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Cell Phone Lawsuit Follows Mojo Investigation

Michael Mechanic — 2008-12-02T14:40:22-08:00

On the heels of a recent Mother Jones investigation into the mortal dangers of driving while gabbing on a cell phone, the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety has sued the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, accusing it of illegally withholding information related to the risks.

The lawsuit, filed yesterday in US District Court in Washington, DC, claims that the federal agency violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by refusing to release documents—including the first-ever government estimate of auto fatalities related to cell phone use: 955 deaths in 2002. NHTSA is a branch of the Department of Transportation that regulates the auto industry and aims to reduce injuries and deaths on the nation's highways. Contacted today, agency spokesman Rae Tyson declined to comment on the suit.

Obama's First Policy Retreat?

Nick Baumann — 2008-12-02T14:39:37-08:00

Did Barack Obama just break his first campaign promise?

On the campaign trail, Obama railed against big oil companies. He often criticized John McCain for backing tax cuts that would reward ExxonMobil and other top oil manufacturers. But now Obama's proposal to apply a windfall tax on big oil has vanished... at least from his transition website. The President-elect's transition team hasn't explicitly announced it will drop the windfall tax plan, but a transition aide, commenting on the condition he not be identified, backed off the promise in an email. "President-elect Obama announced the [windfall profits tax] policy during the campaign because oil prices were above $80 per barrel," he said. "They are currently below that now and expected to stay below that."

The windfall profits proposal was deleted from the transition website almost three weeks before the eagle-eyed American Small Business League (ASBL), an advocacy group for small businesses, noticed the change and protested in a press release Tuesday. The plan was mentioned in a version (PDF) of the site that existed after Obama's election win. But when the transition website relaunched on November 8, references to a excess profits tax on the oil and gas industry were gone.

Auto Execs Starting to Get It?

Jonathan Stein — 2008-12-02T12:51:01-08:00

Bad PR works wonders, apparently. Just two weeks after incurring public wrath for flying private jets to Washington in order to beg for bailout money, Detroit's top dogs are returning this week (driving hybrid cars to get here) with a plan to make amends:

Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Alan Mulally plans to tell Congress he is accelerating his company's development of hybrid and electric vehicles and is willing to cut his salary to $1 a year if Ford uses any federal funds.

General Motors Corp. is expected to focus on efforts to lighten the company's heavy debt load and consolidate or sell at least one of its eight automotive brands, most likely Saab, people familiar with the matter said. GM CEO Rick Wagoner also will take a $1 salary, those people said....

In a phone interview Monday, Mr. Mulally said Ford will explain to Congress it is rushing to launch new hybrids and electric vehicles by 2011, including a battery-powered commercial van and compact sedan. A plug-in electric vehicle that can be recharged from a standard electrical outlet should follow in 2012, he said.

In a separate interview, Ford Chairman William Ford Jr. said the company is looking beyond survival to opportunity. "We want to come blasting out as a global, green, high-tech company that's exactly where the country and the Obama administration want us to head," he said.

There is serious reason to doubt Bill Ford on this issue — he has long talked a good game on environmental matters while his company continued to mass produce gas-guzzling over-sized vehicles. At this point, though, reality appears to have finally penetrated the auto executives' thick skulls. No more private jets, no more massive salaries, no more ignoring the market for hybrids, and hopefully, no more business plans that produce SUVs and little else.

WMD Terrorist Attack "More Likely Than Not" by 2013, Says Report

Bruce Falconer — 2008-12-02T09:32:56-08:00

On the heels of President-elect Barack Obama's announcement of his national security team, a new report wastes no time in outlining one of the more serious and immediate challenges facing the new administration: how to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). According to the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, a congressionally mandated, bipartisan panel of experts led by former senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent, the outlook is not good. The panel's final report, due out tomorrow, shows proliferation to be on the rise and concludes that "unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013."

The last administration famously began its ill-fated foreign adventure in Iraq out of fear that "a smoking gun could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." But the Commission sees biological rather than nuclear weapons as a more pressing concern, describing the United States as "very exposed" to biological attack. The US has taken the lead in securing fissile materials used in nuclear weapons (although serious problems remain), but comparatively little effort has been spent in preventing biological attacks. The nuclear age began with the use of nuclear weapons, which gave urgency to fighting their spread. "The life sciences community," says the Commission, "has never experienced a comparable iconic event. As a result, security awareness has grown slowly, lagging behind the emergence of biological risks and threats." One possible exception, of course, was the 2001 anthrax attacks. But the vulnerabilities in the system has been "only partly addressed" and the Commission notes that "if only 15 grams of dry anthrax spores delivered by mail could produce such an enormous effect [an estimated $6 billion in damages, not to mention lives lost], the consequences of a large-scale aerosol release would be almost unimaginable."

