Ten Ways to Kick our Oil Habit
Gail over at The Oil Drum has a surprisingly comprehensive list that goes beyond merely ‘trying to drive less’:
1. A better “cash for clunkers” program. A two year plan that gives credit for only replacement vehicles with 35 miles per gallon efficiency or greater is suggested. This program would be paid for by extending the 1978 gas guzzler tax to cars and trucks.
2. Emergency funding for endangered mass transit. The article notes that 59% of public transit networks have cut service, raised fares, or both since January 2009. More federal funding could help this situation.
3. A national telecommuting and videoconferencing initiative. Federal employees should be directed to do these as much as possible. “For everyone else, a campaign would make these more normative and socially acceptable.”
4. Smarter freight movement. Grist suggests that Congress commission a study of methods to make trucking, rail and jet transport more efficient, including approaches to improve milage and ways to reduce empty travel of vehicles.
5. Smarter land use. Grist suggests that Congress could direct (and help fund) efforts to update zoning and land use regulations, to encourage more compact development.
6. Smarter travel through IT. Grist recommends a national study, noting that UPS saved 3 million gallons of fuel in a year, by equipping its trucks with software that allowed them to map out routes that avoided left-hand turns. Also, traffic lights could be timed better.
7. Educating drivers. Drivers ed programs and other outreach programs might teach the importance of slower acceleration and maintaining tire pressure for getting good gas mileage.
8. A resolution saying efficiency is a new national priority. Congress should pass a resolution on the importance of efficiency, and tell government agencies to improve efficiency. Funding for new projects might also depend on efficiency.
9. Prizes for tech breakthroughs. A prize is now awarded for 100 mph vehicle. Similar prizes could be offered for other breakthroughs.
10. Efficiency “visibility.” Congress should fund the development of a National Energy Efficiency Data Center (NEEDC), which would study efficiency technologies.
Obama Moves to Massively Expand Covert Military Abroad
Via The New York Times, President Obama has just ordered a “broad expansion of clandestine military operations” in an attempt to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda”. The ‘covert operations’ will likely include anything from target assassinations, ‘drone’ attacks in Pakistan, secret bombing campaigns, money transfers to client states (a la Karzai and Maliki), and many things in-between. This is a significant move for a variety of reasons, not least of which stands the utter lack of public consultation for such a policy.
Mr. Greenwald has a timely essay on why Mr. Obama can undertake such extreme actions in the absence not only of opposition to his imperial policy, but indeed, any discussion whatsoever. Our major news outlets have reported the order in classic ‘objective’ style, assigning as little controversy to it as possible and treating it instead as a run-of-the-mill executive action. But it is interesting to examine why, in this year 2010, after nine continuous years of war, public opinion is such that a unilateral expansion of our secret military complex can occur with as little discussion as imaginable.
First, Mr. Greenwald notes, because this military expansion is taking place under a “Democratic” President, it creates the illusion of so-called ‘bipartisan support’. Back when President Bush was carrying out covert operations in Yemen, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc., they were painted as the actions of an ‘extremist’ administration, one which regards the opposition with disdain and made a point of treating international law with utter contempt. However, after 18 months of military escalation, these wars are as much Mr. Obama’s (that is, “Democratic” wars), as they were Mr. Bush’s. As such, the number of “Democrats” willing to risk their political futures by opposing military action has dropped precipitously, as have the number of war-opposers in the general population. Specifically, the subset of people for whom Mr.Obama can do no wrong will automatically agree with his war policy – or if they disagree, put forth some excuse as to how Mr. Obama ‘has no choice’.
The biggest reason Mr. Greenwald identifies, however, is the complete lack of documented impact these wars have on our livelihood. It has been often mentioned that, unlike in Vietnam, very few Americans have had to go to war against their will. Our press is largely censored as to the true cost of our warfare not only on the beleaguered people of Iraq and Afghanistan, but even our own soldiers. Recall the recent dust-up when our Secretary of War, Robert Gates, “harshly condemned” the media’s display of a flag-draped coffin. And that was just one soldier, who had admittedly died in combat, but whose grisly death we had been totally shielded from. As much as possible, we citizens are encouraged not to think about our military “commitments” abroad, and instead to simply carry on with our daily lives, a few dollars shorter than the day before, a little more ragged perhaps, but still inestimably “proud” of our “commitment” to “democracy in the Middle East”. One wonders just how far that pride would take us if more than 1% of the US population was involved in our military escapades, as the statistic stands now.
But beyond that, what Mr. Greenwald hints at but never explicitly states, is the psychology of powerlessness to which we citizens are routinely subjected. We literally have no say in what our government does abroad, and we have less and less of a say in even its domestic policies. In the 2008 elections, both candidates were unabashedly pro-war, Mr. Obama more so than even his most fervent supporters might have dreamt. For whom are we to vote if we wish to exit Iraq and Afghanistan immediately? Which Congressman, which Senator would even entertain such a possibility? To whom do we donate that we can be sure our paltry $50 will not be rendered irrelevant by the millions of dollars industry interests donate in order to keep these wars going? It is an implacable question, one made all the more urgent by President Obama’s dramatic escalation of our already over-stretched ‘commitments’.
The feeling of powerlessness can lead to apathy, but also to fear. When one recalls the brutality to which previous “anti-war protesters” have been subjected in the US, including savage beatings with nightsticks, water-cannons, ear-splitting sound emitters, tear gas and rubber bullets, it is not hard to imagine from whence this fear of dissent arises. Recall, also, that since the Homegrown Terrorism Act of 2007 passed, civil disobedience – the mere act of peaceful protest – has been defined as ‘terrorism’. And once you are accused of ‘terrorism’, citizen or no, you are immediately stripped of every right you think you have.
