Week of: |
4:39 PM
If Sistani dies, what then?
All the headlines have been focused on Moqtada al-Sadr's uprising in Iraq's southern Shiite region. Another piece of big Iraqi news, however, might have slipped below the radar. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has been flown to London for treatment for a serious heart condition. So what happens if Sistani dies? Who becomes the new spiritual leader of the Shiites? A few days ago, Juan Cole had a brief overview:
It is not clear that the other three grand ayatollahs have Sistani's high opinion of parliamentary democracy rooted in popular sovereignty. He would probably be succeeded by Muhammad Said al-Hakim, an Iraqi and distant cousin of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). SCIRI certainly does not have a long-term commitment to democracy.
In the immediate term, if Sistani dies, a bloody power struggle may well break out among potential successors. Note that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim controls the Badr Corps, a heavy militia of about 10,000 men. It's possible that the al-Hakim could use his militia to try to wipe out Sadr's forces. (Many believe that Sadr was responsible for the car-bomb assassination of SCIRI's former leader, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim.)
And what about the long term? Sistani has certainly been a thorn in the occupation's side -- especially after opposing the federalist constitution. But, as the voice of the Shiites, he's also a relative moderate and opposed to Iran-style theocracy. (Two other potential successors, Muhammad Said al-Hakim and Bashir Najafi are less moderate, though not as radical as Sadr; both have mostly refrained from inciting violence against the U.S.) The views of senior Shiite clerics will play a big part in determining the future of Iraq. A radical Shiite leader, if elected, would likely spur resentment among Sunnis and Kurds, leading to more violence down the road. Those possibilities are far scarier than the skirmishes we're seeing now.
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3:53 PM
Obama v. ... Keyes!
Barack Obama finally has an opponent in his race for the Senate. After getting turned down by more than a dozen prospective candidates -- everyone from former Gov. Jim Edgar to former "Da Coach" Ditka -- Illinois Republicans have reportedly found a taker in Alan Keyes. Yep, that Alan Keyes.
With his two failed runs for the presidency -- and his two failed Senate runs in Maryland, the state where he actually lives -- Keyes gives the GOP a sorely needed candidate who can lose without damaging his political future in Illinois or damaging a particular group within the party. The right-wing radio commentator and former ambassador received this ringing endorsement from House Speaker Dennis Hastert:
"I wasn't involved. Never talked to Keyes. Never talked to any of the state central committeemen. Nobody…Would I have chosen another person? Maybe so. But the people I worked on, I couldn't get to run in the first place."
Of course, Keyes has virtually no chance of winning against Obama. But it will be the first time in history that both Republicans and Democrats nominated an African-American candidate in the same Senate race. Speaking of history, it's probably worth noting that Keyes - who has never lived in Illinois - heavily criticized Hilary Clinton in 2000 for running in New York without being a resident.
When first informed of Keyes as a possible opponent, Obama replied:
"Does he live in Illinois? The Republicans need to just go ahead and make up their minds and when they do, we'll be happy to debate whoever they put in."
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2:25 PM
Dude, where's my job?
So the new job numbers are out, and they aren't good: only 32,000 jobs added this month. Also, figures from the last two months were revised downwards. To put that in context, at least 150,000 jobs need to be created each month to absorb the growing labor force, and at least 300,000 jobs need to be created to keep pace with the Bush administration's job forecasts -- we're already 1.5 million jobs short of those forecasts. Meanwhile, the president is telling crowds that "our economy is moving forward." What?
If this Heritage Foundation "analysis" is any indication, conservatives will no doubt spin the numbers as best they can. First, they'll say that the official unemployment rate fell from 5.6 percent to 5.5 percent. But much of this is due to workers abandoning their search for work; the true jobless rate remains much higher.
Second, they'll say that we should ignore the establishment figures, based on a survey of business payrolls. Instead, everyone should look at the household survey -- a survey conducted over 60,000 households -- which claims that, in fact, 629,000 jobs have been created. This is something of a time-honored tradition among the right, with pundits flogging whatever survey offers better numbers at the moment. (The Bush administration conveniently ignores the household survey whenever it doesn't show strong growth!) Never mind, of course, that Alan Greenspan himself has declared the payroll survey a more reliable source.
At any rate, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) pretty much put the household/payroll controversy to rest in March with this analysis (PDF). The specifics are a little tedious, but basically, after correcting the data to make the two surveys "similar in concept and definition," the numbers converge nicely over time. In the end, no matter which survey you use, the result is the same: job growth under Bush has been a disaster.
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12:51 PM
When is it OK for the Bush administration to leak?
