed, I put a table in the book showing that they have won that battle. Of the 181 federal judgeships, 53% are controlled by Republicans. I would say probably 80% of those, if not higher, are pretty hard-core Republican conservatives.
BuzzFlash: They often nominate people with very limited legal credentials, but they’re loyalists and they’ve drunk the water. It’s not a question of their legal ability or their disposition and records on the bench. It’s a question of their ideology.
John Dean: Bottom line, the Republicans have politicized the non-political branch. A ruling on a legal issue, by a panel on the court of appeals or by the Supreme Court, is not much different than a position the Republican National Committee would take.
BuzzFlash: Exactly. It’s not laughable, but it is, in a way.
John Dean: It’s painfully laughable.
BuzzFlash: You also have a chapter about repairing government and restoring proper process. So, is there any hope?
John Dean: I happen to be a glass-half-full type of person. I think there is hope. I have long ago given up on people who are apathetic about government. I think people really have a right to be bad as citizens, if that’s what they want to be. For years, I’ve looked at the studies of what will get people interested in government and interested in the way it operates, and how to become active in it. And every one of them fails. They never really make any difference. It’s just a factor that Americans are always going to rank amongst the world’s democracies as the least caring about their system.
The good news is that there are enough people who do care, who are, in a sense, proxies for those who don’t. I take some comfort in that. If you give these people the facts, they will make the right decision. My parallel has always been, because I find it terribly instructive, the American jury system. It is democracy in a miniature, a micro situation. You take twelve people from different walks of life, different levels of education, give them facts, give them what the rules are. And 99 out of 100 times, they will come out with the right decision.
They’ll make good judgments collectively. It is somewhat mysterious how they do this, and why they do it. But the results just happen to work out. I think the same is true whether they’re Republicans, Democrats, moderates — wherever they fall on the spectrum. When they get the hard facts, they will make a determination. Yes, about 25% are blinded by their leaders who have no conscience, and they will follow them blindly over the cliff. The other 75% of the active people in the American political scene do make wise judgments.
We see it constantly. The reason I write these books is to get the word out to them. You know, a very small part of the population actually reads books. I plan to stay out with this one for quite awhile. I plan to do much more lecturing than I’ve done in the past. I’ve had a lot of requests to do it, to share this information with people. I bring it to their attention,
because I’m convinced they’ll do the right thing after they get the information.
And I don’t carry the water for anybody. I’m just telling people this is the way it is. Look at my documentation. I’m not quoting the left. I’m quoting across the spectrum for the points I’m making, and I document the points I make.
BuzzFlash: In the end, you have been a vigorous defender of constitutional government.
John Dean: That is my agenda.
BuzzFlash: If today that is a partisan agenda, then we’re in real trouble, because this is the foundation of our government. This is where we started in this interview. This is what binds us together as a nation of diverse people — our belief in a constitutionally based government.
John Dean: In a sense, it’s our civil religion.
BuzzFlash: And the checks and balances will keep any one group from seizing control of the government. What you are saying in Broken Government is that, since the judiciary are ultimately the umpires of the checks and balances, we’re perilously close to that system breaking down.
John Dean: If one more fundamentalist or radical gets on that next bench seat — and swings that to a solid five-person majority — I worry deeply. These are issues that must be addressed in 2008.
BuzzFlash: John, thanks so much.
John Dean: You’re welcome.
BuzzFlash Interview conducted by Mark Karlin.
David Sentelle: How One Right-Wing Judge Can be a Wrecking Ball to the Constitution
Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash
Thu, 11/15/2007
This is my fourth entry on David Sentelle, the Zelig of partisan GOP judges on the federal court.
You can read the third entry by clicking here; the second entry by clicking here; and then following that back to the first entry by clicking here. [open link]
Through even a cursory examination of the 20-year career of Sentelle on the D.C. Court of Appeals — and his mysterious role in particularly key decisions regarding Republican administrations — we can begin to see how the GOP extremists have accomplished their goal of consolidating power by controlling the federal courts, particularly in regards to the crucial D.C. Court of Appeals.
It is vitally important to remember that the D.C. Court of Appeals is not like any other federal court. Because of its location in the nation’s capital, it hears the most significant cases relating to governmental powers and the culpability of administration officials.
