Führer's SOTU
Bush's SOTU projected by Froomkin:
"A leader with an obligation to lead at a time that requires leadership ..."
Living in a different timezone and with a historically reduced urge for a Führer, I´ll be sound asleep when Bush tries to sell his reality of a state of the union.
I guess I will miss just as much as last year, when the whitehouse marketed these talking points:
President Bush laid out ambitious goals for the future, behind which all Americans can unite, and urged the Nation to move forward with the work that needs to be done this year:
- Growing Our Economy and Renewing Great Institutions
- Saving Social Security for America 's Future Generations
- Protecting America 's Families and Promoting Compassion Across the Nation
- Making America Safer with Decisive Action to Win the War on Terror and Spread Freedom
Well, they didn´t had those links when they put it up, but then, it always was only their reality.
Posted by b on January 31, 2006 at 21:45 UTC | Permalink | Comments (4)
R.I.P.
---
It seems to me that true homeland security ought to be more about providing health care for every citizen and less about reshuffling bureaucratic agencies and undermining our civil liberties.
True homeland security should be about protection of liberties. True homeland security should be about protection of pension assets for retired people.
Genuine homeland security should also be about gun control, protecting Americans against domestic hate crimes, and getting serious about reducing the pollution of our air and water.
And homeland security should mean feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and making sure there is quality education for every child and jobs at a decent wage for everyone who wants and needs one. That's how we make our country safe and secure for all citizens.
Posted by b on January 31, 2006 at 18:10 UTC | Permalink | Comments (10)
Globalization Surprise
The chief economist of Morgan Stanley, Stephen Roach, is criticizing globalization. From the World Economic Forum in Davos:
The win-win endorsement of globalization -- that the development of poor countries is a huge plus for rich, developed countries -- was first coined in Davos. There have been anti-globalization protests associated with this event for years. But this year is different. The debate has moved from the outside to the inside. Serious challenges to globalization are now being openly aired in the rooms and corridors of Davos’s fabled Congress Centre.
The reasons behind this shift are not hard to fathom. One of the “wins” in the win-win of globalization has failed to materialize. Job creation and real wages in the mature, industrialized economies have seriously lagged historical norms. It is now commonplace for recoveries in the developed world to be either jobless, or wageless -- or both. That this shortfall has occurred in the midst of accelerating globalization and surging global trade is all the more disconcerting.
As its critics have feared, globalization has advantages for the capital side of the economy, but the labor side is losing. The race to the bottom is clearly visible in the job markets.
The economic model for globalization has serious flaws. Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage does promise advantages for all the trading partners. But it is a theory with idealized assumptions and based on a static model.
The dynamics and time lags which occur in real economic exchanges have serious side-effects and the process to reach the promised advantages can be decades long.
The boondoggle of "more jobs through open trade" looks real - in theory. But when people lose their job and have to wait 20 years for a better job to be created, that advantage are hard to explain to them.
Good to hear that this surprise has finally reached the theorists and policy makers who are in charge here.
Now, the people have to keep up the pressure for a better regulated and controlled trade process.
Trade is good and has benefits. But to let it run wild without at least retaining the social wins of the last centuries is pure corporatism. This has to stop.
Posted by b on January 30, 2006 at 19:04 UTC | Permalink | Comments (21)
Stop Alito
Just do it. Please.
Posted by b on January 28, 2006 at 21:03 UTC | Permalink | Comments (49)
Open Weekend
News & views by and for anyone ...
Posted by b on January 28, 2006 at 19:35 UTC | Permalink | Comments (46)
Hostage Taking Non-Story
As commentator b real points out, reports of hostage taking by U.S. military in Iraq are incomplete. They fail to point out that these acts are illegal under U.S. and international laws.
Imprisoning relatives of assumed insurgents for the sole purpose of catching those assumed insurgents started in July 2003 and is continuing into 2006.
