Independent Caucus

Democrat Hypocrites On Torture

There is an article on Politico (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22439.html) this morning which cites Democrats from Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, Dianne Feinstein of California, Russ Feingold of Minnesota, and others, accusing the CIA of releasing certain memos detailing briefings given to congressional Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, Carl Levin, and others on the enhanced interrogation techniques used at the time during the Bush administration to deflect blame from themselves.  That they are covering their own butts on this one, and attempting to deflect attention to our lawmakers.

Well hell yeah!  And rightly so!

They even make it sound like the Executive branch is out to get them!  Feingold says, "members of the committee or their staff were not in any way involved in [the release of the document]. It appears to come from the executive branch itself. ... I think it’s unbelievable."

Specifically, he finds it unbelievable that Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan requested from the CIA, and received (sin of all sins on the part of the Executive branch, which includes the CIA), a release of memos detailing these briefings of particularly congressional Democrats who are hollering "torture" now so loudly.

Do Feingold, Feinstein, Levin not think the memos should have been released?  These are some of the same Democrats I heard complain time and again when President Bush was in the Oval Office about its refusal to release such memos, and the overuse, they claimed, of classifying documents in a range of different areas, including the whole brouhaha over the U.S. Attorney firings.

So now not only are these Democrats hypocrites on torture, they are hypocrites on open government!

I say Obama is letting these various memos out - earlier memos which were damaging to the former President, his legal advisers, and his Justice Department in particular, and these CIA memos providing information on briefings, including and especially to Democrats - because he IS in fact a believer in open government.  That's my conclusion at this point, and the only part of this whole story which doesn't reek.

ALL these memos should come out now.  There are no more grand secrets to be kept.  And the public wants to know.  If there are still some particulars which must remain secret, then redact them sparingly, and release the rest.

But here's the most despicable part of this story, and of the objections being offered now by the likes of Feinstein and company - they are saying that most to blame for the fact that these interrogations took place is the CIA!..and that they are trying to cover their butt and deflect blame onto legislators.

It's like blaming the prison guards for Abu Grab!

The CIA are the foot soldiers in all of this.  They are at the end of the chain!  The President and his advisors, lawyers, and his Justics Department are at the top of the chain.  Next after them are the legislators who by law must be briefed, and were briefed, and who serve in our government as a check and balance on the actions of the Executive branch, a check and balance on potential tyranny, as the Framers saw it and designed it.  And it worked exactly as it was supposed to.  Except people like Pelosi and Levin (briefed 5 times between 2006 and 2007) did nothing.  And they need to account.  And the voters need to hold them to account.  Feingold and Feinstein weren't high enough members on an intelligence committee to receive briefings.  They are just despicable for criticising the CIA for implementing (awe say implementing) the policy which the President (their boss) approved, and about which congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle were informed, and did not object.

If I were a CIA guy, I would have rightly concluded that, "Well, this sucks, but our whole government seems to think it's ok."

This would all be campaign fodder which I would be busily accumulating if I were a prospective opposition candidate to these very prominent Democrat Senators.  And Pelosi should lose her seat next time Californians vote.  Not only was she the ranking Democrat overall in the Congress, but also the ranking minority member of the Intelligence Committee back in 2002 and 2003 when, had a bigger stink been made, something could have been done to terminate the program in its infancy.

But check out the article.  If you wonder what the smell is, it's probably eminating right off your computer screen.  As Orrin Hatch said about this, the Republican Senator from Utah, "We’re not without power up here.  Now, they can make a fuss on policy differences, but to try and besmirch the people who had these tough decisions to make during those trying times is really offensive to people like me."  And, as Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas said (top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and someone therefore who knows), when asked whether the relevant Democrat lawmakers were informed of the interrogation techniques, his answer: "A strong, affirmative, yes."

Why Guantanamo Should Close

My brother wrote this, prompted by a letter from Andrew McCarthy to Attorney General Eric Holder, which argued strongly for a continuation of the Bush policy of indeterminate detention for terror suspects until the "end of hostilities".  I post it here, as I strongly agree.  Enjoy.

"The president is convening a roundtable task force to decide what to do about the so-called terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  The president invited a diverse group of people to participate, including conservatives, like Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, and a commentator for the National Review.  McCarthy favors detention of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo until as he puts it in his letter to Eric Holder “the conclusion of hostilities.”  Of course, how one defines the “conclusion of hostilities” is subject to considerable debate. 

In the end, McCarthy favors limitless detention of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo – no opportunity to confront the allegations, no access to counsel, no right to a trial, no right to present evidence in defense of the allegations, etc.  This is the same Andrew McCarthy, who like Sean Hannity, doesn’t think water boarding is torture, but rather “enhanced interrogation.”  Essentially, McCarthy favors an approach to dealing with terrorism suspects that defies the U.S. Constitution and Americanism, and resembles the former Soviet-style method for dealing with political prisoners, i.e. indeterminate imprisonment in Siberian gulags.

There is, of course, a constitutional middle ground.  Where the evidence supports charges of terrorist activity, the persons guilty of that activity should be convicted in court and punished severely.  Where the evidence does not exist, the persons detained should be placed on a ship, and dropped off on the shores of their native countries.  This is the American system of justice, by no means flawless, but nevertheless the best system known to mankind.  Will some of the persons released engage in future terrorist activity?  Perhaps.  But, in this country some of the guilty go free.  That is the price of liberty.  There are countries in this world where all of the guilty are punished, where the political decision has been made to subvert liberty to achieve security.  None of us would want to live in those countries, but they exist.

True patriotism ain’t easy.  It requires adherence to American values even when it isn’t convenient or politically expedient.  This country was founded on the defense of “inalienable” human rights.  For obvious reasons, the detention facility is fundamentally un-American, and President Obama is right to shut it down."  - Tom Intili

A Hundred Days, An Overview

Apparently my readership is about to increase, so, time to write something interesting, update the photo, etc, etc.

