Week of: |
4:44 PM
CPI adds to the campaign-finance picture
On Thursday, the Center for Public Integrity released a thorough report on the role of 527 groups in the 2004 election, which nicely breaks down where these groups raised and spent their money. The report’s definitely worth a read and, while the macro-level findings are somewhat well-known, CPI’s research reveals some interesting tidbits. A small sampling:
- Collectively, 527s spent a surprisingly small amount (1 percent or less) of their money on get-out-the-vote efforts.
- Nine of the top 15 individual donors to 527s gave to pro-Democratic groups.
- The swing states of Ohio, Florida and Colorado featured the most broadcast advertising by 527s between August and the election. But "solid" states like Oklahoma, Georgia, New York and Massachusetts were in the top 20. Despite close polls early, Washington state was in the bottom 10.
- The pro-Bush Chamber of Commerce contributed more than $4 million, the most of any non-union interest group donor.
- The number of 527s active in these election cycle totaled only 257 -- compared to 374 in the 2002 cycle.
- More than 2,000 groups registered as 527s with the FEC for this cycle (most registered needlessly or never became active).
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2:56 PM
Think-tank roundup
Speed-clicking through the news is always fun, but sometimes it's worth stopping by the think tanks to see some of new ideas and analyses that don't get nearly as much attention. Here's some of the best stuff from this week:
Brookings: What's next now that the intelligence bill has been signed? Bob Graham and Flynt Leverett have a few suggestions for further reforms.
Century Foundation: In case you haven't heard enough from us about Bush's "Lottery for the Elderly", Bernard Wasow lays out "12 Reasons why Privatization is a Bad Idea."
Council of Foreign Relations: Britain's very own Gordon Brown gives a great speech on a "new Marshall plan" for the world's poorest countries—touching on debt reduction, trade policy, and financial assistance. I just wish our own government could give policy speeches that were even remotely as coherent and interesting. Also be sure to read Amory B. Lovins' proposed solution to our oil dependency problems—namely, super-light vehicles made of advanced composites. It's a new approach, to say the least.
CSIS: The indefatigable Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project on Iraq has put out yet another breakdown of where reconstruction funds are going. Not surprisingly, only about 27 cents on every dollar goes to actual reconstruction—which was exactly the case two months ago. Ah, progress. Also, CSIS teamed up with Heritage to make some very reasonable recommendations for reorganizing the Department of Homeland Security. It's worth noting that Democrats tend to criticize Bush for underfunding the department, but they might get more mileage out of agitating for a smart restructuring of the whole messy system.
Progressive Policy Instiute: Two must-reads from the DLC's latest issue of Blueprint. In the first, Jan Mazurek and Tom Mirga look at some of the most innovative and successful environmental policies from the state and local level over the past few years. With Republicans in power for the next four years, the states are really going to become the key laboratory for progressive ideas, and liberals would do well to pay attention when trying to formulate alternatives to Republican rule. And with that in mind, Will Marshall outlines a strategy for the Democrats to win over red states and other conservative regions over the next four years. Marshall's blueprint could be considered the "centrist" approach to electoral politics, but read it closely: this is hardly a Republican-lite agenda.
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2:20 PM
The House GOP's work ethics
Tom DeLay has become (quite rightfully) the poster boy for ethics violations in the U.S. Congress. But other members of DeLay’s party in the House are making some ethics news of their own.
For a month now, the House ethics committee has reportedly been investigating Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) for his involvement with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. As Mother Jones has previously noted, Abramoff is accused of ripping off Native American tribes he represented, to the tune of more than $80 million. As The Hill reports, the ethics committee (per policy) won’t confirm or deny the investigation, but:
Ney has landed in hot water over his decision to try to advance a legislative measure that would help a client of Abramoff’s, the Tigua tribe of El Paso, which was hoping that Congress would help it reopen a casino closed by federal court order in early 2002.Shortly after Ney agreed to help with the issue in spring 2002, the tribe gave him $32,000 in campaign contributions at Abramoff’s urging.
Ney approached Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) that summer to try to add the measure to an election-reform bill the two were shepherding through Congress. Ney said later that he had been told by Abramoff that Dodd was strongly supportive of the casino measure. But Dodd said that he knew nothing about it and that in fact he would oppose such a measure.
"I then asked Jack Abramoff why Senator Dodd was apparently not supporting it and Mr. Abramoff told me that someone had lied to him," Ney said in a statement Nov. 17. "The matter was then closed from my perspective and this provision was not included in the [election reform bill]. At that point, the issue was closed for me. … I, like these Indian tribes and other members of Congress, was duped by Jack Abramoff."
Yet just over a week after that incident, on Aug. 3, 2002, Ney went on a $150,000 golfing trip to Scotland with Abramoff, according to e-mails released at the hearing, and on Aug. 14, five days after returning to the United States, he met with Tigua representatives in his Washington office and reiterated his interest in the measure.
In other ethics news, a group of Republicans in the House are asking for an investigation of Nancy Pelosi as retaliation for the DeLay complaints. Pelosi was fined by the FEC last year for giving more money than campaign-finance laws allow to two PACs. Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.):
"We have people in our conference who want to go after Nancy Pelosi, who has violated federal election law and has been fined. To the extent that she’s violated federal law, she’s brought into question the integrity of the House. We have members who would love to see us retaliate by going after Nancy Pelosi."
Feeney says he opposes the move because it would turn the ethics committee into a tool for the politically motivated. Of course, comparing Pelosi's actions (or nearly anyone's in Congress) to DeLay's pretty much does that already.
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1:47 PM
The FEC's misplaced priorities
The FEC voted on Friday to make a change to the campaign-finance system. Unfortunately, all it did is make it easier for trade groups to get money from members for their PACs.
As The Hill reports:
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) voted to propose a new rule allowing associations to collect contributions by electronic payroll deductions from employees of member companies.Employees can funnel a portion of their checks directly into their savings accounts, for example, and would also be able to earmark cash automatically to an association’s political action committee, or PAC, under the FEC proposal.