November 15, 2007
We mentioned in yesterday’s installment that we would return to an interview we conducted with Joe Conason, one of our favorite journalists and co-author of the seminal work (”The Hunting of the President”) on how the Republicans undermined democracy through their long-term, synchronized effort to smear and impeach Bill Clinton.
In doing so, we are emphasizing, once again, Sentelle’s pivotal and political role in using his judicial robes to advance the coordinated strategy, in 1994, to use an “investigation” process to achieve the goal of impeachment, essentially a sanctioned coup.
Remember that this was the same basic Federalist Society crew who used the Supreme Court to steal the election for George W. Bush in 2000. They consider the federal judicial branch of government to be an extension of their effort to achieve unified one-party rule. This is not conjecture; it is borne out by the facts.
So we move onto to our July 25, 2002, interview with Conason to return to the scene of the crime. No impeachment effort would have advanced if David Sentelle had not heeded the bidding of Sentelle’s mentor, Jesse Helms, and then U.S. Senator Lauch Faircloth.
The excerpt is a little long, but well worth the effort to read, and it ends on a prescient note:
BuzzFlash: We’ve talked with Gene Lyons and David Brock, and want to talk with you, about one of the little details that gets lost in the memory of the average person. There are probably only a few hundred people in the U.S. that can recall this, but it’s in your book and David Brock’s book. We’re talking about the moment when former Senator Faircloth of North Carolina and Jesse Helms met with David Sentelle.
What happened? Why was this such a critical moment in the effort to bring down the President? To us, it symbolizes that the right-wing and the Republican Party would stop at nothing to unseat a duly elected president, including using their judiciary pals to try to achieve that effort.
Joe Conason: What happened was very interesting, because it shows how determined the Republicans can be, and how far-sighted they often are when they’re protecting their partisan interest. David Sentelle was put in the position to run the Special Division, which is a special court empowered under the Independent Counsel Act to select independent counsels and to oversee their work. Sentelle was a relatively inexperienced federal judge from North Carolina with extreme right-wing views, brought to power by Jesse Helms. He had been a big fundraiser for Ronald Reagan, which was a principal reason why he was appointed to the bench in the first place. Then he was chosen to run the Special Division by William Rehnquist, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Under the guidelines of the Independent Counsel Act, Rehnquist was supposed to select somebody of senior status, a very experienced judge. But the Act did not require him to do that. And David Sentelle was reliably right-wing. That was the only reason that Rehnquist picked Judge Sentelle, and Judge Sentelle proceeded to behave exactly as I think Rehnquist must have expected him to.
But before the Independent Counsel Act was reinstated by Congress and President Clinton, Robert Fiske had been chosen by Janet Reno to serve as the Whitewater special counsel in January 1994.
BuzzFlash: He was a Republican from New York with integrity.
Joe Conason: He was a U.S. Attorney of spotless integrity, one praised by Republicans when he was chosen. Then he functioned for about six months as the special counsel examining Whitewater. Of course, he basically found very little — if anything — to prosecute. I think he was going to prosecute Webb Hubbell. Other than that, there was very little for him to do, and he was wrapping it up. He had wrapped up the Foster investigation and had found that Foster committed suicide. But the right-wing decided that they were very unhappy with this Republican prosecutor’s results in the Whitewater investigation, and started a campaign in the newspapers to get rid of him, particularly in William Safire’s column for the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal editorial columns. There were really vicious attacks on him.
BuzzFlash: So they demanded a special counsel and a special counsel was appointed. But they didn’t like the fact that Fiske was about to close up shop and say there’s nothing here.
Joe Conason: They didn’t like the investigation of somebody they had endorsed, who was from their party, of total integrity — he had prosecuted Democrats and Republicans as U.S. Attorney. They didn’t like the results, so they started a press campaign to get rid of him and get a different prosecutor in there who would get better results — from their point of view. So what happened? When the Independent Counsel Act was reinstated by Congress in the summer of ‘94 — and the President made the mistake of signing it — Sentelle was suddenly re-empowered. Instead of re-appointing Fiske, he fired Fiske. After meeting with Senators Helms and Faircloth, the two right-wing Republican senators from his home state of North Carolina, Sentelle appointed Ken Starr.
When they were asked about this inappropriate luncheon, the judge and two senators first claimed that all they had talked about was their prostates and cowboy boots. But later, Judge Sentelle admitted under oath that they might have talked a little bit about the independent counsel, though he wasn’t sure exactly what had been said. Naturally this was considered an extremely suspicious set of circumstances by anybody who had the faintest powers of observation.
