The Daily Show has a typically insightful piece on the most often ignored rule in Washington: the law of unintended consequences. The well meaning Cash for Clunkers program has upset a very unlikely constituency, demolition derby enthusiasts. Unlike vintage auto collectors, who succeed in negotiating an exemption for gas guzzlers over 25 years old, the massive cars favored by demolition derby drivers were the primary target of the car buyers' tax rebate.

First, intrepid Daily Show corespondent Josh Gad climbs into the passenger seat of one of these increasingly rarer vehicles to get the perspective of derby car industry. Gad then travels to the capital to ask Austan Goolsbee, the normally good-humored member of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, if he knows "how hard it is to find a piece of s*** American car right now." Goolsbee was not amused.

While Gad hilariously overplays the grievances of derby drivers, their complaints can now be added to the buyers' remorse environmentalists and deficit hawks have had for the ill-advised Cash for Clunkers program.

Today is the tenth birthday of the legislation that repealed the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. Glass Steagall's repeal allowed banks to combine investment banking and commercial banking operations—a move that many people believe contributed to the financial crisis by allowing banks to grow larger than ever before. If you've been paying attention, you know that a lot of the people who celebrated Glass-Steagall's downfall are still running the economy today. But I didn't know just how much they celebrated. Here, via Felix Salmon, is American Banker's contemporaneous account of the party, which reads like something straight out of the Cake Wrecks blog:

The reaction on Capitol Hill to passage of the financial reform bill last week ranged from revelry to morbid humor. To mark the historic occasion, House Banking Committee Chairman Jim Leach played host to a group of his closest collaborators on the bill, including Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, Comptroller of the Currency John D. Hawke Jr., Treasury Under Secretary Gary Gensler, and Rep. John J. LaFalce, D-N.Y. They joined staff members, lobbyists, and reporters in drinking champagne and devouring a large cake, which bore an epitaph for the Depression-era separation of commercial and investment banking that the bill undoes. It read: "Glass-Steagall, R.I.P., 1933-1999."

Gary Gensler runs the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for the Obama administration. Larry Summers, of course, is Barack Obama's top economic adviser. Save a piece of cake for us, guys. (As Felix notes, it would be a-mazing to find a photo of this party.)

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told the Advocate on Wednesday that Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal is coming next year. I argued that allowing gay people to serve openly is popular enough now that it might make sense for Democrats to use it as a wedge issue for the 2010 elections. But I missed this survey from Monday, which suggests that support for repealing DADT is growing in the military itself:

A new study about the U.S. military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy questions the assumption that allowing openly gay and lesbian military personnel to serve in the U.S. armed forces could harm military readiness.... The study found that just 40 percent of the military members surveyed expressed support for the policy, while 28 percent opposed it and 33 percent were neutral—less support than seen in previous surveys.

About 20 percent of those polled said they were aware of a gay or lesbian member in their unit, and about half of those said their presence was well known. In addition, three-quarters of those surveyed said they felt comfortable or very comfortable in the presence of gays or lesbians, according to the study.

If Democrats can demonstrate significant support for DADT repeal among servicemembers, it will make their arguments even more effective when the political battle over repeal begins.

Starting with General Stanley McChrystal's confidential strategy assessment, which wound up in the hands of Bob Woodward, the Obama administration's typically tight ship has been leaking like a sieve when it comes to the ongoing strategy deliberations over Afghanistan. Surely it was no accident when news of Ambassador Karl Eikenberry's cable, expressing concerns over sending additional troops to Afghanistan, ended up in the New York Times on the very day that President Obama and his war council were scheduled to convene to discuss a range of strategy options. It's becoming pretty clear that when it comes to Obama's war plan the administration's competing factions are jockeying for influence via the press to advance their preferred policy options. 

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for one, has had enough of it. Speaking to reporters  today, he put his agency's personnel on notice that, if discovered, Pentagon leakers will need to find a new line of work.

Via the Armed Forces Press Service:

I am appalled by the amount of leaking that has been going on," Gates told reporters traveling with him today in the wake of media reports following yesterday's national security session on Afghanistan, President Barack Obama's eighth in the past two months.

Gates said he has little doubt that some of those leaks have come from within the Defense Department. "If I found out who" was involved, he said, "it would probably be a career ender."

...

Returning to the leaking issue, Gates condemned information made public about the alleged Fort Hood gunman that he said could jeopardize the investigation.

"Everybody out there with their own little piece of the action" doesn't understand how it fits into the big picture, he said. "Everybody out there ought to just shut up."

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Do you find it difficult to talk about the nuances of health care reform? Then why not learn how to speak tea bag!

You too can spew such terms as "socialist," "Nazi," and "Obamunist." You can even use the language in everyday conversation.