Anyone who has happened upon this blog knows that its posts are not of typical blog-length.  Some would say article-length; others, tome length.  Whatever.  Practice your attention span, I say.  Besides, why only be fascinated for one or two paragraphs.

But this post is more a compendium of things which have occurred over Obama's first 100 days - that completely irrelevant measuring stick of performance which somehow or another is here to stay.

Inauguration Speech:
You know, just ok.  I wrote a post on this.  And I was there, 30 yards away, maybe.  We were crammed in, and people were full of hope, where I was, and all down the mall, which was just a thumbnail of how people felt across the country, and around the world, whether they voted for Obama or not.  The tide definitely changed that day, from threat-level "orange" to hope.  And like him or not, that fact, in aggregate, was undeniable, as name the last time 2 million people packed the National Mall.

Stimulus Bill:
I wrote a post on this, too, and I said I thought it would have been a good time for him to ring a bell long and loudly to the leaders of Congress, namely, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, that "change" had arrived in Washington, by publicly calling for a rewrite of the bill whose authorship began at his request before he was even president, and was replete with, in "old-Washington" fashion, plenty of constituent goodies, as well as plenty other rightly stimulative things and investments in infrasture of the kind he had campaigned about.  And if they wouldn't rewrite it, I said he should have vetoed it.  Now, I freely acknowledge this may reveal my naivete about Washington.  Jimmy Carter tried to come in and change Washington on day one from its usual way of doing things, and all he accomplished was to alienate himself from the Congress, leaving him with few allies in advancing his legislative agenda.  The difference - and I think it matters - is that Jimmy Carter did not have 2 million people on the National Mall, and approval in the mid-70s, with Congress' approval at that same time in the teens, where it had been for some time, even lower than the mid- to high-20s George Bush had been managing in the last couple years of his presidency.  Obama had and still has a mandate for change, and I thought that stimulus bill was a good time to fire across the bow of his own party, as well as the Republicans.  That said, I'm still glad it passed, and I believe we are seeing some of the positive effects now.

Emphasis on "New" Energy and Education:
Much of that emphasis was contained in the stiumuls bill, and it's why I'm glad it passed.  That stimulus bill, as many commentators have said, was the equivalent of about four-years worth of policy initiative for any other president.  And that's why you loved it or hated it, I suppose.  There was tons of money for new energy, and for education, especially college education; and he advanced that latter goal even further with his announcement yesterday, that part of the "new" form of unemployment insurance would be federal money for taking yourself back to school, in order that America can quickly retool and respond to the serpentine path in which a free-market economy flows and develops.  A heckuva good idea, and money well-spent.

Notre Dame Bruhaha Over Conferring Its Traditional Honorary Degree to A New President:
Notre Dame is being really dumb, I'll just say plainly.  Or, rather, those who are making such a stink about presenting Obama with an honorary degree when he is a pro-choice president, where that flies in the face of the Roman Catholic Church's official pro-life position.  I was raised Roman Catholic.  It is still my religious denomination of choice.  But this is why I hate religion as Man inevitably practices and governs it.  While the Bible and the Koran, which are the bases for the major world religions, have in common the promotion of love, compassion, and generosity to your fellow man, once human beings get involved, they inevitably cherry-pick those same documents to advance and promote an us-and-them view of the world, wrapped effectively and cleverly in a spiritual bow inevitably tied to one's prospects for holy salvation.  Enter the "holy war", be it the Crusades, or the insanity that Islam is permitting in this day and age, where blowing up women and children in the market place, or mowing them down in the lobby of a hotel is an act worthy of martyrdom, and the highest reward by their God.  A religious zealot is someone for whom a few specific religious beliefs trump nearly all other judgments.  This is what Notre Dame does when it says Obama should not receive the degree.  Does the Catholic Church not view as beneficial the social investments on which Obama campaigned, education being just one of them?  Do they not think that will save lives?  What about his professed desire to engage more with our adversaries?  Do they not think that might save some lives?  Obama has simply removed executive orders which in fact ran counter to the established law of the land since, what, 1973?..and that is the Roe v. Wade decision, which in the subsequent 36 years has only been upheld time and again by an array of different challenges and decisions.  Time for Notre Dame to understand that President Obama is not President of the Roman Catholics, by the Roman Catholics, and for the Roman Catholics, who, incidentally, if Notre Dame cared at all, and they don't, vote overwhelmingly for Obama, 55% to 45%.

Cuba:
President Obama, you go!  I don't even smoke cigars but when someone sticks one in my hand, and still I'm looking forward to the day here soon when the wrapper says "producto de Cuba".  Come on.  We engage all these years with China, but not Cuba?  It's just dumb.  Why is economic engagement with China the right policy, but embargo the right policy for Cuba?  Canada, Mexico, the rest of the world dropped their embargos a long time ago.  We're left looking like the knuckleheads.  I don't like it when my country looks like a knucklehead.  I'm looking foward to my first Cuban beach vacation in the VERY near future, y cervezas a la playa.

Pelosi:
Is it just me, or is it fun to watch her backpedal on what she knew about the aggressive interogation techniques employed by the Bush administration, now that everyone (nearly), and most importantly our new President and Justice Department have officially deemed them torture.

Ok, enough fun.  And it's warm outside, and not raining, so far, so no time to waste.  That's my take.  Let me know if you have a different one.  And I'll tell you what's wrong with it.  Ha.  Naw, you know that's not how I work.  Happy Satuday, readers, especially those new ones, who, I'm told, tend toward the inflammatory.  Bring it on!

Les Gelb Helping Us Make Sense

Readers:  I started this before and had to stop.  Easter Mass was beckoning.  Here is the completed version.

Leslie Gelb was on CSPAN this morning promoting his new book, Power Rules:  How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy.  And, in short, he made a lot of sense.