What happened after the meeting with Helms and Faircloth was that David Sentelle picked Ken Starr. This was a very curious choice because Ken Starr had no prosecutorial experience — none whatsoever. He was an appellate attorney for big corporations. He had been Bush Sr.’s Solicitor General, but he had no experience in criminal prosecution at all. What he did have going for him was that he was a politically reliable, right-wing Republican with a good reputation in the Washington press.
BuzzFlash: And a member of the Federalist Society.
Joe Conason: A leading member and supporter of the Federalist Society, a Bush loyalist, and a very partisan Republican. Not too long before that, Starr had thought of running for the Senate in Virginia as a Republican. He had also recently gotten himself involved in the Paula Jones cases as an informal advisor to Paula Jones’ attorneys. Then he was asked to assist Jones by the Independent Women’s Forum, which is a Scaife-funded political organization for conservative women. So we went from a professional prosecutor — probably one of the best in the country — to a lawyer with no prosecutorial qualifications whatsoever, but a strong partisan who’ll behave that way.
BuzzFlash: This symbolizes to BuzzFlash the intersection between the political objectives of the Republican Party and how they use the judiciary. The judiciary nominations are generally below the radar screen of the public and the press. Yet it’s been so important to the Bush White House to get their people on the courts. That’s because their people, with a wink of an eye, tend to be people that can be relied upon when it comes to decisions that can politically affect the interests of the Republican Party. It seems to BuzzFlash that the David Sentelle appointment of Ken Starr was a pivotal moment. The results consumed the nation for four years, including an impeachment trial — the judiciary was used to secure someone who was willing to try to entrap the President of the United States and lead to an impeachment trial.
Joe Conason: Well, I think that’s right. I think these judicial appointments can’t be underestimated. The judiciary is supposed to protect freedoms from corrupt political leaders. The judiciary is supposed to be a bulwark of freedom, and, in this case, it proved to be the opposite of that. The judiciary was used from the very highest judicial position in the land, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, to make political attacks on the opposition or on the duly elected President. This was how the judiciary was misused. It’s one of the grossest abuses of judicial authority we’ve ever seen. And Rehnquist got away with it.
BuzzFlash: How do you reflect upon the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court to install Bush as President? Particularly that unbelievably frank injunction that Scalia issued to stop the recount, saying the recount might be harmful to the eventual winner of the election, George W. Bush — that it might damage the reputation of his presidency?
Joe Conason: I think this was the end result of a long series of unchecked abuses by partisan conservative members of the Supreme Court. And we may not have seen the last of it. What’s disturbing now is you look at a Court like that and you wonder about challenges to civil liberties — whether the support will stand up for them or not. I have grave doubts.
Well, Conason’s doubts about the upper federal courts not upholding civil liberties has been proven, unfortunately, to be a valid concern. And David Sentelle has played a role in protecting the administration as it dismantles the rights guaranteed to us under the Constitution.
How can one partisan hack judge, a disciple of Jesse Helms, continue to do so much damage?
Because the Democrats in Congress do so little to block under-qualified, Republican loyalists whose primary goal is loyalty to the GOP, not the Constitution.
There has always been much talk of the Yale secret society “Skull and Bones” on the net in terms of speculation about George Bush’s connection to the elite and powerful.
But if you want to know who is at the heart of the right-wing, partisan coup of our federal judiciary, one need just go to a public organization, the Federalist Society, of which Sentelle is an avid member (speaking at college and other chapters around the country).
In fact, as this is being written on November 15th, the Federalist Society is holding its annual conference in D.C.
You might take a look at their speaker’s list. It starts with George W. Bush as the keynote at their grand black tie gala in the main hall of Union Station. Of Course, David Sentelle is on a panel; he wouldn’t disappoint his homies.
More tellingly, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts will deliver the “Seventh Annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture” — and you can be sure Ted Olson, husband of the late right-wing shock pundit, will be there. (Olson played a key role in the theft of the election of 2000 for Bush, and was a leader of the “Arkansas Project” formed in the early ’90s to find grounds to impeach Clinton.)
But it doesn’t stop there. Guess who else is coming to rally the troops? How about, among others, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Robert Bork and Edwin Meese?
Phyllis Schlafly and John “Torture” Yoo are also listed as speakers.