This latest move towards military hegemony is particularly insidious, and I suppose it follows that Mr. Obama merely announced his policy, in true decree style, with little or no discussion. With one stroke of a pen, Mr. Obama has resserved the right to carry out military operations anywhere around the globe, from “surgical strikes”, bombing campaigns, ground incursions, assassinations, or, indeed, anything his enigmatic mind may wish. It is worth remembering at this point that Mr. Obama also reserves the right to assassinate US citizens in their beds (that is, far from a battlefield), and ‘render’ accused terrorists to a global prison complex where no defense attorney dares enter. There, they can be beaten, tortured, or even murdered, far from the watchful eye of the Red Cross.
It is easy to imagine this latest move on the part of Mr. Obama is merely a continuation of Mr. Bush’s odious policies. It is that, of course, but its implications go far deeper. Mr. Bush’s covert actions were largely piecemeal: an assassination here, a few ‘drone’ attacks there, maybe some ‘cash assistance’ to some friendly dictator or another for spice. In contrast, Mr. Obama’s new ‘national security strategy‘ systematizes these covert acts of aggression, and sets up, in essence, a new governmental body, with no congressional or popular oversight, to carry out his murderous will around the globe. It is difficult to overstate the significance of this ‘overhaul’, yet it is even more difficult to convince anyone of that significance.
Mr. Hitler once coined the term for the Germans as a ‘sleep-walking people’, but the same could easily be said of Americans (or, for that matter, anyone else). We face, in our generation, a confluence of crises of which we are only just beginning to see the magnitude, and unfortunately the first step to solving a crisis is to realize it exists, something for which, at least with regards to our present constitutional crisis, we still have quite some ways to go.
Hamid Karzai: The NYT’s Faithful Client
The New York Times has a rather fluffy article in today’s issue about how Abdullah Abdullah, the gentlemen from whom Hamid Karzai stole last year’s election in Afghanistan, was given a “cold shoulder” from the White House. The United States, it seems, did not want to give an impression of “doubt” that Mr. Karzai, whose brother is Afghanistan’s biggest drug kingpin, is serious about “combating drugs and corruption”. A more clear and direct vote of confidence for our faithful client in Afghanistan, one can hardly envision.
The article stands as a tract to justify Karzai’s illegitimate rule in Afghanistan, but it does more than that. The most interesting quote comes halfway through the piece:
“There is no point in rolling out the red carpet for a guy who is wanting recognition for being himself,” said a senior European diplomat who is involved in Afghanistan. “The world doesn’t work that way. Karzai is the elected leader of Afghanistan.”
Forgive me, but why did this “senior European diplomat” need anonymity to state such a trite banality? Did they really need to hide his identity so that he could spout the US governnment’s “line” with an air of objectivity? And who is this mystery diplomat anyway?
A clue comes in his final statement: “Karzai is the elected leader of Afghanistan”. Now, it should be clear to anyone who has even loosely followed the debacle of Afghanistan’s election last August that Hamid Karzai is not the rightfully elected leader of Afghanistan, that he fabricated at least one-third of his votes, that he engaged in widespread voter intimidation and ballot-box stuffing, and that nearly every international monitoring agency declared the election in which Karzai won a sham.
The only “senior European diplomat” who has consistently apologized for Karzai’s election “engineering” is Kai Eide, who summarily fired his subordinate, Peter Galbraith, for breaking the story that one-third of Karzai’s votes were fraudulent last October. Kai Eide is one of the most odious UN officials working for Afghanistan, one who has consistently and repeatedly covered up for Hamid Karzai’s staggering corruption, his lawless reprisals against dissent, and his slavish devotion to the US occupation of Afghanistan. It would make perfect sense for him to lend his “expertise” to the New York Times for a hit-piece on his best buddy Karzai’s biggest rival.
But the article is even more insidious than that. Nowhere does it even mention that Karzai’s August 2009 victory was fradulent, save for a single mention that Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai’s vanquished rival, “accused the Karzai government of profound corruption and electoral fraud“, a sling which could be interpreted as mere sour grapes, if it didn’t happen to be true. An uninformed reader, after digesting this one-sided pap, would come away with the clear impression that Hamid Karzai legitimately won the August 2009 election, and that the United States is correct in giving his losing rival the “cold shoulder”. This is a falsehood and a fallacy. Karzai did not legitimately win the election, and the US is wrong and undemocratic to deny the rightful victor, Abdullah Abdullah, an audience with President Obama, who, after all, is leading a vicious occupation of his country.
A sad showing from the once-venerable Gray Lady.
Russian Journalists Pay For Their Craft in Blood
Clifford J. Levy, The New York Times’ Moscow correspondent, has provided us excellent reporting over the years, and he really hit it out of the park today with an in-depth look at the violence and lawlessness muckraking reporters in Russia must contend with. We had heard for some time that Russia was a dangerous place in which to practice journalism (Reporters Without Borders just topped their list of worst media predators with Russia and China), and of course we knew the sad case of Anna Politkovskaya, a courageous reporter whom the Putin regime murdered in 2006 for her reports on Chechnya, but Mr. Levy’s report lays bare the pervasion of violence against reporters in Russia:
“Last spring, I called for the resignation of the city’s leadership,” Mr. Beketov said in one of his final editorials. “A few days later, my automobile was blown up. What is next for me?”
Not long after, he was savagely beaten outside his home and left to bleed in the snow. His fingers were bashed, and three later had to be amputated, as if his assailants had sought to make sure that he would never write another word. He lost a leg. Now 52, he is in a wheelchair, his brain so damaged that he cannot utter a simple sentence.
And:
To the north on the M-10 highway from Khimki is a city called Solnechnogorsk, where a newspaper, Solnechnogorsk Forum, was publishing exposés about how local politicians were seeking to do away with elections to maintain power.
The newspaper’s editor, Yuri Grachev, is 73. In February 2009, several men assaulted him as he left his home, putting him in intensive care for a month with a severe concussion, a broken nose and other wounds.