Supporters of the move point out that unions and corporations are already funneling money to their PACs this way, and they have a point. Still, at a time when money in politics is at an all-time high and both John McCain and Russ Feingold are criticizing the FEC for not enforcing some campaign-finance rules, one would hope the FEC had other reform priorities. FEC vice chair Ellen Weintraub, the lone vote against the new measure, says the commission should first focus on fixing holes in the system. Many campaign-finance reformers view the FEC as shirking its enforcement duty in the last election, and so far the commission isn’t doing much to change that impression.
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11:40 AM
A perfect track record
In a perfect world, everyone would take Jon Chait's op-ed today to heart. The Bush and Reagan tax cuts did not lead to an era of supercharged economic growth. The Clinton tax hikes did not destroy the country, and in fact, paved the way for the boom in the late '90s. Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world, and so Republicans are going to go assault the airwaves, claiming that abolishing Social Security and increasing the deficit -- all in order to deal with a phony "crisis" -- will lead us into a new era of supercharged growth. It won't. The economy has never done what these people have thought it would do.
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10:37 AM
Khartoum's latest bait-and-switch
The duplicity of Sudan’s government continues to astound.
Just Wednesday, government negotiators promised to end all military action in Darfur if the rebel groups kept to the agreed-upon ceasefire (a ceasefire both sides have repeatedly violated).
However, now word comes from the African Union that while the government continues to feign interest in a negotiated agreement, it's actually preparing to launch a major offensive into Darfur. A report cited Friday by several news organizations states:
"The quantity of arms and ammunition brought into Darfur to meet the present build-up of troops in the region is so astronomical that the issue is no longer whether there will be fighting or not, but when the fighting will start."
The tactic of negotiating for peace to cover preparation for war is one of the oldest in the proverbial book. And without a strong international presence to monitor and enforce the ceasefire, the scattered AU monitors can do little more than sound alarm bells and hope somebody in the U.S. or U.N. will listen.
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1:49 PM
Big pharma gets its guy
Retiring Rep. Billy Tauzin has lots of connections on the Hill, with 24 years in Congress and time spent as a member of both major parties. He also has a longstanding relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, which no doubt helped him land his new job as president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America -- the most powerful lobbyist group pushing brand-name prescription drugs.
"This industry understands that it's got a problem," Tauzin told the New York Times. "It has to earn the trust and confidence of consumers again."
And what better way to earn the trust of consumers than putting Tauzin in charge? After all, there’s nothing that inspires more confidence as head of the PRMA than a congressman heavily subsidized by the pharmaceutical industry, who in Congress pushed strongly for pro-industry provisions like preventing the government from negotiating bulk pricing for prescription drugs and authored the pharma-friendly prescription-drug bill earlier this year.
Tauzin’s position -- and his estimated $2 million salary -- isn't an illegal move, just a horribly unethical one. Rep. Henry Waxman put it appropriately:
"The appearance is terrible. A chief architect of the Medicare prescription drug legislation is now going to represent the chief beneficiary of the bill. This will only reinforce the public's disillusionment with Congress."
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1:04 PM
Welcome to Kerry's nightmare
Unless Chris Matthews is in a dueling mood, he might do well to avoid the American Conservative Union’s annual banquet.
On Thursday, the ACU announced Zell Miller will present the group’s "Courage Under Fire" award to members of the Swift Boat Veterans in a scene previously played out only in John Kerry’s nightmares. The idea of Miller, the former pro-Jim Crow Democrat now most identified with his flailing screed against former friend and colleague Kerry, giving an award to the 527 group prompted this reaction from the DNC:
"It seems fitting that a Republican in Democratic clothing is recognizing the work of Republican agents, namely the smears that the Swift Boat veterans launched against John Kerry," spokesman Jano Cabrera told the Associated Press.
It might also prove a good opportunity for Kerry supporters to use all those spitballs Miller complained about.
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12:07 PM
Libertarians unite! (Against privatization...)
Tyler Cowen is doing some excellent work laying out the small-government case against Bush's "forced savings/gutting Social Security" scheme. His latest post notes that, in Chile, millions of people haven't saved enough to live on their retirement funds. To avoid widespread elderly poverty, then, the government has had to create a safety net—which, note, is exactly why Social Security was set up in the first place!
Really, though, it's no surprise libertarians aren't thrilled with a "privatization" program that a) forces people to invest their money in a certain way, puts them through a lot of administrative hassle, and creates a vast new layer of bureaucracy, and b) will only necessitate yet another Social Security-type safety net somewhere down the road.
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11:34 AM
Open Borders for Goods and People in Central America
Central American countries, from Mexico to Panama, are participating in talks this week to introduce an open border and the free flow of people throughout the region. The plan would enable greater regional integration and would supplement CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Agreement), which creates a free trade zone between the U.S. and Central America for goods -- but not people. The U.S. strongly opposes the open border agreement, on the grounds that it facilitates the movement of gangs, crime, and terrorists, and the smuggling of drugs. Central American leaders argue on the contrary that highway checkpoints (drugs) and a common database (the rest), also provided for under the new agreement, take care of these worries.
Make no mistake: The prospect of increased immigration is the real reason for the U.S.'s opposition. The U.S. government fears that Central American immigrants, able to move north freely, will ultimately try to get into the U.S. Immigration was a potential deal-breaker in the NAFTA negotiations in the early 1990s (Mexico wanted a more open border, and didn't get it because the U.S. feared a massive influx of Mexican immigrants). This time Central American countries are pre-empting CAFTA by opening the borders themselves.
The irony here is that if NAFTA and CAFTA actually improved labor standards and working conditions in these countries, laborers in Honduras and El Salvador, for example, would be less likely to make the arduous and potentially life-threatening journey north to the U.S. border. Instead, CAFTA promises another financial windfall for multinational corporations moving south, and pushes Central Americans to move north as they attempt to survive today's global economy.
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11:01 AM
Our most stable program? Social Security!
One thing to keep an eye on in the Social Security debate is how the president frames the issue, because let's face it—the White House is good at this. At the moment, Bush is hammering on one particular theme—that the system is in trouble and pretty soon there won't be any benefits:
Bush said there are more Americans who have no confidence they will ever see any Social Security benefits than people who are worried their current checks will stop coming.
"I think Congress needs to understand that,'' he said.