In January 2004 Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to Rumsfeld:
We are writing you with regard to several incidents in Iraq involving actions by United States forces that appear to violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions. [...] In two of these incidents, U.S. forces also reportedly detained close relatives of a person that the U.S. was attempting to apprehend. In these cases the individuals detained were themselves not suspected of responsibility for any wrongdoing.
ACLU has released U.S. military documents, 1, 2 (both PDFs), obtained through FOIA requests and court orders. These documents refer to obvious U.S. hostage taking in 2004.
Yesterday Reuters and Associated Press reported on the ACLU documents. The AP report does not even mention any question of legality. With regards to law, the Reuters piece only includes a cite of one of the documents,
A June 10, 2004, memo written by the DIA employee, labeled as "secret," referred to "violations of the Geneva Convention.",
but does not elaborate.
Knight Ridder, which seams to have done the only original reporting so far, writes:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. Army has been detaining Iraqi women to help track down husbands or fathers who are suspected terrorists, according to documents released Friday and a Knight Ridder interview with a female detainee who was released Thursday after four months in prison.
[...]
The Iraqi woman told Knight Ridder on Friday that she and eight other female detainees in her cell had often talked among themselves. She discovered that all of them were being held because U.S. officials had suspected their male relatives of having ties to terrorism.
So according to this witness, the hostage taking is ongoing. There are either no orders to follow the law, or such orders are ignored. But even Knight Ridder fails to mention these illegalities.
Hostage taking is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War especially of:
Article 3 (1): Persons taking no active part in the hostilities [...], shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, [...].
To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: [...] (b) taking of hostages
Article 31: No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.
Article 33: No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. ..
Article 34: The taking of hostages is prohibited.
Under US Code Title 18 § 2441 specifically any breach of GC Article 3 is defined as a War Crime.
The LA Times, Washington Post and the New York Times only carry the above mentioned news agency reports with no crime mentioned.
Of the major bloggers only Andrew Sullivan and Laura Rozen mention the illegality.
So where is the outrage? Why do the media fail to point out the obvious? Why is this a non-story?
Posted by b on January 28, 2006 at 12:24 UTC | Permalink | Comments (7)
Alito Confirmation
Democratic Party Senator
(prototype,
revised versions additionally miss a brain)
©DLC Inc. in cooperation with Rove Labs
Posted by b on January 27, 2006 at 16:49 UTC | Permalink | Comments (25)
Hamas Win Makes Peace Possible
Hamas, the islamist Palestinian group, has won a majority of seats in yesterday's election. The ruling Fatah has declared defeat and Prime Minister Ahmed Curia and his cabinet resigned.
Only 6% of a quarter million Palestinians in east Jerusalem could get to vote. But despite (or because of?) these illegal Israeli restrictions and an undercover U.S. funded Fatah campaign, the voters preferred a disciplined, social responsible, religious movement over a corrupt and chaotic secular party.
Like Uri Avnery I believe this to be a positive development for the Palestinians, the Israeli and the wider Middle East.
Let me explain:
Gaza is a big, isolated concentration camp and the West Bank is divided into Bantustans by zionist colonial settlements. Access to water is under Israeli control. Factually Palestine and Israel are one apartheid regime. Given this, there is no and never can be an economical and/or political viable Palestinian state.
But there is no sign that the Palestinians will ever give up their struggle or lose international support unless there is a sufficient and just solution. On the other side, it is baloney to expect that the mass-reestablishment of a Jewish population in Palestine after WWII can be rescinded.
Short of an reenactment of a shoa with opposite signs, the only viable longterm solution is a common state which includes Israel, Gaza and the West Bank into one nation and allows equal rights for everybody living there.
The Israeli election system gives undue power to small, radical religious parties, making Israel in effect a jewish religious state and comparable to islamic rule in Iran. Hamas on the other side is calling for a radical islamic state. The natural compromise is secularization of the government, policy and public life.
