John Cole says: Lou Dobbs Is Giving Me Whiplash
Atrios sees Strange TimesFirst, he is mad because Obama “fired” Wagoner.
Then he weeps for the future of capitalism with the government involved like this.
Then he gets mad because Obama doesn’t know how to handle this crisis and isn’t doing more.
Then he is mad because Obama didn’t fire the head of the UAW.
And then he is mad because Obama might require the unions to make concessions.
And then he is mad because the Obama team is not doing enough for the traditional economy (which I guess is the economy outside of the financial markets and not having to do with the auto industry but doesn’t involve concessions for blue collar workers).
And that was in one 5 minute portion of the show. No mention that half the things that upset him are at odds with the other things that upset him.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Lou Dobbs is just barking mad. CNN, it is time to put the crazy uncle out to pasture.
Mendota:
- Welcome to life in Mendota — the unemployment capital of California. With a 41 percent jobless rate, the town's social fabric is tearing at the seams. Alcoholism and crime are on the rise. To save money, some mothers wash and re-use disposable diapers. Unemployed men with nothing to do wander the streets and sit on benches.
Bush officials should expect Spanish inquisition March 30: Officials are looking into possible torture charges for six former Bush administration members, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in Spain. How can that country consider charges for something allegedly done in the U.S.? Rachel Maddow is joined by author Ron Suskind.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Sully on Understanding Cheney
This conversation between Anderson Cooper and an unidentified member of a drug cartel in Mexico helps explain what's always behind the decision to torture suspects:
UNIDENTIFIED DRUG CARTEL MEMBER: Yes, they do. They have got their ways of showing people who's killing who, where's it coming from. They have got ways of torturing people and killing people them the way they do, so that all the cartels will know who it's -- who it's coming from.
COOPER: Torture is common?
UNIDENTIFIED DRUG CARTEL MEMBER: Yes, it is.
COOPER: Why? Just to get information?
UNIDENTIFIED DRUG CARTEL MEMBER: To -- not to get information. Just the pleasure of doing it. They make it pleasurable, pleasurable (INAUDIBLE) doing it.
COOPER: So, it doesn't -- it doesn't yield useful information; it's just doing it because they enjoy it?
UNIDENTIFIED DRUG CARTEL MEMBER: Yes. Information, they have information from the government, so they have all the information they can get. Most of the -- most of the -- most of the torture is for pleasure.
COOPER: Does it also send a message? Does it also strike fear into the hearts of...
UNIDENTIFIED DRUG CARTEL MEMBER: Into the public, into other people, into other customers, you know, people in the business.
COOPER: Are there any rules of people who can't be killed? I mean, are -- or is anybody safe, women and children?
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED DRUG CARTEL MEMBER: No.
COOPER: Doesn't matter?
- Keeping It Quiet by digby.
Over the week-end, I wrote a bit about the latest torture revelations concerning Abu Zubayda and the fact that everything they got from him under "enhanced interrogations" turned out to be garbage. I mused that they didn't really care what the torture revealed, merely that they got lots of "metrics" that could show they were making progress in the GWOT with their macho tactics. Reader Sleon pointed me in the direction of this post by Bmaz at Emptywheel which adds another intriguing bit of speculation along the same lines:Such is the clincher as to why the torture tapes had to be destroyed. It wasn't just that Bush/Cheney et. al wanted to keep evidence of their torture program secret, there was never any complete way to do that. But there was only one thing that could prove they tortured for nothing and got nothing - the tapes. Cheney and his coterie of fellow Torquemadas were fiends proud of their handiwork; if they had evidence that it worked, they would have kept it. They burn spies for fun, crow on television about their willingness to torture and what they have accomplished, do you really think for one second they wouldn't retain proof if they had it?And let us not forget just who we are talking about here - it is the White House Principals group:
The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.
Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.
The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.
At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.
Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet and Ashcroft. Means, motive and opportunity. Who could have imagined?
