http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2009/08/18/tomo/index.html
Thursday, July 09, 2009
AIDS activists shut down US Capitol rotunda over Obama reversal on AIDS policy
by John Aravosis (DC) on 7/09/2009 12:35:00 PM
UPDATE: That White House Web site pledge to support repeal of the federal ban on needle exchange? It appears to be gone.Woah. Joe and I got wind of this last night. (Great picture on the home page of Roll Call.)
A group of 26 AIDS activists chained themselves to each other in the Capitol Rotunda on Thursday morning, startling visitors, shutting down the landmark area and prompting their arrest by Capitol Police.The group, which was protesting President Barack Obama’s failure to get rid of a ban on funding needle exchange programs, arrived at the Rotunda around 10 a.m.
Obama, during the primary campaign, pledged his support of needle exchange programs to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS. When he took over the White House, the administration website affirmed: "The President also supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users."Yet Obama's budget includes language that bans spending federal money on needle-exchange programs.White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said the administration isn't yet ready to lift the ban - but Obama still supports needle exchange."We have not removed the ban in our budget proposal because we want to work with Congress and the American public to build support for this change," he said.
Huffington Post First Posted: 06-15-09 09:15 PM | Updated: 06-16-09 12:17 PM
He was critical of Obama's speech to the American Medical Association today, since they're a lobbying group that he claims has obstructed previous efforts at health care reform.
"When I heard the president get that round of applause at the AMA today, that's when I knew we were in trouble."
Maher said that his editorial criticizing Obama on "Real Time With Bill Maher" on Friday night was greeted with cheers, which surprised him since his "very liberal Southern California audience" usually boos when he goes after the president.
"They're getting to the point where they're saying 'Yeah, we still like Obama. He's our guy. We're glad he's our president. But where's the beef?" And it's easy to make speeches. What's hard to do is stand up to corporations. Corporations and their incredible strength are what have ruined this country so far. And this president we thought might be the one to stand up to them. I'm losing hope. I still have audacity but my hope is fading."
Maher repeated his concerns that Obama was "caving in to corporations and lobbyists. The track record so far is not good," slamming the president for "not putting it on the line and standing up to the energy companies, the health care industry, the banks."
The lack of initiative could cause political harm, warned Maher. "If he doesn't act boldly, then he's probably going to lose the midterm elections. If he can't shove some progressive legislation down their throats now, I don't know when it's going to happen."
As he did on Friday night, Maher said that Obama could use a little of Bush's decisiveness - without the misguided policies.
"When he wanted to get something done, he got it done... If Bush could go to war in Iraq when nobody was thinking about it, how come this president can't get through something like health care reform in a way that the people really want when people are actually for it."
Watch the video:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/31378220#31378220
White House Browbeats Dem Freshmen On War Money: "You'll Never Hear From Us Again"
The White House is playing hardball with Democrats who intend to vote against the supplemental war spending bill, threatening freshmen who oppose it that they won't get help with reelection and will be cut off from the White House, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) said Friday.
"We're not going to help you. You'll never hear from us again," Woolsey said the White House is telling freshmen. She wouldn't say who is issuing the threats, and the White House didn't immediately return a call. [UPDATE: White House spokesman Nick Shapiro says Woolsey's charge is not true.]
Woolsey said she herself had not been pressured because the White House and leadership know she's a firm no vote. But she had heard from other members about the White House pressure."Nancy's working with it. It's going to be a very close vote," Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Penn.), a close ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday. "We don't have any Republican leeway, so far we have no Republican going to vote for it."
"We'll pass it, but it'll be a close vote. Every vote will count," Murtha said.
Woolsey and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) are both ardent opponents of the war and no friends of the IMF, which is in line for a $100 billion extension of credit in the same bill. Both pointed out that the Democratic leadership didn't bring the bill up for a vote on Friday, indicating they weren't confident they had the votes.
"It says something that this hasn't been brought up yet," Kucinich said. "I will tell you there's a good number of members holding solid. That's why this thing hasn't passed yet."
Kucinich said he's whipping the 51 Democrats who previously voted against the war funding and also whipping Democrats who have voted against the IMF in the past. He said that tremendous pressure was being exerted on the folks leaning against it.
"This is politics, you know, there's a lot of pressure put on members," he said. "But from what I can see, people are concerned that when they go back home, they're going to have to explain why they voted for the war if their constituency's opposed to it. People who have consistently opposed the war are going to have difficulty explaining why they switched."
"There are a lot of progressives who don't like the IMF," said Woolsey. Kucinich is making the case to colleagues that the IMF loan is merely a backdoor bailout of European banks.
Woolsey, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she held a meeting earlier this week among Democrats opposing the package but is not actively whipping against it.
The GOP is also objecting to the inclusion of IMF money in the war bill. Kucinich recalled that the last time progressive Democrats joined with Republicans to defeat a Democratic agenda item came in 1999, when 26 Democrats sided with Republicans to block President Clinton's continuing bombing of Serbia.
"Republicans had their own agenda," recalled Kucinich.
The White House may be forced to drop the IMF provision and fight for it another day, but it's a top administration priority.
"That may happen," said Kucinich. "But as long as it's in there, it's a force that's moving in the direction of defeat of the bill."
UPDATE: The Netroots are pushing increasingly hard against the war bill and have compiled a whip count.
Jeff Muskus contributed reporting
Ryan Grim is the author of the just-released book This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America
David Sirota, Creators Syndicate Inc., Friday, June 5, 2009
Though not (yet) having children of my own, I often consider what my future offspring won't know about and will find humorous. I fantasize that they will have no idea what gasoline-powered cars or private health insurance policies are. But I also worry they will guffaw in disbelief when I tell them politicians once knew that breaking campaign promises without explanation had consequences.