Some might remember Gelb as the guy who teamed up with Biden, prior to Biden announcing for the presidency, to craft a plan for Iraq.  At the time, Iraq was a mess, with sectarian killings amounting to scores each day.  Shiite and Sunni, mostly, were doing their best to annihilate one another, while the Kurds just hoped it all stayed south of them.  Gelb and Biden suggested a loose confederation of states within an otherwise unified Iraq:  basically, a Kurd, Shiite, and Sunni state, each of which could fashion its own local police force, and pass local laws in keeping with local needs and culture, while the central government was responsible for the army, national security in general, and, especially, the distribution of oil revenues among the three states.  Gelb and Biden's point at the time was that this was happening in reality on the ground anyway, and that codifying it could provide some structure and, hopefully, relief from the sectarian mayhem.  I don't know if any more has come of that, particularly the codification part.  But, fundamentally, this was an attempt by Gelb and Biden to take a common sense approach to the problem in Iraq.  Incidentally, their model for Iraq was similar to the model which brought peace to Bosnia, where in that conflict it was Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims killing each other.  So, whether you liked the plan or didn't at the time, it was a pragmatic plan, based on real-world events, and an observation and appreciation of that which had worked in Bosnia, and similarly in Northern Ireland.

This time Gelb was trying to make common sense more generally with respect to American geo-political goals, and what those goals should be, and should not be.  In short, he said the goals should be honest, public, and constrained by that which we believe can reasonably be accomplished.

They should be honest and public in that we should not bluster one thing and do another.  He said that only ever makes America look weaker, but that there are tremendous pressures brought to bear on any American president to sound tough.  The thinking is "We are the United States!  Leader of the free world!  If we don't say 'This won't stand' whom does the job fall to, the French?"  One of Gelb's points is that that argument often carries the day, and the U.S. government or president makes some statement as President Obama did following the North Korean missile test, a very tough-sounding statement which inferred tough action, stating that Security Council resolutions have to mean something if violated.  President Bush made the very same argument against Saddam Hussein in girding for war in Iraq.  President Bush followed through.  But here Gelb would say Bush committed the other mistake, which is attempting something which is beyond American power alone to accomplish.

Bush followed Ronald Reagan's lead of not giving a hoot about public borrowing to accomplish his presidential ends.  He mimicked Reagan again by pursuing the ideological goal of deeply cutting taxes at the same time as he borrowed to accomplish his presidential ends.  Meaning he had to borrow that much more.  He had to borrow enough to offset the shortfall he was implementing in Treasury revenues through his tax cut, plus the extra to meet his presidential ends.  And what were those ends?  For Reagan, it was the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI - a first of its kind attempt to build a missile defense shield around the U.S.  Reagan borrowed to fund SDI and just generally to buy a lot more military hardware.  Those were his ends.  Reagan had to borrow to pay for that.  He also had to borrow for every dollar decrease to the Treasury from his deep tax cut because he didn't offset his tax cut with any cuts in government spending.  As I mentioned, he dramatically increased government spending overall, with the Defense Department getting the lion's share.  For Bush, his ends were conquering Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein.  As well as fighting terrorism.  But his attention on Al Qaeda shifted almost immediately from Al Qaeda to Iraq after 9/11, which many from his administration, documented in several books, say was his focus from day one.

Gelb says the kinds of ambitions which Reagan had for SDI, and which Bush had for a free Iraq, particularly if they have to be bought on a gargantuan national credit card, are a bridge too far for this country, and a greater threat to America than either a missile attack or Saddam Hussein combined.

I agree.  We are getting to where we don't trust the wisdom and motivations of our presidents.  Anyone who doesn't think this is a bad thing for democracy please step up and comment to that effect on this blog.  I worry now with President Obama that his ends, admittedly, much different and more liberal than Reagan's or Bush's, are being similarly pursued with but a scant eye to the deficit, much less the total national debt.  Obama's investments in health care, education, new energy, and infrastructure are all investments which for far too long, and to the far too great detriment of this country, have been back-burnered to fund weapons technologies of various kinds - SDI and others - or, in the case of Iraq, to fund a hugely expensive war and goal which did not have the support, and therefore funding, of the rest of the world.  They have also been back-burned by a sequence of Republican presidents who somehow, quite unbelievably, have failed to see their import, even, quite literally, their national-security import to this country, since we are a country of guns and butter made strong by the ample supply and quality of both.  But Obama is trying to be the anti-Reagan, the anti-Bushes, all at once.  And, once again, Gelb would say this is a bridge too far.

If Obama attempts to do too much he will have ruined any chance at truly changing political and national priorities in this country.  If he takes a bad balance sheet, made bad by Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, and makes it worse by making one of their worst mistakes, forgoing fiscal and budgetary discipline to further his presidential aims, then he will have lent his endorsement to their mistake, and made the "change we need", and the kind Gelb advances, further from us.

Obama is frustrated.  I suspect he is beyond that, that he is nothing short of angry that three Republican presidents have done what, since Reagan, Republicans and conservatives have ideologically threatened to do, and that is "starve the beast".  The thought there, quite radical, quite revolutionary for those who call themselves "conservative", is to put the United States into so much debt that it cannot afford anything but the smallest role for the central government - likely, defense, coining money, and interstate commerce - plus the interest payment on the debt.  It's equivalent to the homeowner who gets into such debt that, after making all the minimum payments for the month has only enough left over to eat.

