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November 21, 2008

Obama's No-Drama Pick for Treasury: Tim Geithner

Various news outlets are reporting that on Monday, Barack Obama will announce his pick for Treasury secretary: Tim Geithner.

Compared to the other leading contender, Larry Summers, a former Clinton Treasury secretary, Geithner, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, is relatively unknown. Geithner is a career economist (with no Ph.D.)--no Wall Street master of the universe--who has worked in three administrations for presidents of both parties. He's been described as not an imposing figure, but a rather competent and steady person. Which may be why the Dow Jones shot up after word of his appointment leaked. (Take that, Hank Paulson!)

In March, Financial Times published a profile of Geithner. Some interesting bits:

People have made the error of mistaking his easy manner for a lack of confidence or steel. In reality, although he is widely described as nice, Mr Geithner can be forceful. "Everyone tends to underestimate him," says a former colleague. "If he was a bigger person physically, people might say he was president material, since he has that aura of power. But because he is slight and he looks young, people underestimate him."

....Mr Geithner joined the Treasury in 1988 and spent time as assistant attaché at the US embassy in Tokyo - witnessing the onset of a decade of stagnation in Japan - before [during the Clinton years] joining Mr Summers's international team under Robert Rubin, Treasury secretary. He rose rapidly, playing a big part in shaping the US response to the Asian crisis. "He is very bright, independently minded, thoughtful, and has an unusual sense of public service - he is a very easy person to get along with," says Mr Rubin. "He is practical, worldly in the sense that he has a feel for things - for the psychology of markets, the politics of what he is doing - and a good sense of humour." For a high-flying public official, Mr Geithner has remarkably few enemies.

According to FT, Geithner took some--though not fully adequate--steps to counter the credit crisis earlier this year:

He thinks in probabilistic terms - worrying about "fat tail risks" of adverse possible outcomes even in good times. Long before the credit crisis broke, he led an effort to strengthen the infrastructure underlying the over-the-counter derivative market. But he did not spot how rusty the Fed's liquidity support tools had become, or the vulnerability of the banks to the credit woes, until the crisis erupted, and in the past months has been forced to improvise repeatedly to find ways of pumping cash into frozen parts of the financial system. Recently the Fed has innovated at a remarkable pace. Still, most analysts believe it did too little to contain money market strains in the early months of the crisis.

And FT noted:

Peers see Mr Geithner as pragmatic - someone who focuses on what can be achieved and will not let the best be the enemy of the good....Mr Geithner tends to "smell" his way through situations, a senior central banker says....Mr Geithner is not an intellectual force in the way Mr Summers, Mr Bernanke or Mr King - all professional economists - are. But he understands the issues....For someone who has never worked in the private financial sector, he has a subtle sense of markets' psychology.

So he's not a big macher like Rubin or Summers. But he's sure close to them. (And he worked in the mid-1980s for Kissinger Associates, the consulting firm run by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that refuses to disclose its clients.) Obama is choosing a fellow who appears to bring a Summers-like policy approach to the post without the Summers baggage. After all, Geithner has been part of the system that has failed, even if he did try to a limited degree to stop the crash.

Bottom line: Geithner is a conventional and safe choice. And you know those markets. They can get awfully nervous very easily--especially these days. Obama seems to be looking to soothe them without starting up yet another soap opera (which is what would happen if he were to tap Summers). Geithner is no drama. And there's already plenty of that when it comes to the economy.

P.S. Same news reports are noting that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, whose support of Obama during the primaries caused James Carville to call him a Judas, will be selected to run the Commerce Department.

Amateur Video Taken Inside Somalia's "Pirate Town" of Eyl

This footage, taken from CNN, is interesting purely for voyeuristic reasons. Where do these Somali pirates come from? To where do they return when their pirating is done? The town of Eyl in Somalia's Puntland region is believed to be a prime operating base of Somalia's pirate class, a place where virtually everyone is involved in some way in the plundering of commercial ships passing through the Gulf of Aden. Not much happens in this video (and by that I mean, like, nothing), but never has a lonely, windswept walk along a dirt road seemed so fascinating. Take a look.

US Embassy Guard Suspended After Anti-Obama Comments

An American working as a security guard at the US embassy in London has been fired following comments he made on his website about President-elect Obama. Those comments, according to the Guardian, included:

"… ideals that are the very cornerstone of American liberty and democracy could very well become an ephemeral memory of American history under the socialist leadership of the incumbent Barrack Obama.

"… The real question of concern, now that Obama is the president-elect, is what promises have Obama's camp given in return to these socialist, communist, fascist and terrorist supporting nations and special interest groups? Such accolades and endorsements do not come easy in this nuclear age."

The decision to let the guard go appears to have been made jointly by the American diplomats at the embassy and the Wales-based company that employed him. Not sure how I feel about this. Employees of the federal government don't owe their fealty to the president, they just have to work their hardest for him. I understand how high-level civil servants and political appointees would be let go if they weren't on the same page as the president. They exist to implement his vision. But low-level employees, in my opinion anyway, should be allowed to have a wide range of opinions on their leadership, just as everyday Americans do.