Obama Takes Initial Open Government Step

Jonathan Stein — 2008-12-02T08:00:25-08:00

Who here is interested in the copyright standards of the Obama transition's web-based information, documents, and videos? Everybody, right? Excellent.

Open government advocates are cheering the fact that the Obama transition team has changed the copyright restriction on Change.gov to a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which allows users to grab content off Change.gov, copy it, remix it, and distribute it without limitation. All users have to do is attribute the content to Change.gov. It is the freest possible version of a copyright and a step in the right direction.

But there's more to be done, of course. The open government community is pushing for a couple more concessions from the Obama people, the primary one being that content needs to be practically accessible in addition to legally accessible. That is to say, it matters little if content on Change.gov can be remixed and modified and disseminated, if the coding of the content doesn't allow it to be copied in the first place. Here's an explanation from open-government.us, where you can find more ideas for a truly open transition:

South Texas Indictments of Cheney, Gonzales Dismissed

Jonathan Stein — 2008-12-02T06:53:33-08:00

Happened yesterday. And it wasn't surprising.

Harvey Milk: Local Legend or National Figure?

Mother Jones — 2008-12-01T14:07:55-08:00

Harvey Milk, the San Francisco board of supervisors member who was assassinated in 1978, never considered himself to be a local anything. Milk, who was born in New York and has a high school in Manhattan named for him, also lived in California, Florida, and Texas during his life. He held office in San Francisco for a mere 11 months, but he had dreams of becoming a mayor, a congressman, and after that, who knew? So it seems incongruous that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would decline to commemorate Harvey Milk's birthday by deeming the first openly gay man in the nation to hold public office a "local" figure.

The Milk bill, sponsored by California assemblyman Mark Leno, sought to make Milk's birthday (May 22) a statewide "day of significance." The bill itself is fairly low-impact: schools and government institutions would remain open for regular business. The bill would only "encourage" educational institutions to "conduct suitable commemorative exercises on that date." In September, Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill saying that Milk's "contributions should continue to be recognized at the local level."

Last week Gus Van Sant's film about Milk opened as a limited release. At the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, the line to enter the movie stretched for almost two blocks. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie earned a record-breaking $1.4 million in three-day box office, or $38,375 per location. The films five-day Thanksgiving Weekend total gross was $1.9 million. Local level, indeed.

—Daniel Luzer

Image by flickr user Sam Spade

Bush Earns Medal for AIDS Efforts

Mother Jones — 2008-12-01T12:58:05-08:00

Today, the twentieth anniversary of World AIDS Day, George W. Bush received the first "International Medal of P.E.A.C.E." for his contribution to world peace via HIV/AIDS funding. Starting in 2003, Bushs Presidents Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) gave $15 billion to international programs to fight HIV/AIDS, but the programs were widely panned for their focus on abstinence-before-marriage and be-faithful-to-one-partner education. The medal was awarded by Pastor Rick Warren's new P.E.A.C.E. organization, which honors "ordinary people empowered by God."

According to a 2006 year-long study by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the ideological bent of PEPFAR made the programs ineffective in countries with high HIV rates like Uganda and South Africa. South Africa's HIV prevalence rate among adults has increased from 18.8% in 2005 to 25.5% today. And in Uganda, the infection rate nearly doubled between 2003, just after PEPFAR began implementing programs there, and 2005.

If Only Those Dead Indians Hadn't Been So Cowardly

Jonathan Stein — 2008-12-01T12:29:26-08:00

Conservative bloggers, who blamed the Virginia Tech victims for not fighting back against the madman who attacked their school, are back for a second dip in the blame-the-victim cesspool. Here's John Hinderaker:

I wondered earlier today how a mere ten terrorists could bring a city of 19 million to a standstill. Here in the U.S., I don't think it would happen. I think we have armed security guards who know how to use their weapons, supplemented by an unknown number of private citizens who are armed and capable of returning fire. The Indian experience shows it is vitally important that this continue to be the case. This is a matter of culture as much as, or more than, a matter of laws.

Adam Serwer of TAP explains this attitude thusly:

This is a really strange and immature coping mechanism that manifests on the right in times of high profile tragedy. Rather than contemplate being a victim of a terrorist attack, the subject imagines him or herself as the star of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. I'd say it's simple racism, but it really is fear masquerading as bravado, a cultural chauvinism that directs itself at other Americans as readily as it does at foreigners. It is the "short skirt" theory of violence. If it happened, you must have been asking for it.

Hm, yes. I have to say, I have never seen anyone who has actually faced combat criticize the inaction or ineffectualness of untrained, unarmed bystanders when in a life-or-death situations. (If this has happened somewhere, please feel free to correct me.) This thinking appears to be peculiar to a certain kind of conservative keyboard monkey who measures America's strength by the size of its military and considers himself (always a him) more patriotic than liberals because he is more likely to thank a veteran for his or her service, though he himself would never serve.