If you want to know the members of the vast right-wing federal judiciary, of whom Sentelle is just one key player, the Federalist Society convention is the place to be today.
It doesn’t need to be a secret society; their activist, extremist judicial power grab is right out in the open.
And tonight their Howdy Doody, George W. Bush, will come to receive their gratitude and to express his thanks for all that they do for his radical agenda. After all, Bush wouldn’t be president without their assistance in 2000.
David Sentelle will be there, you can be sure, a proud foot soldier in the Republican judicial infantry.
Privacy redefined: Big Brother comes to America
Mary Shaw, Smirking Chimp
Nov 14 2007
Per Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,”No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home, or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”
In other words, we can rest comfortably in our homes, knowing that our privacy is sacred under this international standard of which the U.S. was a founding endorser.
But now the Bush administration is in charge.
They redefined torture. And now they’re redefining privacy.
You see, we were attacked on 9/11 by a handful of fringe radicals. Therefore, the Bush administration needs to read your e-mails and monitor your phone calls. Oh, and they need to review your financial records. Go figure.
As a recent CNN article explains:
[I]t is time that people in the United States change their definition of privacy. Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.
Yeah, and the fox will “properly safeguard” the henhouse.
Hello, Big Brother.
Ministry Of Truth Helpfully Redefines Privacy
Chris Weigant, HuffPo
November 12, 2007
A United States Ministry of Truth spokesman proudly unveiled the new official definition of “privacy” today, on the heels of their successful campaign to redefine “torture.” The new meaning of the word “privacy” will now be (according to MiniTru): “the secure feeling citizens get by knowing that their government is collecting and protecting their personal data.” Old definitions of privacy will no longer be operative.
The MiniTru spokesman was quite enthusiastic about the definition rollout.
“For generations Americans have been burdened by the responsibility of guarding their own privacy,” he said. “This was too great a task for the public to adequately control, so the logical answer was to have the government take over this onerous work, to better serve each citizen’s private life. No longer will Americans have to worry about their own privacy, because now Big Brother will take care of it for them.”
OK, I made those quotes up, I admit. But I’m sad to say I didn’t make up the story itself. Both the AP and the New York Times have stories about principal deputy director of national intelligence Donald Kerr’s recent speech [PDF transcript] to the Geospatial Intelligence Foundation. Here are some of the quotes from Kerr:
“Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety.”
“Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity, but in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity — or the appearance of anonymity — is quickly becoming a thing of the past.”
When asked to elaborate on the “privacy does not equal anonymity” implications, Kerr responded:
It’s a really good question because, in fact, it’s a personal question that everyone, in a way, has to answer for themselves. But I think today, you know, I’m willing to call up, pick the vendor of your choice. I’m willing to share my credit card number and expiration date with a person I have never seen, have no idea whether they’ve been vetted or not. I’ve certainly been able to get past being anonymous in that transaction. And of course, you multiply that by all of the transaction [sic] that you’re involved in every day.
I was taken by a thing that happened to me at the FBI, where I also had electronic surveillance as part of my responsibility. And people were very concerned that the ability to intercept emails was coming into play. And they were saying, well, we just can’t have federal employees able to touch our message traffic. And the fact that, for that federal employee, it was a felony to misuse the data — it was punishable by five years in jail and a $100,000 fine, which I don’t believe has ever happened — but they were perfectly willing for a green-card holder at an ISP who may or may have not have been an illegal entrant to the United States to handle their data. It struck me as an anomalous situation.
So this is not something where groupthink works for an answer. I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that up doesn’t empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere.
Kerr gets bonus points for using a Newspeak-y term “groupthink” in there, and for gratuitous immigrant-bashing as well.
Not content to rest on his laurels, he somewhat bizarrely took a swipe at Tonto, while explaining that we’re all just going to have to get used to his new definition of privacy:
Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity; and it’s an idea that is deeply rooted in American culture. The Long Ranger [sic -- I'm sure he meant to say "Lone Ranger"] wore a mask but Tonto didn’t seem to need one even though he did the dirty work for free. You’d think he would probably need one even more. But in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity — or the appearance of anonymity — is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
Anonymity results from a lack of identifying features. Nowadays, when so much correlated data is collected and available — and I’m just talking about profiles on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube here — the set of identifiable features has grown beyond where most of us can comprehend. We need to move beyond the construct that equates anonymity with privacy and focus more on how we can protect essential privacy in this interconnected environment.