To put it gently, those "more Americans" are mistaken. Even if Congress left the program alone, did nothing to patch it up, even if the economy grew at the sluggish pace projected by the Trustees, every single American will still receive benefits that are higher in real terms than they are today. The checks will never "stop coming".
On the other hand, there are some things that might "stop coming". For example, our tax cuts, unlike Social Security, have not been paid for, have created huge unfunded liabilities, and don't have their own dedicated financing base. Neither does the Department of Education, or the Department of Defense, or paychecks for soldiers in Iraq. Right now Social Security is about the only government program that actually "exists". It's the most solid, most financially stable program we have.
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10:34 AM
Medal of Freedom winners, then and now
On Monday, President Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- the nation’s highest civilian honor -- to Tommy Franks, George Tenet and Paul Bremer. That brings the total number of winners under Bush to 38, a similar pace to Bill Clinton’s first term. But while the achievements of the three Bush honorees weren’t exactly a "small dunk" for the award, the choices are somewhat surprising for a different reason -- while Clinton usually bestowed the award on political figures, Bush has generally avoided that practice, instead giving it to people outside the public-service realm.
A partial list of Clinton’s choices includes: Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Bob Dole, Colin Powell, Barbara Jordan, Cesar Chavez, Mo Udall, Gaylord Nelson, Walter Reuther, Sargent Shriver, C. Everett Koop, Wesley Clark, Lloyd Bentsen, Helmut Kohl, Gerald Ford, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and William Brennan.
For the sake of comparison, Bush’s 35 previous choices mostly included non-government figures such as Hank Aaron, the late Roberto Clemente, Bill Cosby, Fred Rogers, Julia Child, John Wooden, Doris Day, Estee Lauder, Rita Moreno, Arnold Palmer, Placido Domingo and Charlton Heston.
So among government types, Bush has elevated Bremer, Franks and Tenet to his very short list alongside Nancy Reagan, Nelson Mandela and the Pope. Just imagine what they would have gotten if the Iraq war was a success.
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4:51 PM
Is Syria next?
Earlier this week, William Kristol urged an invasion of Syria—on account of Syrians bankrolling the Iraqi insurgency. True, Kristol noted, we do have a larger Iran problem to deal with, but the Syrian problem is more urgent and easier to handle, so we might as well deal with that first. Right, then. Normally, this wouldn't merit the dignity of a response—except that now Syria expert Joshua Landis is hearing that Kristol's idea is actually getting kicked around the Pentagon. Oy...
But fine, let's think through what would happen here. First, the U.S. could try a few punitive airstrikes on Syria and see if that spurs President Bashar Assad to crack down on Baathist-supporting Syrians. Maybe it works, quick and easy. But maybe Bashar refuses, or maybe has no control over those meddling Baathists. In that case, the Pentagon might have to consider toppling Bashar's regime, hoping that a pro-American moderate like Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam comes to power. But again, maybe it's not a moderate, maybe it's one of the increasingly popular radical Islamist groups that comes to power. What then? Full-scale invasion? Eh, no problem. We'll just get Ken Adelman to write his "Cakewalk in Syria" article and it's off to war we go.
The point is, "easy" military actions tend to get out of control pretty quickly. Iraq was also supposed to be the urgent and easy problem we would deal with before moving on to reform Saudi Arabia and terrify Iran, or whatever the master plan was. But it didn't work out that way. Meanwhile, there's the whole question of the Arab street, which, note, already loathes the United States almost to a person. Now it's true, Arabs didn't rise up and wreak havoc on the region, as feared, after the invasion of Iraq. But presumably there's a breaking point somewhere, a point at which serious "blowback" shutters through the Middle East—and invading yet another Arab country seems like a pretty ill-advised way to test that breaking point.
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3:24 PM
Northern exposure threatens the Inuit
Appealing to the Bush administration to fight climate change on an environmental basis hasn’t gotten any results. So now, a coalition of Inuit tribes plans to appeal to the U.S. on a human-rights basis.
At the ongoing U.N. conference on climate change in Buenos Aires, the Inuit coalition announced it will request a ruling from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on the grounds that global warming caused by the U.S. is destroying native culture (based on the melting of polar caps, and the changing migration patterns and probable extinction of wildlife). As chairwoman Sheila Watt-Cloutier of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference said:
"We've had to struggle as a people to keep afloat, to keep our indigenous wisdom and traditions. We're an adaptable people, but adaptability has its limits. Something is bound to give, and it's starting to give in the Arctic, and we're giving that early warning signal to the rest of the world."
While a commission ruling wouldn’t have legal consequences in its own right, a ruling against the U.S. could provide an opening for more lawsuits against the U.S. by the Inuit (and by nations like Tuvalu, which is disappearing due to rising water levels). Reasoning with the government hasn’t worked and, with the clock ticking, it’s a logical step to explore these other avenues.
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1:49 PM
Bush's pet white elephant
For the first time in two years, the U.S. on Wednesday ran a test of the national missile defense system that will cost taxpayers about $50 billion over the next five years. As the Associated Press reports, the test proved the latest in a string of failures:
A target missile carrying a mock warhead was successfully launched as scheduled from Kodiak, Alaska, at 12:45 a.m. EST, in the first launch of a target missile from Kodiak in support of a full flight test of the system.However, the agency said the ground-based interceptor "experienced an anomaly shortly before it was to be launched" from the Ronald Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean 16 minutes after the target missile left Alaska.
An announcement said the interceptor experienced an automatic shutdown "due to an unknown anomaly.
There’s also this little nugget from the AP that’s worth mentioning:
The Missile Defense Agency has attempted to conduct the test several times this month, but scrubbed each one for a variety of reasons, including various weather problems and a malfunction on a recovery vessel not directly related to the equipment being tested.
So the missile shield not only failed, it failed under optimal test conditions. Even in its most "successful" test a few years back, the intercept system eliminated only five of eight targets. There’s not much new to add, but the obvious point remains -- not only has the administration undermined decades of non-proliferation efforts with this system, but its undermined them for a system that doesn’t work and costs billions of dollars at a time of record deficits.
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12:18 PM
Will Iraq become yet another theocracy?
On the front page of the New York Times today, John Burns and Robert Worth express concern that the unified Shiite electoral ticket -- which will dominate the new Iraqi government -- will fall under Iran's influence. Most worrisome is Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), who may head up the new government.