While investigations looked into the allegations regarding former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, officials at the National Archives talked with the press about Berger's alleged actions -- and one Democratic congressman wants to know why.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) sent a letter to John Ashcroft Friday, asking why DOJ officials allowed the disclosure of information about an ongoing investigation. He points out that officials normally avoid commenting on such investigations - such as those involving Valerie Plame and Ahmed Chalabi - and said the DOJ overruled the advice of the prosecutors handling the Berger investigation. Waxman said he learned Thursday that:
"Archive staff have now been told that they are "in no way constrained" from discussing any details relating to Mr. Berger's case. When my staff contacted Justice Department officials to confirm this, they reported that the Justice Department did receive a request from the Republican staff and thereafter revised their instructions to Archive officials."
John Ashcroft hasn't yet written a response.
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11:24 AM
Who's paying our federal judges?
An item in the Washington Post yesterday made note of a new GAO report. The report indicates that a private judiciary committee has been quietly redacting public information about federal judges who may have financial conflicts of interest.
Judges are always allowed to redact material for safety reasons, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. In many instances, the redacted material included information about stocks, debt, business contacts, gifts, and outside income. It makes you wonder what, exactly, is being hidden. Especially since, as the Post notes, federal judges are hardly immune from a bit of corruption:
In the case of the judiciary, studies in recent years have shown that judges improperly issued hundreds of orders in lawsuits against companies in which they owned stock. At least one judge threw out lawsuits against a medical center on whose board he sat. Activists and reporters also used the reports to identify judges who traveled at no cost to them to resort locations to attend seminars hosted by interest groups.
What makes this more disturbing is the fact that, as Michael Scherer reported last year in Mother Jones, corporations have increasingly been lobbying for federal judges who will prove amenable to business interests:
[W]ith a sympathetic ear in the White House, corporate America is taking its legal agenda to the federal bench with a behind-the-scenes campaign of high-powered lobbying and interest-group advertising. [William] Pryor[, a Supreme Court nominee] is just one of the corporate stars. Several of President Bush's nominees to federal appeals and district courts -- and even White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, a former Texas Supreme Court justice who now selects federal nominees for the president -- owe their careers to the support of the insurance, retail, and energy industries that got them elected on the state level…
Big money, however, cares a great deal about who sits on the nation's 13 federal circuit courts. "There is the hope on the part of the business community that their rulings will be more friendly," says Paul DeCamp, a Republican corporate lawyer who counts two nominees as personal friends.
This trend won't stop until Bush is ousted from the White House, at minimum. But until that comes, the public needs to be able to follow the money trail.
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9:38 AM
Senate races to watch
The National Journal's Charlie Cook has a good run-down of the Senate races. On Cook's view, there are essentially eight competitive races this year -- three Republican seats, five Democratic seats -- and the Democrats need to win seven of them to retake the Senate. (The seats are in Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota.)
It's true that the Democrats have strong candidates in all of those races, and they certainly have a chance, though it won't be easy. But Cook left out two major races -- both Republican seats -- that could prove pivotal for the Dems.
1) In Pennsylvania, Sen. Arlen Specter was bloodied after a fierce primary challenge from hard-right Rep. Pat Toomey. Reports indicated that all those disillusioned conservatives who favored Toomey might stay home on election day. Specter, who spent around $15 million in the primaries, has always tried to cultivate a moderate image, but after the Bush era, he's vulnerable on two fronts: He voted in favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment (see here for more), and he backed off from blocking the Labor Department's scale-back of overtime pay, after pressure from the White House.
Specter's Democratic challenger, Rep. Joe Hoeffel, has the support of a few prominent bloggers, and is a charismatic candidate -- he was recently arrested for protesting against genocide outside of Sudan's embassy. If he can get his name ID up, he could well oust Specter. (In the latest poll I'm aware of, Hoeffel trailed 51-36.)
2) The always-interesting state of Missouri could also prove competitive. Three-term incumbent Christopher "Kit" Bond has a lot of money on hand, but he's never been a strong campaigner. Much of his support in 1998 came from black voters, many of whom will likely swing back to the D column, given their overwhelming support for John Kerry. In an early DSCC poll, Bond's re-elect number was an anemic 41 percent. Bond's challenger, State Treasurer Nancy Farmer, is a wonderful candidate who won statewide election in 2000 despite being vastly outspent by her opponent. Unfortunately, she too lacks name recognition. Sen. Jon Corzine (D-NJ), head of the DSCC, has promised to devote serious time and money to this race. That, plus Kerry's success in this swing state, could make all the difference.
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4:26 PM
What's in the Defense bill? A lot
President Bush signed the $391 billion Department of Defense Appropriations Bill for the 2005 fiscal year this morning. While most of the coverage (rightly) focused on the small increase in soldiers' pay, the belated funding of body armor for troops and the always massive expenditures on weaponry, a closer look at the bill reveals some interesting sidenotes.
The final text of the bill appropriates an additional $51 million for the Department of Defense to use by Sept. 30, 2005. But that requires Donald Rumsfeld to make a series of grants outlined by Congress:
- The Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Foundation, which runs its namesake museum in New York City, gets $5 million.