Protecting anonymity isn’t a fight that can be won. Anyone that’s typed in their name on Google understands that. Instead, privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured. And it is that framework that we need to grow and nourish and adjust as our cultures change.
I think people here, at least people close to my age, recognize that those two generations younger than we are have a very different idea of what is essential privacy, what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs. And so, it’s not for us to inflict one size fits all. It’s a need to have it be adjustable to the needs of local societies as they evolve in our country. Eventually, we can only hope that people’s perceptions — in Hollywood and elsewhere — will catch up.
So because I’ve used Google once in my life, I have agreed to have the United States government tap my email and phone?
Wow.
But seriously, this is the type of person who is supposed to be in charge of protecting privacy while “going after terrorists,” and his complete inability to see the difference between a transaction between a citizen and a private company and the government’s ability to listen in to that conversation. This is terrifying. That someone with such a basic lack of the principles involved is high up in the chain of command at National Intelligence, and is apparently informing the citizenry of the “new” and “improved” definition of privacy: Private is Public. Anonymous is Evil.
Towards the end of the AP article, the Electronic Freedom Foundation gives their response, which I couldn’t agree with more:
Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that defends online free speech, privacy and intellectual property rights, said Kerr’s argument ignores both privacy laws and American history.
“Anonymity has been important since the Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms,” Opsahl said. “The government has tremendous power: the police power, the ability to arrest, to detain, to take away rights. Tying together that someone has spoken out on an issue with their identity is a far more dangerous thing if it is the government that is trying to tie it together.”
Opsahl also said Kerr ignores the distinction between sacrificing protection from an intrusive government and voluntarily disclosing information in exchange for a service.
“There is something fundamentally different from the government having information about you than private parties,” he said. “We shouldn’t have to give people the choice between taking advantage of modern communication tools and sacrificing their privacy.”
“It’s just another ‘trust us, we’re the government,’ ” he said.
Or, more properly, Trust Big Brother. Big Brother loves you!
Redefine Privacy … Umm … No Thanks
A. Alexander, Progressive Daily Beacon
November 12th, 2007
One of the Bush administration’s senior intelligence officials said that the American people needed to reassess their understanding of personal privacy. According to the official, privacy can no longer mean anonymity, i.e. having one’s personal information remain unknown. “Instead,” he said, “it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.” Umm … (rubbing eyes with heel of palms in disbelief) … SAY WHAT?
Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence, was the official who suggested that the American people redefine their definition of privacy. Okay, we’ve thought about what Mister Kerr said and please, with all due respect to both he and the Bush-Cheney … err … team, we’d prefer not to redefine our definition of privacy. We would very much prefer that our privacy … ah … umm … remain private.
No offense, but “privacy” doesn’t now mean, nor will it ever include an individual citizen, his or her government AND the corporate boardroom. That’s not privacy, that’s an orgy.
This might be hard for Donald Kerr and Dick Cheney and George Bush to understand, but if Bill O’Reilly wants to call his intern or coworkers on the phone in hopes of doing the “what’re you wearing” rub-n-stroke marathon, that’s really nobody’s business but theirs. And it sure as heck isn’t any concern of the government or EXXON Oil. Why exactly does the government need to listen to an absent father’s phone call to his daughter on her birthday?
Under what possible circumstance is it vital that the CEO of RJ Reynolds be made privy to a mother’s email sent to her son away at university? Mister Kerr’s concept grows creepier by the moment. His understanding of privacy is really quite perverted.
Seriously, does Donald Kerr really believe that the American people would be comfortable knowing that someone like Dick Cheney or a corporate parasite like Enron’s former CEO, Kenneth Lay, was listening in on their private discussions? Dick Cheney can’t even keep the identity of an undercover CIA agent secret. It doesn’t seem likely that Mable Pierce in Milwaukee, Wisconsin would want a blabber-mouth like that to know about the affair she’s been having with her husband’s brother. Mister Cheney would tell Scooter Libby, Scooter Libby would tell Robert Novak and the next thing you know, Mable would end up in divorce court. And sorry, there is absolutely no reason that a Ken Lay-like corporate snake in the grass would need to know anything about Mable Pierce’s private affair(s). What Mable’s doing with her brother-in-law might be wrong, but it isn’t any of Dick Cheney’s business
and it sure as heck isn’t any concern to corporate America.