Let's be realistic: Iran's certainly going to have some sway over Iraq, at least for awhile. The Shiite clerics in Qom and Mashad are influential, after all, and those cities have been the major Shiite centers of learning for centuries. That in itself is no big deal. What people are really worried about is that the Khomeinist concept of velayat-e faqih, or theocratic rule by clerics, will migrate to Iraq. But that seems unlikely. Aziz al-Hakim may have praised the doctrine before, but SCIRI's top scholar, Hamid al-Bayati, has also said that clerical rule would be "inappropriate for Iraq." The other major Iranian-backed party, al Da'wa, has disavowed clerical rule altogether.
Meanwhile, Iraq's most influential cleric, Ayatollah 'Ali al-Sistani, does not believe in clerical rule at all, and neither do most Shiites. It's not surprising: Khomeini's doctrine, after all, is sort of heretical, derived from Plato's idea of the "philosopher-king" rather than from the actual Qu'ran.
The Times also omits all the other, kinder, gentler, Shiite leaders who will play a big part in the new government. Hussein Shahrastani, a former nuclear scientist and a moderate close to Sistani, will have a lot of sway. Adel Abdul Mahdi, the current Finance Minister, is also going to have a prominent position -- he's big on economic development and modernization, not theocracy. Same with Ibrahim al-Jaaferi, an exceedingly popular pro-Western technocrat.
So this is going to be a fundamentalist regime, no doubt, but it's going to be a moderate fundamentalist regime. As Reuel Marc Gerecht has argued, this Shiite bunch could go a long way towards meshing Islam with democracy. They might even turn out to be mildly pro-American. Of course, all that happens only if the new Iraqi government can avoid civil war with the Sunnis and/or Kurds, avoid Shiite infighting, and generally keep the country in one piece. That's the real concern here.
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12:04 PM
Terminating California's redistricting system?
The success of the Texas GOP in using redistricting to make gains in the House demonstrated again the power of politically motivated gerrymandering. As the Wall Street Journal reports Wednesday, redistricting reform has found an ally in
The key to a fair redistricting, of course, is creating a system that sets consistent standards to be applied by a nonpartisan overseer -- Iowa’s system provides a good (and extremely rare) example. As with stem-cell research, Schwarzenegger seems willing to lend his name to an important reform issue here, but it's critical that a system that protects one party doesn't just become a system that protects the other.
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11:00 AM
Not even a fig leaf
It seems like all pundits ever do anymore is talk about "what the Democrats should do." Still, if you're not over-saturated yet, read Josh Marshall's thoughts on how the Democrats should approach the coming Social Security battle in Congress:
The Democrats don't just need to keep their caucuses overwhelmingly together on this issue. They need to avoid even a single defection in the House or the Senate. From what I hear from knowledgeable sources this is already pretty close to doable in the House; and probably no more than three or perhaps four are even in play in the Senate.
Such unity has the obvious advantage of giving Republicans less breathing room in putting together majority votes in both houses. But it does much more than that. Making the elimination of Social Security a strictly Republican gambit raises the political stakes dramatically. Many Republicans will be far more cautious without bipartisan cover. Democrats must deny them even the thinnest of fig leaves. Making it a strictly Republican affair will also provide valuable clarity in the coming election, rather than the muddled picture created by Democratic defections on the 2001 tax bill.
That sounds exactly right. Reading stories like this about the dynamics in Congress over the past few years, it's clear that Republicans are obsessed with cutting the minority party out and running things entirely on their own. Democrats don't get to shape legislation, or add their input into bills. The only thing that happens when they cross the aisle is that Republicans can then use their support as a bipartisan cover -- and then attack the Democrats if they ever criticize the bills. Many Democrats supported No Child Left Behind, but when they voiced concerns about its funding, they were attacked as flip-floppers. Democrats voted to give Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq, but when they criticized his conduct, they were attacked as flip-floppers. Meanwhile, Bush was able to claim "wide" support on the Medicare bill -- where Sens. Max Baucus (D-MT) and John Breaux (D-LA) provided symbolic support -- tax cuts, and the rest. It was a fiasco.
So it's time to make it clear that if the president wants to pass something, he's going to have to pass it as a Republican bill. They want a one-party state? They got it. Forced savings that gut the Social Security safety-net? A Republican idea. Dismantling the employer-based health-care system without providing an alternative? A Republican idea. Mounting federal deficits? A Republican idea. Voters ought to see that the Republicans, and Republicans alone, write and pass every single one of these bills. And that means not a single Democrat should support them, not even in the hopes of trying to improve them slightly.
This is why, partly, I've been so keen on Joe Lieberman moving to Homeland Security. The noise he's been making about cooperating with the president on dismantling Social Security are far more damaging to the Democrats than the loss of his vote could be. Marshall has some good ideas on enforcing unity. I have to say I'm a bit leery of watching the bipartisanship net completely unravel, but let's also be honest, it unraveled a long, long time ago.
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10:37 AM
Go West, young Dems
Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times takes a look at voting patterns in the South. The verdict: John Kerry didn’t just lose, but got pulverized. As the Times’ Ron Brownstein explains:
”President Bush dominated the South so completely in last month's presidential election that he carried nearly 85% of all the counties across the region -- and more than 90% of counties where whites are a majority of the population, according to a Times analysis of election results and census data…”In Southern counties without a substantial number of African American or Latino voters, Bush virtually obliterated Kerry. Across the 11 states of the old Confederacy, plus Kentucky and Oklahoma, whites constitute a majority of the population in 1,154 counties. Kerry won 90 of them. By contrast, Bill Clinton won 510 white-majority counties in the South eight years ago.”
Brownstein goes on to detail just how Republican the South is tracking, with Bush generally besting Kerry among white moderates. Ed Kilgore of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council tells the Times:
"The one incontrovertible thing we learned is we are going to have to be competitive in more parts of the country.”