- San Francisco's Presidio Trust gets $1.875 million to renovate the former military complex's parade field.
- Fort Ticonderoga gets $1 million to renovate its King's Warehouse.
- The Military Aviation Museum of the Pacific in Hawaii gets $8.5 million.
- Fort Campbell's Wings of Liberty Military Museum gets $10 million.
- The non-profit United Services Organization receives $2.55 million.
- The IDEA (Interior Distance Education of Alaska) program based in Galena City, Alaska, gets $5 million.
- Seattle's Wing Luke Asian Museum receives $1.5 million.
- The Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation in Washington, housed inside Arlington National Cemetery, gets $1 million.
- The American Red Cross gets $2 million for its Greater Alleghenies Blood Services Center.
- The school system in Tennessee's Clarksville-Montgomery County gets $4 million.
- The National Museum of Cavalry and Armor at Fort Knox gets $1 million.
Elsewhere in the bill, fans of Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta (the Cabinet's token Democrat) will be happy to learn that the bill establishes an internship program in his name. The program gets $2.55 million and gives economically disadvantaged students of Asian-American descent internships at the Department of Defense.
The bill also tries to pay back some past expenses. For example, there's $500,000 for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to help pay for the use of high-resolution imaging by authorities fighting 2003 wildfires.
More importantly, $70 million made available to fight famine and provide humanitarian aid to victims of violence in Sudan and to refugees now living in neighboring Chad.
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1:38 PM
Met candidates, robbed bank
The 98,000 residents of Davenport, Iowa were very popular yesterday. Not only did George Bush and John Kerry show up, but so did some opportunistic robbers who hit up three of the town's banks. Admittedly, Davenport has had a high crime year so far -- last month there were seven, compared to one or two most years. Still, three in a single day is not nothing. The Davenport police believe that the robberies were timed to coincide with the candidates'visits and insist that in spite of the extra security for the campaign events, regular patrols were not scaled back. But the police department of the next purple town in line to host Bush and Kerry on the same day would be wise to keep an extra eye on those banks just in case.
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11:59 AM
Don't slash spending and call it a "cap"
Fiscal responsibility and deficit reductions are by and large good things. Every time the government runs a massive deficit, investors are lured away from the private sector and into government bonds. When we're talking about trillions of dollars in federal debt, that makes for a major drag on private investment and growth. It's clear, then, that Bill Clinton's 1993 deficit reduction bill paved the way for a long era of prosperity. Likewise, I'm all for John Kerry's new plan to reduce the deficit. But let's get one thing straight: putting caps on discretionary funding -- i.e. keeping spending in line with inflation -- can really be quite harmful. Here's the Washington Post on Kerry's proposal:
Those [deficit reduction] policies, according to Kerry advisers, include restoration of caps on discretionary spending and budgets that keep the growth of discretionary spending in line with inflation, with the exception of security and education spending. Automatic cuts would come into force if spending exceeded inflation, again excluding security and education.
Unfortunately, if you want to keep domestic spending at a "stable" level, it has to rise with both inflation and population growth. If you cap, say, housing vouchers at the rate of inflation, and the population rises, then by definition you've cut housing vouchers. Bush has tried the same trick; it's utterly dishonest, and I wish more reporters would call him on it.
The larger issue is that "discretionary spending" has always been a major straw man for deficit hawks. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities noted in an analysis earlier this year, discretionary spending accounts for only a tiny sliver of total government spending. If you want to talk about deficit reduction, start thinking seriously about reforming Social Security and Medicare, or repealing the tax cuts. Don't slash nutritional programs and housing vouchers and call it a "spending cap."
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10:52 AM
Take a tax hike
While Robert Kuttner is out advising Democrats to tax the "super-rich" in the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal takes a more sober look at what high marginal tax rates for the wealthy really mean. As George Bush himself has pointed out, one problem with Kerry's plan is that rich people tend to "have accountants" and can wiggle out of paying as many taxes as possible. The Journal concurs:
Higher tax rates prod the rich to search harder for tax shelters and other tax dodges. The latest academic work suggests that lifting the top tax rate to 39.6% from today's 35% (which works out to a 7% decrease in such taxpayers' take-home pay at the margin) would reduce taxable income in that bracket by about 4%.
Of course, we could always just strengthen the IRS. As Kuttner notes in his piece, the Republicans gutted the IRS in the '90s, after cooking up a few scare stories about evil collection agents (most of which proved false). Now the service mainly goes after lower-income taxpayers, shying away from the daunting task of taking on millionaires with armies of accountants and tax lawyers.