Historically, Americans generally held campaign promises sacred. We understood that republican democracy makes us rely on pledges of future action as the metric for choosing representatives; we knew that politicians reneging on pledges without adequate reason were desecrating that democracy; and we therefore often punished promise breakers accordingly.
I'm not idealizing halcyon days that never were - just ask George H.W. Bush, who lost re-election in 1992 after trampling his "no new taxes" guarantee. Indeed, breaking campaign pledges was one of the surest ways for politicians to hurt themselves - until 2006.
That year's highest-profile campaign was Connecticut's U.S. Senate race between incumbent Joe Lieberman and challenger Ned Lamont - a race signaling a tectonic shift.
Lieberman had broken two key promises: He was violating an explicit term-limits pledge, and he vowed to "help end the war in Iraq" while working to continue it. And yet he was re-elected without ever explaining his reversals.
I'd like to think that result was merely a symptom of momentary shell shock. Perhaps an electorate so numbed by Republicans' then-recent attacks on John Kerry's changing positions was temporarily unable to process discussions of "flip-flopping."
But then behavior by President Obama suggests a more systemic assault on the campaign promise is under way.
It started in December, when he was asked why he was making Hillary Rodham Clinton his chief diplomat after criticizing her qualifications and promising Democratic primary voters that his views on international relations were different than hers. He responded by telling the questioner "you're having fun" trying "to stir up whatever quotes were generated during the course of the campaign." The implicit assertion was that anyone expecting him to answer for campaign statements must just be "having fun" - and certainly can't be serious.
A few months later, in reversing a 5-year-old commitment to support ending the Cuban embargo, Obama offered no rationale for the U-turn other than saying he was "running for Senate" at a time that "seems just eons ago" - again, as if everyone should know that previous campaign promises mean nothing.
At least that was a response. After the New York Times recently reported that "the administration has no present plans to reopen negotiations on NAFTA" as "Obama vowed to do during his campaign," there was no explanation offered whatsoever. We were left to recall Obama previously telling Fortune magazine that his NAFTA promises were too "overheated and amplified" to be taken literally.
It's true that politicians have always broken promises, but rarely so proudly and with such impunity.
We once respected democracy by at least demanding explanations - however weak - for unfulfilled promises. Then we became a country whose scorched-earth campaigns against flip-flopping desensitized us to reversals. Now we don't flinch when our president appears tickled that a few poor souls still expect politicians to fulfill promises and justify broken ones.
The worst part of this devolution is the centrality of Obama, the prophet of "hope" and "change" who once said that "cynicism is a sorry kind of wisdom." If that's true, then he has become America's wisest man - the guy who seems to know my kids will laugh when I tell them politicians and voters once believed in democracy and took campaign promises seriously.
David Sirota is the best-selling author of the books "Hostile Takeover" (2006) and "The Uprising" (2008). Find his blog at openleft.com or e-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com.
This article appeared on page A - 13 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:
CREW learned today that the Obama administration is opposing our request that the Supreme Court reconsider the dismissal of the lawsuit, Wilson v. Libby, et al. In that case, the district court had dismissed the claims of Joe and Valerie Wilson against former Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Richard Armitage for their gross violations of the Wilsons' constitutional rights.
Agreeing with the Bush administration, the Obama Justice Department argues the Wilsons have no legitimate grounds to sue. It is surprising that the first time the Obama administration has been required to take a public position on this matter, the administration is so closely aligning itself with the Bush administration's views.
In fact, the Obama administration has gone one step further, suggesting Mr. Wilson failed to provide any evidence that Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rove or Mr. Libby harmed him. This is particularly ironic because the government had moved to have the case dismissed before the Wilsons had the opportunity to uncover the details of how Ms. Wilson’s covert identity was revealed.
Melanie Sloan, the executive director of CREW and one of the Wilsons’ attorneys, said:
We are deeply disappointed that the Obama administration has failed to recognize the grievous harm top Bush White House officials inflicted on Joe and Valerie Wilson. The government’s position cannot be reconciled with President Obama’s oft-stated commitment to once again make government officials accountable for their actions.
Time to Stand Up as Congress Stands Down with War Funding Bill
Tom Andrews, former Member of Congress, Maine
How is it that, after winning the White House and strong Congressional majorities in 2008, Democrats are still playing defense when it comes to national security? How is it that those same politicians who were handed a mandate for change in November are, just a few months later, losing the fight to close the Guantanamo Bay prison? How is it that someone as widely discredited as Dick Cheney is setting the terms of debate on national security?
For years, Congressional Democrats urged patience from their progressive, anti-war base. Without the White House and strong Congressional majorities, they argued, there was only so much that could realistically be done to change our nation's disastrous course.
So in 2008 progressives once again pulled out every stop to organize and mobilize for the elections. Candidates, starting with President Obama, embraced our vision and our issues-from ending torture and shutting down Guantanamo Bay prison, to ending the scandal that, in America, "health care system" has become an oxymoron, to the demand that Americans return to work rebuilding our economy on a foundation of clean air and energy independence.
But while Democrats won big in November, they are losing in May.
Exhibit A: One of the most discredited and least popular political figures in America, former Vice President Dick Cheney, has Democrats on the defensive about closing the Guantanamo Bay prison and ending a disgrace that has blighted our nation's moral standing in the world. Democrats responded by quietly stripping the supplemental appropriations bill of the funds President Obama needed to close Guantanamo while ordering the administration to come up with a plan for handling the detainees.