It is the ideological vision of Reagan, who said famously that government is not a solution to our problems, but that government IS the problem.  Starve the beast.  It's the ideological vision of George W. Bush.  More defense, deep tax cuts, borrow.  Starve the beast.  Well, we have yet to in a short span have enough presidents like Reagan and the Bushes to starve the beast, but the beast is hungry.  President Obama is hungry.  He is hungry to pay for and invest in the things which he believes have been neglected for a long time (and have been) and which he believe we need to be a better country (and we do).  But if he ignores the fact that Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II were at least somewhat successful in what to me is truly nothing short of a treacherous attempt to bankrupt this country in order to force the central government to recede to its most minimal responsibilities of defense, money, and commerce, and with that deconstruct the social safety net fashioned during the New Deal and Great Society (you don't have to believe me, conservative publications readily acknowledge this as their goal), if Obama ignore the success those 3 past presidents had in creating the national debt we have today, some $15 trillion, and the further $1.7 trillion dollar deficit for this year, and simply does as they did, and pursues his goals without heed to the debt, making it thereby inevitably worse during his presidency, then in the eyes of many, and with considerable justification, he will be seen as no better.

And that's Gelb's point, and his admonition.  Say what you can to.  Don't say threatening things to North Korea about their launch unless you truly plan to do something threatening.  And don't let your ideology, presidential ambitions, or impatience amplify our greatest threat following the presidencies of Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and that is the deep fiscal and deficit crisis we find ourselves in, and which we are counting on him to improve, and not make worse.

Les Gelb Making Sense

Leslie Gelb was on CSPAN this morning promoting his new book, Power Rules:  How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy.  And, in short, he made a lot of sense.

Some might remember Gelb as the guy who teamed up with Biden, prior to Biden announcing for the presidency, to craft a plan for Iraq.  At the time, Iraq was a mess, with sectarian killings amounting to scores each day.  Shiite and Sunni, mostly, were doing their best to annihilate one another, while the Kurds just hoped it all stayed south of them.  Gelb and Biden suggested a loose confederation of states within an otherwise unified Iraq:  basically, a Kurd, Shiite, and Sunni state, each of which could fashion its own local police force, and pass local laws in keeping with local needs and culture, while the central government was responsible for the army, national security in general, and, especially, the distribution of oil revenues among the three states.  Gelb and Biden's point at the time was that this was happening in reality on the ground anyway, and that codifying it could provide some structure and, hopefully, relief from the sectarian mayhem.  I don't know if any more has come of that, particularly the codification part.  But, fundamentally, this was an attempt by Gelb and Biden to take a common sense approach to the problem in Iraq.  Incidentally, their model for Iraq was similar to the model which brought peace to Bosnia, where in that conflict it was Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims killing each other.  So, whether you liked the plan or didn't at the time, it was a pragmatic plan, based on real-world events, and an observation and appreciation of that which had worked in Bosnia, and similarly in Northern Ireland.

This time Gelb was trying to make common sense more generally with respect to American geo-political goals, and what those goals should be, and should not be.  In short, he said the goals should be honest, public, and constrained by that which we believe can reasonably be accomplshed.

They should be honest and public in that we should not bluster one thing and do another.  He said that only ever makes America look weaker, but that there are tremendous pressures brought to bear on any American president to sound tough.  The thinking is "We are the United States!  Leader of the free world!  If we don't say 'This won't stand' whom does the job fall to, the French?"  One of Gelb's points is that that argument often carries the day, and the U.S. government or president makes some statement as President Obama did following the North Korean missile test, a very tough-sounding statement which inferred tough action, stating that Security Council resolutions have to mean something if violated.  President Bush made the very same argument against Saddam Hussein in girding for war in Iraq.  President Bush followed through.  But here Gelb would say Bush committed the other mistake, which is attempting something which is beyond American power alone to accomplish.

Bush followed Ronald Reagan's lead of not giving a hoot about public borrowing to accomplish his presidential ends.  He mimicked Reagan again by pursuing the ideological goal of deeply cutting taxes at the same time as he borrowed to accomplish his presidential ends.  Meaning he had to borrow that much more.  He had to borrow enough to offset the shortfall he was implementating in Treasury revenues through his tax cut, plus the extra to meet his presidential ends.  And what were those ends?  For Reagan, it was the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI - a first of its kind attempt to build a missile defense shield around the U.S.  Reagan borrowed to fund STI and just generally to buy a lot more military hardware.  Those were his ends.  Reagan had to borrow to pay for that.  He also had to borrow for every dollar decrease to the Treasury from his deep tax cut because he didn't offset his tax cut with any cuts in government spending.  As I mentioned, he dramatically increased government spending overall, with the Defense Department getting the lion's share.  For Bush, his ends were conquering Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein.  As well as fighting terrorism.  But his attention on Al Qaeda shifted almost immediately from Al Qaeda to Iraq after 9/11, which many from his administration, documented in several books, say was his focus from day one.

Gelb says the kinds of ambitions which Reagan had for SDI, and which Bush had for a free Iraq, particularly if they have to be bought on a gargantuan national credit card, are a bridge too far for this country, and a greater threat to America than either a missile attack or Saddam Hussein combined.

I agree.  We are getting to where we don't trust the wisdom and motivations of our presidents.  Anyone who doesn't think this is a bad thing for democracy please step up and comment to that effect on this blog.  I worry now with President Obama that his ends, admittedly, much different and more liberal than Reagan's or Bush's, are being similarly pursued with but a scant eye to the deficit, much less the total national debt.  Obama's investments in health care, education, new energy, and infrastructure are all investments which for far too long, and to the far too great detriment of this country, have been back-burnered to fund weapons technologies of various kinds - SDI and others - or, in the case of Iraq, to fund a hugely expensive war and goal which did not have the support, and therefore funding, of the rest of the world.  They have also been back-burned by a sequence of Republican presidents who somehow, quite unbelievably, have failed to see their import, even, quite literally, their national-security import to this country, since we are a country of guns and butter made strong by the ample supply and quality of both.  But Obama is trying to be the anti-Reagan, the anti-Bushes, all at once.  And, once again, Gelb would say this is a bridge too far.