The Journal also notes that the Alternative Minimum Tax could be used to prevent wealthy taxpayers from dodging taxes, if it were revamped:
Created in 1970 to make sure the richest taxpayers don't get so many tax breaks that they avoid taxes altogether, [the AMT] is encroaching on the upper-middle class. It doesn't sound bad -- a 26% or 28% rate -- but the taxpayers affected don't get the full benefit of the personal exemption, deduction for state and local income taxes or miscellaneous deductions. Without changes, the AMT will be bigger than the regular income tax before the end of the decade.
One other point. I'm surprised that Bush is now arguing against a tax increase on practical grounds, rather than on grounds of fairness. Maybe Karl Rove has figured out that modest tax hikes for the wealthy just don't seem outlandish to voters. After all, we're not talking about nationalizing the means of production here. The upper class seemed to make out quite nicely with a 39.6 percent marginal rate during the 1990s.
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5:08 PM
Selling the news
Forbes.com is crossing a new frontier in media advertising: companies can now link to words in the site's news stories to pitch their products. The publication is giving a summer trial to a program developed by IntelliTxt, a San Francisco-based company with 150 clients. The words linked by the advertisers are doubly underlined, distinguishing them from regular links on Forbes.com and before clicking, the reader is warned that ad content is to follow. Jim Spanfeller, the president of Forbes.comtold the Associated Press that the site is "not trying to blur the line between advertising and editorial, we're just trying to find out where that line is." But some in the media business are worried about the potential harm of this new advertising technique on editorial content. As Larry Kramer, chairman and chief executive at CBS Marketwatch told the New York Times: "Are we going to start writing stories that use words that we think will bring us more revenue…While I don't think anybody is doing anything untoward now, I do think there is potential for that."
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4:14 PM
Religious freedom: compare and contrast
In favor of religious freedom: Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani:
The most revered Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, described the bombings [of Christian churches in Iraq] as "criminal actions" and called on the new Iraqi government to end such violence.
"We confirm the necessity of respecting the right of Christians and other religious minorities and their right to live in their country, Iraq, in security and peace," Ayatollah Sistani, who communicates publicly only on matters he regards as vital, said in a statement.
Not as in favor of religious freedom: George W. Bush.
The administration has failed to take actions authorized by law to improve the conditions of religiously persecuted people in the countries that were designated as being of "particular concern" in March 2003: Burma, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Sudan....
For the past several years, the State Department has ignored the recommendation of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom -- an independent body created by the IRFA -- to list Saudi Arabia as a country of "particular concern for religious freedom."
Saudi Arabia isn't the only country whose crackdown on religious expression is ignored by the administration. The State Department also turned a blind eye to its own findings on Pakistan, Eritrea and Turkmenistan and failed to list them as countries of "particular concern."
This is all in good fun, of course. But read that second article, a Salon piece by Judd Legum of the Center for American Progress. Bush sure talks about how important religious freedom is, but he doesn't actually do a whole lot to support it.
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3:28 PM
George Shultz's numbers game
In the New York Times today, former Secretary of State George Shultz has written one of the most misleading op-eds I've seen in a long time. He offers a pretty chart purporting to "prove" that Republicans have a better economic record. And indeed, according to Shultz' graph, the Clinton era shows a plateau, and then a drop, while the second Bush era, after the recession, shows only a sharp line upward. Hm, a sharp line upward… So Bush must clearly be better, right?
No, not even according to Shultz' own graph. First, note that the graph marks a change in GDP and employment over time. So the graph basically tells us that the economy under Clinton sustained steady 4 percent growth for several years, and continued to add people to the workforce. The "Clinton recession" came at the end of a long era of prosperity, after living standards had risen sharply. Which we already knew.
By contrast, the Bush economy only managed to hit 4 percent growth this year -- and the change in growth should have, in theory, risen much faster during a recovery. Also, note that, according to Shultz' figures, employment growth under Bush never got above zero until 2004. On the chart, Bush's record looks like a steep upward line, but the numbers are actually quite damning. If anything, the graph adds evidence to the idea that, under a different set of policies, we could have had much faster growth over the past four years. Thanks for reminding us.
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2:43 PM
Kerry's band reunites ... then splits! (A metaphor?)
The candidacy of John Kerry galvanized his old rock band to get back together; but not for long.
While in prep school, Kerry played bass for The Electras. And as the Boston Herald reports, the other members recently decided to reissue their locally recorded album on CD.
But members disagreed about what to do with the profits, and the album is now sold on two competing web sites. The Democrats in the Electras wanted to give profits to Kerry's campaign, while Jack Radcliffe and Andy Gagarin wanted to split profits equally among band members.
The Democratic Electras are already selling the CD online, with audio samples available.