Police officials first said he was drunk and fell down. Then they said he had been the victim of a random robbery, though all that was taken was a folder with material for the newspaper’s next issue. The muggers have not been found, and politicians from the governing party, United Russia, said the attack had nothing to do with Mr. Grachev’s work.
These are not isolated instances, and they serve as a grim reminder of the relative liberty journalists enjoy in America. Our media may be choked with propaganda, our reporters systemically lied to, our independent media ruthlessly crowded out of existence by the news-manufacturing combines, but to my knowledge, journalists in America, even decidedly inconvenient ones such as Glenn Greenwald or Naomi Klein, do not have to contend with car bombs and assassination attempts. This is something which I think we take for granted, and which I only think we will miss, if we do at all, once it has been taken away from us.
Elena Kagan – The Executive’s Dream
The smartest points on the Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination, were, as usual, made by Glenn Greenwald, who noted that not only does Ms. Kagan have no documented views on any important subjects, she has often expressed herself stolidly in favor of a greatly expanded executive branch. Ms. Kagan believes that habeas corpus and the right to a speedy civilian trial should be revoked to people accused of Terrorism, as well as their right not to be interrogated by torture, their right to see the evidence against them, and their right to see a lawyer. She has expressed this, at least, in various letters which can be found with a Google search.
It’s difficult to express my sadness at this nomination. We had prayed that Dianne Wood – a far stronger candidate with a proven, documented record against unlimited executive power – would end up the nominee. Some of our most cherished privileges, such as the right not to be interrogated by torture, hang by the thread of a single Supreme Court justice. Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Boumediene v. Bush, Rasul v. Bush and several other crucial cases were decided by a narrow 5-4 majority. The above cases ruled nearly every aspect of the Bush-Obama secret detention program unconstitutional, and though they were largely ignored, their value is inestimable.
The New York Times, our bellwether to establishment opinion, let loose a glaring (Freudian?) slip in its treatment of the Kagan nomination. Halfway through the article, they say:
As he presses an ambitious agenda expanding the reach of government, Mr. Obama has come to worry that a conservative Supreme Court could become an obstacle down the road, aides said. It is conceivable that the Roberts court could eventually hear challenges to aspects of Mr. Obama’s health care program or to other policies like restrictions on carbon emissions and counterterrorism practices.
Which is baffling for a variety of reasons. First, the “ambitious agenda [to expand] the reach of government” would likely include, in NYT parlance, the health care reform bill, the financial regulation bill, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, or other such Obama initiatives. The “ambitious agenda” surely does not include an unlimited expansion of executive power to torture, detain, and assassinate anyone around the globe, something with which Ms. Kagan (a so-called “liberal”) wholeheartedly agrees. To the contrary, Mr. Obama has real reason to fear a liberal Supreme Court, which would continue to strike down his unconstitutional uses of executive power – hence his selection of a cheerleader for indefinite detention and torture. Were Ms. Kagan, like her predecessor Justice Stevens, to have spoken out vociferously against our present detention practices, I have no doubt Mr. Obama would have passed her over for the nomination, as he did to Dianne Wood.
The confirmation hearings are sure to unfold as usual – that is, with as little substantive information as possible. When Ms. Kagan is asked about her views on previous decisions, she will of course say: “I will not interfere with precedent.” When she is asked about any future decisions she might make, she will naturally say “I cannot comment until the case comes before me.” So we end up learning nothing about her judicial views, except for the few stray comments that suggest she supports a “robust” interpretation of executive power. Change we can believe in!
Lieberman Wants to Revoke NYC Bomb Suspect’s Citizenship
At Harper’s, Scott Horton makes a great catch:
Senator Joseph Lieberman has developed a knack for craven fearmongering. His latest proposal was born from the police operation by New York’s finest that led to the capture of Faisal Shahzad last weekend. Shahzad, a financial analyst, is a United States citizen and, as a long-time resident of Bridgeport, one of Lieberman’s constituents, which Lieberman considers a troublesome complication. Lieberman says he will sponsor legislation under which the president will be given the power to deprive a person of his citizenship simply by bringing certain charges.
Lieberman is vague about the proposals, and he offers no explanation of how a citizen could be stripped of his citizenship by executive fiat consistently with the Constitution,a step that would have all the traditional badges of tyrannical government. He also apparently believes, incorrectly, that only U.S. citizens have a right to receive aMiranda warning. (That’s the sort of mistake that a young lawyer sitting for the bar would never make, although Lieberman has been a lawyer since 1967 and was a former Connecticut attorney general.)
Though obviously legislative adventures such as those of Mr. Lieberman should be avoided at all costs, I think it is important to remember that the “facts” of the Times Square incident are now murky and inconclusive at best. We have a “suspect”, but no idea if he actually did it; we have a confession, but no idea how it was extracted. For all the front-page accusations of his supposed “links” to “The Taliban”, we know only for sure that
1) – A crude, incompetent bomb consisting of M-88 firecrackers (the sort children play with), a sealed tank of propane, and a couple bags of fertilizer was placed at the back of an SUV in Times Square. This is not how you make a bomb, and given that the sort of firecracker he bought cannot undergo self-reignition (one M-88 can’t set off another M-88 with its detonation), I have real doubts that the “explosion” would have even broken through the car. It was hardly the sort of device one envisions upon hearing the phrase “car bomb”, particularly as the citizens of Baghdad have come to know it.
2) – A Pakistani-American citizen was picked up at an airport attempting to leave the country with a ticket he paid for in cash. The Times sent its reporters scurrying to find his relatives the moment the NYPD released his name, and they emerged with a hit piece on how the suspect, Mr. Shahzad, “fit the profile of a Terrorist”. Rife with circumstantial evidence, the article describes his “‘money woes”, his newfound “zeal for Islam”, his “strong religious identity” and so forth. The article does not mention the evidence against Mr. Shahzad, and takes his guilt as a foregone conclusion.
