Lawrence Wilkerson: Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay
There are several dimensions to the debate over the U.S. prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that the media have largely missed and, thus, of which the American people are almost completely unaware. For that matter, few within the government who were not directly involved are aware either.Follow the link to read Wilkerson's full report.
...The fourth unknown is the ad hoc intelligence philosophy that was developed to justify keeping many of these people, called the mosaic philosophy. Simply stated, this philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance (this general philosophy, in an even cruder form, prevailed in Iraq as well, helping to produce the nightmare at Abu Ghraib). All that was necessary was to extract everything possible from him and others like him, assemble it all in a computer program, and then look for cross-connections and serendipitous incidentals--in short, to have sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.
Thus, as many people as possible had to be kept in detention for as long as possible to allow this philosophy of intelligence gathering to work. The detainees' innocence was inconsequential. After all, they were ignorant peasants for the most part and mostly Muslim to boot.
...
Obama: The Buck Stops With Me on AIG
Yglesias: What If We Hadn’t Done the Bailouts
Populists on the left and opportunists on the right have taken to condemning the series of “bailouts” the government has undertaken since the fall of Lehman Brothers. And certainly I think these situations have been mishandled in a number of respects. And beyond that, I think these situations are inherently problematic in a variety of ways. But there’s a strong case to be made that the policy response to the recession has made things better than they might otherwise have been. When I say something like that, people tend to pester me in response for specifics: What, exactly, would have happened if we’d just let AIG and Citi and Bank of America and others collapse? The problem is that it’s impossible to say, in detail, what would have happened.
Kevin Drum, however, makes the excellent point that we can illustrate this in part with reference to Justin Fox’s chart of today’s job losses versus the Great Depression:
Consider, after all, that our response to the Depression appears to have been 180 degrees wrong. We literally did almost everything possible to make it worse: we tightened the money supply, balanced the budget, raised interest rates, passed protectionist legislation, and allowed banks to fail by the hundreds. It escalated a panic into a Depression. And this time around? Just the opposite: interest rates are close to zero, we’re running an enormous budget deficit, protectionism has largely been kept at bay, money is being pumped into the economy prodigiously, and with the notable exception of Lehman Brothers banks are being saved right and left. These actions have reduced a panic to a severe recession. If we had taken the same policy actions that Hoover and Mellon took in the 30s, does anyone doubt that the results would have been another Great Depression? I don’t. We may still be doing a lot of dumb things, but we’re an awful lot smarter than we were 80 years ago.
Kevin’s right. The right-wing advocates of no bailout and “spending freeze” are, in essence, calling for a return to the Hoover-Mellon policies that had disastrous results in the past. The nature of those results is spelled out in the chart. What people are living through today is no walk in the park, but it’s vastly better than the alternative. Meanwhile, the left-populist alternative of no bailouts and massive stimulus wouldn’t have been quite as bad because some proportion of the masses of the unemployed could have been employed in public sector jobs. To get stimulus on that scale, however, would have required an extremely high percentage of pure makework and essentially wasted funds.
What we’re seeing today is policy that’s basically on the right track, with errors on the margin. What we saw in the past was policy that was pointed in the complete wrong direction, married to good ideas like public relief on the margin. Unfortunately, as you can see on the chart there’s a ton of room between “not as bad as the Great Depression” and “worse than all the other post-war recessions.” And if we stay stuck in that territory for a long time, as I fear we might, there’s a real chance that voters will conclude in 2010 and 2012 that “bailouts and stimulus don’t work” and we’ll respond to continuing economic weakness with Hooverite policies that push us off the cliff.
- Benen: THE PIVOT....
Marc Ambinder had an interesting item today noting, among other things, that the White House has to choose between rolling back on its heels or using the controversy surrounding AIG as "an example to catalyze public support for significant regulatory reform."It looks like the president has made his choice.
President Barack Obama says he wants Congress to pass legislation giving the government greater regulatory authority over financial institutions like American International Group.
Standing on the White House lawn as he prepared to go to California, Obama again assailed the company for its business practices and the executive bonuses that it has authorized.
Obama said, "The buck stops with me." And he disclosed that he and members of his economic council have commenced discussions with leading congressional players on legislation that would create another regulatory entity -- along the lines of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation -- to give the government more authority over financial institutions like AIG.
After noting the nation's disgust, the president added, "I don't want to quell that anger -- people are right to be angry, I'm angry. I want to channel our anger in a constructive way. The most important thing is to stabilize the financial system, get credit flowing again, and make sure we change how these businesses operate so they don't put us in situation where when things go bad, tax payers fit the bill."