Republicans seized their advantage and gleefully pounded away on the floor of the House and their various media perches and echo chambers that Democrats were hell bent on shipping international terrorists from Guantanamo Bay right into American neighborhoods. Why, if Democrats have their way, you might very well look out your window next week and see Abu Zubaydah mowing the lawn next door!
Meanwhile, Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern sought to include in the bill a call for the administration to provide Congress with an exit strategy from what many of us fear could become the next American quagmire -- the war in Afghanistan. That modest proposal never got to see the light of day. Congressman McGovern instead had to introduce it yesterday as a free standing bill with 76 original co-sponsors and will fight to have it included in the 2010 Defense Authorization bill.
House Democrats need to hear from us. If the war spending bill passed yesterday is the best they think they can do with control of the White House and strong majorities in both chambers of Congress, we have a lot of work to do.
And there is no time to lose-Congressional action on the 2010 Defense Authorization bill is only weeks away.
The Defense Authorization bill will start making its way through the House Armed Services Committee soon and will likely be on the floor of the House as early as next month. In addition to providing an opportunity for Congress to endorse Congressman McGovern's Afghanistan exit language, it will also be Congress's first crack at President's plan to cut obsolete weapons systems. But even here, Democrats are on the defensive: Despite proposing cuts in the most obscene examples of Pentagon waste, the 2010 Democratic defense budget is still tens of billions of dollars larger than the largest Defense budget ever proposed by President George W. Bush!
And, even this budget is under fire! The weapons lobby is working overtime to cut deals and keep those dollars flowing. Meanwhile, many of the same Members of Congress - including Democrats -- who will attempt to revive this obscene weapons spending are wringing their hands and telling us that clean air and health care for all Americans is simply beyond what Congress can afford.
Is this the change we can believe in?
The news yesterday wasn't all bad, though. Congressman Sam Farr was able to get language included into the war funding bill that endorses the president's time-line to remove all troops from Iraq and requires the Pentagon to provide ongoing reports to Congress on its progress in implementing that time-line. This was necessary to push back against pressure from some in the military, including the U.S. commanding general in Iraq, Ray Odierno, to slow the pace of a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in light of the recent uptick in violence. The fact is, there will likely be an uptick in violence whenever the U.S. pulls out of Iraq, particularly if the Maliki government continues to refuse compromise with his Sunni rivals. The issue is not whether Iraq will be peaceful and stable. It won't, at least for the foreseeable future. The issue is whether Iraqis will have sovereignty over their own country.
Yet what happened on the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday should serve as a wake-up call to all progressives. Democrats in Washington can do much better; it's our job to make sure that they do.
Insurance Industry Breaks Promise To President Obama
by Jason Rosenbaum
Just four days after standing next to President Obama and declaring their commitment to control health care costs to the tune of $2 trillion over 10 years, the insurance industry, drug and medical device makers, and hospital groups are backing off their promise:
Hospitals and insurance companies said Thursday that President Obama had substantially overstated their promise earlier this week to reduce the growth of health spending. Mr. Obama invited health industry leaders to the White House on Monday to trumpet their cost-control commitments. But three days later, confusion swirled in Washington as the companies' trade associations raced to tamp down angst among members around the country....Health care leaders who attended the meeting have a different interpretation. They say they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts."There's been a lot of misunderstanding that has caused a lot of consternation among our members," said Richard J. Umbdenstock, the president of the American Hospital Association. "I've spent the better part of the last three days trying to deal with it."
Mr. Obama invited health industry leaders to the White House on Monday to trumpet their cost-control commitments. But three days later, confusion swirled in Washington as the companies' trade associations raced to tamp down angst among members around the country.
...
Health care leaders who attended the meeting have a different interpretation. They say they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts.
"There's been a lot of misunderstanding that has caused a lot of consternation among our members," said Richard J. Umbdenstock, the president of the American Hospital Association. "I've spent the better part of the last three days trying to deal with it."
By reducing the rate of growth in health care spending by 1.5% each year, the nation can achieve a savings of $2 trillion over the next decade. This effort will have a direct effect on the budgets of individuals and families and will also go a long way in ensuring that every American have access to affordable, high-quality health care. Stay tuned for more information on this important initiative in the weeks and months ahead.
He and other health care executives said they had agreed to squeeze health spending so the annual rate of growth would eventually be 1.5 percentage points lower. ...One of the lobbyists, Karen M. Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, said the savings would "ramp up" gradually as the growth of health spending slowed.David H. Nexon, senior executive vice president of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, a trade group for makers of medical devices, said "there was no specific understanding" of when the lower growth rate would be achieved."It's a target over a 10-year period," Mr. Nexon said.
One of the lobbyists, Karen M. Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, said the savings would "ramp up" gradually as the growth of health spending slowed.
David H. Nexon, senior executive vice president of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, a trade group for makers of medical devices, said "there was no specific understanding" of when the lower growth rate would be achieved.
"It's a target over a 10-year period," Mr. Nexon said.
This just proves what the American people have known all along: You can't trust the insurance industry with health care reform.
Why have these commitments gone soft? It's about profits. Every dollar of health care "waste" in the system, every dollar that goes somewhere other than to your health, that's a dollar more in the pockets of a rich hospital administrator or insurance industry CEO. For health care costs to come down, somebody's profits have to come down as well.
Now, in a good reform plan, every player in the system would be squeezed a little bit to help alleviate the crushing cost on the patient. Doctors, hospitals, and other providers would charge a bit less for care and be paid based on quality, not quantity. Drug and medical device makers would be forced to sell their products at a discount in volume. And the insurance industry would trim overhead and profits to keep costs in line. Then, employers and government would pitch in to cover all individuals. It would be a system of shared responsibility.