With Fatah such a solution would have been impossible. What could have been a compromise between a secular Palestinian and a religious state Israel but something ignoring the islamist side? Fatah, and Abbas as a U.S. selected President, would never be able to get their population's support for such a step. Hamas' win makes the solution possible.
On the other side a fractured Israeli government may not be able to compromise and keep its standing. In the coming Israeli election, Ohlmert's Kadima may now have the chance for a decisive victory, eliminating the need for a coalition with religious splinter parties.
What may look as a recipe for an even stronger stand off, a strong Hamas and a unrestrained, unilateral acting Kadima, is a precondition for negotiations that lead to sustainable solutions.
Bury the roadmap, which was ignored by all side anyway. The EU and the Arab league should up the financing of the Palestinian side for the promise of a sustained hudnah (truce). The roadmap partners should threaten serious sanctions for any unilateral steps by the Israeli government that would cement the conflict.
There is no escape from the logic of a one state solution.
South Africa has shown that peaceful solutions to apartheid are possible. To develop, they need pressure from outside and strong leaders with both parties on the inside.
Hamas victory has established one strong party. The other parts of the puzzle may now fall into their place.
Posted by b on January 26, 2006 at 11:48 UTC | Permalink | Comments (39)
Impeachment Worries
by Malloga Malooga (lifted from a comment)
Yeah, it seems they are gearing up for impeachment again. But I'm extremely worried about a sinister turn of events. Let me explain.
When Clinton was impeached, it was a huge media circus. The impeachment would not and could not have happened without the complicity of the media to create an issue out of a non-issue ("from whole cloth") and reinflate the deceitful shroud every day. The right wingnuts were also behind it. Some might say to stymie any progressive agenda Clinton might care to enact; others may argue to cover up the right wing agenda he was actually enacting.
In the end, impeachment was shown to be a fatuous exercise, and it failed. The demdems, and the indies, and even the non-caring cynics, all breathed a vast collective sigh of relief that the country had not gone crazy. As an aside, that was the first time I realized the true NPR agenda, with their breathless he said, she said coverage.
O.K. Now we have the Bush impeachment. All the demdems will wet their pants with excitement. We will be treated to the very same circus: Hillary blowdry Clinton, John live shot Kerry, Joe sanctimony is me Lieberman, Joe hairpiece Biden, Nancy eyejob Pelosi, and worse, if there is worse, speechifying endlessly and vacuously. The repugs will stand John keating 5 McCain and Linsay born again Graham against the wall to bleat like sacrificial lambs. If Sen. Byrd actually says anything of substance, everyone will assiduously ignore it or pronounce him too senile to hold office. We will have NPR creating one of their trademark pseudo-intellectual events, replete with resident scholars, house whores, Larry Tribe and Doug Kmiec pointing out trivialities (whoopie v. bungie 1887). And the networks will have a field day. People will be jumping out of windows after OD'ing on Cokie.
But lets look beyond the circus and see how this may play out. At best, the country will be convinced that it was wrong to spy on Americans and we go back to the status quo: Americans spy on Brits, and Brits spy on Amurkans, then they get together and cut bait. Have no fear that that could ever be discussed and debated. At worst, the elite are actually able, through the machinations of the circus and maybe a helpful terrah attack or two, to convince the sheeeeeple that they need to be spied on for their own good. Spying becomes institutionalized law. That would be a fine turn of events. Indeed, it is probably the plan. Dems may get lucky and win some seats, but who cares. They are running to the right of Bush anyway. When they get into power we can look forward to expanding our military and fighting the "War on Terror™" the right way, that is with democratic sub-contractors.
While all this is going on the administration (who can fall off a Segway and chew gum at the same time) will be interpreting and enacting some of the most heinous legislation imaginable, while the whoreporate press (who cannot think and sharpen a pencil at the same time) will be assiduously ignoring it all.
And, of course, in the end Bush, having been impeached, will not be indicted. He will get off, and in doing so will claim another fictitious mandate, and the press will depict this as a triumph of a man who cared about America's security when 'others' didn't.