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2:40 PM
Kudos to reporters who didn't buy the Bush line
Kudos to Knight-Ridder reporters Jonathan Landay and Warren Stroebel, who have were recently recognized for their stellar reporting on the run-up to the Iraq war. Even as Judith Miller and the New York Times were swallowing Ahmed Chalabi's WMD fabrications whole, Landay and Stroebel put out article after article criticizing the Bush administration's case for war. The American Journalism Review has a terrific profile of the two reporters:
"Knight Ridder is not, in some people's eyes, seen as playing in the same ball field as the New York Times and some major networks," Strobel says. "People at the Times were mainly talking to senior administration officials, who were mostly pushing the administration line. We were mostly talking to the lower-level people or dissidents, who didn't necessarily repeat the party line."
From what I gather, Seymour Hersh does the same sort of "lower-level" grunt work. Is it really a coincidence that the reporters who break the major stories all get their info from someone other than an unnamed "senior administration official"? Also, note the wrath of the White House towards muckrakers:
"As the pressure built on the administration and their case got shakier and shakier, there was obviously a lot greater stress, and there was some shouting that was done at us over the telephone," Hoyt says. Some of those calls came from well-known names in high places, Bureau Chief John Walcott adds, declining to drop any names.
Around that time, the White House turned up the pressure, Strobel says, and "tried to freeze us out of briefings."
Landay adds: "I think this administration may have a fairly punitive policy when it comes to journalists who get in their face. And if you talk to some White House reporters, there is a fear of losing access." He says that fear may have played into the relatively uncritical approach of news organizations like the Times.
Now, we can obviously point the finger at the White House. As Jonathan Chait recently argued in The New Republic, this administration has quietly but steadily undercut democracy in America, and intimidating dissenters is just one more tactic. At the same time, if the Washington press corps got together and said, "We're not going to let them force feed us this crap," the public would be far better served. Let's hope Landay and Stroebel continue to win accolades; maybe other reporters will start waking up.
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11:14 AM
CEOs for Kerry!
John Kerry announced some key endorsements Wednesday morning, hoping the public support of about 200 CEOs will help him win more votes from corporate America.
The list of Kerry supporters includes a number of prominent Democrats like Henry Cisneros and Vernon Jordan. But it also lists ex-Bush supporters such as former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca, Texas Pacific Group's David Bonderman, Brown-Forman's Owsley Brown II and Thomas Johnson of GreenPoint Financial Corp. Perhaps the most conspicuous name is Peter Chernin, the (at least for now) president and COO of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
Some of the executives appeared with Kerry at a Wednesday summit in Davenport, Iowa. In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal Bonderman had a concise explanation for his switching candidates:
"George is a really good guy personally. But his policies are really terrible. And he had an opportunity to bring the country together - which was his MO in Texas. But for reasons only his psychiatrist would know, he's chosen to do just the opposite as president. He's turning out to be the worst president since Millard Fillmore - and that's probably an insult to Millard Fillmore."
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11:13 AM
War is ... complicated
We had a bit of fun the other day with George Bush's statement that "There's nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat." When it comes to actual war, however, complexity goes with the territory -- and our soldiers know it. See, for example, Pamela Hess' excellent analysis of the ever-confusing insurgency in Iraq:
"The insurgency is not one thing," said Lt. Col Joe L'Etoile, the division's director of operations. "This is a multilayered problem. The layers are not stratified, so they can't be addressed in isolation from each other. They animate and feed each other. Every area is different. It manifests itself in a different balance depending on what part of the country you are in."…
This complicated insurgency may be a tough sell in Washington, where those for and against the war are both served by the notion of a unified enemy. Those in the Pentagon and the White House, who are seeking to maintain public support for the war, know the best way to do that is to have an easily identifiable and reviled enemy and show quantifiable progress in defeating him. …
But commanders here are largely unconcerned with Washington. They care deeply how the war is being perceived at home and are desperate for people to understand the complexities they face -- not as an excuse, but to drive home the point that they need time here to do their work.
Hess doesn't straight-out say whether the Pentagon's simple-minded vision of Iraq has hampered the Army's efforts. But recall that for a while, Rumsfeld stubbornly denied that there was any sort of guerilla warfare going on. How much did that little publicity stunt slow the effort to create a proper security response? Likewise, U.S. officials have conceded that last year's narrow focus on hunting down Baathist leaders diverted attention away from the nascent insurgency. The administration thought all "evildoers" were the same, and it proved disastrous.
These aren't isolated incidents. During the Afghanistan campaign, the Bush administration, seeing only black and white, decided simply to equate all members of the Taliban with al-Qaeda, when in reality, there were quite a few political divisions we could have exploited, as Seymour Hersh reported. Its the sort of mistake that costs lives. So yes, there's a lot that's complicated about supporting our troops, and this administration really isn't up to the task.