Clearly, the insurance industry, hospitals, and drug makers aren't interested in shared responsibility. They don't want to be squeezed a bit. The want to protect their profits so much that they show their two-faced nature: Standing next to the President of the United States, promising responsibility, and then backpeddling as fast as they can four days later.
That's why we need to make them do it. Voluntary agreements are not enough. We need regulation and we need real cost control, and that means a public health insurance option that will force these awful companies to earn their keep through stiff competition, something they've avoided for far too long.
They're liars. They're cheats. They're greedy. They're untrustworthy. They cannot be trusted to come up with a health care reform plan that works for you and me. We must make them do it.
Jason Rosenbaum is an activist living in Washington, DC, and works for Health Care for America Now
Health care's enigma in chief
by David Sirota, Creators Syndicate, Inc.Friday, May 15, 2009
The most stunning and least reported news about President Obama's press conference with health industry executives this week wasn't those executives' willingness to negotiate with a Democrat. It was that Democrat's eagerness to involve those executives in a discussion about health care reform even as they revealed their previous plans to pilfer $2 trillion from Americans.
That was the little-noticed message from the made-for-TV spectacle administration officials called a health care "game changer": In saying they can voluntarily slash $200 billion a year from the country's medical bills over the next decade and still preserve their profits, health care companies implicitly acknowledged they were plotting to fleece consumers, and have been fleecing them for years. With that acknowledgment came the tacit admission that the industry's business is based not on respectable returns but on grotesque profiteering and waste - the kind that can give up $2 trillion and still guarantee huge margins.
Chief among the profiteers at the White House event were insurance companies, which have raised premiums by 119 percent since 1999, and one obvious question is why - why would Obama engage those particular thieves?
It's a difficult query to answer, because Obama is a health care mystery, struggling to muster consistent positions on the issue.
Listening to a 2003 Obama speech, it's hard to believe he has become such an enigma. Back then, he declared himself "a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program" - i.e., one eliminating private insurers and their overhead costs by having government finance health care. Obama's position was as controversial then as today - which is to say, controversial among political elites, but not among the public. ABC's 2003 poll showed almost two-thirds of Americans desiring a single-payer system "run by the government and financed by taxpayers," just as CBS' 2009 poll shows roughly the same percentage today.
In that speech six years ago, Obama said the only reason single-payer proponents should tolerate delay is "because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."
This might explain why when Illinois contemplated a 2004 health care proposal raising insurance lobbyists' "fears that it would result in a single-payer system," those lobbyists "found a sympathetic ear in Obama, who amended (read: gutted) the bill more to their liking," according to the Boston Globe. Maybe Obama didn't think single payer was achievable without a Democratic Washington. And when, in a 2006 interview, he told me he was "not convinced that (single payer) is the best way to achieve universal health care," perhaps he was following the same rationale, considering his insistence that he must "take into account what is possible."
Of course, even as a senator aiming for the "possible" in a Republican Congress, Obama promised to never "shy away from a debate about single payer." And after the 2008 election fulfilled his single-payer precondition of Democratic dominance, it was only logical to expect him to initiate that debate.
That's why the White House's current posture is so puzzling. As the Associated Press reports, Obama aides are trying to squelch any single-payer discussion, deploying their health care point-person, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., to announce that "everything is on the table with the single exception of single-payer."
So it's back to why - why Obama's insurance industry-coddling inconsistency? Is it a pol's payback for campaign cash? Is it an overly cautious lawmaker's paralysis? Is it a conciliator's desire to appease powerful interests? Or is it something else?
For a president who spends so much time on camera answering questions, these have become the biggest unanswered questions.
David Sirota is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future. Find his blog at OpenLeft.com or e-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com.
Neal Wolin, Top Geithner Pick, Joins The March From Wall Street To Treasury
As Dick Durbin watched his effort to stave off home foreclosures get slaughtered in the Senate by bank lobbyists earlier this month, he concluded that the financial industry "frankly owns the place."
They obtained that ownership partly through tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to members of both parties. But they also buy the staff, a crucial investment when a few words deep in the text of a bill can mean billions to an industry.
Staffers aren't bought outright with manila envelopes filled with cash. Instead, they see for themselves what fruit awaits a staffer loyal to the banking industry. And then they return to lawmaking.
On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee takes up the nomination of Neal Wolin to be Timothy Geithner's number two at the Treasury Department. During the Clinton administration, Wolin worked under Larry Summers as the Treasury Department's top lawyer, where he helped write the deregulation bill -- Gramm-Leach-Bliley -- that undid Depression-era reforms and is partly blamed for the financial meltdown.
The Bush years were good to Wolin, who became head of the lobby shop at Hartford Financial Services Group, where, according to the company website, he "oversaw the company's legal, government affairs, [and] corporate relations." Now Geithner wants him back in the administration.
"Neal wasn't on Wall Street. He was in the insurance industry," said Treasury spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter in an e-mail.
He'll join Mark Patterson, Geithner's chief of staff, a former top lobbyist with Goldman Sachs. (Cutter points out that Patterson also worked for former senator Tom Daschle. "He's got an extensive policy career," Cutter writes.)
Goldman Sachs didn't have to look far for a lobbyist to replace Patterson. It tapped Michael Paese, who has been a top lobbyist for the past year for the Wall Street trade group SIFMA -- the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. A Goldman spokesperson confirmed the Paese hiring but declined to comment further.
Before joining the bankers' lobby, Paese wrote laws for Democratic Rep. Barney Frank's House Financial Services Committee. In 2007, he and Rick Delfin, another Democratic committee aide, worked closely with SIFMA to neuter a bill aimed at preventing banks from bundling up and selling fraudulent, subprime loans, according to Business Week (jump to page four) and confirmed by the Huffington Post.