And the whole circus, the whole simulacram world, only serves to legitimate itself. The media will be a non-stop orgy chorus of "THE SYSTEM WORKS." If there was a more corrupt, more ecologically unsustainable system anywhere in the world, I know not of it. But that will be the meme: the reification and deification of the fucking system. Bush is not the Emperor without clothes, the whole system of capitalist endless industrialized growth is. And god forbid the sheeeeeeple should ever grok that. Humanity is the ram that Abraham, now capitalism or the system or whatever you want to call it, is about to slay because god commands it so. Issac is our conscience. Will we awake from the spell before it is too late?
So, I can only see this as a lose-lose proposition for progressives, but probably one that must be fought anyway. Perhaps there is a better strategy that I don't see. Anyway, sorry to be my usual sunshiney self. Maybe I could find a position as a Hebrew prophet and short order cook?
Posted by b on January 25, 2006 at 22:55 UTC | Permalink | Comments (23)
OT 06-10
News & views ...
Posted by b on January 25, 2006 at 22:40 UTC | Permalink | Comments (22)
Atrios Wanks
Joel Stein had this commentary in yesterday Los Angeles Times.
He speaks of "Warriors and wusses" and why he does not support the troops:
But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.
Liberal blogger Steve Gilliard doesn´t agree and wants to throw a parade. Atrios gives Stein his "Wanker of the Day" award.
Bring on the parades. If our military rank and file have been betrayed by their civilian leadership they deserve our respect doubly.
Both are wrong and Stein is right.
The U.S. military is hardly a defense force. Neither is it a peacekeeping or rebuilding institution. As is obvious from history, Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force are instruments to force U.S. special interests on others.
This is also a voluntary military. People who join it sign a contract they don´t have to sign. There is nobody threatening to kill them if they refrain. There is no reason to applaud anyone who joins a company that is known for crimes in the first place.
Even less so, when they go into an illegal war. If soldiers get betrayed by being ordered to do so, it is their human duty to decline to fulfill that order. They do not only have a right to do this, but an obligation. Illegal orders are not to follow.
The judgment of the Nuremberg trials says:
The Charter specifically provides in Article 8:
"The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment."
The provisions of this article are in conformity with the law of all nations. That a soldier was ordered to kill or torture in violation of the international law of war has never been recognized as a defense to such acts of brutality, though, as the Charter here provides, the order may be urged in mitigation of the punishment. The true test, which is found in varying degrees in the criminal law of most nations, is not the existence of the order, but whether moral choice was in fact possible.
This does not mean that I condemn each soldier for not resisting and not going to jail. There is a lot of pressure and manipulation once you are in and it is at least difficult to fight this.
But to support the troops in this war and to ask for parades is simply enabling the next imperial adventure and the brutal death of more men, women and children.
The only support one should give them is to get them out.
Posted by b on January 25, 2006 at 15:37 UTC | Permalink | Comments (60)
The Iran Bourse Meme
"The U.S. will bomb Iran because Iran attempts to start an oil bourse."
That is meme flying around the blogsphere and in some comments here. It is wrong.
The meme is constructed around this thesis:
"The value of the U.S. Dollar would go down, if oil would be traded in exchange for other currencies."
Thereby, this construct says, it would seriously harm the U.S. and the U.S. preempts this with war.
Two distinct different transactions and economic calculation are mashed in this argument.
First: I want to sell this stuff. How do I get compensated?
Sometimes a compensation might be a product or commodity. During the cold war the USSR delivered gas to Germany and got compensated with thousands of miles of special seamless pipes and other industrial goods. I did learn to weld at a shipyard that sold ferries to Indonesia for thousands of tons of agriculture goods.
Usually the compensation medium is some form of money and the preference is on the side to have it in a currency that is universally accepted. The U.S. Dollar is a usual candidate, as is the Euro. Gold in the form of gold related currencies could be a good candidate too. But you would also take rice, sheep or tons of ore, if that is the better deal at hand.