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5:40 PM
Homeland Security, British style
Britain's National Steering Committee on Warning and Informing the Public is sending out a pamphlet to every British home in the next few weeks advising how to proceed in a case of an emergency, such as a terrorist attack. Playing on the 1960s "turn on, tune in, drop out" mantra, the committee advises Brits to "Go In, Tune In, Stay In."The British press has derided the pamphlet as utterly useless but highly entertaining -- in part justifying the 8 million pounds the government is spending on the campaign. In the case of a terrorist attack, Brits are urged to stay indoors munching on canned foods while tuning into battery-powered radios for the latest news. Among the pamphlet's counsels: "If a bomb goes off in your building, look for the safest way out." As Scotland's Herald notes:
"…This [is] the latest in a long and illustrious line of unintentionally hilarious British public information material ... This is homeland security, British style…The fatal flaw in this merry midsummer madness is its vagueness; its complete failure to define what we should be afraid of. While on one hand it treats [us] like idiots, on the other hand it avoids any analysis of the danger we face or its possible manifestations. That we must evaluate and decide for ourselves."
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4:31 PM
Wal-Mart labor gets organized
Wal-Mart has famously managed to keep unions out of its U.S. stores. But a labor board ruling Monday could pave the way for unionization at a Wal-Mart store near Quebec City.
More than half the store's 145 eligible workers signed up with the United Food and Commercial Workers, and the state's Quebec Labour Relations Board granted certification to the union. Under Quebec's labor laws, the union can demand binding arbitration if Wal-Mart doesn't agree to a contract within the next year. While the retailer hasn't decided whether to appeal the ruling, professor Paul-Andre Lapointe told the Associated Press that the union is likely to go forward:
"[In Quebec] the state and the courts have a favorable bias for unionism; the right of workers to participate in their working conditions is seen as a dimension of industrial democracy. That's the goal of the labor code; it doesn't mean it campaigns for unions, but it gives equal rights to employees during a union drive, to balance things out."
That should make it more difficult for Wal-Mart to work around unions, as when it started buying packaged meat and conveniently laid off a group of unionized Texas meatpackers.
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4:27 PM
Diplomacy works, if you know how to use it
Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that the Bush administration has nixed provisions for "verification and inspection" in a new treaty banning nuclear weapon production. Quite understandably, arms control experts cried foul: why ban something if you won't even enforce that ban. Anyways, this latest move shouldn't come as a surprise. Critics have long documented the Bush administration's failures vis-a-vis nuclear non-proliferation -- the Center for American Progress has a useful roundup today. But no one seems to really have a handle on why this is all happening.
As I've written previously, the administration seems to want to scrap the very concept of non-proliferation in favor of a more robust "counter-proliferation" policy, whereby the U.S. would "deter and defend" against WMD regimes. Top Pentagon officials like Paul Wolfowitz and Stephen Cambone have agitated for new "bunker buster" nuclear weapons whose role can go beyond deterrence. Much of this stems from a genuine mistrust of nonproliferation. As Geoff Porter noted in the New York Times, the administration falsely believes Libya gave up its weapons because the Iraq invasion scared Col. Muammar Qaddafi. Note that Bush isn't just trying to link Iraq and Libya to score points on the campaign trail -- he really believes there's a causal link, despite all evidence. And he's trying the same saber-rattling tactics against North Korea, to no avail.
Unfortunately, non-proliferation systems will always be imperfect. Even the strict sanctions couldn't stop Pakistan from conducting atomic tests, and as I've argued before, we're probably going to have to live with a nuclear Iran. But at the same time, non-proliferation treaties have certainly had some successes -- Brazil and South Africa voluntarily gave up their nuclear programs. More crucially, what alternative do we have? We can't invade -- or even frighten -- Iran or North Korea. What does Paul Wolfowitz think -- our "bunker busters" will cow every man, woman, and child in Tehran, most of whom support the nuclear program?
Now, we obviously need all those multilateral non-proliferation institutions -- inspections, intelligence sharing, securing loose material -- to keep nuclear weapons away from non-state actors like al-Qaeda. But when it comes to rogue states, the only lasting deterrent is to draw them more tightly into the world economic community, so as to exert a stronger influence. Fred Kaplan has noted that Clinton's incentive approach really did work with North Korea, while Bush's "tough stance" has proved disastrous. Likewise, Porter observes that Qaddafi gave up his weapons because he needed economic growth at home. Diplomacy works, if you know how to use it.
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2:01 PM
Wal-Mart as Welfare Queen
Wal-Mart maybe be known for its low prices, but according to a recent UC Berkeley study, Californians are paying more than they think. The study concludes that the state's taxpayers are subsidizing Wal-Mart by paying for some $86 billion in public benefits such as health care, food stamps, and housing to the store's employees. It is a clever taxpayer rip-off by Wal-Mart: the store pays low-wages and fails to provide health insurance, knowing that the government will pick up the tab. The study found that Wal-Mart's wages are 31 percent below that of other large retailers and that 23 percent fewer of its employees are have health insurance coverage, forcing them to rely on state aid.