The difference here may be that the man works in security, and his comments call into question whether or not he can be trusted to keep the American embassy, which is functionally on extension of Barack Obama on foreign soil, safe.

Consequences of Gay Marriage, Illustrated

Speaking of things that are falsely hyped as bringing about the apocalypse, here's a graphical representation of gay marriage's ramifications. Enjoy.

From GraphJam via Andrew.

The War on the War on Christmas Kicks Off With Biggest Logical Leap of the Year

It's that time of year again. From now until December 26, expect over-the-top proclamations from your favorite conservative hacks about how our inability to say the words "Merry Christmas" is a sign of this country's imminent downfall. And it's not just our culture that suffers because of our overzealous political correctness, says Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger. In the most absurd (and least substantiated) logical leap of the year, he claims our economy is being destroyed as well.

"And so it will come to pass once again that many people will spend four weeks biting on tongues lest they say "Merry Christmas" and perchance, give offense. Christmas, the holiday that dare not speak its name.

"This year we celebrate the desacralized "holidays" amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin — fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man's theory: A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy."

Yup. It has nothing to do with the government's financial overseers being asleep at the switch, or a decades-long conservative push for deregulation, or even the greed of lenders who gave out bad loans in order to make millions and Wall Street types who created financial instruments they could not understand in order to make billions. Nope. The stock market is tumbling, unemployment is growing, and people across America are feeling the pinch at their kitchen tables because your local Target has a "Happy Holidays" banner out front.

You aren't getting away with it any longer, Target. Daniel Henninger has exposed your scam. Angry mobs are coming to your locations to scrawl "Merry Christmas" over your "desacralized" signs, and then everyone will feel better and start buying TiVos and the economy will be great again.

November 20, 2008

The Young Turks Illustrate Progressives' Web Video Dominance

My piece out today on frustrated internet activists in the Republican Party begins with a story from Michael Turk, a conservative activist who ran the eCampaign division at the RNC after the 2004 presidential election. In short, the RNC killed an exciting opportunity for web video just as it began to get some coverage because it badly misunderstood the conventions of the genre. (See the piece for more detail.) That episode presaged the current state of affairs. Four years later, Barack Obama used and is using web video as one of many technological tools to reach out to hundreds of thousands of his supporters, while John McCain had a lackluster YouTube channel and generated little excitement around his web operations.

But it isn't just Obama who is capitalizing on the power of web video. It's the left more generally. Consider The Young Turks. A radio show originally on Air America and now on XM satellite radio, The Young Turks has been broadcasting on the web since the pre-YouTube era. Now that it operates a YouTube channel, it is absolutely killing the game. Just this week the channel passed 50 million views, with 32.4 million views coming in a period that maps with the election cycle (January to October 2008). By comparison, the John McCain YouTube channel has just 25.7 million views in its lifetime.

A progressive satellite radio show did better traffic online than the Republican presidential candidate. The Republican activists that I spoke with have a seriously uphill battle.

Judge Orders Five Guantanamo Detainees Freed

After hearing the Bush administration's evidence for holding six Algerians as enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, a federal judge appointed by the first President Bush and who had been expected to be sympathetic to the government, sided with the defense and ordered the government to free five of the six men. The New York Times reports:

After the first hearing on the government’s evidence for holding detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, a federal judge ruled on Thursday that five of the prisoners are not being lawfully held and ordered their release.

The case, involving six Algerians detained in Bosnia in 2001, was an important test of the Bush administration’s detention policies, which critics have long argued swept up innocent men and low-level foot soldiers along with high-level and hardened terrorists.

The hearings for the Algerian men, in which all evidence was heard in proceedings closed to the public, were the first in which the Department of Justice presented its full justification for holding specific detainees since the Supreme Court ruled in June that Guantánamo detainees have a constitutional right to contest their imprisonment in habeas corpus suits.

Ruling from the bench, Judge Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court in Washington said that the information gathered on the men had been sufficient to hold them for intelligence purposes, but was not strong enough in court.

Even more notable, the judge issued an appeal to the government, asking that it not appeal his decision that five of the six were not enemy combatants. He told the government that it would be able to make all its legal arguments when the defense makes it appeal concerning the one detainee whom the judge ruled did qualify as an enemy combatant. In other words, the judge, not exactly a jurist most predisposed toward the defense, emotionally requested that the government let these five fellows, who were detained in the first place under suspicious circumstances, go after many years of unjustified imprisonment.

The Iraq "Surge" Is Working, But Will It Be Enough?

The Fund For Peace has released its eighth in a series of reports about the progress (or lack thereof) of the US occupation of Iraq. The "surge," says the report (.pdf), has been successful at reducing violence, but "a false sense of security is emerging" that this alone will be enough to set Iraq on the course to long-term stability.

Analysts and journalists everywhere seem to have bought into the Bush administration's line that things are looking up—a view reflected in John McCain's campaign claim that we are "on a path to victory." General David Petraeus, however, has been more cautious in his assessment, describing the emerging peace in Iraq as "fragile" and "reversible." This is closer to the truth, say the report's authors.