This certainly explains why it was top White House lawyers including Gonzales, Addington, Bellinger and Miers, with "vigorous sentiment", assisted the CIA in the decision and process to destroy the torture tapes of abu-Zubaydah and others.
(Every time I am reminded of that principles group watching "choreographed" torture before signing off on it, I am shocked and appalled all over again. )
As to the question at hand, considering the fact that Cheney and Rummy spent their entire careers trying to correct what they considered the sins of the Nixon administration, Bmaz's speculation makes sense. After all, they believed that Nixon's catastrophic error was failing to destroy the ... tapes.
Daily Kos' BarbinMD: Mitch McConnell, Then And Now
Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was on CNN's State of the Nation, whining that:
I must say I'm disappointed. After two months, the president has not governed in the middle as I had hoped he would. But it's not too late. He's only been in office a couple of months. Still before him are the opportunities to deal with us on a truly bipartisan basis.
And back when Republicans controlled the White House, Senate and the House?
How can we have bipartisanship in the Congress if Democrats won't take 'yes' for an answer?
Hypocrite.
The latest poll from the Washington Post and ABC News shows a changing mood in the country. The number of people thinking we're heading in the right direction is on the move in a positive direction -- hitting levels that haven't been seen in five years. Obama's approval rating is holding strong, too. Seems that talking to the American people has been the right move. They know their president is on the job trying to fix the mess caused by others (people get that he's not to blame, too, which is good considering he's only been president for just over two months):The number of Americans who believe that the nation is headed in the right direction has roughly tripled since Barack Obama's election, and the public overwhelmingly blames the excesses of the financial industry, rather than the new president, for turmoil in the economy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.Yes, there is good news in the poll. But, Obama and the nation still have a long way to go. And, as noted, partisanship is shaping opinions. It's probably the very same people who stuck with George Bush don't like what Obama is doing. The Republicans let Bush destroy the economy. Obama is going to be judged on how he fixes it.
At this early stage in his presidency, Obama continues to benefit from a broadly held perception that others should bear the bulk of responsibility for the severe economic problems that confront his administration. Americans see plenty of offenders, but only about a quarter blame the president and his team for an economy that's in the ditch.
Despite the increasing optimism about the future, the nation's overall mood remains gloomy, and doubts are rising about some of the administration's prescriptions for the economic woes. Independents are less solidly behind Obama than they have been, fewer Americans now express confidence that his economic programs will work, barely half of the country approves of how the president is dealing with the federal budget deficit, and the political climate is once again highly polarized.
The percentage of Americans in the new poll who said the country is on the right track still stands at just 42 percent, but that is the highest percentage saying so in five years and marks a sharp turnabout from last fall, when as many as nine in 10 said the country was heading in the wrong direction. Fifty-seven percent now consider the nation as moving on the wrong track.
Benen suggests that PAST IS PROLOGUE....
In an analysis piece about the Obama administration's plan for the auto industry, the New York Times' David Sanger writes, "In the past, the United States government had briefly nationalized steel makers and tried to run the railroads, with little success."This seems to internalize Republican talking points about the benefits of government intervention. When the feds intervene in private enterprise, the argument goes, it tends to come up short, so Obama is making a mistake trying again.
But this is based on a faulty assumption.
[H]ere's the funny thing: any honest reading of history suggests that the federal government has quite an impressive record of rescuing institutions considered too big to fail. In addition to almost routine workouts of failed banks conducted in good and bad times by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and other regulators, the list includes many large industrial companies as well. In 1971, for example, Congress extended emergency loans to failing aircraft builder Lockheed and wound up not only saving a company vital to America's national defense and export manufacturing base, but earning a net income for the Treasury of $5.4 million in loan fees.