If Obama attempts to do too much he will have ruined any chance at truly changing political and national priorities in this country.  If he takes a bad balance sheet, made bad by Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, and makes it worse by making one of their worst mistakes, forgoing fiscal and budgetary discipline to further his presidential aims, then he will have lent his endorsement to their mistake, and made the "change we need", and the kind Gelb advances, further from us.

Obama is frustrated.  I suspect he is beyond that, that he is nothing short of angry that three Republican presidents have done what, since Reagan, Republicans and conservatives have ideologically threatened to do, and that is "starve the beast".  The thought there, quite radical, quite revolutionary for those who call themsevles "conservative", is to put the United States into so much debt that it cannot afford anything but the smallest role for the central government - likely, defense, coining money, and interstate commerce - plus the interest payment on the debt.  It's equivalent to the homeowner who gets into such debt that, after making all the minimum payments for the month has only enough left over to eat.

It is the ideological vision of Reagan, who said famously that government is not a solution to our problems, but that government IS the problem.  Starve the beast.  It's the ideological vision of George W. Bush.  More defense, deep tax cuts, borrow.  Starve the beast.  Well, we have yet to in a short span have enough presidents like Reagan and the Bushes to starve the beast, but the beast is hungry.  President Obama is hungry.  He is hungry to pay for and invest in the things which he believes have been neglected for a long time (and have been) and which he believe we need to be a better country (and we do).  But if he ignores the fact that Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II were at least somewhat successful in what to me is truly nothing short of a treacherous attempt to bankrupt this country in order to force the central government to recede to its most minimal responsibilities of defense, money, and commerce, and with that deconstruct the social safety net fashioned during the New Deal and Great Society (you don't have to believe me, conservative publications readily acknowledge this as their goal), if Obama ignore the success those 3 past presidents had in creating the national debt we have today, some $15 trillion, and the further $1.7 trillion dollar deficit for this year, and simply does as they did, and pursues his goals without heed to the debt, making it thereby inevitably worse during his presidency, then in the eyes of many, and with considerable justification, he will be seen as no better.

And that's Gelb's point, and his admonition.  Say what you can to.  Don't say threatening things to North Korea about their launch unless you truly plan to do something threatening.  And don't let your ideology, presidential ambitions, or impatience amplify our greatest threat following the presidencies of Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and that is the deep fiscal and deficit crisis we find ourselves in, and which we are counting on him to improve, and not make worse.

Voice Worth Listening To On the Financial Crisis

These are excerpts from a speech delivered this past Tuesday.  As I listened to the speech broadcast on C-SPAN radio, the message seemed one of honesty and reason.  I have heard speeches by this man before, and thought the same thing, including once during the Bush presidency when he spoke to a joint session of the U.S. Congress.  More eloquent and moving words about freedom spoken that day by this man I had not heard by anyone else in recent memory.  On this occasion, on Tuesday, his topic was the current financial crisis, capitalism, regulation, and the upcoming G20 meeting in London.

"In this crisis, we have to have our reference points.  This is what I am trying to provide this evening.  Freedom as an absence of discipline, freedom as an absence of rules is the false idea that is the main reason why we are in the situation we are in.  The same people who supported financial deregulation are now saying that regulations thwart liberty, but it is the contrary.  It's rules that allow for freedom....  What freedom is there for an employee who is laid off because financial speculation has destroyed his company?....

[We] must lead the fight to have more moralistic financial capitalism, and to rebuild a capitalism that is better regulated.  We cannot change everything all of the sudden, but we have to have results.  Because you expect results.  And that's why I will say in advance that I will not associate myself with an international summit that decides not to decide anything....  We have to restore confidence, and it will not come about without new rules that will bring an end to the deviations of the last 25 years.  If we don't want to play the anti-capitalist game, capitalism must stop being a caricature of itself.  The London summit, cannot be a technical summit, but it has to be a political summit where we talk about the issue of whether we are going to reform capitalism or leave the field open to those who want to destroy it, and at the same time destroy freedom.... 

But the ethic of capitalism has to be an ethic that is responsible, an ethic of effort, an ethic of honesty....  I think that having a large salary in a case where your company is failing is not responsible and it is not honest.  Distributing bonuses in a company that has received money from the government as part of a bailout plan is not responsible and it is not honest.  For a company manager who has brought his company into a situation of difficulty, to be able to get out with a golden parachute is not responsible, and it is not honest.  I want everybody to understand me.   There cannot be an economy without morals. When you're a boss, when you're a manager, you have a duty to set the example.  And this duty of setting the example is even greater in a time of crises.  So we can no longer have golden parachutes.  We can no longer have bonuses, the distribution of free shares or stock options in a company that is receiving government bailouts, or that is implementing a recovery plan, and has had to have massive layoffs.  Because when we implement a social plan, or when we have partial unemployment, or we take government funds to bailout the company, it is not honest to use these for any other purpose other than for fixing the company.  And it is not honest to use this money in the least way whatsoever to pay people who do not deserve it.

...we can't have a system where everybody wins at every turn.  If I am successful at my company, then I will have a big salary.  Very good.  If I fail my company and I have a big salary, not so good.  Because that means you're not responsible.  And how do you expect people to accept this?  And I accuse those who behave in this manner not only of behaving in a dishonest way, but of destroying the values that underlie the principles of our country.

When a company has losses, nobody can force this company to distribute money that it hasn't earned.  But when a company makes hundreds of millions of Euros in profits, billions in profits, it is not acceptable that we do not raise the issue clearly, and in public debate, of sharing the assets of this company, because the employees, including the very least among them, have all contributed to creating the wealth of this company....

Ladies and gentlemen, this crisis brings us back to the value of work.  It signals the end of an economy of speculation.  This crisis brings us back to morals...."

They are the words of Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France.