The changes to the bill requested by SIFMA effectively gave banks operating in the "secondary market" a get-out-of-jail-free card for making, bundling and selling bad loans. The bill was watered down and the market for the securitized loans was allowed to continue as it was. The secondary market was almost completely exempted from rules governing liability for bogus loans.
It is the securitization process that prevents homeowners from selling their home for less than is owed on it, forcing them into foreclosure instead. Securitized loans are at the very heart of the financial collapse, as the process allowed banks to shed responsibility for bad loans by bundling them and shipping them off.
After their work on SIFMA's bill, Delfin and Paese went to work for SIFMA. Often in Congress it is the prospect of future riches -- rather than money already delivered -- that can have the most impact. It's a drunken conga line snaking through the party, starting at the staff level, shuffling to K Street and then shaking it over the White House. All a staffer needs to do is get up and dance.
"We are grateful for the opportunity to have provided insight and input throughout the legislative process," Marc Lackritz, SIFMA president and CEO, said before the vote on the bill. Regrettably, he said, he still couldn't support it, because it might cramp the subprime lending market.
"The bill could severely restrict home loans for a segment of consumers striving to reach the American dream of home ownership," he said. "Firms may choose to abandon the market for making loans to individuals with less than perfect credit -- an end result that would restrict credit to the very borrowers this legislation aims to help. It's regrettable that such a well-intentioned bill, if made law, could have the adverse effect of constraining the mortgage credit market, making it harder for families to own their own home."
The bill was a total failure and led to but a handful of mortgage modifications. It did not stop or even slow the subprime lending market, which continued to burn hotly, right up until it scorched the global economy.
After it passed a similar but undeniably tougher mortgage reform bill last week, the House Financial Services Committee patted itself on the back, saying that if "Congress had enacted these long overdue mortgage lending reforms, which Democrats have been advocating since 1999, the subprime lending meltdown could have been avoided altogether."
But the Center for Responsible Lending, in an otherwise laudatory press release, pooh-poohed the bill for coming up short on securitization.
The bill "does not sufficiently fix the misalignment of incentives throughout the mortgage market that led to the current crisis," it said. As they did at the last dance, the industry found a way to carve out generous exemptions for itself. "Moreover, in some very important ways, the bill exempts from its scope those loans that have been bundled into mortgage-backed securities -- the very loans that are proving most problematic as we try to address the foreclosure crisis."
Obama To Fire His First Gay Arabic Linguist
by
Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Palm Center at UCSB
Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic and who returned recently from Iraq, received notice today that the military is about to fire him. Why? Because he came out of the closet as a gay man on national television.Some readers might think it unfair to blame Obama. After all, the president inherited the "don't ask, don't tell" law when he took office. As Commander-in-Chief, he has to follow the law. If the law says that the military must fire any service member who acknowledges being gay, that is not Obama's fault.Or is it?A new study, about to be published by a group of experts in military law, shows that President Obama does, in fact, have stroke-of-the-pen authority to suspend gay discharges. The "don't ask, don't tell" law requires the military to fire anyone found to be gay or lesbian. But there is nothing requiring the military to make such a finding. The president can simply order the military to stop investigating service members' sexuality.
An executive order would not get rid of the "don't ask, don't tell" law, but would take the critical step of suspending its implementation, hence rendering it effectively dead. Once people see gays and lesbians serving openly, legally and without problems, it will be much easier to get rid of the law at a later time.
I spent a day with Dan Choi last month, and he is not someone we want to fire from the military. He loves the armed forces. He served bravely under tough combat conditions in Iraq. His Arabic is excellent, and he used his language skills to diffuse many tough situations and to save lives, both Iraqi and American. All of his unit mates know he is gay, and they have been very supportive of him. But he doesn't want to live a lie.Obama has been praised for delaying efforts to get rid of "don't ask, don't tell," and some major gay rights groups are actively lobbying to delay consideration of the issue. They seem to believe that Obama should focus on other gay-rights issues first, and that he shouldn't spend his precious political capital trying to ram a repeal bill through Congress.
This misses the point. Obama could sign an executive order today. With roughly three-quarters of the public, including a majority of republicans, in favor of open gay service, a meaningful public backlash is unlikely. A slight majority of service members prefer that the policy be left in place, but polls also show that only a tiny minority of them care strongly about the issue, and that the vast majority of service members are comfortable interacting with gays.
Obama may believe he has nothing to lose by waiting. But what about Dan Choi's career? Is this really the right time to fire military officers who are fluent in Arabic?
By Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday April 28, 2009 14:52 EDT
The first sign that the Obama DOJ would replicate many of the worst and most radical arguments of the Bush DOJ was in the Jeppesen case, a lawsuit brought by five victims of the CIA's rendition and torture program (including Binyam Mohamed). The Bush administration had argued that the entire "subject matter" raised by the lawsuit (the rendition program) was such a gravely important "state secret" that the court could not consider any lawsuit relating to that issue. That argument was a by-product of one of the Bush DOJ's most controversial actions: its radical expansion of the "state secrets" doctrine. Whereas that privilege was once an evidentiary privilege enabling the Government to declare specific documents too secret to use in litigation, the Bush DOJ converted it into an all-purpose shield allowing them to have entire lawsuits dismissed even wherethe lawsuit alleged that the President's conduct was illegal.
The District Court in Jeppesen had accepted the Bush DOJ's argument and dismissed the lawsuit, and on appeal in February, the Obama DOJ -- to the obvious surprise of the judges and in a reversal of everything Democrats claimed they believed during the Bush presidency -- told the Ninth Circuit panel that they embrace the Bush DOJ "state secrets" position in full (a position they've since repeated in other cases).