3) – The suspect confessed. But I should stress emphatically that that is all we know of his confession. Mr. Shahzad has been accused of five terrorism-related charges, according to the New Statesman, and apparently gave his interrogates “the goods” – that is, he confessed to having trained in Pakistan, having “links” with “The Taliban”, etc – precisely what our policy planners might have wanted. The AFP was kind enough to note that Mr. Shahzad has not been in a court, and has in fact, “disappeared” since his “dramatic arrest” 4 days ago. We don’t know where he was taken, who interrogated him, or what exactly he confessed to.
I do not wish to be called a “conspiracy theorist”, but it is well known (and given the tone of coverage, tragically well accepted) that if you are accused of the crime of Terrorism, you will be interrogated in secret and tortured at the very least by days or weeks of sleeplessness (try it, reader!). I have no idea how Mr. Shahzad was interrogated, except that it was done by the military. Unless I see documentary evidence to suggest otherwise, I think that given the military’s past experiences with interrogation, we can assume Mr. Shahzad was tortured.
Then what is his confession worth? Very little, it would seem, and even less given the almost hilarious nature of his “crime”. The contents of his car were essentially inert. Is it a crime to have firecrackers, a sealed propane tank, and a few bags of fertilizer in your car at Times Square on a Saturday night? Evidently, if you happen to be on a particular list, everything is a crime.
It would be difficult to overstate the danger of Mr. Lieberman’s proposal and those like it. By classifying a certain class of crime (“Terrorism”) as one for which normal rules do not apply, one creates a dangerous precedent. Who, after all, is a Terrorist? Mostly Muslims, for now, but the Administration has given indications for years that it plans on expanding the definition to, say, civil disobedience.
This is an unhealthy trend, and ought to be stopped. To have two sets of laws – one for people accused of “Terrorism” and the other for everyone else – is illogical and absurd; and worse, it demolishes the idea of whether or not we can conclusively ascertain a “Terrorist’s” guilt. Precisely because Mr. Shahzad likely confessed under torture, we shall never know whether or not he was actually guilty.
BP Off the Hook for Billions
Many have mentioned and I think it bears repeating that British Petroleum, who, along with Haliburtion, bears full responsibility for the stain of death expanding through the Gulf of Mexico, is only liable for $75 million in damages – what you would call a drop in the bucket. They must pay for 100% of the cleanup, which is substantial, but fishermen and tourist companies, those who have seen their lives ruined for BP’s avarice, can collectively get only $75 million in damages.
The economic damage of this oil spill is sure to run in to the billions of dollars, and many commentators estimate the lost capacity resulting from this spill will run into the tens of billions. All of the property destroyed, the fisheries massacred, the empty tour boats and so forth will have to fight for a slice of the $75 million that BP is offering.
This ridiculous situation came after the fallout of the Exxon-Valdez spill of 1990, which occurred off the coast of Alaska and involved orders of magnitude fewer economic victims. Rikki Ott of Reuters explains how Exxon bargained with the Senate then to shoulder all of the cleanup costs if the Senate could guarantee that they could only be sued for $75 million.
Those are the rules which govern our present disaster, and they are, to say it mildly, unfair. As we know, BP lobbied against the regulation that would have required them to buy a valve ($500,000) which would have prevented this disaster (>$5,000,000,000). They ought to be liable for every cent of damage their avarice caused.
Congress is now working on raising BP’s liability cap from $75 million to $10 billion, a proposal I think we could all get behind. I’ll be eagerly waiting to see what becomes of it.
Sanders Pushes for Fed Audit
Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) is pushing an amendment to the financial overhaul bill before the Senate that would broaden the Government Accountability Office’s power to audit the Fed and compel the central bank to disclose details about the firms that received emergency federal aid during the financial crisis.
Of course, the Obama White House is looking to kill the amendment. Surprise!
SEC Ignored Fraud, Watched Porn
I know I’m somewhat late to the party on this one, but I wanted to point out to anyone who wasn’t aware that senior members of the Securities and Exchange Commission, our main regulatory body, watched hours of pornography per day, while on the job. This peak porn usage occurred during 2007-2008, at the height of our banks’ financial fraud.
From ComputerWorld, of all places:
Seventeen investigations involved senior SEC staffers earning between $100,000 and $222,000 annually. In many cases, the Kotz’s office obtained on-the-record admissions from the employees involved, though the report does not say how, or even whether, the employees were disciplined.
Kotz’s report lists several instances where SEC employees spent several hours daily on porn. One such case involved a senior attorney at the SEC’s Washington headquarters who sometimes spent eight hours a day surfing pornographic sites and downloading explicit images. The attorney apparently downloaded so much porn that he filled up all the available space on his government-issued computer. He then downloaded more images onto personal CDs and DVDs, which he stored in boxes in his office.
Enjoy the rest of your day.
Exxon-Valdez Spill “Pales in Comparison” to Current Louisiana Spill
It’s true. From the BBC:
Five times as much oil as previously thought could be leaking from the well beneath where a rig exploded and sank last week, US officials said earlier.
The slick is 45 miles (72km) by 105 miles (169km) – almost the size of Jamaica – and heading for the US coast.
A third leak has been discovered, and a fire-fighting expert said the disaster may become the biggest oil spill ever.
“Probably the only thing comparable to this is the Kuwait fires [following the Gulf War in 1991],” Mike Miller, head of Canadian oil well fire-fighting company Safety Boss, told the BBC World Service.
“The Exxon Valdez [tanker disaster off Alaska in 1989] is going to pale [into insignificance] in comparison to this as it goes on.”
Scientists say only a quarter of local marine wildlife survived the Exxon Valdez disaster.
Mendacious Commercials Against Financial Regulation
Annie Lowrey over at The Washington Independent has a nice post deconstructing the latest series of advertisments attacking the financial regulation bill now being debated in the Senate.
I admit I hadn’t seen this lovely bit of propaganda until she drew my attention to it, and it’s interesting to examine the claims it makes. The first rule of propaganda is to attribute to your enemy your own actions and intentions. Thus, the commercial rather cleverly accuses the Senate of setting up an apparatus for “unlimited bailout authority”, and, astoundingly, claims that “Goldman Sachs is in favor of the bill”.