In describing his vision of "a broader package of regulatory steps," Obama also said today that outrageous bonuses are part of a "culture" in which "excess greed, excess compensation, excess risk-taking have all made us vulnerable and left us holding the bag." He concluded, "I hope that Wall Street and the marketplace don't think that we can return to business as usual. The business models that created a lot of paper wealth but not real wealth in the country and have now resulted in crisis can't be the model for economic growth going forward."
- Meyerson on The Nationalization Option:
You might think that having anted up $173 billion of our own money, we taxpayers would have some leverage at AIG, now that we own 80 percent of the shares. You might think that when chief executive Edward Liddy, a holdover appointee of Hank Paulson's, told Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that he had just mailed $165 million of our money as bonuses to the geniuses at the firm's financial products unit -- who probably did more on a per-banker basis to destroy global capitalism than any other kindred group -- that Geithner, upon hearing this news, would have responded, "Liddy, you're fired."But Geithner's indulgence of bankers' indulgences is fast becoming the Obama administration's Achilles' heel. The AIG debacle is the latest in a series of bewildering Geithner decisions that threaten to undermine the administration's efforts to restart the economy. So long as it's Be Kind to Bankers Week at Treasury -- and we've had eight straight such weeks since the president was inaugurated -- American banking, and the economy it is supposed to serve, will remain paralyzed. The Geithner plan to restart the banks provides huge taxpayer subsidies to hedge funds, investment banks and private equity companies to buy the banks' toxic assets without really having to assume the risk. That's right -- the same Wall Street wizards who got us into this mess, using the same securitization techniques that built mountains of debt within a shadow financial system that remains unregulated, are the saviors whom Geithner has anointed to extricate us -- with our capital, not theirs -- from the mess that they created.
A more plausible solution would be for the government to assume control of those banks that are insolvent, as it routinely does when banks go under. It could then install new management, wipe out the shareholders, take the devalued assets off the banks' books, restart lending and restore the banks to private control at a modest profit for the taxpayers. There may be reasons that Geithner's plan makes more sense than this one, but if they exist, Geithner has failed to explain them.
...Sanders and Durbin have two things that Tim Geithner sorely lacks: a capacity to envision a less predatory, more salutary form of banking and a determination to enact such reforms. No one expects Tim Geithner to become a born-again populist, but is it asking too much of him that he come up with a plan that doesn't throw our money at the same bankers engaged in the same old practices that brought us to this pass? Is it too much to ask that he nationalize the insolvent banks and stop shoring up a bankrupt system?
Benen: LOWERING THE BAR FOR MOB RULE....
About two weeks ago, OMB Director Peter Orszag suggested the administration might pursue major healthcare and energy reforms through the budget reconciliation process. The point would be to make passage far easier -- Republicans can vote against reconciliation bills, but they can't filibuster them.Apparently, this wasn't just a trial balloon.
Senior members of the Obama administration are pressing lawmakers to use a shortcut to drive the president's signature initiatives on health care and energy through Congress without Republican votes, a move that many lawmakers say would fly in the face of President Obama's pledge to restore bipartisanship to Washington.
Republicans are howling about the proposal to expand health coverage and tax greenhouse gas emissions without their input, warning that it could irrevocably damage relations with the new president.
"That would be the Chicago approach to governing: Strong-arm it through," said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who briefly considered joining the Obama administration as commerce secretary. "You're talking about the exact opposite of bipartisan. You're talking about running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them in the Chicago River."
Ponder that Gregg quote for a moment. If Obama doesn't let Republicans have the opportunity to block key pieces of the White House agenda, then Republicans and the president may not get along. As if the minority party has been playing a constructive role up until now.
I know it's an antiquated notion, but the administration is describing a system in which a bill receives majority support in the House, majority support in the Senate, and then becomes law with the president's signature. We've reached the point at which this very idea isn't just odd, some find it literally offensive, comparable to mob violence.
What's more, Roll Call reports today that a block of eight Senate Democratic "moderates" want to help Republicans on this, so the White House will have a harder time passing major energy and healthcare reforms, and a simple majority won't be enough.
The argument, according to the piece, is that some right-leaning Dems -- most notably Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) -- believe mandatory supermajorities will make it easier for them to exert influence. If their own party can pass legislation in the House and Senate by majority rule, their efforts to water down bills may not work.
And wouldn't that be a shame.
- Sudbay: Republicans in full whine mode because Obama is going to work around their obstructionist tactics
The Republican whining about Obama and bipartisanship is getting tiresome. To work, bipartisanship has to be a two-way street. But, the Republicans have a roadblock on their side of the street -- and they bitch every time Obama tries to get around their obstructions:...Obama went to the White House with a vow to change the way things are done. The Republicans are playing the same games. Obama vowed accomplishments for the American people. The Republicans on Capitol Hill are doing every thing they can to stop him. So, when Obama basically, says "Fine, I'll do it without you," the Republicans whine and run to the media. It's pathetic and it's gotten really old already.