Today, in a 26-page ruling (.pdf), the appellate court resoundingly rejected the Bush/Obama position, holding that the "state secrets" privilege -- except in extremely rare circumstances not applicable here -- does not entitle the Government to demand dismissal of an entire lawsuit based on the assertion that the "subject matter" of the lawsuit is a state secret. Instead, the privilege only allows the Government to make specific claims of secrecy with regard to specific documents and other facts -- exactly how the privilege was virtually always used before the Bush and Obama DOJs sought to expand it into a vast weapon of immunity from all lawsuits challenging the legality of any executive branch program relating to national security
In rejecting this radical secrecy theory, the court emphasized how the Bush/Obama doctrine, if accepted, would essentially place the President above and beyond the rule of law:
Read that last sentence -- that, said the court, is the power of lawlessness which the Obama administration was attempting to preserve for itself.
Critically, the court went on to note that the Government's interests in maintaining secrecy "is not the only weighty constitutional values at stake." Quoting the Supreme Court's language in Boumediene -- which in 2008 declared unconstitutional the Military Commission Act's attempt to abolish habeas corpus -- the court today noted that equally imperative for the court is to preserve "freedom's first principles [including] freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers." The court concluded that applying the secrecy privilege on a document-by-document basis, rather than allowing the Government to abuse the privilege to bar citizens from vindicating their legal rights in court, preserves all of those competing interests. In short, presidential assertions of secrecy are neither absolute nor supreme.
Today's decision is a major defeat for the Obama DOJ's efforts to preserve for itself the radically expanded secrecy powers invented by the Bush DOJ to shield itself from all judicial scrutiny. Given how Obama recently emphasized how committed he is to defending government secrecy powers in court, it it highly likely the Obama DOJ will attempt to appeal this ruling further -- to a full 9th Circuit panel and/or to the Supreme Court -- but in the meantime, the case will return to the District Court for a document-by-document assessment of what is and is not truly "secret" (and the court today held that a mere decision by the President to classify certain documents is insufficient; the court is required to exercise independent judgment as to whether secrecy is truly warranted). Finally, these 5 torture victims will have their day in court.
* * * * *
I'll have an interview posted shortly with the ACLU's Ben Wizner, lead counsel for the plaintiffs in this case.
UPDATE: My interview with Wizner about today's ruling -- which is roughly 10 mintues long and which I highly recommend -- can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below. He does a superb job of explaining why this victory is so crucial to anyone concerned with basic civil liberties, accountability and checks on executive power abuses. He also notes -- and I agree entirely -- that the court's decision is a model of clarity and logical reasoning, and really seems to have been designed to convey as clearly as possible, to lawyers and non-lawyers alike, why the secrecy theories defended by the government here are so dangerous and distorted. Reading the court's relatively short decision is also highly recommended.
Go here:
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DEFENDS ABILITY TO IMPRISON DETAINEES INDEFINITELY:
Early this month, a federal judge ruled that "some prisoners held by the United States military in Afghanistan have a right to challenge their imprisonment," citing the legal right to habeas corpus that the U.S. Supreme Court granted to detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
However, on Friday, the Obama administration said it would appeal the ruling, signaling that it "was not backing down on its efforts to maintain a the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight."
In an editorial slamming the Obama administration's position, the New York Times today wrote, "In the absence of a fair review process that complies with international and military law, there is no reason to feel confident that everyone detained at Bagram deserves to be there."
Salon's Glenn Greenwald remarked on Obama's evolution on the issue, noting that when the Supreme Court granted habeas rights to Guantanamo prisoners last fall, Obama praised the Court's "rejection of the Bush Administration's attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo." In fact, speaking on the Senate floor in 2006, Obama declared, "But restricting somebody's right to challenge their imprisonment indefinitely is not going to make us safer. In fact, recent evidence shows it is probably making us less safe."
Published on Friday, April 10, 2009 by RebelReports
Rahm Emanuel's Think Tankers Enforce 'Message Discipline' Among 'Liberals'
The White House is ‘helping’ liberal groups to get their political messages in sync with the official line.
by Jeremy Scahill
Over the past several weeks, independent journalists and anti-war activists have tried to shine a spotlight on how groups like the Center for American Progress and MoveOn, which portrayed themselves as anti-war during the Bush-era, are now supporting the escalation and continuation of wars because their guy is now commander-in-chief. CAP has been actively pounding the pavement in support of the escalation in Afghanistan, the rebranding of the Iraq occupation and, more recently, Obama's bloated military budget, which the group said was "on target." MoveOn has been silent on the escalation in Afghanistan and has devoted substantial resources to promoting a federal budget that includes a $21 billion increase in military spending from the Bush-era.
What is clear here is that CAP and MoveOn are now basically psuedo-official PR flaks targeting "liberals" to support the White House agenda. This, though, should not come as a shock to those who have closely monitored these groups. They were the primary force behind Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), "a coalition that spent tens of millions of dollars using Iraq as a political bludgeon against Republican politicians, while refusing to pressure the Democratic Congress to actually cut off funding for the war." Now, according to John Stauber, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, the Center for American Progress is now running "Progressive Media which was begun by Tom Matzzie and David Brock in 2008 and now ‘represents a serious ratcheting up of efforts to present a united liberal front in the coming policy wars....' [These groups] are working hard to push Obama's policies, including rationalizlng or defending his escalation of the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan as "sustainable security."