The upside for Democrats is that they made some quiet gains in the West, particularly at the state level. As USA Today reports, Democrats took power in seven state legislatures on Election Day (as opposed to four for Republicans), and came back to clinch a tie in the Iowa Senate. That includes Democrats controlling both Colorado houses for the first time in 30 years, and important gains in Montana (of all places), where Democrats took the governorship, the state Senate and could win the state House pending the outcome of a currently tied race. In total, Democrats gained more than 60 seats in state legislatures nationwide.
Granted, the party’s weakness in the South (while not surprising) is an area for Democrats to work on, and they should continue to contest all elections there. But the Midwest and West remain the best target areas for the party, where Democrats can more easily find viable federal candidates and have a real chance to grow their base.
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9:56 AM
Townsend for Homeland Security?
Now that Bernard Kerik has withdrawn his nomination the role of chief of Homeland Security, the White House has begun floating a few other names. (Joe Lieberman has already rejected the job.) Foremost among the candidates, it seems, is Frances Fragos Townsend, the current counterterrorism czar. Let's listen in on Townsend's very interesting views on terrorism, shall we? From the Washington Post last October:
Townsend, the White House terrorism and homeland security adviser, gives two framed courtroom sketches from a former life a place of honor on her West Wing wall. The color portraits, from 1990, depict her as lead prosecutor in a case against New York's Gambino crime family. When she took her White House job in May, she told the Associated Press that the transition from organized crime to terrorism "actually turns out not to be that big a leap." She added, "Really in many ways you're talking about a group with a command-and-control structure."
It's just like the mob! It's just like law-enforcement! Funny, I could have sworn that a certain Democratic candidate for president received heavy flak for suggesting the exact same thing. Townsend, though, takes it to a whole new level -- treating terrorism like a video game, where the object is simply to kill and capture as many "bosses" as we possibly can. Hence the White House's little check-list of terrorist leaders. Needless to say, most security experts think this approach is rather short-sighted. Now, in fairness, counter-terrorism and homeland security are different things, and just because Townsend doesn't understand groups like al Qaeda doesn't necessarily mean she can't defend the country. But it still seems like a pretty big red flag, no?
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4:52 PM
A Rumsfeld retrospective
Atrios dredges up from the memory hole "Rumsfeld's Rules", written by everyone's favorite Defense Secretary shortly after he took over the Pentagon in January, 2001. Some selected wisdom from the Big Don:
If you foul up, tell the president and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes.
It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.
Don't divide the world into "them" and "us."
Don't think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles de Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.
You will launch many projects but have time to finish only a few. So think, plan, develop, launch and tap good people to be responsible. Give them authority and hold them accountable.
As one Eschaton commentator noted, Rumsfeld seems to have forgotten more than most people will ever know. I'd laugh if it wasn't so depressing…
Oh, what the heck, one more. Rule: "A lack of precision," Rumsfeld's rule #34 goes, "is dangerous when the margin of error is small." Application: "It is unknowable," said Rumsfeld on the eve of the war in Iraq, "how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
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4:44 PM
U.S. still dealing with the "merchant of death"
Victor Bout is back in the news this week, with both Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times running stories on the connection between the notorious arms dealer and a company under contract with the U.S. military in Iraq.
Mother Jones’ own Michael Scherer broke this story back in September. He reported that the military had contracted Air Bas -- a company run by Bout’s brother and tied to a Kazakh company the U.N. called a front for Bout’s operation -- for charter flights in Iraq. As Scherer wrote months ago:
”Concerns about Bout’s work for the United States date back to May, when Senator Russ Feingold asked the Pentagon and the State Department to scour their files for any evidence of contracts with companies tied to Bout. An inquiry conducted by the State Department found, according to a State Department source, that ‘there were allegations that raised our concerns, and we shared those concerns with the Department of Defense.’ Months later, however, the Pentagon has yet to respond, and officials there would not say whether they are looking into the State Department’s concerns.”
As the Times reported, Air Bas has been flying military officials as recently as last week. Feingold told the paper on Monday, “what’s obviously wrong is that U.S. taxpayer dollars are going to fatten the wallet of someone associated with the Taliban and with atrocities in places like Liberia and Sierra Leone." He’s exactly right.
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2:16 PM
Another twist in the torture story...
The New York Times' Doug Jehl finds the CIA trying to distance itself from the abuses at Abu Ghraib:
Concerns about harsh techniques used by Special Operations forces prompted the Central Intelligence Agency last year to bar its officers in Iraq from taking part in military interrogations where prisoners were subjected to duress, intelligence officials said.
A classified directive issued by the agency's headquarters on Aug. 8, 2003, to all its personnel in Iraq advised that "if the military employed any type of techniques beyond questions and answers, we should not participate and should not be present," according to an account provided by a senior intelligence official.
Let's put this in perspective. At the time the CIA directive was issued, the White House had already written a legal decision allowing the agency itself to use harsh methods on its own prisoners. According to earlier reporting by the New York Times and others, the CIA had long been employing "waterboarding" and other torture techniques to interrogate suspected terrorists abroad.
And yet, if Jehl's story can be believed, the CIA now claims it couldn't stomach the Pentagon's interrogation techniques in Iraq. That seems awfully odd. After all, a report by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay on Abu Ghraib claimed that "the conduct of C.I.A. personnel at the [Abu Ghraib] prison was perceived by military officials there as more aggressive than that allowed by the military," and that the CIA had a "corrupting influence" on the military. So did the CIA really stay out of this business, or are they just trying to cover their rear-ends?
In other, more important, torture news, yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported that even though the Justice Department has rescinded its old justifications for torture, it still has not issued new legal guidelines for interrogations. One administration official thought this was no big deal, asking, "Why do people have to write opinions about how far you can go?" Gee, I dunno. Because we don't want people making this stuff up on the spot?
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2:07 PM
The legacy of Mike O. Leavitt
Most of the media attention surrounding Mike Leavitt’s move from head of the EPA to Health and Human Services has focused on the challenges Leavitt will face in his new job. But, with confirmation hearings on the way, it’s also worth remembering Leavitt’s record in his current post.