Yes, violent deaths are down, but not even close to what we'd expect in a functioning civil society. The "surge" has reduced killings by 80 percent over the past year, but even at current levels, 800 people continue to die each month from political violence. "Putting this into a comparative context," the reports reads, "this means that nearly as many people were dying violently in four to five months in post-surge Iraq as had died in three decades of civil conflict in Northern Ireland."

And whatever sense of security Iraqis may enjoy, at least compared with a year ago, remains somewhat fragile—and primarily an outgrowth of the ferocious ethnic cleansing that occurred in Iraqi cities and towns before the "surge" began. Today, Iraqis live highly segregated communities, divided by ethnicity and religion. According to an August 2008 poll, 74 percent of Iraqis said they felt safe at home. But outside of their segregated neighborhoods, only 37 percent felt that way... and fewer still, just 31 percent, agreed that today's Iraq could be described as "stable."

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Army.mil.

Think You Can Run the Minnesota Recount? Here's a Test

Minnesota Public Radio has been photographing ballots in the Franken/Coleman Senate recount to illustrate just how hard it is to determine voter intent. What do you do, for example, when someone votes for Franken but also writes in "Lizard People"? What do you do when someone votes for Franken, but then draws an arrow to the Coleman circle? What do you do when someone doesn't mark a circle, but puts a scribble next to one of the candidates' names? Take a look for yourself here, and vote on whether each ballot should count here. (You know who could run this recount? David Corn. He has experience from Florida in 2000.)

Victory on Capitol Hill: Waxman Takes House Energy Committee

Huge news. Great news. Michigan Representative John Dingell, who has spent over 50 years in the House of Representatives being the auto industry's babysitter, has lost his position as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee to the younger and more liberal Henry Waxman. The House Democratic caucus voted by secret ballot this morning. Members had a choice between voting for seniority or the possibility of bold and necessary action on climate change. They made the right choice, 137-122.

Who's Really Calling The Shots on The Economic Bailout?

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a non-partisan watchdog group that advocates transparency and accountability in Washington, today fired off a letter to leaders of a half dozen relevant House and Senate committees, requesting more information on how lawmakers decided to approve the $700-billion economic bailout package. Danielle Brian, POGO's executive director, complained of a "continued lack of openness concerning the government's response" to the financial crisis and urged Congress to ensure that appropriate safeguards are put in place to prevent fraud and abuse.

From the letter:

We take no position on the merits of the various actions over recent months to address the crisis. However, Congress needs to act now to ensure that the ongoing expenditures of billions—even trillions—of the taxpayers' funds are subjected to extraordinary scrutiny.

Too few questions are being asked about the how, and even the why, behind these enormous undertakings. Even when questions do get raised, as at recent hearings, numerous important questions go unanswered. This issue is so critical we feel compelled to urge you to demand those answers, either directly from policymakers and recipients of these taxpayer funds, or through your own independent investigations.

At this writing, nearly half of the $700 billion appropriated under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) has gone out the Treasury's door with little openness. The public needs to know how the beneficiaries of their tax funds are chosen, how conflicts of interest are guarded against, and whether the integrity of the process has been assured...

Our overriding concern is the utter lack of information about who is making critical decisions involving untold billions of taxpayer dollars. It is not clear how banks or other institutions are chosen to be bailed out or allowed to fail. It is a mystery to us and to the public why one industry is favored and another is left to suffer. We are at a loss to understand how particular companies or institutions within particular industries are blessed and others are not. Irrespective of whether the decisions are made by political appointees, career employees, or Members of Congress, the decision-making process has been a nearly perfect black box.

Right-Wing Paranoia About an Obama Supreme Court

The conservative legal powerhouse, the Federalist Society, is holding its annual convention in Washington this week. In past years, the group has had smug gatherings highlighting all of its many members who've been installed in lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary and into other top government jobs. It's crowning moment: the confirmation of longtime member Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

This year, though, the right-wing scholars and judges headlining the events seem a bit more subdued. Barack Obama has put a huge brake on their quest to remake the federal courts into bastions of conservative legal thought (and dashed the career plans of a new generation of conservative lawyers). Among the rank and file this morning, talk revolved around fear of the direction the Supreme Court might take under an Obama administration. There was wild speculation that Obama would be replacing moderate liberals like John Paul Stevens (who was actually appointed by Gerald Ford), with "radical leftists."

Chief among those leftists, according to the banter, would be Lawrence Tribe, the famous liberal constitutional law scholar at Harvard law, who was also one of Obama's professors and now current advisor. Tribe represented Al Gore in the 2000 recount litigation before the Supreme Court and has a long line of Supreme Court arguments under his belt that include the famous case of Bowers v. Hardwick, in which he argued against Georgia's sodomy law (and lost). Bill Clinton reportedly passed him over for the high court in the 1990s, fearing he was too liberal to get confirmed by a Republican Congress.

But the Federalists should take a breath: Obama is not going to appoint Tribe. First off, Tribe is simply too old. At 67, he is already out of range. (By comparison, Chief Justice John Roberts is 55.) Not only that, but Tribe earlier this year had to cancel his spring classes at Harvard after being diagnosed with a benign brain tumor that required surgery. He may be brilliant, but his health and age simply make him ineligible. And for all the talk about an Obama court, so far, unless a sitting justice unexpectedly kicks the bucket, there's not likely to be an opening for quite a while. Even Stevens, 89, has hired clerks for the next October term, as have all the other justices, a sign that for the moment, none of them intends to give up their cushy jobs for retirement any time soon.