On Wednesday, Ben Smith at Politico reported on the latest development in this White House-coordinated campaign to use these think-tankers to whip up support for its agenda. It is a newly formed coalition, the Common Purpose Project, which blogger Jane Hamsher describes as "one of the many groups Rahm Emanuel has set up to coordinate messaging among liberal interest groups." This one includes the direct participation of White House officials, according to Smith:
The Common Purpose meeting every Tuesday afternoon at the Capitol Hilton brings together the top officials from a range of left-leaning organizations, from labor groups like Change to Win to activists like MoveOn.org, all in support of the White House's agenda. The group has an overlapping membership with a daily 8:45 a.m. call run by the Center for American Progress' and Media Matters' political arms; with the new field-oriented coalition Unity ‘09; and with the groups that allied to back the budget as the Campaign to Rebuild and Renew America Now. Unlike those other groups, however, the Common Purpose meeting has involved a White House official, communications director Ellen Moran, two sources familiar with the meeting said. It's aimed, said one, at "providing a way for the White House to manage its relationships with some of these independent groups."
Unlike those other groups, however, the Common Purpose meeting has involved a White House official, communications director Ellen Moran, two sources familiar with the meeting said. It's aimed, said one, at "providing a way for the White House to manage its relationships with some of these independent groups."
Common Purpose was founded by Erik Smith, a former aide to Dick Gephardt. The group's political director is former Obama aide, Miti Sathe. "Common Purpose is formed as a 501(c)(4), which leaves it focused on policy, rather than electoral, work," notes Smith. "Part of the group's role is to enforce a kind of message discipline." He tells the story of how last month "some of the more liberal members of the coalition" were launching a campaign against conservative Democrats under the banner "Dog the Blue Dogs." The White House, Smith alleged, "was in the midst of discussions with members of the congressional Blue Dog caucus, and objected to the slogan, which was promptly changed, and the page describing the drive is gone from CAF [Campaign for America's Future, a participant in the Common Purposes calls]'s website."
Hamsher, who wrote an interesting response to the Politico report with a different spin on the above story, concluded:
There's a big problem right now with the traditional liberal interest groups sitting on the sidelines around major issues because they don't want to buck the White House for fear of getting cut out of the dialogue, or having their funding slashed. Someone picks up a phone, calls a big donor, and the next thing you know...the money is gone. It's already happened. Because that's the way Rahm plays.
© 2009 Jeremy Scahill
Jeremy Scahill is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.
Published on Friday, April 10, 2009 by Ted Rall.com
Barack Obama, Torture Enabler
by Ted Rall
America is a nation of laws--laws enforced by Spain.
John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, William Haynes and Douglas Feith wrote, authorized and promulgated the Justice Department "torture memos" that the Bush Administration used for legal cover. After World War II, German lawyers for the Ministry of Justice went to prison for similar actions.
We've known about Yoo et al.'s crimes for years. Yet--unlike their victims--they're free as birds, fluttering around, writing op/ed columns...and teaching. At law school!
Obama has failed to match changes of tone with changes in substance on the issue of Bush's war crimes. "We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards," he answered when asked whether he would investigate America's worst human rights abuses since World War II. Indeed, there's no evidence that Obama's Justice Department plans to lift a finger to hold Bush or his henchmen accountable.
"They should arrest Obama for trying to impersonate a President," one wag commented on The San Francisco Chronicle's website.
Fortunately for those who care about U.S. law, there are Spanish prosecutors willing to do their job. Baltasar Garzón, the crusading prosecutor who went after General Augusto Pinochet in the '90s, will likely subpoena the Dirty Half Dozen within the next few weeks. "It would have been impossible to structure a legal framework that supported what happened [in Guantánamo]" without Gonzales and his pals," argues the criminal complaint filed in Madrid.
When the six miscreants ignore their court dates (as they surely will), Spain will issue international arrest warrants enforceable in the 25 countries that are party to European extradition treaties. All hail King Juan Carlos I!
Which brings us to a leaked report by the Red Cross, famous for its traditional reticence to confront governments. Which means that physicians are enjoined to do no harm. Doctors are prohibited by their ethical code of conduct from attending, much less participating in, torture. (What does this have to do with Bush's lawyers? Hold on. I'm getting there.)
The Red Cross found that CIA doctors, nurses and/or paramedics "monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls," reports The New York Times.
"Even if the medical worker's intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury," the report said, they would have violated medical ethics. But they weren't there to protect anyone but the CIA. They even "condoned and participated in ill treatment....[giving] instructions to interrogators to continue, to adjust or to stop particular methods." Charming.
Since 1945, at least 70 doctors around the world have been prosecuted for participating in torture. But not Bush's CIA torture facilitators. Not by this president. Asked to comment on the Red Cross report, a spokesman for CIA director Leon Panetta replied that Panetta "has stated repeatedly that no one who took actions based on legal guidance from the Department of Justice at the time should be investigated, let alone punished." (There's the lawyer connection.)
Which is similar to what Obama said about the torturers: "At the CIA, you've got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don't want them to suddenly feel like they've got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering up." Don't you just hate being micromanaged when you're torturing people?
Ah, the great shell game of American justice. You can't prosecute the torturers because their lawyers advised them that torture was OK. You can't prosecute the lawyers because all they did was theorize--they didn't torture anyone. You can't prosecute the president and vice president who ordered the torture because they have "executive privilege" and, anyway, who would put a head of state on trial? What is this, Peru?
What's the flip side of a victimless crime? A perpless crime?
It's a neat circle, or would be if it fit, but drink some coffee and let the caffeine do its thing and it soon becomes apparent that it doesn't come close. The trouble for the Bushies, and now for Obama--they're his torturers now--is that lawyers are bound by a higher code than following orders.