In its analysis piece Tuesday, the New York Times notes "the surprised reaction of many in Washington that Mr. Bush would turn to an apparent environmental specialist" to head HHS. But Leavitt wasn’t hired for the EPA post because of environmental expertise. During his 11 years as governor of Utah, in fact, the state often ranked last in per-capita environmental spending, and he came under fire from watchdog groups for his close relationship with industry and laissez faire approach to regulation. His first major action after replacing Christine Todd Whitman at EPA was Clinton-era restrictions on mercury in the air and water. Rather, Leavitt was chosen for his relationship with the president, and he’s been a driving force in the "Clean Skies" bill and other legislation that weakens protection. While Leavitt was willing to at least meet with environmental groups, he generally seemed to just go along with the environment-gutting agenda set by Bush.
The danger, of course, is someone further to the right replacing Leavitt at EPA. As Phil Clapp of the National Environmental Trust put it, "Obviously, we had policy differences with him, but we had begun a good dialogue. Conversations had started. He had made a serious effort to reach out to us. Who replaces him is a great concern to the environmental community."
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1:22 PM
Hezbollah's satellite crashes in France
France’s top court issued a hate-crimes ruling late Monday against Al Manar, a news network run by Hezbollah. As a result, the French satellite network that carries the overtly anti-Semitic channel must remove it within 48 hours, the first time a government has banned the station.
Of course, this case exemplifies the challenge of balancing free-speech principles and virulent bigotry. The recent examples of such content cited in the case include a November "news" program accusing Israel of spreading the AIDS virus throughout the Arab world, and a Syrian-produced drama that repeated the infamous blood libel (once regularly used by Christians to incite the massacres of Jewish villages). The French government argued these and other programs violated the country’s hate laws -- as well as the station’s license agreement. The French satellite network only started airing Al Manar on Nov. 19, after the station agreed to comply with French law by applying for a license from the Higher Audiovisual Council. In doing so, the Beirut-based station agreed not to engage in anti-Semitism, an agreement it quickly ignored.
Despite the ruling, French viewers can still access Al Manar on satellite networks based in other countries (several of which broadcast in France). While free-speech advocates can definitely view the ruling as a negative precedent, even groups like Reporters Without Borders (which opposed the ban) called Al Manar’s content unacceptable and worthy of some sanction. At any rate, said content is clearly more egregious than many of the infractions that draw FCC fines here, and the idea of a terrorist group running a propaganda news network is obviously problematic in its own right.
Responding to the court ruling, Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karame threatened to retaliate against French stations aired there. He also blamed the decision on Zionist influence, pretty much making the court’s point for it.
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12:35 PM
Aiming at the wrong entitlement?
Kevin Drum picks up a ball I've been kicking around for the past few days—that Medicare, not Social Security, is the real problem that needs fixing. Now let's make this argument a little more sophisticated and add a twist: The two problems are actually related, and fixing Medicare could potentially ease the pressure on Social Security.
Here's what I mean. At the moment, using various benefit formulas, Social Security pays out around 40 percent of workers' pre-retirement wages. However, much of that pension check is being eaten up by a premium collected for Part B of Medicare. Thanks to spiraling health care costs, those premiums are going up much faster than prices (hence, eat up increasingly more of an individual retiree's check over the course of a year), and much faster than wages (hence, eat up a greater share of each generation's checks). At the rate we're going, Medicare premiums will soon cut into over half of our retirees' Social Security benefits.
Privatization only makes this problem worse. Under the Social Security Commissions Model 2—on which the president's plan will presumably be based—guaranteed Social Security benefits would eventually decline to around 20 percent of pre-retirement wages. So retirees could see their entire check gobbled up by Medicare premiums. In other words, they'd be living entirely off of their savings and private accounts. To repeat: That's no safety net whatsoever.
So if Congress "fixes" Social Security but not Medicare, they will destroy Social Security as we know it. End of story. Conversely, if Congress controlled the growth of Medicare but didn't touch Social Security, then Part B premiums would hold steady, and eventually decline as a share of one's retirement benefits. Presto! Congress has automatically increased the size of Social Security benefits, and has a bit more flexibility to cut payouts down the road if it turns out the system can't stay solvent. In other words, you can kill two birds with one stone if you aim at the right bird. The White House, needless to say, has the wrong bird in its sights.
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10:49 AM
Art censorship: not a pretty picture
An art exhibit at the Chelsea Market in New York abruptly closed over the weekend after the market's managers objected to a portrait of President Bush shaped from tiny images of chimpanzees swimming in a "marshy landscape." The response to 23 year-old Chris Savido's picture of Bush is an obvious attack on First Amendment rights and adds to the growing list of artists censored for portraying the president in a negative light. While many interviewees expressed surprise that this could happen in New York, management there has a long history of stifling the freedom of artistic expression (from Rockefeller destroying Rivera to Mayor Giuliani's fight against "Sensation"). As creative critiques of Bush -- from Eminem's "Mosh" to the marshy chimps -- draw increased scrutiny, let's remember not only Americans' right to freedom of speech but also America's well-documented history of censorship and artistic suppression.
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10:33 AM
New Senate, new hearings
As we all know, George Bush never admits mistakes, and congressional Republicans have been loath to thoroughly look into them. So new minority leader Harry Reid has decided that if Republicans won’t examine the administration’s problems, Democrats will have to.
To that end, the Democratic Policy Committee announced it will increase the rate of its periodic oversight hearings to one a month, starting in January. Reid mentioned global warming, "No Child Left Behind," the administration’s use of intelligence and contracting scandals in Iraq as possible subjects for new hearings.
There are ample obstacles to these hearings having direct political impact -- most notably a lack of subpoena power and the partisan makeup of the committee -- but they do give Democrats a way of putting these issues back in the news once a month and could help unify the Senate caucus in opposition. Of course, that probably would have been a more effective strategy before the election.
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3:37 PM
Wingnuts on the loose!
It was buried all the way down on the very last paragraph of this New York Times story, but I think it's worth highlighting and underlining Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis' (R) views on liberalism:
It's like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn't want to go. I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we're going to take it back.
Oh yes, it's just like that. Meanwhile, I'll let everyone judge for themselves if conservatives are taking our country somewhere we do want to go—namely, a world in which the federal government discriminates against hiring gay people:
A pro-family activist from Virginia says voters who put Republicans in office should demand that politicians not employ key personnel who don't hold the conservative views that the party promotes. That activist says the Capitol Hill office of Virginia Senator George Allen is a good example. Senator Allen is head of the Republican Senatorial Committee and was a key figure in the GOP's big victories in November. But Joe Glover, president of the Virginia-based Family Policy Network, says something is very wrong. Glover says homosexual publications have outed at least six members of the senator's office as homosexuals. He says one homosexual activist even went so far as to say Allen had the "gayest office on Capitol Hill."