November 19, 2008

Are There Any Subprime Saints?

What's the difference between a subprime a-hole and a subprime saint? Intent.

One focuses on maximum, nation-crushing profit, the other on providing merely profitable, nation-building services.

Check out Slate for subprime lenders to the working poor and minorities who have late-payment/default rates so low as to be insignificant.

Comparisons such as these alone should provide sufficient bases for thoroughgoing prosecutions once Obama is in power.

Throw the Bums Out (of Detroit)

Let's say you're three auto industry executives summoned to Washington to explain why you deserve billions of dollars in taxpayer money. You and your cronies have mismanaged your industry for years, but luckily for you and unluckily for the country too many parts of the economy rely on your continued existence. You watched AIG executives get strafed in the media for throwing lavish corporate retreats (with spa trips!) just after taking bailout funds. You know the public is hyper-sensitive to signs of waste, because middle class Americans are struggling to get by and it's their money you're seeking.

So what do you do? You take separate private jets from Detroit to Washington. You take three flights at an estimated cost of $20,000 each, despite the fact that coach flights are available for under $300 and first class flights are available for under $1,000.

You spend $60,000 when you could have spent $900. And then you go to Congress with your hand out.

Jesus H. Christ. Bailout funds for the industry should be contingent on new leadership taking over and old leadership being put in stocks.

Holder's DC Legacy: Not Much

Eric Holder seems poised to sail smoothly into a historic appointment: the first African American attorney general of the United States. He brings to the job everything you might want in the nation's top prosecutor: decades of experience working in the department he will oversee, with a special emphasis on prosecuting corrupt public officials; service as a local DC judge, and a temperament nearly as cool as Obama's. The only possible hitch in his ascension to AG is his role in Bill Clinton's pardon of financier Marc Rich, who was once married to a Clinton donor.

Given Holder's otherwise squeaky-clean reputation and a democratic Congress, that minor hiccup isn't likely to slow him down. What might give some members of Congress pause, however, is Holder's record as US Attorney for the District of Columbia during the Clinton administration. If Democrats are looking for a crusader to clean house at the Justice Department and elsewhere in the federal government, Holder might not be their man.

In 1997, I wrote a lengthy story for the Washington City Paper critical of Holder for not doing more to prosecute public corruption in the District, which at the time, was headline news. Marion Barry had recently won another term as mayor after coming out of prison, and had generated a host of good material for an aggressive prosecutor. Yet as I wrote in 1997:

[F]or all the love Holder has engendered in the community as U.S. Attorney, he has had precious little impact on the city's endemic municipal corruption. Barry has returned to his old tricks, nudging contracts and city jobs to old cronies and new girlfriends...

Holder…has not had a single high-profile D.C. public corruption case since he became U.S. Attorney. By comparison, during his 5-year tenure [former U.S. Attorney Joseph] diGenova successfully prosecuted two deputy mayors and a dozen lower-level city officials. Holder may have had his way with the media and kept the community at bay, but now that he seems to be moving on, people are wondering why he isn't leaving behind a more honest, or at least more chaste, D.C. government.

Holder is, by nearly all accounts, an extremely nice guy. As US attorney, he schmoozed with the neighborhoods, addressed the office's dismal record on domestic violence prosecution, and generated a host of gushy press reports that never failed to mention his membership in Concerned Black Men. By staying out of the cesspool of municipal government, he managed to avoid creating even the slightest appearance of controversy, something his predecessors had generated tons of (all of which makes his involvement with the Rich pardon so curious).

Even as he wooed the press, Holder knew how to keep his mouth shut, a quality Obama will no doubt value. His office was virtually leak-proof, a major change from his predecessors like diGenova, who to this day remains a serious blabbermouth. But Holder's reluctance to bring charges against city officials also prompted speculation that he distrusted city juries, a lack of confidence that's not an especially desirable quality in a top prosecutor. It also conveyed a certain amount of snobbery that only compounded the perception that the US attorney, who also prosecutes federal crime, could not be bothered with piddly little municipal corruption cases.

One city official practically thumbed her nose at Holder after she was caught holding drivers' licenses from two different jurisdictions and voting in DC elections even though she actually lived in Maryland. (She voted in a special election that was decided by a single vote.) Fraudulently registering to vote is a felony in DC. But when the Washington Post confronted her about it, the former taxicab commissioner said brazenly, "Hey, arrest me!" No one did, the woman continued to vote in city elections, and Holder's office never did a thing about the highly publicized act of lawbreaking.

Previous US attorneys in the District, who were white and Republican, had spent an inordinate amount of time and resources trying to put Marion Barry behind bars. Those decisions earned them little but outright hostility from city residents, so Holder's appointment and approach came as welcome change. Even so, members of the DC Council and other public servants working to clean up the city government complained that Holder had gone a little too far the other way. They thought he was depriving the city of some of the much-needed sunshine that can come with a public trial. Holder's reluctance to pull the trigger on many of the investigations generated by law enforcement in DC ensured that many of those responsible for the city's dysfunction continued to flourish. (As the former city auditor told me at the time, "No one ever makes the bad guys pay back the money. If you don't mind a little embarrassment in DC, you can steal to your heart's content.")