Yoo, Bybee, Addington, Gonzales, Haynes and Feith were asked by the White House to come up with legal cover for what they knew or ought to have known were illegal acts under U.S. law, international law, and treaties including the Geneva Conventions (which were ratified by the U.S. and therefore hold the force of U.S. law). Since they don't deny what they did--indeed, they continue to justify it--their presumed defense if they wound up on trial in Europe would be that they were just following orders.
However, the decision in the 1948 trials of German attorneys immortalized in the fictionalized film "Judgment at Nuremberg" makes clear that a lawyer's duty is to the law--not his government. And not just his own country's law--international law.
The Nuremberg tribunal acknowledged that Nazi Germany was an absolute dictatorship in which everyone answered to Adolf Hitler and could be shot for disobeying. Nevertheless, the court ruled, "there were [German] restrictions for Hitler under international law." Despite his total legal authority within Germany, Hitler "could issue orders [that violated] international law." Obeying a direct order from Hitler, in other words, was illegal if it violated international law. And German lawyers went to prison for doing just that.
The six lawyers about to face charges in Spain didn't have to worry about Nazi firing squads. They were rank opportunists trying to advance their careers in an Administration that viewed laws as quaint, inconvenient obstacles. Here's how not scared they are: Feith recently penned an op/ed in The Wall Street Journal daring--double-daring--Obama's Justice Department to go after him.
"If President Barack Obama and the prosecutors see a crime to be prosecuted, they can act," Feith wrote.
One can only hope. In the meantime, we'll always have Spain.
Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.
Published on Friday, April 10, 2009 by YES! Magazine
A Plea To President Obama: Don't Bankrupt America!
by Sarah van Gelder
President Obama's massive giveaway to Wall Street threatens to bankrupt the federal government and undermine the agenda that got him elected. Here are some first steps needed to change course.
Dear President Obama,
I'm getting a sinking feeling. Watching your appointees' latest bank bailout makes me wonder if all your administration's good work on health care, education, and jobs will be swept away by the extraordinary giveaway of trillions in taxpayer money to a group of powerful Wall Street operatives, who appear willing to bankrupt our country to continue building their wealth and power.
Could this be happening on the watch of someone who, like yourself, came to Washington with the promise of personal integrity and a concern for the common good?
From outside the Beltway it looks pretty clear: Your financial team's identification with Wall Street corporations is compromising their ability to advise you on what can save our country. Please listen to some of today's most astute independent analysts:
Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University economist:
"Two weeks ago, I posted an article showing how the Geithner-Summers banking plan could potentially and unnecessarily transfer hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth from taxpayers to banks. ... In fact, the situation is even potentially more disastrous than we wrote. Insiders can easily game the system created by Geithner and Summers to cost up to a trillion dollars or more to the taxpayers."
Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary:
"So you and I and other taxpayers have kept these hedge-fund honchos flush enough to be able to reap the bonanza that Geithner now wants to bestow on them for cleaning up the mess they and others on Wall Street made -- a bonanza to be financed by you and me and other taxpayers, who are taking on all the risk."
David Korten, author of Agenda for a New Economy, and board chair of YES! magazine:
"Wall Street will continue to play out its extortion racket so long as the public is willing to put up with the bailout-first, reform-later capitulation of the Federal Reserve and the FDIC. There must be a strong and immediate public demand to restructure first."
William Greider, writer for The Nation, formerly with The Washington Post, and author of some of today's best books on the economy:
"If Wall Street gets its way, the 'reforms' may further consolidate power and ratify a corporate state--a grotesque hybrid that combines the worst aspects of socialism and capitalism. The reform ideas announced by Geithner would plant the seeds by creating a 'systemic risk' regulator, presumably the Federal Reserve, to oversee the largest, most politically adept banks and financial firms that qualify as 'too big to fail.' Capitalism, with its inherent tendency toward monopoly, would have the means to monopolize democracy."
Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter:
"If we do not immediately halt our elite's rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. ... The stimulus and bailout plans are not about saving us. They are about saving them. We can resist, which means street protests, disruptions of the system and demonstrations, or become serfs."
And here's William Black, a regulator who takes bank regulation seriously, in an interview with Bill Moyers:
"We're hiding the losses, instead of trying to find out the real losses. ...Follow what works instead of what's failed. Start appointing people who have records of success, instead of records of failure. ... There are lots of things we can do. Even today, as late as it is. Even though they've had a terrible start to the administration. They could change, and they could change within weeks."
It's not too late, Mr. President. We can still keep these corrupt financial institutions from bankrupting America. We need you to stand up to the Wall Street insiders in your own administration who might understand what boosts the profits of banks, but not what helps our economy. Please replace them with independent advisors, who haven't spent their careers working for investment banks, hedge funds, and the Federal Reserve.
We don't need to re-inflate the disastrous bubble casino and we don't need to pump more taxpayer dollars into the too-big-to-fail institutions that have caused this mess. Instead, it's time to take a long, cold look at these banks, which George Soros says are now "basically insolvent."
Nationalize them. Reorganize them. And decentralize them -- make sure none are too big to bring down our economy. And make sure we never again find ourselves in the bizarre circumstance of having the biggest failures -- the ones whose actions threaten to destroy the economy -- calling the shots in Washington. Instead, reorganize these banks so that all of them are linked into the real economies they should be serving, not undermining -- the locally rooted enterprises that provide the sustainable livelihoods we need.
Yes, we can! Mr President. And for the sake of our country, we must.
Sincerely, Sarah van Gelder YES! Magazine
If you share these concerns, please:
Sarah van Gelder is the Executive Editor of YES! Magazine.