Hillary

From a recent letter to a friend:

By the way, I said to my co-workers for the first time since the election that I wished Hillary had won.  As you know, I went to the inaugural address, and I was as excited like many to see America elect a bright man and an African-American man.  People had a lot of hope that America had turned a significant and necessary page that day.

I'm willing to trust the various economists out there who said the current recession required a sizable Keynsian injection of "G" in order to turn things to the good, and, importantly, to keep things from spiraling into something really bad.  "Ok, so do that, President Obama," is what I thought.  Pass a large stimulus.  Don't make the mistake, according to experts on the subject, that both Europe and the U.S. made in the early 30s when they let several very large banks fail, which only accelerated and worsened things.  "Ok, so, keep the banks which you believe cannot fail from failing, President Obama, which possibly also includes AIG", I thought.

But, except for those extraordinary, one-off payments, bring the structural budget into balance, the usual federal budget everyone on Capitol Hill and all of us are so familiar with.  As much as I don't like "off-budget" accounting, I would have argued for keeping the Stimulus and rescue payments off-budget, so that then the President's budget would show clearly (and only) what kind of fiscal, budgetary plan the President is proposing.  And Congressmen and all of us could then easily judge whether his budget plan is in keeping with his campaign promise to balance the budget, and lead us back to annual surpluses, so that we can begin to repay the balance on our debt.

This was something President Clinton did and was rightly proud for.  When Hillary spoke on this issue, I believed her when she said she would return to the same fiscal approach.  She had credibility.  She had a record reflected and inherited from her husband.  And I believed her.  That might not have been "change".  It might indeed have been "back to the future".  But history offers successes and failures.  And rational behavior repeats successes and learns from failure.  I wanted to repeat that particular success.

But Obama campaigned almost identically to her on that issue.  And when it became obvious that he would be the nominee, I believed him more on that subject than John McCain.  McCain is not only a Republican - a party which confers on its members a phenomenal guilt by association on the matter of deficit spending in the wake of its most recent three presidents, Reagan, George H.W Bush, and George W. Bush - but he dedicated the majority of his stump time on the subject of fiscal discipline railing against earmarks, which are 1% of the budget.  The great Republican deficits were being generated by the other 99%, and I wanted to know how his Republican presidency would be different.  I heard his stump speech nearly every day on the radio.  Like Obama's, it was nearly always the same.  And on budgets, besides eschewing earmarks, he would simply declare, "I will balance the budget, my friends.  I will balance the budget."  He never told me how, what he would do differently.  In fact, he more often told me what he would do the same, such as make the Bush tax cuts permanent.  He chanted that, too.  But, as soon as you do that, your numbers, like Bush's, don't add up, unless McCain was going to tell me all the programs he was going cut out which Bush never did, or the agency budgets he was going to slash, and by how much.  The numbers were never there.  So, since Obama was at least parroting Hillary, I believed him.

But now after having seen his budget, the CBO projects annual deficits throughout the Obama presidency and beyond (yes, he is planning to leave his successor a sizable deficit, making his complaints about what Bush left him ring distinctly hollow these days).  That budget, and that fact, leave me feeling sad, sad for our country, and a bit tricked.  I still could not have voted for McCain, but now I find myself wanting Hillary more than ever.  It's not to be, though.  But she is there, a voice in his cabinet.  A significant voice, with a lot of access to the President.  His presidency is young.  And next year offers the opportunity again to turn the budget in a different, more responsible direction.  I have to hope that happens, maybe, that Hillary and others work on him, make clear to him that his legacy will indeed be a fiscal one, not a military one, and that the greatest threat to that legacy will be the red flag which is the red ink he hands over to the next president.  So, I have hope, but, right now, given the budget he has proposed, that's all I have for the time being.

Bad Time For America

A lot of things have gone wrong in recent times.  In terms of our Congress, Republicans and Democrats even during these difficult times would rather play political power games than be patriots and govern.  The world came to Wall Street for highly-rated investments paying somewhat better returns than the moribund T-bill.  Wall Street sold them bologna and told them it was steak.  There is some $60 trillion or so (yes, that's with a 't') around the globe in derivative securities.  If their real value is pennies on the dollar, then where does the world go to repair and replace that loss - Jupiter?

We have trusts once again, after Theodore Roosevelt explained to us the danger of trusts, and dissolved scores of them.  Think of a trust as a monopoly or near-monopoly.  If it's a critical industry - i.e. not the  movie industry, but, say, banking - then you can also think of it as an entity "too big to fail."  Why we would ever want one of those I cannot imagine.  Neither could Teddy Roosevelt.   So he set about dissolving them, while we watched dispassionately or even offered our endorsement as bank consolidations pressed on through the '90s and into this decade (the same has happened with another critical industry - the media - but that's fodder for some future post).

So we've known since Teddy that "too big to fail" is not good, is not what we want.  We want smaller than that.  Greater numbers than that.  We want the exposure, the risk associated with critical industries either spread among many players or regulated to death the way property-casualty insurance is, or utilities.  Not the way derivatives specifically and statutorily are not.  That practice leads to $60 trillion in junk bonds, and people losing everything, their savings, their retirement, their job, their livelihood, and the roof over their head, and their children's head.

What would Teddy be doing if he were with us today?  What would he be saying?  What would he be advocating?  You can bet it would shock the world, and represent far more structural change than we have seen so far from President Obama.  Oh, and Teddy Roosevelt was a conservative.  He knew trusts were a roulette wheel, and roulette isn't very conservative, so he was against them.  He was a conservationist, because that and "conservative" share the same root.  Here's a great Teddy paragraph I stole from Wiki:

"I stand for the square deal. But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service... When I say I want a square deal for the poor man, I do not mean that I want a square deal for the man who remains poor because he has not got the energy to work for himself. If a man who has had a chance will not make good, then he has got to quit... Now, this means that our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics... For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation. The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being."