And hey, what about ALL those Republican strategists, state campaign chairman, senators and congressman dialing numbers found on the stalls in the men’s room all across America? These Republicans are hypocrites, but their “is that you big fella” phone conversations are their private business … neither government, nor corporations need to be involved. Who knows, maybe if they were secure in the privacy of their conversations they wouldn’t need to meet in bathrooms?
The point Mister Kerr needs to understand is that there has never been, in all of human history, a government or business that was capable of protecting, honoring and respecting the sanctity of any individual’s privacy. And, frankly, nothing about the current government or today’s corporate leadership inspires confidence that anything in that area has changed over time. So, in closing, we’ve considered Mister Kerr’s kind suggestion that we redefine our understanding of privacy and we’ve decided not to invite him, the government and business into our very personal lives.
Mister Kerr shouldn’t take it personal. We just seem to think that he is confusing “privacy” with an orgy and we don’t roll that way. But, never know, Bill O’Reilly might.
Edwards: If Members of Congress Won’t Give Americans a Healthcare Plan, I’ll Take Away Theirs
Joshua Holland, AlterNet
November 15, 2007
Last week, John Edwards launched a series of ads across Iowa promising that if he were elected and Congress didn’t pass his healthcare plan, he would strip lawmakers of their own coverage (you can view the ad in the window to your right).
Arguing that ordinary Americans deserve access to healthcare that’s just as good as what members of Congress get is a devastatingly effective message and has long been a crowd-pleaser among progressives. Edwards told radio talker Ed Schultz, “There’s no excuse for politicians in Washington to have heathcare, but America doesn’t have healthcare, and I think we have to shake this place up a little bit. What we would do is we would submit legislation saying if universal healthcare is not passed by this summer, that the Congress and members of the administration would lose their healthcare coverage.”
It’s a beautiful piece of populism — a message that appeals to an American Main Street that polls show to be as disdainful of Congress as it is hurting from spiraling healthcare costs in the face of stagnant wages. It’s a campaign that can showcase how much lawmakers appreciate the kind of coverage they receive and just how hard they’d fight to keep it, and, importantly, will make it that much harder for opponents to mouth the inevitable blather about the perfidy of “government-run,” “socialized healthcare” with a straight face.
But while the ads represent a very nice piece of political rhetoric by Edwards, make no mistake: It’s also the public presentation of a serious and thoughtful healthcare proposal (PDF) — one that would cover every American — that is both pragmatic in its approach and also the most progressive in the field after Dennis Kucinich’s.
Edwards’s plan, like that available to members of Congress, is built around a lot of choice. Employers would have the option of either covering employees privately or sharing the costs of purchasing coverage from among a menu of state-run plans — called “health markets” — with different amounts of coverage and at different prices. These would all have the advantages of economies of scale and of spreading risk out over large insurance pools. All of the plans would be “open to everyone,” regardless of “pre-existing conditions, medical history, age, job and other characteristics.”
Some single-payer advocates have criticized the plan because, unlike Dennis Kucinich’s call to establish a not-for-profit health system, Edwards’ plan would leave the insurance industry in place to suck patients dry and add enormously to the nation’s healthcare tab.
But while it’s well-intentioned, most of the criticism misses a crucial aspect of the plan.
The key to Edwards’ approach is that it mandates the creation of at least one health market that’s fully public, based on the Medicare model and available to all. That means that the public sector would be allowed to compete with private insurers — a concept that’s anathema among conservatives — and consumers would be able to choose the option, public or private, that gives them the best bang for the buck.
The idea is that once the benefits of a single-payer system become clear — especially the lower costs advocates predict — eventually most people would move, voluntarily, from the private health markets to the fully public one, and the politics of the transition to single-payer would be infinitely more manageable.
That Edwards’ healthcare plan anticipates that transition is no secret; it’s spelled out explicitly:
Health Markets will offer a choice between private insurers and a public insurance plan modeled after Medicare, but separate and apart from it. Families and individuals will choose the plan that works best for them. This American solution will reward the sector that offers the best care at the best price. Over time, the system may evolve toward a single-payer approach if individuals and businesses prefer the public plan.
Some observers have argued that Edwards’ threat is a nice piece of political theater — a means of making a point — but not much more. When blogger Ben Smith asked University of Chicago