Many in DC's legal community had long speculated that the U.S. Attorney's office was just a way station for Holder, and suspected him of coveting a federal judgeship. He was clearly defensive about this when I met him. He told me back then, "I want to make clear that the decisions I've made in this office with regard to what I've said about any issue, any speeches I've given, any prosecutive decisions I've made, have absolutely nothing to do with furthering my career." Weeks later, he became deputy attorney general.

Hillary - 234; Jesus - 23; Chuck Norris - 2

Via Ben Smith, a tally of the write-in votes in Duval County, Florida:

234 HILARY CLINTON
174 RON PAUL
23 NONE OF THE ABOVE
23 JESUS
21 MIKE HUCKABEE
14 MITT ROMNEY
8 COLIN POWELL
6 GOD
4 OBAMA
4 RUDY GIULLIANI
4 STEVEN COLBERT
3 DONALD DUCK
3 DONALD FOY
3 MICKEY MOUSE
3 T. BOONE PICKENS
2 BILL COSBY
2 CHUCK NORRIS
2 CONDOLEEZA RICE
2 LOU DOBBS
2 PAGO POSSUM
2 SARAH PALIN
2 SEANATOR BROWNBACK

Those receiving one vote included Alfred E. Newman, Bill Clinton, Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden, Oprah, Joe the Plumber, Willie Nelson, and "Me."

We're All Paying for Alberto Gonzales

McClatchy reports the Justice Department will foot the bill for a private attorney to defend former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales against charges—brought by a former DOJ official, of all people—that he politicized hiring and firing within the department during his stint as the Feds' top litigator.

Even though an attorney from the DOJ's civil division could have represented Gonzales, he requested the department pay double for a private attorney:

According to a person with knowledge of the case, the Justice Department has imposed a limit of $200 an hour or $24,000 a month on attorneys' fees. Top Justice Department attorneys generally earn no more than $100 per hour.

So, basically, the taxpayers are bailing out a man who oversaw a department that completely undermined its own credibility and objectivity by actively seeking to tear the blindfold from justice. I want to call it ironic, but epic farce describes it better. —Steve Aquino

Obama's First Drama: Hillary Clinton

I was agnostic on the matter of Hillary Clinton's possible appointment as secretary of state--until last night.

If Barack Obama, the president-elect, wanted to pull a Team of Rivals play, that had seemed fine to me. And placing Clinton in Foggy Bottom would remove her from the dicey business of passing health care reform. Would it unite the party? Well, judging from the election results, the party is pretty darn united already. Despite the griping of a few Hillaryites at the Democratic convention, her voters certainly swung behind Obama in the general election (see Pennsylvania), after HRC and WJC campaigned for BHO in the fall. Unless an explicit deal was made between Obama and Hillary Clinton, it did not seem that Obama, after bypassing her for veep, had to appoint her anything for the party's sake. Still, if Obama and his savvy band of advisers thought that handing her one of the best jobs in the Cabinet would generate political benefits they could use to advance their agenda, I, as a non-fan of Hillary Clinton, was willing to say, okay--for what that was worth.

But then this happened: the presidential transition of no-drama Obama became infected by the never-ending soap opera of the Clintons. And it really is time to turn that program off. There are plenty of policy and political reasons for a progressive not to fancy Hillary. She served on the Wal-Mart board when the mega-firm was fighting unions; she screwed up health care reform for almost a generation; she voted wrong on the Iraq war and then refused to acknowledge she had erred. But, worst of all, as the cliché goes, with the Clintons, it always does seem to be about the Clintons.

So we've had a week of will-she-or-won't-she and what-about-him. Couldn't this have been handled with a little more grace? Maybe not, since it involves the Clintons.

I don't know how the Obama camp approached the issue. But before Obama met last week with Hillary to talk about this, his team should have done a pre-vetting of Bill. And then Obama, at this meeting, ought to have said something like this to her:

If you might be interested in the State position, there are a few issues that would come up concerning Bill. Let me run through a few. Would he be willing to release the names of his foundation's donors, as well as those who contribute to his presidential library? Would he be willing to forego contributions and speaking fees from foreign governments, foreign heads of states, and major foreign companies that would have an interest in US foreign policy decisions? Would he be willing to discuss with my national security adviser his foreign travel plans and his foundation's projects before they are announced and undertaken--and would he be willing to defer to us if we believe they are not appropriate or helpful at the time? I know that these are big things to ask. But given his global activity and standing, there's not much choice. And if it's a deal-breaker, I certainly would understand. But before you and I go down this road, we should make sure there are no major obstacles. Can you talk to him and get back to me in a day or two? And, to be helpful, Rahm has come up with a list....

Hillary's answer would have to have been either (a) of course, or (b) thank you for considering me, but I don't believe this would be a good fit. Two days would pass, and then the drama--or at least this part of it--could be over.