Neither of these statements is true, of course, but the implications go deeper than that. As TPM revealed earlier this week, the sponsors of the ad, a front-organization calling themselves “Stop Too Big to Fail”, are funded entirely by corporate dollars, including, yes, Goldman Sachs. This attempt to dust up public anger against the financial reform bill indicates Wall Street’s fear of it, and their willingness to tell any lie in order to see that the reform bill doesn’t pass.
Not that they really have that much to worry about. As George Washington remarks, the reform bill currently being debated is “All Holes and No Cheese“, noting that:
Dodd’s bill:
- Won’t break up or reduce the size of too big to fail banks
- Won’t remove the massive government guarantees to the giant banks
- And won’t even increase liquidity requirements to prevent future meltdowns
What it will do, however, is set up new protections for consumers, specifically to protect them from predatory lending practices, overdraft fees, byzantine contracts that require a Ph.D to understand, etc. The bill will also (hopefully) enact some barriers to the trade of over-the-counter (unregulated) derivatives, those delightful instruments that got us into this crisis.
As with the health care bill, I feel really ambivalent about this.
On one hand, the Dodd bill does almost nothing to prevent too-big-to-fail, it proposes some watered-down reform on derivatives trading, it doesn’t reduce the size or power of our mega-conglomerate banks, it doesn’t reinstate Glass-Stegall, and it does nothing to rein in the frankly absurd amounts of cash the bank executives make, whether or not they happen to crash the economy
On the other hand, this bill does provide some new consumer protection services, it bans proprietary trading (whatever that is), and it does create a new regulatory body whose specific charge is to watch over our mega-banks (as opposed to the SEC, which has a universal mandate).
Is this good enough? Can we do better? With the flood of Wall Street money flowing into campaign coffers, and with the November election only 6 months away, I’m inclined to say no. Maybe we should take what we can get. And keeping in mind that, unlike the health-care bill which had full industry support, the Dodd bill is being opposed by nearly every major bank, maybe it isn’t so bad after all. If the banks are against it, there must be something good inside this bill.
Update: Also see Nomi Prins’ article in Alternet entitled “Ten Ways The Dodd Bill is Failing on Financial Reform“:
It won’t constrain the Fed’s future bailout operations. It appears to limit the Fed’s ability to lend money freely to firms in trouble by “allowing” its system-wide support only for healthy institutions or systemically important market utilities. But what’s to stop the Fed from designating any company a “systemically important market utility”? That was basically the rationale behind the AIG bailout.
Update II: It’s also important to keep in mind that Chris Dodd, the bill’s sponsor, is heavily funded by some of the most odious Wall Street titans, including Citigroup (who gave him $110,000 this cycle), AIG ($87,000), Merrill Lynch ($61,650), Morgan Stanley ($44,000), and JP Morgan ($37,000). Hooray for transparency!
A New Non-Profit News Venture – Without Millionaire Benefactors!
Alan Mutter over at Newsosaur gives us a great profile of a new non-profit news startup in Minneapolis called MinnPost that seems to be as good a hope as any to revive our failing news economy:
MinnPost, a scrappy news start-up in Minnesota, is beginning to show how to run a sustainable non-profit venture without depending on major philanthropic support.
And it is doing so in two ways: First, by keeping costs low. Second, by raising money almost continuously through such diversified initiatives as advertising, NPR-style user contributions and even an annual gala featuring organic-vodka martinis.
In other words, the highly regarded Minnesota news site is the antithesis of such large-scale journalism projects as Pro Publica, Texas Tribune and Bay Citizen, which at this writing all rely on multimillion-dollar endowments from wealthy individuals and institutions.
MinnPost not only started life without a multimillion-dollar nest egg but also is committed to fully supporting its ongoing operations without major philanthropic donations by 2012, says Joel Kramer, a former editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune who launched the site in 2007.
Back when Propublica emerged we heard a lot of talk about how its model of non-profit news gathering was a harbinger for the future of news. And while they have given us a series of fantastic investigations, capped most recently by their explosive profile of corrupt hedge fund Magnetar, the uncomfortable fact remained: their business model depended on multi-million dollar grants from wealthy philanthropists. They were, by definition, not a sustainable project.
MinnPost, on the other hand, appears to be the first non-profit whose stated goal is to provide quality journalism free of massive philanthropic donations. They do so by a mixture of low overheads, low operating costs, and good old fashioned reader donations. One of my major criticisms of ProPublica, fantastic though they are, is the obscene six-figure salaries their reporters and editors make. MinnPost does away with these, but (and this should come as a surprise to the Wall Street banks who contend that multi-million dollar bonuses are the only way to secure “talent) the quality of their reporting does not appear to have suffered.
We’re all holding our breath to see what’s going to come of the bloodbath our legacy news media are swimming in (They lost 27% circulation in the past five years), but startups like MinnPost are a genuine ray of hope.
This Week in Good Ideas
Finally harnessing offshore wind power:
The Cape Wind project, the nation’s first offshore wind farm, is go for launch. After nine years of controversy and heated negotiations, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced today that Nantucket Sound, about five miles off the coast of Massachusetts’s Cape Cod, will host a 130-turbine wind farm covering 24 square miles that will begin generating electricity as early as 2012. Salazar made the announcement from the Massachusetts Statehouse in Boston and was joined by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, a big supporter of the project.
Salazar included a few modifications to help protect the historical, cultural, and environmental assets of Nantucket Sound. The farm was originally intended to include 170 turbines, but he dropped the number to 130 to help reduce visual impact. He also stipulated that developers need to take additional marine archaeological surveys and other “commonsense measures” to “minimize and mitigate” potential adverse effects of the project.