In 1980 it did the same for Chrysler, this time extending loan guarantees in exchange for stock warrants that, after the company returned to health and paid back its loans, yielded the government a cool $311 million in capital gains. More recently, in the aftermath of 9/11, Congress granted airlines $5 billion in direct compensation for lost business and up to $10 billion in loan guarantees, again in exchange for stock warrants. That wasn't enough to save many individual airlines from having to undergo restructuring plans imposed by bankruptcy judges, but when Americans took to the air again they found the industry intact and offering plenty of flights. Moreover, by February 2007, airline stocks had recovered enough that the Treasury was able to sell its warrants for a net profit of $119 million, with no loans left outstanding.
More to the point, the U.S intervened -- twice -- to re-engineer the railroad industry, and not only produced very positive results but helped turn around the industry around.
What do Conrail's and Woodrow Wilson's forays into socialism tell us? For one, they contradict the doctrinaire idea that government will always and everywhere mess up if it gets hands-on control of a private industry -- even if in both instances other government policies largely contributed to the crisis that government control ultimately solved. The dramatic improvements to rail technology and logistics achieved by the USRA during the Great War also belie the notion that market forces alone will always be a sufficient spur to innovation and maximum efficiency. When government takes responsibility for an ailing industry, it also gets a combination of a hands-on learning experience and a strong incentive to do the job right: with public money at stake in the industry's success, politicians pay more attention to the ways in which their own past decisions are making its problems worse.
These are vitally important truths to keep in mind as Washington considers how best to help an ailing Detroit avoid catastrophe. The auto industry's problems, like the railroads', are not solely the fault of arrogant, out-of-touch executives flying to and from begging sessions on Capitol Hill in private jets; government policies have shaped the environment in which automakers must produce and sell vehicles, often for the worse. Antiquated state laws forbid Detroit from streamlining its distribution networks by closing unneeded dealerships -- a hindrance that advantages foreign automakers, who entered the U.S. market later and accordingly built fewer dealerships. Similarly, foreign car companies have an edge in producing smaller, more fuel-efficient cars because they have eager domestic markets for such vehicles thanks to government policies in those countries that keep the price of gasoline high. In America, by contrast, decades of cheap-oil policies out of Washington -- many wrangled at the behest of the auto industry -- brought it short-term profits from gas-guzzling SUVs, but long-term ruin.
Simply throwing vast sums of money at Detroit, then, is unlikely to save the American auto industry, no matter how many strings are attached to that money. Better for the federal government to take direct, if temporary, control of U.S. automakers, as it did with the railroads. Only at that point will Washington have both the leverage to force needed management reforms as well as the incentive to change its own policies -- increasing gas taxes, preempting state dealership laws, and easing Detroit's high health care costs by, among other things, passing universal health care.
Anoymous Liberal wonders -Do Conservatives Understand How Bankruptcy Works?
The news this morning that GM CEO Rick Wagoner has been asked to leave GM as a condition of GM receiving further federal money has led to a completely non-sensical (though predictable) spasm of criticism from conservatives. Michelle Malkin whines that Obama is playing "auto repairman-in-chief." Jonah Goldberg writes that "GM is now Obama's company" and snarks that "being a law professor and community organizer totally prepares you to run huge white elephant multinational corporations." Mark Steyn issues a dire warning:[T]his GM/Chrysler thing is bad. Really bad. The descent into corporatism will doom America: The government is not competent to pick winners and losers, and will mire us in long-term Continental-style economic stagnation if it persists.And Matthew Vadum of the American Spectator warns that there is a "whiff of fascism" to Obama's move and that he is engaged in an "assault on American capitalism [that] is unprecedented."
Of course if you ask any of these people what should be done about GM and Chrysler, their answer is, inevitably, that they think the companies should be allowed to go bankrupt. But that just raises a more basic question: do conservatives understand what bankruptcy is?
When a company files for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of Bankruptcy Code, it doesn't just disappear into a puff of smoke. The goal of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy is a reorganization of the company, and that reorganization process is overseen at every step by the government. Upon filing of the Chapter 11 petition, a federal bankruptcy judge takes jurisdiction and all important decisions from that point forward must by approved by the court. The officers and executives of the company are often replaced. Sometimes a trustee is appointed to run things. All sorts of business issues get litigated during the process. Eventually, if things go according to plan, a plan of reorganization is approved by the judge and the reorganized company emerges from bankruptcy.