Today the news is that Bill will do what he can. AP is reporting:

Former President Bill Clinton has offered several concessions to help Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his wife, become secretary of state, people familiar with President-elect Barack Obama's transition vetting process said Wednesday.

Clinton has agreed to release the names of several major donors to his charitable foundation and will submit future foundation activities and paid speeches to a strict ethics review, said Democrats knowledgeable about the discussions.

They also said that Clinton would step away from day-to-day responsibility for his foundation while his wife serves and would alert the State Department to his speaking schedule and any new sources of income.

Does that take care of it? Note the use of the word "several." It's hard not to see some sticking points arising about what is disclosed and when. The negotiations between the Obama camp and the Clinton team are supposedly proceeding smoothly. But why should there be negotiations? And could it end up with news reports saying Bill Clinton is willing to reveal X, but the Obama side wants him to release X plus Y? That is, more drama. According to AP, "One Clinton adviser noted that former President George H.W. Bush has given paid speeches and participated in international business ventures since his son, George W. Bush, has been president--without stirring public complaints or controversy about a possible conflict of interest." This does raise the suspicion that the Clintonites might not agree to all the necessary limitations. And don't they--or at least, this aide--understand there's something of a difference between their case and that of the Bushes (though it was probably not appropriate for Daddy Bush to engage in that activity).

Bottom-line: if HRC came fuss-free, then maybe there'd be no reason to kick up a fuss about her appointment. Yet that doesn't seem to be what's happening.

But there's another issue to consider, one that has been overshadowed by the drama: if she runs the State Department in a fashion similar to how she managed her campaign, then the country will be in trouble. Her spinners went beyond the boundaries of fair and reasonable spinning. Her team was a snake pit of competitive aides. She did not master the art of refereeing internal disputes. She signed off on strategic blunders. Hers was not a steady hand.

Perhaps that's the better argument against her. Being secretary of state isn't just about giving speeches and touring the world as a celebrity, it's about managing (and now reviving) the creaky and beleaguered foreign policy apparatus of the United States. And Clinton's résumé is not strong on that front.

(Photo of Clinton and Obama by flickr user sskennel used under a Creative Commons license.)

Dick Cheney Is Not Going to Prison

Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales have been indicted by a grand jury for illegal detention practices! Time for some celebratory terrorist fist jabs!

Not so fast, champ. Cheney and Gonzales have been indicted in a South Texas county, and it has nothing to do with Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, or black sites. Cheney was indicted because he invests in the Vanguard Group, which holds financial interests in private prison companies that run holding pens for illegal immigrants in South Texas. (This is a booming business in the Lone Star state; we've written about it before.) Gonzales was indicted because he allegedly used his position while in office to stop a 2006 investigation into abuses at one of these privately-run prisons.

Conditions at these places are pretty awful, but that doesn't mean Cheney and Gonzales should somehow end up in jail. The always-delightful Will Bunch gives us all the reasons:

Dick Cheney is not going to jail, not any time soon, at least, and not because of the bizarre report that the vice president of the United States has been indicted in a small, obscure county deep in the heart of South Texas in a scandal over federal prison and detention abuses there. Aside from the obvious fact that a Willacy County, Texas, grand jury lacks authority over federal actions, the indictment of Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other is not even signed by a judge, and the result of a wacky -- controversial wouldn't do the man justice -- renegade lame duck DA. It's almost not even worth noting that Cheney's alleged tie -- investing his millions in Vanguard mutual funds that are major owners of publicly traded federal prison contractors -- is weak beyond belief; by the grand jury's reasoning, one could surmise that others with Vanguard 401K plans (example: journalists at the Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer!) could be charged as well.

The lesson? You shouldn't give a law degree to just anybody. This prosecutor and Alberto Gonzales both prove that.

No Recount in Alaska Senate Race (Probably)

You probably know by now that Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, a Democrat, will be the next senator from Alaska. Ted Stevens (R-Felonies), the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, will now spend his time mulling over legal options.

What you may not know is that a recount is not in the offing. According to Alaska law, if the difference in the vote is less than 0.5 percent, the defeated candidate can request a state-funded recount. With just a couple thousand votes left to count, Begich has 150,728 votes and Stevens has 147,004 votes. That's 47.76 percent to 46.58 percent, a 1.18 percent difference.

Alaska law does allow a recount if the margin is larger than 0.5 percent, but the candidate requesting the recount must cover the expense. No word yet if Stevens is considering it. The AP and the Anchorage Daily News are calling the race over, and the state of Alaska will follow suit this week or the next.

November 18, 2008

Louisiana Court to BBI Spies: Testify or Else

A ruling by a Louisiana court could shed further light on the shadowy work of Beckett Brown International (BBI), the now defunct private security and investigations firm that spied on Greenpeace and other targets on behalf of corporate clients.

On Monday, state appeals court judge Kent Savoie ordered two of the firm's former officials, Tim Ward and Jay Bly, to testify or face potential contempt charges in a case related to a massive spill of ethylene dichloride in Lake Charles, Louisiana by chemical manufacturer Condea Vista. Working for Condea in the late 1990s, BBI mounted a wide-ranging operation to gather intelligence on the company's opponents, including local activists and lawyers suing the chemical maker on behalf of clients harmed during the cleanup of the 1994 spill. In addition to tailing activists and obtaining the phone records of Condea opponents, BBI installed a mole inside a Lake Charles environmental group to report inside information about the organization's strategy and campaigns.