He's got my vote.

We need structural, fundamental change of the things which have not worked.  What are they?  What are these things which haven't worked for a long time, and for which voters this past November practically screamed for "CHANGE!".  What are they, in no particular order?

1. A fundamental objection to partisan, special-interest driven lawmaking by the Congress (see Teddy, above).
2. A fundamental objection to borrowing on the part of our government.
3. Fundamental objections to the redistribution of income upwards since the '80s - reduced taxes for high-income earners; corporate tax loopholes, including offshore tax havens in the Caribbean, Switzerland, LIchtenstein; a reallocation of company profits from workers to CEOs and executives, as evidenced by a change in CEO compensation from 30-1 of the average employee ('80s and earlier) to 400-1 (now).
4. Fundamental objections to the brokenness of Wall Street, following Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Long-Term Capital Management, and the current crisis in mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps, which at its core is the structural problem that boards of directors - the intended watchdog for the investor - do not work, and often are enablers of those they are supposed to be watching.
5. A fundamental objection to the "Preemption Doctrine" in foreign policy.
6. A fundamental objection to the ceding of privacy rights from the individual to the central government (honestly, what would Franklin have said, or Patrick Henry?).
7. A fundamental desire for a refocusing toward longer-term goals of energy independence, carbon-emissions reduction, improved infrastructure, and making American school children among the best-educated in the world.

Those seven things?  They were 99% of the election.

Barack Obama and Timothy Geitner have been completely preoccupied till now with putting their collective thumb in the dike.  Maybe that was, is, unavoidable.  Maybe it is necessary.  But that is not change.  That is damage control.  If this president is to hold our attention, and our hopes, and our support, he will need to very soon move to how, exactly how to be the next Theodore Roosevelt, and implement structural changes in how Wall Street works, and indeed how the Congress works.  In taking that on, he is only taking on the most rich and powerful of the private sector, and an entirely independent branch of government which only also has check-and-balance powers over his.  But if Teddy were here, I think he would do it.  Teddy would say it's the conservative thing to do.  Probably the wrong words for Obama to adopt, but, then again, maybe not.  In any case, if he is to hold our attention and our support, he will have to soon show that he can multi-task, that he can jam his thumb in the dike while pointing out the new direction with his index finger.  Crisis management is not change I can believe in.  I know he's only been in office for two months.  But I want page two.  I heard page one - the high-level summary - all campaign long.  I want page two.  I want him to give me his seven.  I want him to pick one or two, and give an address that begins, "Today my administration has set about the task of reforming the SEC and corporate governance laws in this country to bring about the shareholder accountability and transparency which the current system too often fails to bring.  We are going to work with whomever in the Congress will work with us, and I and others in my administration are going to travel the country and explain it to the American people, and, frankly, from them learn even more than we currently know about the problems inherent in the current system."  Note that FDR did exactly this following the stock market crash when he put none other than Joseph P. Kennedy, father of John F. Kennedy, in charge of the SEC, since no one had worked the capital markets to greater advantage than he during a time when everyone else was losing their shirts.

Obama has been accused of attempting to resurrect FDR.  While he's at it, he should resurrect his cousin, Teddy.  Armed with measured amounts of both, he might just set America on a better course, a course she needs.

Founding Fathers Need Revision

These are confusing times.  But, if you stay observant, you can detect consensus on surprising things, among them, an acknowledgment by Congress that on many tough issues, our usual form of congressional lawmaking doesn't work.

Think of the military base closing commission, the BRAC.  Why do we have that?  Congress created it because it couldn't get out of its own political way on sensitive questions regarding which military bases should be closed.  Now, deciding which bases to close ought to be easy enough, right?  Ask the military.  Let 'em tell ya what they need, what they don't.  Cross-examine them, Congress, if you want to, and make sure their reasons are solid, defensible, and correct.  But, get the military's recommendations, push back a little, ask questions, vote.  Done.

No.  Uh-uh.  Didn't work that way.  Oh, the military was more than capable of making a needs assessment and making recommendations to Congress.  It's just that inevitably, if a base recommended for closing fell in a given Congressman's district, then he or she most assuredly was going to vote against the entire bill, or offer an amendment removing such base from the list; and likewise, if it fell in a Senator's state, then he or she was sure to attempt to amend the bill or, if necessary, fillibuster it so that it would not become law.  Nothing could get done, in short, on this issue.  Our form of representative government didn't work - not for base closings - it was completely locked up.

So Congress created the BRAC, a commission comprised of not a single elected representative of the American people, and delegated to it the task of putting forth base closing recommendations which could not be fillibustered, nor amended, but voted upon in all or nothing fashion with a simple up or down vote.

So why did we need a BRAC?  Why did Congress prove incapable of legislating over base closings?  In short, it revealed a weakness in our form of representative government:  It doesn't work well when the national interest runs counter to local interests.  The issues and facts around base closings were too arcane to market to the American people as a national interest or threat.  Base closings are not 9/11.  They are not $4 gas.  So local areas viewed it locally with the simple question, "Are they closing my base?"  Actually, it was more with the statement, "They better not be closing my base."  Representatives knew this, and voted that way.  They were remaining responsive to their constituents, but their constituents were not thinking in the national interest.  I submit our form of representative government will break down not just sometimes, but every time when this is the case.

How do you govern on national (or even worse, global) problems unless they are being acutely felt right now (not in 5 or 10 or 15 years, even if experts promise us that unless action is taken now we certainly will feel the problems acutely then)?  People who lived near and were perhaps employed by bases recommended for closing couldn't acutely feel the problems which stem from a persistent misallocation of Defense Department spending.  They couldn't feel that.  But they could feel the loss of their job if the base closed.  How many layoffs would occur if boards of directors were elected by employees, especially, if voting rights continued (as with elections) for some time after the layoffs were implemented?  Well, nearly none, I'd argue, particularly if being a board member is found as desirable by board members as Congressmen and Senators find desirable being in the Congress.