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8:33 AM
Internationalizing Iraq: one idea
John Kerry's vague plan to "internationalize" the situation in Iraq has come in for pretty heavy criticism. ("What's he gonna do, get the French involved?") Well, ridicule no more. Juan Cole has offered up a specific outline on how to internationalize the occupation in Iraq.
The basic idea would be to hand over the occupation to the UN, which would give itself an "active peacekeeping" mandate. After that, Cole argues, a number of non-neighboring Muslim countries such as Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco would supply enough troops to supplant the U.S. divisions, allowing us to rotate out most of our forces. (Saudi Arabia has already proposed something similar.) The key is to relinquish U.S. control over the military command structure, something that George Bush would never allow.
The plan sounds quite realistic, though there are quite a few stumbling blocks:
The UN force would have as its mandate to help negotiate a final settlement with the Kurds and to supervise the integration of the peshmerga and the Shiite militias into the new Iraqi army, which would have mixed units for national cohesion. It would also work to develop safeguards for minority rights so as to mollify the Sunni Arabs in places like al-Anbar.This is a useful reminder that there are really two phases to securing stability in Iraq. First, there's a need for troops to wrestle down the Sunni insurgents, foreign fighters, ex-Baathists, and the like. But after that, we need to make sure the long-term political outlook is stable, something that neither Kerry nor Bush have shown much interest in. At present, the Kurds are obviously pretty irked that we've scuttled the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL). Without some sort of constitutional assurances that they'll retain some autonomy, no one expects the Kurds to dismantle their militias, the pesh merga. Meanwhile, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani remains a bitter opponent of the TAL. It's one of many major inflammations in the making. But a UN team -- led by someone like Lakhdar Brahimi -- could probably navigate these disputes far better than could, say, John Negroponte.The other worry, of course, is that things could get really, irreparably bad before Kerry can even get into office. Everyone harps on Kerry's non-existent Iraq plan, and rightly so, but the big scandal is that President Bush really has nothing. Except, it seems, for hoping that all the violence disappears from the news.
4:30 PM
Is the world waking up to Sudan's nightmare?
Attacks by Sudanese Janjaweed militia against refugee camps in eastern Chad have prompted the Chadian military to base more troops along the border. On Monday, those forces received some needed support in the form of 200 French troops who will help guard the border.
France will also allow its military planes to fly food and other supplies to the refugees, who have fled the ethnic violence that killed tens of thousands in Sudan. Colonel Philippe Charles, head of the French garrison in its former colony Chad, said the humanitarian operations began Saturday, and tried to defend the long delay before his country (like many others) acted:
"The mission of the armed forces is not to undertake humanitarian transport. But we have decided to do so because the situation in Darfur is serious and the French president wished us to provide logistic support for humanitarian operations."Also on Monday, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli warned Sudan to quickly meet the requirements of a U.N. Security Council resolution requiring it to disarm the Janjaweed:
"One month ago, Sudan committed to take actions to stop the violence in Darfur and to improve humanitarian access. Thirty days have passed, and painfully little has been done. The need is now, there is no excuse for not taking action now, the Security Council calls for action now and that's what we want to see."It appears the world is finally waking up to the need to improve the situation in Darfur. If only it hadn't taken so long.
3:20 PM
The Plame leak investigation goes on
The leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity - and the apparent political motive - might have dropped under the public's radar, but U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has continued to investigate. The new issue of Newsweek reports that Colin Powell recently testified before a grand jury as part of Fitzgerald's investigation:
"Powell's appearance on July 16 is the latest sign the probe being conducted by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is highly active and broader than has been publicly known. Sources close to the case say prosecutors were interested in discussions Powell had while with President George W. Bush on a trip to Africa in July 2003, just before Plame's identity was leaked to columnist Robert Novak."The story says there's no sign that Powell is a focus of the probe, but credits Fitzgerald for his thoroughness and says the inclusion of Powell shows how high the probe goes.
1:49 PM
Children in Abu Ghraib
This new report on child torture in Abu Ghraib is just horrible. Why isn't anyone in the U.S. covering it?:
It was early last October that Kasim Mehaddi Hilas says he witnessed the rape of a boy prisoner aged about 15 in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets," he said in a statement given to investigators probing prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib. "Then, when I heard the screaming I climbed the door … and I saw [the soldier's name is deleted] who was wearing a military uniform." Hilas, who was himself threatened with being sexually assaulted in Abu Graib, then describes in horrific detail how the soldier raped "the little kid"…It's not certain exactly how many children are being held by coalition forces in Iraq, but a Sunday Herald investigation suggests there are up to 107. Their names are not known, nor is where they are being kept, how long they will be held or what has happened to them during their detention.Proof of the widespread arrest and detention of children in Iraq by US and UK forces is contained in an internal Unicef report written in June. The report has - surprisingly - not been made public.Someone tell Donald Rumsfeld there's nothing complicated about investigating child torture. (Rumsfeld's latest Abu Ghraib investigation was an absolute "whitewash".) And someone tell the American media to get off their asses and start investigating. We shouldn't have to hear about this from Scotland's Sunday Herald.