Everybody thrives to optimizes the deal. The currency is not relevant in this, the value is.
You make a deal where you exchange one value for another value but when the deal is done, and you are not in immediate need of seamless pipes or rice or dollars, there is the real question.
Second: How do I store this value.
If you did get a somehow interchangeable value for your goods, dollar or euro or gold or rice or ore or sheep, you are not a bit restricted in your decision here. The penalty for changing a billion $ to € or vice versa is quite small. For ore it may be bigger, but you would have reflected that in the deal above.
All this dwarfs if you look at yield differences and risks of various investments. Do I buy a 4% bond in currency X or a 2% bond in currency Y. Will X fall and Y rise? Do I buy shares in A or in B? How are the dividends?
This decisions is not based on the currency you did the deal with. It is based on expectations of inflation rates or company prospects.
A Iran oil exchange or trading place is not a danger for the U.S. $. Someone who trades oil does not care about the currency related to the exchange as long as that value is, somehow, interchangeable with others. The currency question only comes up in investments where the yield of a euro bond may be less of a the yield of dollar bond while the dollar bond may have a higher risk of inflationary devaluation.
So the Iran oil-exchange meme is wrong when it is founded on the trading currency - dollar dump argument.
The meme could be right if it were is based on the notation that both of todays major oil trading places, the IPE in London and the NYMEX, are owned by powerful U.S. banks.
Owning an exchange includes making the rules and judging on them. That allows for some creative schemes to boost ones profits. But there is not yet much prove that the lobbying of these folks would induce a military conflict of the foreseen grade.
But the power to control the flow of oil, to be able to deny oil to some at will and to give it at favorable (with a profit) rates to other is a much bigger financial and national interest incentive than some trading scheme profits.
Iran is THE middle east producer that is currently NOT under U.S. control.
With Iran under U.S. control, any U.S. President would have great leverage to deny oil at a reasonable market price to any other state. Be that Japan, some E.U. country that doesn´t follow the rules or China, the ultimate enemy the military-industrial complex needs to have.
So what is the best way to make Japan, the E.U. and China your enemy?
Posted by b on January 24, 2006 at 22:17 UTC | Permalink | Comments (21)
Iran: Why And Why Now?
Steve Clemons has some frightening notes on the Iran developments:
Monday morning, 9:30 a.m., in SC-6 of the U.S. Capitol, war-profiteer and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey will be joined by former RNC Spokesman and President for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies President Clifford May and Arizona Senator (and staunch supporter of the recess appointed John Bolton) Jon Kyl to help roll out public opinion research that allegedly states that Americans support military action against Iran and its alleged nuclear weapons program.
...
What is fundamentally disturbing about Woolsey's move is that they coincide with other movement.I cannot validate the accuracy of a report I have -- but with the caveat that this may be erroneous information -- TWN has been told that senior Congressional leaders, including senior Democratic officials, were given a top secret briefing on Tuesday, 17 January, on potential military options against Iran. No Congressional leaders have publicly stated that they received such a briefing, but others close to the intelligence community have conveyed that information to TWN.
This briefing date coincides with Secretary of State Rice's meetings with European officials over next steps to take with Iran.
Another disturbing part of the brewing Iran problem is a classified Air Force bombing study that allegedly reports that it is possible for an American bombing campaign to destroy and/or incapacitate 85% of Iran's nuclear program.
85% of what? How many children, women and men would be killed and wounded? What about a very possible escalation? And the biggest question of course WHY?
From a long term strategic point of view, one could make a case that Iran should acquire nuclear weapons. But one could also make that case for Germany or Japan.
Like Germany and Japan, Iran has made explicite statements that it does not want nuclear weapons. Why should we believe Germany and Japan, but not Iran?
"A nation which has culture, logic and civilization does not need nuclear weapons. The countries which seek nuclear weapons are those which want to solve all problems by the use of force. Our nation does not need such weapons."