Watch satirist Mark Fiore's tutorial below:

Where have all the lobbyists gone? A recent study of disclosure forms by OMB Watch and the Center for Responsive Politics finds that a larger-than-average number "deregistered" this year, removing themselves from the official ranks of influence peddlers. But they haven't  gone very far. The groups say that these former lobbyists are now simply seeking to shape government policy in less transparent ways.

The study found that 1,418 federally registered lobbyists deregistered in the second quarter of 2009, between April and June (an average quarter would see a few hundred lobbyists terminate their active status.) The drop occurred shortly after Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13490, which put new restrictions on former lobbyists appointed to the executive branch.

The study observes that the "data does not provide enough context to provide a direct correlation to the executive order." But it also argues the the mass deregistration is likely not coincidental—and it's evidence of some of the larger flaws in lobbying disclosure rules. 

The report suggests that many of the lobbyists who lobbyists deregistered—possibly in the hope of getting a job in the executive branch some day—now have some other title that allows them to continue doing very similar work:

Another troubling issue highlighted by the organizations is that the thousands of lobbyists who appear to have left their line of work may not have actually done so. At the federal level, many people working in the lobbying industry are not registered lobbyists, instead adopting titles such as "senior advisor" or other executive monikers, thereby avoiding federal disclosure requirements under the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

In short, the deregistration doesn't mean there are actually fewer people seeking to influence policy. They're just doing so with less transparency, as they're no longer legally obligated to disclose their activities. So when the White House announced in September that "it is our aspiration that federally-registered lobbyists not be appointed to agency advisory boards and commissions," it might have had the opposite effect from what the new administration intended.

In May, President Obama nominated a renowned scientist known as the "father of green chemistry" to head the EPA's Office of Research and Development. For an administration that supports ambitious climate change legislation and stresses the importance of sustainability, the nomination of Paul Anastas, director of Yale's Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering and a former White House environment director, was very much in keeping with its broader agenda. Anastas' nomination was unanimously approved in committee in July, and his confirmation seemed all but assured. Yet six months later Anastas still isn't confirmed. Standing in his way is Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), whose block on Anastas' nomination raises questions about Vitter's close ties to the formaldehyde industry.

Today, the future of the formaldehyde industry is very much in jeopardy. A few years back, the International Agency for Research on Cancer definitively announced that the chemical, used in building materials and household products, causes cancer in humans. The EPA, which has studied formaldehyde's risks for more than a decade, doesn't go quite so far, saying it's a "probable human carcinogen." But that could soon change. The EPA has recently signaled that it plans to definitively assess formaldehyde's health effects. "This is not the time for more delay," an EPA spokeswoman told the New Orleans Times-Picayune in September. As the agency's research director, Anastas would surely have a role in this assessment. Given that one of Anastas' specialties is researching "the design of safer chemicals and chemical processes to replace hazardous substances," the formaldehyde industry is predictably concerned about his nomination.

Army Spc. Alex Baker, horticultural specialist, from Stephenville, Texas, assigned to the Texas Agribusiness Development Team at Forward Operating Base Ghazni, listens as his interpreter explains how a lime is used in local cuisine during a market assessment at the produce market in Ghazni, Afghanistan, Oct. 27. The ADT performs market assessments in the produce market every 4-6 weeks to measure trends, prices, and seasonal changes on local and imported fruits and vegetables. (US Army photo via army.mil.)

Today's must reads:

• Obama and Afghanistan: A Credibility Gap? (MoJo)
• US Ambassador to Afghanistan: Don't Escalate, It's Not Worth It (WaPo)
• Doug Elmendorf Calls Out America (Ezra Klein)
• "12 reasons unemployment is going to (at least) 12 percent." (Reuters)
• Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Next Year? (MoJo)
• Arguments for cutting estate tax further are without foundation (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
  
• The McDonald's at Gitmo is hiring (BoingBoing)

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From the web site of Physicians for a National Health Plan comes this summary of a new study on American veterans' limited access to health care. These figures as an estimate, extrapolated from an earlier study--but if they are right, they dwarf the number of deaths from combat, and rival the suicide figures I wrote about earlier today.

A research team at Harvard Medical School estimates 2,266 U.S. military veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they lacked health insurance and thus had reduced access to care. That figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001.

The researchers, who released their analysis today [Tuesday], pointedly say the health reform legislation pending in the House and Senate will not significantly affect this grim picture.

The Harvard group analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s March 2009 Current Population Survey, which surveyed Americans about their insurance coverage and veteran status, and found that 1,461,615 veterans between the ages of 18 and 64 were uninsured in 2008. Veterans were only classified as uninsured if they neither had health insurance nor received ongoing care at Veterans Health Administration (VA) hospitals or clinics.

Using their recently published findings in the American Journal of Public Health that show being uninsured raises an individual’s odds of dying by 40 percent (causing 44,798 deaths in the United States annually among those aged 17 to 64), they arrived at their estimate of 2,266 preventable deaths of non-elderly veterans in 2008.