Pro-family conservatives, he says, need to make sure Senator Allen hears their voices. "If someone is going to run the day-to-day operations for the Republican apparatus to elect U.S. senators across the country, then dog-gone-it, it better not be somebody who practices a lifestyle that is diametrically opposed to the evangelical Christian base that delivered George W. Bush and the Republicans in the Senate the victory they saw in November," he says.
Like Rep. Davis, I can think of some analogies of my own…
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3:19 PM
On the record with David Hicks
In June, George Bush agreed to speed up the legal process for David Hicks, an Australian detainee in Guantanamo Bay, making Hicks among the first detainees to be formally charged and one of only four detainees to undergo August preliminary hearings before the military tribunal. After more than two years in Gitmo without charges, the sudden shift in Hicks’ treatment was seen as Bush throwing a bone to John Howard before the latter faced voters in his re-election bid (which he won in October).
On Friday, a U.S. district court unsealed a Hicks affidavit from August that includes more charges of abuse at Guantanamo. As AAP reports:
Hicks said he was deprived of showers, sufficient food, access to regular reading material and other social contact, including mail, because he failed to cooperate."I have been beaten while blindfolded and handcuffed ... At one point, a group of detainees, including myself, were subjected to being randomly hit over an eight-hour session while handcuffed and blindfolded," Hicks said.
"I have had my head rammed into asphalt several times (while blindfolded) ... I have been forced to run in leg shackles that regularly ripped the skin off my ankles," he said.
Hicks also said he was deprived of showers, food and social contact, and forcibly injected with sedatives. Most oddly, Hicks says in the affidavit that military officials offered him fifteen minutes with a prostitute if he agreed to spy on his fellow detainees and report back. Over the weekend, Pentagon officials said the department is investigating Hicks’ allegations, and began the investigation before the documents were made public.
Oddly, the Hicks affidavit made little news in the U.S. (only the Washington Post among the major papers mentioned it, and there only in passing). While the press has lately given little coverage to torture allegations, these and other new charges speak to how serious a problem prisoner abuse has become.
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2:21 PM
Washington and the never-ending recount
The recount extravaganza that is the Washington governor’s race took another turn Monday -- one that could change the outcome of the contest.
As previously noted, the most recent statewide count gave Republican Dino Rossi a 42-vote margin against Democrat Christine Gregoire. Now, however, the director of elections in King County (the largely Democratic county that includes Seattle) announced that 561 absentee ballots there were wrongly discarded. Election workers reportedly rejected the ballots because they thought the signatures didn’t match earlier records when, it turns out, the original records did match, but hadn’t been added to the state’s computer database.
The upshot is King County will amend its official results to include these ballots, and presumably give Gregoire a sizable lead. The recount should, of course, continue to its conclusion. But once again, it appears a simple matter of human error almost decided who’d be leading the state for the next four years.
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1:14 PM
Hard numbers on Social Security
This debate can get monotonous, it's true, but it is the top item on the president's agenda. I've said before that there are two distinct issues involved in the Social Security debate. There's the insolvency issue: the program may—may—face a modest long-term shortfall. Then there's the private account issue: some people, especially mutual fund managers, want private accounts. Today the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), more or less working off this "two issue" framework, does a little number-crunching tio show once and for all that diverting $2 trillion now to pay for private accounts will not solve the long-term insolvency problem—in fact, private accounts will "permanently worsen Social Security's financial condition."
Here's the most striking assertion: If the Republicans wanted a) to shore up Social Security and b) create private accounts, and if they wanted to do it all through borrowing, they would have to borrow much, much more than the $2 trillion Bush has thus far suggested. Much more. So that begs the question: Who in their right minds is going to buy all that Treasury debt? The same Asian central banks that are now having doubts about their dollar reserves?
Now Republicans have rather deviously suggested that, well, we'll need to borrow this much eventually, since Social Security is in a long-term rut—ignoring the fact that Social Security may not actually be in a rut. There's also a big, big difference between paying to cover up Social Security shortfalls over an infinite time horizon, and paying to cover up those shortfalls all at once, right now, as yet another CBPP report explains. And the most important consideration here—expect this to be a theme—is that all that borrowing would hamstring our ability to deal with the coming Medicare crisis.
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1:11 PM
It all leads back to... Scooter Libby?
So the New York Post is running a POST WORLD EXCLUSIVE right now. Excited? I sure am. The big news here is that billionaire Marc Rich—Marc Rich of being-pardoned-by-Clinton fame—was involved in the UN's Oil-for-Food scandal. Whoo! Or this would be WORLD EXCLUSIVE news if, you know, ABC hadn't run the exact same story two weeks ago. Hey, you don't suppose this little "exclusive" was meant to divert attention from the media fanfare surrounding a certain Bernard Kerik, do you? Or would Rupert Murdoch never sink that low?
Back to Oil-for-Food. As tempting as it is to connect Marc Rich to Bill Clinton (and thus blame the former president for all that ails the UN), Laura Rozen notices something rather interesting: For the past 17 years, Rich's attorney has been Lewis "Scooter" Libby, now chief advisor to Vice-President Dick Cheney. Not a chance that Libby knew anything about all of those oil-for-food deals Rich brokered, right?
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1:03 PM
U.N. still fiddles as Darfur burns
Weeks ago, the United Nations mandated a Dec. 31 deadline for the Sudanese government and rebel groups to forge a peace agreement to end the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. But if the U.N. response to violations of the existing cease-fire is anything to go on, the odds are against the international community imposing any meaningful consequences.
On Monday, both sides of the conflict began a new round of negotiations in Nigeria. But as African Union officials told the Associated Press, both are also guilty of violating the negotiated cease-fire, with 13 documented violations in September and another 54 between October and now. In response, the international community has done virtually nothing, and the most recent U.N. resolution on Sudan actually removed language that allowed the U.N. to threaten sanctions.