Excerpts: Ahmadinejad conference - Jan 14 2006
The Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued the Fatwa that the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire these weapons.
Iran statement at the IAEA emergency meeting - Aug 9, 2005
The IAEA has more access to Iranian nuclear sides than in any other country of the world. While Iran had not revealed all its nuclear sites (there is some ambiguity in the NPT whether a site has to be revealed before it starts producing), it has done so after some pressure and the IAEA has not found a hint of a program to weaponize.
Even if Iran would someday make the decision to want nukes, it would take them years to get them and to develop the means to deliver those.
The U.S. administration knows all this.
So why do they pound the war drums and why are they doing so now?
Posted by b on January 23, 2006 at 15:23 UTC | Permalink | Comments (30)
OT 06-09
News and views ...
Posted by b on January 23, 2006 at 7:48 UTC | Permalink | Comments (60)
Sometimes It Just Takes A While
In late 2004 Jérôme and I made some gloomy predictions about the U.S. economy, stocks and the dollar. The markets did not follow through. I lost a bunch of money betting on a lower dollar, though not as much as Buffett did (a cool billion).
Buffett still sticks to his dollar bet. So do I.
We were just too early. The general analysis still seems correct. Too much money is created. Doug Noland reports:
Over the past 34 weeks, M3 has inflated $619 billion, or 9.8% annualized.
M3 is measurement for the total money supply in the U.S. That money needed to go somewhere.
Steve Roach of Morgan Stanley thinks the same but he says maybe this liquidity party is over.
In my view, the froth in asset markets -- first equities in the late 1990s and, more recently, property -- is a direct by-product of a powerful surge in global liquidity.
...
Courtesy of central bank policy normalization ... in conjunction with an important shift in the mix of global saving, there is good reason to look for a much slower flow from the global liquidity spigot in 2006.
There are great financial global imbalances. The U.S. is over consuming on lent money and one day will have to stop to do so. On the first whiff of this, the equity markets will tumble.
Has it started?
Yesterday the NYT titled Higher Oil Prices Send Shares Tumbling.
That did not sound right to me. Sure, crude was up, but sugar even set a record high. Why not write "Markets Down on High Sugar Prices" and buy some candy before Mars rises prices?
Joking aside, I agree with Barry's Big Picture that oil was not the decisive factor. More important: some major companies did not make the expected or predicted numbers.
He names Alcoa, Yahoo, Intel, Apple, eBay, GE and Citibank. If those biggies miss, others will too. But stock prices still include expectation of rising profits.
In general stocks may not be a good investment this year or even a few years ahead. Since early last week I am short on the Dow as an index again and plan to stick to that a bet for a while.
So I will repeat the mistakes I made last year. Short the U.S. dollar and equities and probably, maybe, again lose money.
But sometimes sticking to ones analysis pays.
In late 2003, betting on higher gold prices, I did buy a chunk of Tan Range shares for some $0.74. The company it is owned by Jim Sinclair and I do like his ideas.
I was often tempted to sell as the stock did not really start to move until last fall. Yesterday it was a bit down. It closed at $6,80.
So that was a good deal and it paid to be patient. Sometimes it just takes a while.
Posted by b on January 22, 2006 at 20:08 UTC | Permalink | Comments (10)
The Whale
When a white whale visited Bonn in 1966 (scroll down to synopsis) a huge public discussion broke out about capturing or killing it.
The animal, defying all attempts to catch it, made it back some 250 miles through the river to the open sea on its own mind.
Blair Corp. did catch the whale in London today but it died on the makeshift transport.
The whale struggled with the effects of being out of the water as it was ferried toward the Thames Estuary, officials said.
Sad.
Posted by b on January 21, 2006 at 20:42 UTC | Permalink | Comments (27)
Binny
by Noisette (lifted from this comment)
People like Binny have an existence which is 90% media. The poster boy terrorist. You lend your name and your image for a cause, and work for the best or highest bidder - CIA, Saudi, your own business, etc. You move forward, hope you are doing the best.