It's only when long-term problems, left unaddressed because they are long-term, and because addressing them has negative short-term political repercussions, rise up finally and hurt us with some immediate-term pain that we ask the question, "You knew about this for years and you didn't do anything?...Why?!"  For instance, if there were some experimental (for now) military system we knew we would need - perhaps a network of "sniffers" to detect airborne smallpox or other weaponized pathogen, or a device for detecting nuclear material in shipping containers, or perhaps a missile-defense system of some sort - but in which we never sufficiently invested because raising taxes and/or realigning current defense allocations (such as from targeted base closings) were out of the question due to long-term repetitions of short-term thinking, and then 100,000 Americans quickly perish on account of some enemy using such device successfully against us, can't you just hear your all too fatuous Congressman or Senator scolding military and Pentagon witnesses at the investigatory hearings after, "What is it you are telling me?...That over the last twenty or more odd years the Pentagon and military have spent billions, ney, trillions of dollars on things THEY KNEW THEY DID NOT NEED instead of on systems which THEY KNEW THEY WOULD just because it was politically EXPEDIENT!!  Over 100,000 people are dead!  What do you say to that?!!!"

And, of course, an answer along the lines of "You hypocritical bastard," would be more than justified.

Anyway, I hope I'm stating the obvious.  Our system of representative democracy works best on legislating solutions to short-term problems.  It does least well on long-term problems.  This is plain and easy to see.  Look where we really stink.  Look at Social Security.  We funded it for the long-term with a tax rate back in the '80s well in excess of what was needed to pay current retirees, but knew we'd need that higher tax level to cover boomers eventually.  We put it on a sound actuariarl footing.  Kudos.  But, instead of using the surplus in tax receipts to buy, really, anything of long-term asset value - gold, silver, knickel, copper, or metal of choice, a mixed portfolio of currency bonds from major currencies around the globe, real estate, etc - what did we do with it?  Just spent it as if it were not from Social Security receipts, but any ol' tax receipt of the federal government.  So now Social Security is just as underfunded as if we'd done nothing in the '80s, except we paid much higher FICA taxes all along.  And there is no more regressive tax than FICA.  Just ask Joe Six-Pack.  Or Warren Buffet.  It's paid only on the first $90,000 or so of income, and nothing over.  For your poor, lower-middle, and middle-income guy, that's their entire wage; for someone like Oprah, who makes around $40 mill a year, it's less than 1/2 of one percent.  Our Congress's attempt at a long-term solution was a significant tax increase on average guys, where the government then spent the money on everything but Social Security.  All of those hard-struggling Americans deserve to have that money returned.

What about Medicare?  Well, we wrote and passed it with the promise of a bunch of benefits.  Then we expanded on those benefits during the Bush II administration with prescription drug coverage.  Did we do as we did with Social Security?..i.e. set its tax rate at some long-term level?  Nope, we didn't, which proved the right move given what we did with the Social Security surplus.  If we'd done that with Medicare too, then Medicare would be every bit as broke as it is now, even though we would have been paying a much higher Medicare tax for years.  The next time they decide to "fix" Social Security the way they did last time, I hope they just don't and say they did, since it's exactly the same thing.  Oh, and Medicare is underfunded now (based on current benefits) by an estimated, I don't know, $60 trillion or something.  No kidding.  Ok, I just looked it up - it's $34-$70 trillion, depending whom you ask.  Wiki says it's $34, so let's go with that.  It's a number so large that it doesn't exist.  What do I mean?  I mean it will never be paid, the program is destined to become so deeply, deeply slashed.  For those who say, "Well, not necessarily, Joe, we could raise taxes," let me reiterate - $34 trillion, $34 trillion, $34 trillion.  Depending on which number is truly correct, you're talking about a number which is from 3 to 6 times the size of the entire, accumulated national debt of this country!  You can't tax your way out of that...we don't have it to tax!

So, apparently, the Founding Fathers need revision.  They gave us a "republic, if [we] could keep it," but one with a bicameral Congress of House and Senate members with no incentive, and therefore no capacity, to legislate solutions to long-term problems until the long-term is no longer the long-term but the immediate-term acutely felt (we are not alone in this; consider John Kennedy's book, Why England Slept, where the long-term England failed to address was but a mere 20 years away, i.e. the start of the second World War).  John Nash (played by Russell Crowe) said in the movie, A Beautiful Mind, "Adam Smith needs revision," because he realized markets don't operate in reality from the cumulative result of individual interest, but rather the individual preception of cumulative interest, and what is in the individual's best interest based on that.  The real John Nash won a Nobel for that.  As he should.  Winning Nobels is often about expressing something that always was, like E=mc².  Until we account in our form of government for something that always was, the tendency of people and therefore their representatives in government to act out of short-term local interest, rather than longer-term national interest, we shall always be unprepared for the long-term problem, and government of, by and for the people shall necessarily mean governing from one crisis to the next.

Note To Reid Staffer

I sent this to a friend who works for Leader Reid:

Do you really think the stimulus was what it could have been? I thought it was an important missed opportunity. To be successful and find the American center Obama will need to do battle with Pelosi and Reid, both left of center. He was never, will never be better positioned for that battle then right out of the gate, with his approval sky high, especially compared to the low marks for Pelosi, Reid, and the Congress. Obama needed to weigh in with full force during the conference negotiations, and insist that pork and other unnecessary spending be excised, and amendments denied Republicans by Pelosi would get their up-or-down vote in the conference bill. A campaign promise was to do that line by line with the budget once over this economic crisis. The stimulus bill was the perfect opportunity to show the Congress and the American people that that was not just campaign rhetoric, but a statement of policy. It would have been brackish water for Pelosi and Reid, but necessary, sometime..