Goldman Slimeball Hearing
Well, the big Goldman Sachs hearing just wrapped up 10 hours of grueling testimony, and I’m still reeling from the stupendous prevarications their executives offered. The financial bloggers were out in full form today with some great live-blogs here, here and here. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this as the hearings progress, and I’d love to see how Goldman will justify its fraudulent deals with AIG once the Senate gets around to asking about them; but until then, a couple comments:
1) I really have to hand it to Sen. Carl Levin for his rigorous and adversarial line of questioning. Watching him tear these executives apart for knowingly engaging in outright fraud is gratifying, though of course some jail time for these executives would be even more so. Watch this video for the money shot (as it were).
2) I was really astounded by the total lack of contrition these executives showed. They defrauded investors to the tune of $500 million (at least) by selling them bonds which they knew were worthless and then betting against those bonds. The basic refrain from all these executives, particularly Mr. Sparks, was that “these bonds were traded on the open market and at market values” – but of course that’s an entirely spurious argument because Goldman was withholding valuable information from their clients (that the bonds were worthless). Amazingly, the Goldman executives don’t seem to think they were doing anything wrong! Fraud is totally acceptable in their world, just so long as it makes them money. Just don’t buy a used car from them – they’d probably sell you a death-trap and then take out car insurance and life insurance on you.
Before I get too gushy on Senator Levin, I should hasten to remind my readers that he voted for the Financial Services Modernization Act back in 1999 – the same act that allowed Goldman Sachs to trade unregulated (“over-the-counter”) derivatives. Without the FSMA, the sort of fraud Goldman engaged in would have been impossible, and any attempt to prevent this sort of behavior in the future is meaningless without repealing the FSMA. Needless to say such a repeal is not even being discussed.
Watching the hearings today gave me a strange, other-worldly feeling. Some of the same senators who took major campaign donations from Goldman Sachs were sitting there and grilling these executives. A cynical observer might have gotten the impression that this was all a bit of political theater designed to soothe the public’s anger, which by all accounts is badly in need of catharsis. Certainly when one remembers that the very behavior for which Goldman is now being indicted was standard practice for nearly all of the major banks, it seems strange that the Senate should decide to focus all of its ire on Goldman. But then again, they are, after all, the most visible symbol of Wall Street insanity.
“Warrior Transition”
The Times is out today with an excellent article on the military’s so-called “Warrior Transition Units”, wherein our traumatized soldiers who return from Iraq and Afghanistan can “unwind” in warehouses across the country. They’re given free drugs and told not to think about things so much. There are, of course, too many ex-soldiers who have been permanently scarred by the things they saw on duty to adequately counsel all of them, but the military makes up for it in painkillers, anti-depressants, and sleeping pills.
The article has some pretty juicy examples:
He was prescribed a laundry list of medications for anxiety, nightmares, depression and headaches that made him feel listless and disoriented. His once-a-week session with a nurse case manager seemed grossly inadequate to him. And noncommissioned officers — soldiers supervising the unit — harangued or disciplined him when he arrived late to formation or violated rules.
Oh, and:
Sgt. John Conant, a 15-year veteran of the Army, returned from his second tour of Iraq in 2007 a changed man, according to his wife, Delphina. Angry and sullen, he reported to the transition unit at Fort Carson, where he was prescribed at least six medications a day for sleeping disorders, pain and anxiety, keeping a detailed checklist in his pocket to remind him of his dosages.
“They didn’t want to do anything but give him medication,” she said.
Also:
“These kids change their medication like they change their underwear,” said a psychotherapist who works with Fort Carson soldiers and asked that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the transition unit. “They can’t even remember which pills they’re taking.”
Two points emerge which The Times clearly hints at, but doesn’t come out and say:
1) These cases are bound to happen when you force 18-year-old kids fresh out of high school to travel to a godforsaken desert they know nothing about, kill people for basically no reason, watch their best friends die, and come home to a country that barely even knows they’re at war.
2) There has to be some kind of agreement with the pharmaceutical industry at work here to defraud taxpayers. We’re prescribing these kids pills like they’re candy, and there’s hardly any evidence as to these drugs’ efficacy. How much is the pharmaceutical industry making off of these prescription-happy doctors and the taxpayers who are footing the bill?
Those two points aside, a really excellent effort out of The New York Times.
Kyrgyzstan Clients and the Afghan War
Aram Roston is out with another fantastic investigation in this week’s The Nation about how no-bid contracts and an obedient client-dictator in Kyrgyzstan has allowed one company to control virtually all the oil that enters into Afghanistan:
This is the story of two interlinked and secretive offshore companies run by a former Army intelligence officer. The firms run a specialized monopoly of massive proportions. Their niche: supplying aviation fuel for US military operations in Afghanistan–enough to fill two Olympic-size swimming pools each and every day of the year.
The companies’ names are Red Star Enterprises and Mina Corp. In Afghanistan, Red Star Enterprises has a sole source contract worth more than $1 billion, won without competition, to deliver fuel to Bagram Air Base, that central hub of the war effort.The Nation has obtained an unusual “memorandum of agreement” between Red Star and the US military authorities, giving the firm exclusive ownership of a fuel pipeline that feeds directly into the base.
Fraud Didn’t End With Goldman Sachs
Hats off to ProPublica for their phenomenal follow-ups to the SEC case against Goldman Sachs, and for revealing that what might have been a genuine move against corruption now merely seems like a politically motivated slap on the wrist, a show-trial, essentially, where big bad Goldman Sachs gets forced to pay a pittance of a fine and the rest of their compatriots who indulged in the exact same practices go off scot-free. Let’s not forget that they paid only 1% of their 2009 profits in taxes, so whatever restitution the SEC squeezes out of them won’t begin to cover their debt to the US Government.