The Curious Retention of Robert Gates

David Corn — 2008-12-01T10:57:58-08:00

Barack Obama's national security team--at this early stage--presents more questions than answers. His selection of Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state has been a much-chewed-over topic of pundit puzzlement. And with the Monday morning unveiling of his senior defense and foreign policy aides, Obama made official another curious decision: his retention of Robert Gates as secretary of defense.

There's an obvious reason for Obama to keep Gates at the Pentagon. Having a George W. Bush appointee in charge will give Obama political cover as he proceeds with his plan to withdraw troops from Iraq. But there are several potential problems with this move. I've consulted two former Pentagon officials--who are critics of standard operating procedure at the Pentagon--who decry this move. (Neither wanted to be quoted, for they might now or later be in contention for a job in the Obama administration.) "It's probably the dumbest thing Obama's done," one said.

They identified three possible pitfalls. First, Gates is a lame duck. There has been no indication how long he will stay in the Pentagon's top post, but it seems Gates will remain there on a quasi-temporary basis. Consequently, Pentagon bureaucrats who don't want to see their prerogatives challenged--if Gates wanted to do such a thing--could try to wait him out. Second, Gates is no agent of change when it comes to the Pentagon budget. In the Bush years, the regular military budget has increased by 40 percent in real terms (not counting so-called "emergency" supplemental spending bills for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan)--partly because of hundreds of billions of dollars in cost overruns. During the campaign, Obama talked about the need to cut "billions of dollars in wasteful spending" from the military budget. But Gates has yet to demonstrate he is truly interested in reworking the Pentagon's out-of-control budget. Keeping Gates in place sends the signal that Obama, who faces a host of hard jobs, is not eager to take on the Pentagon at the start of his presidency. "There are so many problems at home," says one of the critics, "Obama may not want to do anything fundamental about the Pentagon."

Picking Up the Pieces: A Sober, War-Time National Security Cabinet Takes Shape

Laura Rozen — 2008-12-01T09:40:34-08:00

As they were introduced and made brief remarks this morning, it was hard to envy the team of national security aides President-elect Barack Obama announced today at the Chicago Hilton. President Bush and Vice President Cheney broke the national security apparatus. Are retired Marine Corps General Jim Jones, Obama's designated national security adviser, Sen. Hillary Clinton, the next secretary of state, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who Obama has asked to stay on, up to the task of fixing it? In the midst of two wars, and the most ominous economic crisis in half a century?

Obama expressed confidence in the pragmatism and competence of the bipartisan national security team he had assembled, and the event conveyed sobriety and awareness of the enormous task ahead, more so than any excitement at the prospect of a new, more cooperative and internationalist national security vision to come from Washington. The team he picked reflected the subdued moment: pragmatists over ideologues, managers and technocrats who get things done. These people represent a far cry from the Bush era's hardline, uncompromising, us-versus-them, bellicose rhetoric and often miserable incompetence.

"In this uncertain world, the time has come for a new beginning a new dawn of American leadership to overcome the challenges of the 21st century, and to seize the opportunities embedded in those challenges," Obama said. "To succeed, we must pursue a new strategy that skillfully uses, balances, and integrates all elements of American power: our military and diplomacy; our intelligence and law enforcement; our economy and the power of our moral example. The team that we have assembled here today is uniquely suited to do just that. They share my pragmatism about the use of power, and my sense of purpose about Americas role as a leader in the world."

General Jones, who has served as a Marine Corps commandant, as NATO's supreme allied commander, and, most recently, as Bush's Mideast envoy (trying to assess efforts to build up the Palestinian security forces), is widely respected both abroad and within the turf-conscious national security community in Washington. (A native Kansan, Jones went to high school in France, where his father was stationed as a military officer and speaks fluent French.) Jones is "a good guy," says one former US intelligence official who dealt with Jones during the first Bush term on a European-related issue. "He's politically tuned into Hillary. He's pretty smart guy, speaks French....They like him in Europe. He's a well-respected, good man, a square guy and a good marine. He'll handle the job better than Stephen Hadley."

Other appointments Obama announced today include his long-time campaign foreign policy adviser Susan Rice as US ambassador to the United Nations, which will again be a cabinet level position; Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as secretary of homeland security; and Eric Holder as attorney general. It's worth noting that Obama did not announce a director of national intelligence or director of the Central Intelligence Agency among his other national security appointments today. The reported top candidate for the job, John Brennan, withdrew his name from consideration last week, after coming under criticism in the left blogosphere for allegedly defending the CIA's harsh interrogation practices while serving as an aide to former CIA director George Tenet.