The most recent cease-fire violation occurred Sunday, when two humanitarian aid workers were killed by gunfire. In response the U.N. is suspending humanitarian operations in the southern region of Darfur where the shootings occurred. While the organization obviously has a need to protect its employees, however, pulling aid out of the country only furthers the genocidal purpose of the Khartoum government by letting more Darfurians die of illness and starvation. And once again, the civilian population is paying the price.
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12:08 PM
Counting the campaign finance money
With filings for the last quarter of the election cycle now completed, we have final totals to gauge the role of money in the past election. And the numbers show what experts predicted -- anti-Bush 527s significantly outraised their pro-Bush brethren overall, but the gap closed in the later stages of the race.
As the Boston Globe notes, 527s collectively raised about $534 million and spent about $544 million, blowing past early estimates. And nearly two-thirds of that activity came from 527s working to defeat George Bush.
As expected, the individual donors to outside groups were headed by George Soros (about $27 million), Peter Lewis (about $23 million) and Stephen Bing ($13.9 million) -- all on the anti-Bush side. The top outside-group funder on the GOP side, Bob Perry gave "only" $8 million.
Among the 527 groups themselves, the top three spenders were also anti-Republican -- America Coming Together ($76.3 million), The Media Fund ($54 million), and the SEIU’s PAC ($36 million). The leaders on the GOP side included Progress for American Voter Fund ($35 million), the Republican Governors Association ($34 million) and the Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth ($22 million).
All that cash supplemented the candidates’ record hard-money totals -- with Bush finishing at $273 million and Kerry at $249 million -- and the massive amounts raised by party committees. The final totals simply confirm what’s been obvious for some time, that existing campaign-finance reform is just a small step on the road to getting big money out of politics.
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10:39 AM
Good-bye Kerik, Hello... Lieberman?
Over the weekend, Bernard Kerik withdrew his candidacy to head the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Seems he had a bit of a "nanny problem". Er, and a mob-connection problem. And a bribery problem. And a… well, you get the picture.
According to Josh Marshall, the White House is now claiming that they were surprised by the nanny problem, but they had vetted everything else. What? The New York Times may believe that that failing to pay taxes for a nanny is what makes Kerik unfit to head DHS, but that seems like the only irrelevant concern here. It simply doesn't matter if a DHS head is abusive, or has "character" issues, or sleeps with two women at once. It matters a great deal, however, if a DHS head is prone to taking bribes and consorting with mob bosses. Not all scandals are alike.
Meanwhile, if rumors can be believed, Joe Lieberman would be a splendid pick to head up Homeland Security. Really. From a partisan standpoint, it would of course weaken the Democrats—Connecticut's Republican governor, M. Jodi Rell, would be selecting Lieberman's replacement. But Lieberman does at least as much damage to the Democrats right now—he's already suggested that he would back Social Security privatization, thus lending a horrible idea the thin veneer of bipartisan credibility. More importantly, though, Lieberman would help to make DHS a respectable institution, at long last. These color-coded threats and whatnot should be taken seriously, after all, and as long as a loyal Bush hatchet-man is in charge of the department, no one can really determine whether there's actually a terrorist threat or whether Bush needs a color change to distract the media. DHS has become a bit of a laughingstock over the past four years, and that's certainly not good for national security. A Democrat at the helm would go a long way towards changing those perceptions.
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10:16 AM
The voters who count cast their votes
The reality of a second Bush term will become official today, as the Electoral College will formally cast its votes. In Ohio, protesters tried getting the governor to postpone the vote until the state finishes its recount, but he declined. So barring an unprecedented elector mutiny, the election will be certified today.
In today’s editorial, the Los Angeles Times writes:
"This ratification will elicit yawns instead of the outrage it did in 2000, when the electoral college went for the loser of the popular vote. But don't think 2000 was such an anomaly. The country barely dodged a bullet this time around. Had 59,388 Ohioans switched from Bush to Kerry, 2004 would have repeated the acidic result of the electoral college winner -- the next president -- being the popular-vote loser. This time the travesty would have been even greater, as Kerry would have been sworn in despite receiving 3.3 million fewer votes than Bush, who received 543,895 votes fewer than Gore in 2000."
The paper goes on to call for the end of the Electoral College, which it says "only produces a corrosion of confidence in and stoking of cynicism about the overall election system." And it’s critical of the partisan nature of the debate over College.
Fair enough, but blaming this "corrosion of confidence" on the Electoral College overlooks the many, many, many voting concerns that actually cause the cynical view of the electoral process -- and would remain just as prevalent in a popular-vote-only system (if votes were fully counted in Florida 2000, this new national round of popular/electoral debate wouldn’t have started). While changing the Electoral College is a legitimate issue, it would do nothing to fix paperless electronic voting, disfranchisement, confusing ballots, partisan election officials, partisan gerrymandering, registration issues, selective recounts and the myriad other concerns of the past two elections. Without reform on that level, the switch to a popular-vote system would just mean changing the packaging without improving the product.
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9:46 AM
The Social Security straw man
As Kevin Drum points out this morning, people have been predicting doom for Social Security for over a decade. And guess what? The program keeps becoming more and more stable. So why should we worry now? To make this point a different way, we could point out that the program is on a sounder financial footing than it has been at any point in history. So why's everyone getting so panicky now? Thankfully, more than a few Democrats are adopting these rather common-sense talking points.
So that begs the question: why is the president focused on a fake crisis when he could be thinking about... Medicare reform? Yes, Medicare reform, which is a far, far more serious problem in the long run. As Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal reports today, the intermediate-case scenario for Social Security is that the program will run a deficit of around 2 percent of GDP in 2080. Medicare, meanwhile, will hit a whopping 10 percent of GDP. But the thing is, the government can always cut everyone's Social Security benefits by 25 percent and there will still be benefits—higher benefits, in fact, then we enjoy today. So if 2080 rolls around and there is a Social Security deficit, no big deal. But you can't just cut a hip transplant, or a pharmaceutical prescription, by 25 percent. For obvious reasons. Now there are no easy solutions to reform Medicare, but hey, the president's earned some capital and he intends to use it—so why not use it on something valuable? Why is he ignoring the country's real problems?
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