NOTE FROM JOHN: "[W]arning that it could irrevocably damage relations with the new president." Right, those would be the relations where Obama bent over backwards, even offered the GOP 3 cabinet posts, and in return 3 of them - a whopping 3 - voted for the stimulus package. What "relations" are the Republicans talking about?
Rush Limbaugh, the leader of the GOP, has said repeatedly he wants Obama to fail. Most of the GOPers on the Hill are lemmings who follow (and fear) Rush. That's what Obama is up against. Republicans want to kill Obama's agenda. It's good that the White House has figured that out. Now, roll the Republicans. Team Obama should "Strong-arm it through." It's the only way to save the country from the economic disaster created by the Republicans.- D-KOS' BarbinMD: Republican Talking Points
Via The Plum Line, here are the official Republican talking points on President Obama and the Democrats:
- "The budget is a radical proposal that will change the character of our nation, trampling on freedom and liberty."
- "The only approach that has not been tried is the conservative approach – limited bureaucracy, lower taxes, and responsible regulatory structures."
- "The administration is disingenuous, unfocused, and reckless."
These were sent out to House Republican, and were designed to:
... represent the first major move this cycle by House conservatives to create united conservative messaging front.
So, the GOP's "major move" is to embrace the furthest extremes of their base, pretend like the last eight years didn't happen, and call names. Apparently solutions to the problems the country faces didn't make the list.
The Party of No is aptly named.
- Benen on 'POLITICALLY OBSESSED'....:
Two weeks ago, Karl Rove argued on Fox News that the Obama White House is so overtly political, it considers every issue "from a political perspective." He added that Obama's team, like Bill Clinton's team, does everything "with a very keen eye towards the politics of the matter, not what was in the best interests of the country."
It was one of the most ironic things I've ever heard in my life. Greg Sargent reports today, however, that the argument is now officially part of the talking points for Republicans on the Hill.
A Republican sends over a new set of GOP talking points for House conservatives -- privately circulated this week to scores of GOP press secretaries on the Hill -- that blasts the Obama administration as "radical" and "reckless" and the "most politically obsessed White House in history."
Now, there's obviously a special kind of stupid at play here. But instead of delving into all of the many, many ways in which the Obama White House is anything but "radical" and "reckless," let's instead just focus on the notion that the president and his team are the "most politically obsessed White House in history."
There's obviously no objective measurement for something like this, but I'm hard pressed to imagine how Republicans can back up this charge as it relates to Obama. Has he shifted positions on issues based on polls? Has he failed to reach out to those with whom he disagrees? Has he politicized any government agencies or systems? If the president and his team are "politically obsessed," they're hiding it well.
Which leads us to the president's immediate predecessor, who didn't hide it well. The most politically obsessed White House in history," is probably the one described by a top Bush advisor this way, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything -- and I mean everything -- being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis." If Republican lawmakers are really looking for a White House obsessed with politics, they should have looked at the presidential team they carried water for over the last eight years -- it's the one that managed to politicize every aspect of the federal government.- Aravosis: Wall Street traitors now threatening Obama
Can we just shoot them all?
From the Wash Post:The firestorm over bonuses paid by insurance giant American International Group has triggered alarm at other financial firms, threatening federal efforts to draw private investors into economic recovery programs....Enough already. First, there are no jobs. There are no competitors to run to. If these people don't get bailed out, they will lose their jobs, they will lose their companies. So please spare us this bull about how if we don't give people $100,000 bonuses, in the middle of a massive recession, they'll somehow leave. Where pray tell will they go? Other than to the 70th floor to jump off the building.
The attack by lawmakers on AIG pay has provoked renewed complaints from some financial company executives that federal involvement in business decisions is making it difficult for struggling firms to return to profitability. In particular, executives say they need to offer bonuses to keep and motivate their most valuable employees and are already seeing an exodus of talent.
But more importantly, who the hell do these people think they are? I'm worried about making any money at all this year. As I'm sure many of you are. And these folks are whining about the only thing they got going, a free handout mind you, to keep them alive? To keep us alive? If these companies don't want to join whatever program the administration comes up with to save credit, to save our economy, then nationalize them or, if it's safe to do so, let them fail. But enough of this greedy, whiny crap about how they're all going to leave if we don't give them massive bonuses. Let them leave. Then let them join the unemployment line while figuring out how to pay their mortgages on $400 a month. It's time to tell these companies to STFU, and jam this down their throats. They don't like it, they can go bankrupt or be nationalized. But enough of the games, and enough of the weakness telegraphed by the administration and the Fed. Read this:Officials at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department are increasingly worried that the controversy could discourage investors from joining a new government effort to revive consumer lending as well as a separate plan that relies on private money to buy toxic assets from banks, sources familiar with the matter said. Treasury officials planned to outline that second program as early as this week.Stop it. Stop telegraphing weakness to barracudas. You people have the upper hand. These companies are about to go bankrupt. Don't give them a choice, just do it. And if you have to nationalize them, or otherwise take over their companies, and jam a solution down their throats, then do it. We are trying to avert a global depression, and these greedy traitors are worried about whether they'll get a $100,000 bonus. Enough already.