For those of you who haven’t been following the byzantine hearings regarding the Goldman case, with their alphabet soup of acronyms and stern avocations from our media that these are “complex financial instruments” we’re dealing with – well, who can blame you? But the gist of the case is relatively easy to follow, and while Goldman may have been a particularly egregious offender, almost every investment bank bigger than a mom-and-pop outfit traded in Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), the “complex instruments” that lie at the center of this case. Earlier this month ProPublica ran an extensive look at Magnetar, a hedge fund that traded exclusively in CDOs, and just a few days ago it revealed that Merril Lynch engaged in identical practices to the ones that got Goldman Sachs sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
CDOs are basically a bet that a given asset will perform well or perform poorly. In the Goldman Sachs case, Goldman put together securities (assets) that it knew would fail (the SEC hopes to show that a Goldman trader specifically picked the components of the securities for their especial toxicity), sold those securities to gullible investors, then secretly took out a collateralized debt obligation against that same security, betting, in essence, that its value would go to zero, which of course they knew would happen because they picked it specifically to do so. When, sure enough, the security did become worthless, Goldman hit paydirt.
This is called fraud, and it’s a pretty grievous sin in the world of finance (at least it was, once upon a time). So on one hand, it’s absolutely just for Goldman Sachs to come under the SEC’s gun, get its reputation tarnished a bit, and, with luck, get a few of its executives fired, where they can live the rest of their days in their Park Avenue penthouses, counting their ill-gotten gains. But on the other hand, what is the use of this symbolic prosecution if it doesn’t engender a shift in practices from the financial community?
The case of John Paulson and Goldman Sachs identified in the SEC indictment was neither the biggest nor the most blatant case of securities fraud during the run-up to the crisis. For the SEC to suddenly regain its regulatory muscle, and for them to focus on this one case to the exclusion of all else stinks of politics. President Obama’s approval ratings are dropping fast, and prior to this there had been no prosecutions of financial fraud at all. I could easily see President Obama instructing the SEC to move forward on the Goldman case so he could have something to show by November, especially since Goldman is the most visible and most reviled of all the Wall Street slimeball firms.
Finally, this case brings to light just how important the financial reform being discussed in the Senate is to prevent future such fraud. Currently most of the discussion seems to center around the politically popular “consumer protection”, but while overdraft fees and adjustable rate mortgages were pernicious side effects of the crisis, the real engine behind the financial meltdown was the widespread sale of over-the-counter (unregulated) derivatives like the CDOs mentioned in this case.
“Financial Reform” means nothing if not the outright ban of derivatives trading – or failing that, the erection of a structured derivatives exchange where fraudulent trades like the Goldman Sachs deal would be visible to the public and to investors. Without that, we’re literally back where we started.
Senate Climate “Compromise”
I guess I have to support pretty much anything we can get on the climate change front, and I admit this bill looks pretty good, despite Reuters’ obvious attempts to slander it. The gasoline tax is bound to cause inflation and more Tea Party unrest, but any climate legislation is to some extent inflationary, and I don’t think there’s very much that wouldn’t spark more Tea Party unrest at this point.
But I wanted to point out the one aspect of the bill Reuters mentioned that I think is a major mistake:
On Wednesday, a Senate source told Reuters the legislation would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide emissions. It would also end state and regional carbon-trading programs, such as the one several Northeastern states participate in, to be replaced by a national carbon reduction policy.
One of the big benefits of the EPA is that it’s an Executive department, and thus its dictates don’t have to go through Congresses’ butchery to become implemented. As Christopher Parenti explains in exhaustive detail, the EPA already has the power to singlehandedly dictate carbon emissions via the Clean Air Act. Whatever this bill recommends will no doubt be much lighter on the pollution industry than whatever the EPA could have come up with.
In fact, given that the EPA had recently signaled it was going to move on climate change with or without Congress’ approval, the timing of this Bill, and its clauses that strip the EPA of most of its power, are suspect. That the current bill enormously benefits industry interests is undeniable.
Blowback
Some unintended consequences in the “War on Drugs”: murderous gangs who lay waste to whole towns.
On the other side, a brutal war between drug gangs has forced dozens of fearful families from the Mexican town of El Porvenir to come to the border seeking political asylum, and scores of other Mexicans have used special visas known as border-crossing cards to flee into the United States. They say drug gangs have laid waste to their town, burning down houses and killing people in the street.
Americans are taking in their Mexican relatives, and the local schools have swelled with traumatized children, many of whom have witnessed gangland violence, school officials say.
“It’s very hard over there,” said Vicente Burciaga, 23, who fled El Porvenir a month ago with his wife, Mayra, and their infant son after gang members burned down five homes in their neighborhood and killed a neighbor. “They are killing people over there who have nothing to do with drug trafficking,” he said. “They kill you just for having seen what they are doing.”
Now, it occurs to me that if you decriminalize “drugs”, the people who trade in them can take advantage of a modern judiciary to settle their disputes instead of simply killing each other.
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi
I mentioned previously that the Iraq election was a sham not because it was rigged (though it certainly was) but because the Iraqis had to choose between two pro-occupation candidates, Al-Maliki and Allawi.
The vote was inconclusive, but those two candidates were widely trumpeted as the “frontrunners”, and many of our newspapers expressed the US government’s opinion on the matter by claiming Allawi won. But few have very much to say about him, now that the initial excitement is over. To fill the silence, I wanted to point out a curious fact about him that Ron Suskind revealed in his latest book, The Way of the World.
Apparently Allawi was involved in the manufacture of false evidence connecting Saddam to 9/11. He was at the CIA headquarters immediately before President Bush gave the order to the CIA to “manufacture evidence” that Al-Qaeda had training camps in Iraq. I cannot dismiss the coincidence of a major Iraqi politician meeting with the CIA immediately before they set to work manufacturing evidence. On some level at least, Allawi was a collaborator.
And he still is.
How The US Funds the Taliban
I want to draw attention to this article by legendary investigative journalist Aram Roston in last November’s The Nation, which gives some pretty compelling evidence that the US plans Afghanistan to be an endless war. The US taxpayer is apparently the Taliban’s single biggest donor.