In other words, bankruptcy is a process by which a company relinquishes ultimate control of its destiny and its operations to the government in exchange for protection from its creditors. It gives the government a veto power over everything. What the Obama administration is doing right now is no different in principle from what a bankruptcy judge does; they're just trying to do it outside of the formal bankruptcy process because they believe that doing so will minimize the harm to GM and the overall economy.
The claim that what Obama is doing represents some sort of unprecedented intrusion by government into the private sector is risible. It's not as if the Obama administration is trying to step in and dictate how a successful company is run. These are insolvent companies. The alternative is not laissez faire; it's formal bankruptcy, with a bankruptcy judge calling all the shots.
- Yglesias: The Obama Auto Plan
It’s taken me all the way until the end of the day to actually digest the day’s big story—the Obama administration’s new auto industry plan. The first thing to say about this is that unlike a lot of other things that have raised the cry of “socialism!” this really sort of is socialism. You have the President of the United States firing the CEO of General Motors, and simultaneously ordering Chrysler to pursue a process of selling itself to Fiat. The administration is wisely trying to avoid an extended period of state-directed management of industrial firms producing consumer goods, but that’s certainly the situation they’re in at the moment and it’s something we ought to try to bring to an end as soon as possible.My understanding of the Chrysler portion of the deal is basically that if Chrysler and Fiat can’t come to terms within 30 days, then Chrysler is going to enter into a Chapter 7 liquidation process at which point Fiat could buy whatever it wants. Consequently, Fiat is likely to be able to extract favorable terms on whatever deal they reach. General Motors, meanwhile, is in effect being put into a debtor-in-possession bankruptcy. They haven’t technically been put in such a scenario, but the firm’s restructuring plan has been rejected and the panel is offering a 60 period in which to put together a more radical restructuring featuring haircuts from bondholders and labor unions and dealers. This is basically what would happen in a DIP bankruptcy. The thinking is that given current conditions in the economy and the credit markets it wouldn’t be possible to arrange that through the private sector, so a bankrupt GM would need to be liquidated rather than reorganized. The government is stepping in to, instead, facilitate reorganization.
In both cases, these seem like economically reasonable courses of action. It’s important to note, though, that if these plans work it doesn’t seem like they’ll especially achieve what people would ideally like to see. The American auto industry isn’t really going to be “saved.” General Motors is going to shrink radically, and Chrysler’s production facilities will basically become “transplant” factories of an Italian firm. In job terms, the auto industry is going to continue to shrink as a source of employment. In particular, the Chrysler-Fiat merger scenario is consistent with massive job losses in the United States since it’s not obvious how many Americans Chrysler would really want to employ. If GM succeeds in getting out of a lot of its debt obligations, the resulting company isn’t going to be well-positioned to expand when the broader economy recovers since it’ll be hard to borrow on favorable terms. And the “good jobs” nature of blue collar work in the auto industry is going to further erode.
Long story short, this looks like an economically responsible way to avoid a cataclysmic implosion of these firms at an inopportune moment. But this isn’t going to prevent the conditions facing the population of Michigan from further deteriorating. That state more-and-more looks like it’s going to be the 21st century version of the Great Depression’s Dust Bowl. The most important policy question facing us in this regard thus continues to be what can be done to help the people of the Rust Belt that doesn’t just involved indefinitely propping up shrinking firms. The first step is simply to turn around the shrinkage in the larger economy, but the question will remain even if recovery reaches the rest of the country.
In which Rachel discovers repuglican hypocrisy. Detroit leaning March 30: Today President Obama called for another restructuring of the auto industry and forced General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner to resign. Is the White House tougher on automakers than Wall Street? Rachel Maddow is joined by syndicated columnist David Sirota.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
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