Up until now, Ward and Bly have balked at testifying about their work for Condea, both citing a Maryland statute that protects private investigators from disclosing their clients and operations.

At the hearing, Tom Filo, a Lake Charles attorney targeted by BBI, testified that in 2006 he got a call from John Dodd, a onetime investor in the security firm, who said he had discovered documents from Filo’s law firm among BBI's files. These confidential documents included medical information about plaintiffs, correspondence related to fees among attorneys, and unfiled legal documents. Filo has contended that these documents were stolen from his offices.

In February 2007, Peter M. Markey, a former Condea Vista superintendent at Condea's Lake Charles plant, acknowledged that from 1997 to 2000 the company employed "a detective agency to monitor and get information of environmental groups in Lake Charles." At the time, Markey said in a deposition that this was part of a PR effort "to understand environmental groups and what was going on here."

On Monday, lawyers for Condea Vista argued that BBI's work for the company had no bearing on the case at hand—brought by a plaintiff charging he was harmed during the cleanup of Condea's 1994 spill—but Savoie's ruling could pave the way for further disclosures about what BBI called its "Lake Charles Project."

The Agents of Change on Obama's Transition Team

Last week, the Obama transition team announced its agency review teams, which, according to the office of the president-elect, will examine key departments, agencies, and commissions, as well as the White House, to provide Barack Obama and his key advisers “information needed to make strategic policy, budgetary, and personnel decisions prior to the inauguration.” As the media and most political consumers focus on who will get what senior position in the Obama administration, this group of about 130 people will do the nuts-and-bolts work of preparing the agendas for the incoming decision-makers. It’s an important band of policy wonks and government experts. Many of the positions were filled, as might be expected, by Washington players who served in the Clinton administration. For instance, Reed Hundt, who chaired the Federal Communications Commission during the Clinton years and who now works for a strategic consulting firm, is leading the team responsible for international trade and economic agencies. And Tom Donilon, a partner at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, who was assistant secretary of state for public affairs in the Clinton administration, is in charge of the group focusing on Foggy Bottom. (The bio for Donilon released by the transition office neglected to mention his stint as general counsel and executive vice president at Fannie Mae.)

The transition team has its share of lobbyists--despite that Obama once vowed he was “running to tell the lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over.” But while most of the transition team members possess the conventional resumés of Washington insiders—albeit Democratic ones--there are several transition team appointments that stand out as harbingers of change. Or at least potential harbingers. These are people whose careers have been anti-Bushian in a deep and profound sense that extends beyond partisan difference. They are academics or policy advocates who have devoted much—if not all—of their adult working lives to advancing the public interest. Their presence on the review teams—even though the transition could use more of such people—enhances the prospect for change beyond the usual. Here’s a sampling:

Sarah Sewall is leading the transition’s national security team. She is the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. According to her bio, her “research focuses on U.S. national security strategy, civil-military relations, and the ethics of fighting insurgencies and terrorism.” The ethics of fighting terrorism? That’s about as non-Bush (or non-Cheney) as it gets. She also started a project to create “a military concept of operations for intervening to halt mass atrocity.” Not even Bill Clinton did that.

Clark Kent Ervin heads the Homeland Security Program at the Aspen Institute. He was the first Inspector General at the Department of Homeland Security—a Bush appointee. During his tenure at DHS, he released several reports assailing mismanagement and security screw-ups. Not surprisingly, when his appointment expired, Ervin was not re-appointed by Bush. With Rand Beers, who worked on counterterrorism for the National Security Council in both the Clinton and Bush II administrations, Ervin will oversee the transition’s review of the Department of Homeland Security. His participation sends a signal: competence and diligence matter.

Thomas Perez is head of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation. He has spent years as a consumer advocate and civil rights lawyer. He’s also been a law professor specializing in poverty law and public health issues. During the Clinton years, he was a federal prosecutor in the civil rights division of the Justice Department. For the transition, he’s working on both the team in charge of justice and civil rights issues and the unit zeroing in on the Department of Health and Human Services. A Justice Department influenced by Perez will be quite different than one influenced by Monica Goodling.

Theodore Shaw is president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., a prominent civil rights law outfit. He has handled school desegregation and capital punishment cases. Shaw represented a coalition of African-American and Latino students in the historic case involving the use of affirmative action at University of Michigan for undergraduate admissions. The US Supreme Court struck down the school’s undergraduate admissions policy but ruled that race can be considered during the admissions process by a university seeking to foster diversity on its campus. Shaw is part of the transition’s Department of Justice unit.

Cruz Reynoso was the first Chicano person to serve on the California Supreme Court. There, he was a consistent liberal, often ruling in favor of environmental protection, individual liberties, and civil rights. He voted often to overturn death penalty sentences. Largely because of that, Reynoso, along with two other justices, became targets of conservatives and were ousted by the voters in 1986, under the state’s unusual judicial election system. Prior to becoming a state judge, Reynoso was director of California Rural Legal Assistance. Reynoso was a awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton. For the Obama transition, he is reviewing the Commission on Civil Rights.