Now, many would argue that we’re merely ending the war through monetary means, but you have to really think about what this implies. The Taliban may decide not to shoot at us for the time being, but this money being given to them now can be used against us at any future date. The Taliban are evidently a cheap organization to run, and with millions of US dollars they can continue resisting forever.
This is simply not rational behavior for a country who’s avowed goal is to “defeat the Taliban”. It is rational for a country who wishes always to have a “Taliban” around to fight.
As one of the truck drivers on the route we pay the Taliban not to fire upon says:
Hanna explained that the prices charged are different, depending on the route: “We’re basically being extorted. Where you don’t pay, you’re going to get attacked. We just have our field guys go down there, and they pay off who they need to.” Sometimes, he says, the extortion fee is high, and sometimes it is low. “Moving ten trucks, it is probably $800 per truck to move through an area. It’s based on the number of trucks and what you’re carrying. If you have fuel trucks, they are going to charge you more. If you have dry trucks, they’re not going to charge you as much. If you are carrying MRAPs or Humvees, they are going to charge you more.”
We have been pursuing the same strategy as part of our “Surge” in Iraq with the so-called “Sunni Awakening”, and while every pundit to the right of an anarchist crows that “The Surge Worked”, we have not seen any political reconciliation there, no disarmament, and no end to suicide attacks (an average of 1.5 of which occurred every week in 2009).
I have no doubt that the “Afghan Surge” or whatever it is they’re calling it nowadays will be trumpeted from every news outlet within six months as the greatest victory since Julius Caesar. But, as in Iraq, I think we will find a full withdrawal to be still in the infinite future.
India’s Sexual Revolution
Tehelka has an outstanding piece in this week’s issue about the hyper-sexualization of Indian culture which you should definitely read. In a land where only one generation ago arranged marriages were the norm and pre-marital abstinence a steel command, India’s youth have undergone a startling shift in accepted mores.
At this moment thousands of Indian parents are uneasily wondering whether they really want to know what is going on. Mini’s parents still don’t know how to deal with what they found out. Mini is a dainty, extremely pretty 14-year-old. When she was 12, her first boyfriend and she were both eager to claim BTDT (Been There, Done That) about oral sex. One evening at home alone, they tried it out, anticipating a definite move up the social ladder. Sure enough, the next day at school her friends congratulated her even while making faces at the slight grossness in ‘going down’ on a boy.
_____________________
Dr Prakash Kothari, founder of the World Association For Sexual Health, a man familiar to India through his ubiquitous sex columns, says that one reason children are sexually active earlier is because better nutrition leads to earlier puberty. He says of his new, young clients: “Thirty years ago, only married couples came in looking for advice on safe sex and contraceptives. Today, young girls and boys walk in and ask about sex toys and tonics. Some even ask us if being high on LSD andcharas will enhance their sexual experience.”
Tehelka gets major points for noting the influence of American television:
Alisha describes the extent of OC role-play in her circle: Alisha’s slender best friend was considered to be like rail-thin Marissa from the show. Alisha, who used to be plump until recently, was automatically typecast as Marissa’s best friend Summer since the girls considered Summer chubby. (Look up Rachel Bilson, the waifish actress who plays Summer, and decide for yourself whether our kids are gripped with hatred for their bodies.) The identification with these shows is so close that Alisha’s best friend decided to “do it” with her boyfriend after OC’s lead couple, Ryan and Marissa, did it for the first time. The pressure then began for Alisha (aka best friend Summer) to also ‘pop the cherry’. All this is recounted without any sense of its bizarreness.
But fails to take into account what I believe to be a major factor in this trend: the ever-rising age of marriage. 50 years ago this kind of blatant promiscuity may have been uncommon, but teenage sex was practiced and widespread. Except the teenagers tended to be married. I have no statistics on hand, but my grandmother, to take the most parochial example, was married and had her first child by age 16. Mahatma Gandhi, in fact, was married as an infant and first discovered sex at age 13. No one thought very much of it at the time.
Today, among the upper classes, women and men are generally expected to marry in their mid-to-late twenties, respectively. But they are also expected to keep to the same traditions as their parents’ generation, including arranged marriages and strict abstinence. A child that reaches sexual maturity at age 14-16 but is expected to wait a full decade before “popping the cherry” (as the vulgar expression goes), will almost inevitably engage in promiscuity at some point.
The average age of marriage has gone up across the socioeconomic spectrum, but nowhere has the trend been as acute as among the upper-classes. I think it is telling that they are who comprise most of the anecdotes for the Tehelka piece. Among the middle and lower classes (where the average age dips down to the early 20s to late teens), I should imagine one would find this sort of thing quite a bit less.
I don’t want to make too much of this point, because I think the rise of American television in India is the real culprit, as Tehelka mentions. But I want to also point out the conspiracy of silence that still surrounds sexual matters in Indian culture. Most Indian children would be horrified to discuss these issues with their parents, and their parents no less so. It’s the ultimate taboo. In my own experience, my parents didn’t speak a word of it to me – they left that for the school.
But sex education is almost nonexistent in India, and many states have actually banned teaching sex education in schools. The Internet is a dirty place, as you know, and the television shows these children watch (Tehelka mentions The OC and Gossip Girl) contain scenes that would be impossible for a child to understand. With all adults refusing to speak of it, it is natural they should get a warped perception.
However despite all these rationalizations, this is a very disturbing trend in Indian society, and though Tehelka must have sensationalized it a bit, I think it is a valuable lesson in how children, in an absence of understanding adults, will interpret their new cultural surroundings.
Note to Tea Partiers
Former Rep. Dick Armey, the President of Fredomworks (who funds most of your rallies), is now a lobbyist for the financial sector.
That is all.
Tax Day!
I know I’m a day late for tax day, but I wanted to re-post the War Resisters League’s pie-chart on where these tax dollars are being spent. You can download a detailed PDF here.
I hope everyone had a happy filing.
The Reasoned Review 