12:56 PM
Spinning the budget deficit
Over the weekend, the Bush administration tried to spin away the announced $445 billion budget deficit by claiming that things weren't as bad as the $521 billion hole they had predicted. Good news, right? Of course, when you inflate expectations, even the harshest news sounds light by comparison. And that's just what happened. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has a new report that absolutely skewers the White House spin. Among other things:
The actual deficit only sounds moderate because the White House artificially inflated their original deficit predictions. The deficit is actually $76 billion worse than it was last year. Most of the deficit, predictably, comes from the 2001 and 2003 tax cut packages. The deficit has not shrunk because of faster-than-expected growth, as the administration claims. The White House assumed the current pace of growth in their original projections. Supply-siders take note: this means we can't just "grow our way out" of the deficit. Indeed, at this point in a strong recovery, the deficit would be expected to shrink. It hasn't. We need a change in policy. The administration's promise to cut the deficit by 2009 is completely unrealistic. In making those projections, the White House is pretending that it won't continue such policies as continued relief of the Alternative Minimum Tax. (Note: this is why the administration often favors short-term extensions for tax cuts -- it makes the deficit projections look smaller. Furthermore, things are expected to get really bad in 2010 -- the year after the White House forecasts end! But rather than address a very real fiscal problem, the GOP has resorted to spin and having the Speaker of the House propose abolishing the IRS. (Kevin Drum knocks down that idea here.) Is there anyone who will even try to defend Bush's deficit policy?
11:49 AM
Sandy Berger exonerated (but not by the media)
The media were all over former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger last week when they learned Berger left the National Archives with copies of classified documents. However, when officials investigating Berger's actions cleared him of withholding information ... barely a peep.
As the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, investigators determined that no original materials are missing from the Archives, and nothing Berger viewed was withheld from the Sept. 11 Commission:
"Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper said officials there 'are confident that there aren't any original documents missing in relation to this case.' She said in most cases, Mr. Berger was given photocopies to review, and that in any event officials have accounted for all originals to which he had access."Considering the efforts of Tom DeLay and other Republicans to cast Berger's actions as a plot to remove information potentially damaging to the Clinton administration, it's important for readers to know the Sept. 11 Commission never lost access to that material. But neither the New York Times or Washington Post, which covered the initial "Sandy Burglar" allegations at length, have done a follow-up report on the investigators' findings. While the Journal ran a story, it did so on page six Friday, as the convention dominated the front page where Berger appeared Monday. The news cycle moved on without this key information making a dent.
Berger hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing, and his lawyers said he returned all copies of documents he took. Charges might yet be filed for Berger's removing the documents, but it looks like the only damage done in this case is to Berger's reputation.
11:39 AM
Will Kerry and Edwards Get Things Done?
The blogger Billmon has a good question. With all of their lavish campaign promises, are Kerry and Edwards setting voters up for a huge letdown if they get into White House and then fail to pass anything?:
The voters have heard - we've all heard - these same promises before. There's an enormous layer of built-up cynicism, thicker than rhinoceros hide, that has to be cut through before such promises can even begin to sound credible. I'm not sure that Edwards, for all of his low county accent and boyish charm, was able to get to the other side. At this point, I don't know if any candidate could…Still, I have to wonder whether Edwards (and Kerry, when he speaks tomorrow) wouldn't do well to add just a touch of realism to their mandatory optimism, by at least mentioning the enormous obstacles they will face if they are elected and actually try to govern with a "two Americas" program.The basic dilemma is this: even if Kerry and Edwards win in November, they'll face hostile Republican majorities in both the House and (most likely) the Senate. That leaves them two options. First, they can try to win over Senate moderates like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. With a bit of shrewd political maneuvering, Kerry might be able to slip some of his big initiatives through Congress. As Time recently reported, Bill Frist is an utterly ineffective Majority Leader, so the Senate Republicans are likely a weak link.
The second option, vastly more audacious, is to campaign and govern with an eye to the 2006 congressional midterm elections. Kerry and Edwards could certainly try, on the campaign trail, to build such overwhelming support for their proposals, that any GOP resistance to, say, health care will be seen as stark obstructionism. Remember that Bush played the obstructionist card to great effect in 2002, and bludgeoned the Democrats out of power. The alternative, of course, is for Kerry to come to office, fail to get anything passed, and get routed in the midterms, as Clinton did in 1994.
So it's possible that the optimistic campaign promises are all part of a grand strategy. In reality, I imagine Kerry and Edwards have too much on their minds to plan for 2006 right now, but it's certainly something to think about.