Spencer Overton, a professor at George Washington University law school, wrote the book, Stealing Democracy: The Politics of Voter Suppression. The book’s website says, “Voters don't choose politicians--politicians choose voters by manipulating election rules. What can we do to restore power to the people?” It continues: “While politicians spew shallow sound bites that describe a ‘free’ American people who govern themselves by selecting their representatives, in reality politicians from both parties maintain control by selecting particular voters. Incumbent politicians maintain thousands of election practices and bureaucratic hurdles that determine who votes and how votes are counted--such as the location of election district boundaries, long lines at urban polling places, and English-only ballots.” Overton is someone who has questioned the fundamentals of the voting system. He has called for “making voting easier for all Americans” and for “removing redistricting power from self-interested partisans.” He’s leading the team assessing the Election Assistance Commission.

For twenty-six years, Alan Houseman has been executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit, public interest law firm that has focused on issues affecting low-income persons. Houseman has tried to develop innovative anti-poverty strategies and to ensure that low-income Americans have access to civil legal assistance. He is the model of a non-corporate lawyer. Houseman is working on the transition team’s review of the Legal Services Corporation.

Pamela Gilbert is a former executive director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. For two decades, she was a leading consumer advocate in Washington. She served as consumer program director at the US Public Interest Research Group and was executive director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch. At the CPSC, she helped coax a 40-percent funding boost out of Congress and the Clinton administration. Then came the Bush years, and the CPSC was hollowed out. She will be reviewing the CPSC—think dangerous toys and poisonous pet food from China--for the transition team.

Bill Corr heads the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, one of the leading anti-tobacco nonprofit groups. He joined the outfit after spending 23 years working on Capitol Hill and in the executive branch. That is, he did not become a lobbyist for private interests. He is leading the evaluation of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Xavier de Souza Briggs is an associate professor at MIT. His specialty, his bio says, is “the ‘geography of opportunity’--a policy and research field concerned with the consequences of segregation by race and income and with efforts to respond, such as through ‘housing mobility’ programs that help families exit high-poverty, high-risk neighborhoods in search of better places to raise their kids.” Was there anyone in the Bush administration who had expertise in this field? Briggs is part of the transition unit looking at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Housing Finance Board, and the Interagency Council on Homelessness. (Joining him on that team are Roberta Achtenberg, who during the Clinton years became the first openly lesbian or gay federal official who had to be confirmed by the Senate, and Bruce Katz, a longtime housing policy wonk in Washington, who now runs the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.)

With a presidential transition team led by an academic who has specialized in the ethics of fighting terrorism, it’s clear a major shift is under way in Washington. Certainly, there will be Democrat-on-Democrat policy battles ahead—during the transition and within the Obama administration. Centrist and conventional-thinking Democrats will play critical roles, especially during debates on economic matters. But the composition of Obama’s transition team shows there’s potential for significant change designed by public interest-minded people who possess deep policy expertise and are dedicated to their fields. These folks are the opposite of Michael Brown.

Photo by flickr user Barack Obama used under a Creative Commons license.

Lieberman Escapes Dems' Wrath--and That May Be Good

Revenge is for those who don't care about results.

That's the mature message of Howard Dean. Moments after the Democratic Caucus in the Senate decided to keep Senator Joe Lieberman, who had campaigned for John McCain's presidential bid, as head of the Homeland Security Committee, Dean, the outgoing head of the Democratic National Committee told the Huffington Post that the Senate Dems had done the right thing:

You know, the desire of revenge is great, of course. But the truth is public policy doesn't run on revenge very well. And when you see the trouble this country has gotten into in terms of foreign policy, where Bush basically ran a foreign policy based on petulance because he was mad at, for example, Mexico, for abstaining on the Security Council when the Iraq War came up, if you have to actually run the country, it is best not to do it based on feeling of anger towards your enemies....

My point of view is that Barack won. He can afford to be magnanimous. And if we happen to win both recounts and Georgia, Joe is the 60th vote. And the truth is -- and I certainly don't have to defend Joe Lieberman because, you know, we have an interesting history -- but the fact is, he does vote 90 percent of the time with the Democrats. And no, he shouldn't have said all those things. But why not clean the state? Why not start all over again? Why not allow him to vote with us on the 90 percent of the stuff? He will be a good vote on climate change -- and this matters. He may be a good vote on election reform, which I hope we will get to. So, you know, he may end up - though it is a little against the odds -- he may end up being the vote that allows us to conduct business when Mitch McConnell decides we shouldn't.

Dean has a point. Netroots Democrats got whipped up into a frenzy over the Lieberman matter. For many Democrats, excommunicating Lieberman--who is an independent now but who caucuses with the Democrats--would have felt great. They wanted to see the Senate Dems flash some political muscle. But getting personal is not always the way to get ahead. When Obama takes the high road, he can gain political capital. When congressional Democrats help him do that, they will be helping themselves. Lieberman is a sideshow--a sanctimonious, irritating sideshow. But the president-elect and the Democrats in Congress have much bigger fish to fry. They could afford to toss this one back into the pond.

By the way, Kevin disagrees.