I'm beginning to think Obama retired the "enemy combatant" thing too early...
Yglesias: Some Members of Evan Bayh’s New Anti-Progressive Caucus Too Frightened to Admit Membership
It’s been known for a while now that Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) has been planning to form a caucus of “moderate” Senate Democrats hoping to soak up special interest cash in exchange for blocking the progressive agenda. I’m told he more formally announced the formation of this group this morning, on Morning Joe, to acclaim from Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan. It’s nice to see that Bayh isn’t even pretending that what he’s advancing is some alternative vision of progressive change—it’s something he expects, rightly, die-hard rightwingers to find pleasant. The hilarious catch, however, is that when Bayh was asked to name the members of his new Obstruction Caucus he couldn’t name them all. Apparently “three or four” members of the group are part of a Chickenshit Subcaucus who want to block the change America needs but don’t want to be publicly identified as belonging to the group! After all, Barack Obama is popular! And his agenda is popular! So if you choose to oppose it, you might face political problems. So better to keep the sabotage secret.
It’s nice work if you can get it.
For special bonus ax-grinding, note that Bayh is, along with some other members of the Obstruction Caucus, an “honorary co-chair” of Third Way which is, as we all know, a valuable partner in pushing for progressive values.
Ezra Klein: OBLIGATORY JOURNOLIST POST.
It is true: I am the coordinating force behind a vast, tentacular conspiracy involving every journalist and policy wonk in Washington, DC.To this I say: It's all true. My power is immense. My enemies will be crushed. My bling shines fierce. Mwahahahahaha. Sort of.
Mike Calderone's story on Journolist basically gets the list serv right, though the Politico headline, the Drudge headline, and so forth get it quite wrong. There are a lot of off the record list servs floating around Washington, DC. There's one for bloggers, three for feminists, a couple for national security reporters, a handful for progressive organizers, and dozens more I know nothing about. There are a lot of list servs where people talk about things that aren't related to politics. It may surprise you to know this, but the members of the IFA often communicate privately over a Google group rather than publicly on our (admittedly awesome) blog. This is part of a broader, and admittedly worrying, societal trend in which loose communities of people communicate privately over e-mail.
Journolist is meant to serve a very specific purpose that's actually related to my experience building this blog. The work of this site has always been to illuminate standard political reporting with expert policy commentary. In that, I've been helped by the many experts who have adopted the medium as their own: Mark Thoma, Brad DeLong, Paul Krugman, Matthew Holt, Peter Orszag, Andrew Gelman, Larry Bartels, Dani Rodrik, John Sides, among others. As a journalist, it's hard to always know who to call or which questions to ask. The joy of those blogs is that I don't have to guess what experts think is important: They simply explain what they think is important and I can use, or follow-up on, the information.
But not all policy experts have blogs. Many are frankly unsettled by the medium. They've been trained to view published material as almost sacrosanct: The product of much review and long reflection. That's great, but it doesn't obviate the value of off-the-cuff expertise. Sometimes I need to know about Pakistan before the ICG releases its report. Happily, in my experience, most wonks were more than willing to provide quick commentary e-mail. Which is why I created Journolist. The idea, then as now, was to foster a safe space where policy experts, academics, and journalists could freely talk through issues, bringing up the questions they considered urgent and the information they thought important, with the result being a more informed commentariat. It's been of immense value to me, and through that, of value to my readers.
As for sinister implications, is it "secret?" No. Is it off-the-record? Yes. The point is to create a space where experts feel comfortable offering informal analysis and testing out ideas. Is it an ornate temple where liberals get together to work out "talking points?" Of course not. Half the membership would instantly quit if anything like that emerged. There are no government or campaign employees on the list. More to the point, there are a number of folks who are straight news reporters and consciously eschew partisanship. Also, Erick Erickson writes:
I’m told such luminaries as David Shuster at MSNBC, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, a host of New York Times magazine writers, Frank Rich, and others all collaborate on this list.I'm not sure who told him that. Not one of those people is on Journolist. If they were, I imagine I'd get booked for more spots on Maddow. It is true that the list is center to left. That's not about fostering ideology but preventing a collapse into flame war. The emphasis is on empiricism, not ideology.... ...
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