But that is not quite right; it makes him seem too keen, too principled, too calculating, too ready, like in spy novels, to switch sides according to the latest strategy, fighting for an ultimate aim.
One has to understand, Saudi dissidents, Egyptian nay sayers, and many others (all from the upper classes), find their funding and encouragement mainly in one place. Be it to fight the Russkies, create disturbances, scare Americans, fight on the Muslim side in Yugo, Cechnia (sp?), Africa too now under the radar (?), there is only one source of important funds, arms, expertise, encouragement. The Saudis fund Islamists big time - but they are supposedly ‘pure’ and don’t overtly truck with terrorists.
All ‘islamist’ radicals (the label is a joke) are dependent on the US and Gvmts that are US allies. Without that support, they would never bother. Never. But there is a LOT of money swashing around. Glory, too.
All of them are motivated by greed and the appeal of a more exciting life. The ‘terrarists’ are a great example of the success of ‘trickle down’.
In a way, it is a grand success. There is no all-out war, just skirmishes under the surface, and all of us sleep at night. More like violent corporate infighting, Mafia, than ww2.
Pity the poor Iraqis. And the people in the ex USSR.
The very fact that Binny is either alive or dead but remains a vital figure tells it all.
Posted by b on January 21, 2006 at 19:53 UTC | Permalink | Comments (0)
Weekend OT
Saturday & Sunday ...
Posted by b on January 21, 2006 at 6:53 UTC | Permalink | Comments (41)
Defined From Without
defined from without (detail)
by anna missed
paint on wood, 12"x12"
2004-5
full size (100kb)
The NSA activities are supported by the President’s well-recognized inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and sole organ for the Nation in foreign affairs
Legal Authorities Supporting the Activities of the National Security Agency Described by the President; (PDF); Jan. 19, 2006
Posted by b on January 20, 2006 at 19:11 UTC | Permalink | Comments (19)
Tax Funded Campaigns
A while ago Billmon speculated that taxpayer money is converted into funds for the Republicans through Pentagon propaganda contracts and the Lincoln group.
This would be a variation of the tax funded campaigns other countries have established.
So far nothing turned up with Lincoln. But all of the Republican K-street project is a tax money converter. Companies get pressed to fill Republican campaign funds and are rewarded with benefits which, in one way or another, hurt the taxpayers.
But it a very ineffective converting method and a waste of taxes.
Take the case of the Cerberus hedge fund where a Pentagon contract for $160 million was shuffled through committees by Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis for a lousy $110,000 of campaign donations. From the viewpoint of a Republican taxpayer and the Representative this is not much bang for the buck, but it is a legal way and anyway, it is not his money that is spend but yours.
A bit more effective might be the Wilkes/Cunnigham method, were defense contracts were given to paper companies for work that nobody in the Pentagon requested and that was probably never done. Some millions went to the party and the representative. So this was a bit more effective than the Lewis bribes. Unfortunately the details turned out to be illegal.
Josh Marshall is pointing to new and better scheme.
The president is from Texas as are DeLay and other top folks in Congress. The Texan governor is a Republican. These people are the best lobby Texas could ever have.
But still the State of Texas, through its governor, saw a need to hire a former DeLay aide to lobby in D.C. for state interests. That aide gave $75,000 out of the $180,000 contract to Republican campaign funds.
Another case turns up in Illinois were the biggest County in Speaker Denny Hastert's districts hired a former Hastert aid to lobby by filling campaign funds.
This is a much more effective way to push tax money to one party than the Lewis bribe. This method is legal and it is better for the nation. The effect is the same as with the Lewis and Wilkes tricks, but less money is wasted on useless products.
Is this a better future of tax funded campaigns?
Posted by b on January 20, 2006 at 16:41 UTC | Permalink | Comments (4)