Major League Baseball Catches Outsourcing Fever

Jonathan Stein — 2008-11-29T15:12:05-08:00

Or maybe this is better described as insourcing....

The Pittsburgh Pirates hope Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel really do have million-dollar arms.

The two 20-year-old pitchers, neither of whom had picked up a baseball until earlier this year, signed free-agent contracts Monday with the Pirates. They are believed to be the first athletes from India to sign professional baseball contracts outside their country.

Singh and Patel came to the United States six months ago after being the top finishers in an Indian reality TV show called the "Million Dollar Arm" that drew about 30,000 contestants. The show sought to find athletes who could throw strikes at 85 miles per hour or faster.

The article notes that when Singh and Patel (picture) first came to the United States and began playing catch, they "were mystified by the concept of gloves and had to be taught not to try to catch the ball with their bare hands." But the article also notes that the pair has athletic experience throwing the javelin, so this will definitely end well.

What Do Obama's Foreign Policy Appointments Tell Us About Future of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

Jonathan Stein — 2008-11-29T10:37:20-08:00

Depends on if you're considering General James Jones, likely National Security Advisor in the upcoming Obama Administration, or Senator Hillary Clinton, likely Secretary of State. Their professional histories send conflicting messages about Obama's intentions in the region. Check out Eli Lake in TNR for more.

Must-Reads on the End of the Bush Administration

Jonathan Stein — 2008-11-29T10:18:59-08:00

There are two great stories out discussing what we should do with all the national security secrets that, if made public, could (1) expose the full extent of the Bush Administration's torture, detention, rendition, and wiretapping programs, (2) make Bush Administration officials vulnerable to criminal prosecution, (3) create a public circus that overshadows the Obama Administration's early actions and spoils a moment of goodwill that Obama wants to exploit, and (4) potentially make our defenses weaker in the war on terror.

Result (1) is obviously a good thing. Is (2)? Even if it comes with effects (3) and (4)? Is there a way to do this that avoids (4) entirely?

Check out the thoughts of Dahlia Lithwick in Slate and Charles Homans in the Washington Monthly. Obama seems interested in establishing a commission that ferrets out the who/what/where/when/why, but doesn't initiate criminal proceedings. That's probably the approach the majority of the country would prefer, but is bound to anger some on both the right and the left.

Iraqi Parliament to Vote Today on "Status of Forces Agreement"

Bruce Falconer — 2008-11-26T07:40:56-08:00

The Iraqi Parliament is expected to vote today on the "Status of Forces Agreement" (SOFA), a document that, if passed, will establish guidelines for US forces in Iraq and, more importantly, set a timetable for their withdrawal. Washington and Baghdad signed on to a draft of the agreement earlier this month. If it is accepted today by at least 138 of the 275 members of Iraq's parliament, the document will then go to the Iraqi presidential council for final approval. SOFA, which the Iraqis are already informally calling "the withdrawal agreement," mandates that US forces pull out of Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009, and leave the country entirely by December 31, 2011, effectively ending the US occupation of Iraq.

According to Peter Galbraith, a senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, who has written extensively on the American occupation for the New York Review of Books, the agreement represents "a stunning and humiliating reversal of course by the Bush administration, which had vehemently opposed any timetable for withdrawal from Iraq." But things change, and especially with Barack Obama's impending inauguration, SOFA is perhaps more acceptable to the current administration than leaving the timetable for withdrawal entirely in the hands of its successor. "The signing of this agreement, along with the election of a new president who ran on a platform to end the war in Iraq, suggests that anti-Iraq efforts have not been in vain," says John Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World. "The agreement reflects the views held by the majority of Iraqis and Americans that it is time for US combat forces to start getting out of Iraq."

Still, not all Iraqis are eager to see US forces leave. A Sunni bloc within the Iraqi Parliament, joined by a few renegade Kurds, are said to be holding out on ratification of SOFA. Their primary concern is "how they'll be treated by the Shiite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki" once US forces depart, according to today's Wall Street Journal. Iraqi Sunnis formed the bulk of the insurgency in past years, but have more recently become partners in the American occupation, primarily to counter the ascendance of Shiite parties. US and Iraqi officials have been negotiating for Sunni support in the final hours leading up to today's vote.

Galbraith shares in the Sunnis' concern. "For the last two years, President Bush has pretended that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is a democrat and an American ally," he says. "In fact, Maliki is a sectarian Shiite politician who heads a government dominated by pro-Iranian religious parties. The US presence is now no longer serves the interests of Iraq's ruling Shiite religious parties or their Iranian allies, so we are now being asked to leave."

UPDATE: The Iraqi parliament has decided to put off the vote until tomorrow morning, allowing more time for SOFA's backers to persuade opponents of the agreement.