1 Boring Old Man

SC panel says governor should face ethics charges
The Associated Press
By JIM DAVENPORT
November 18, 2009

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford will face charges he violated state laws, according to an ethics panel ruling Wednesday that came after its three-month investigation into his use of state, commercial and private airplanes and his campaign finance practices. The State Ethics Commission did not provide details of its decision or the specific charges the governor would face during a hearing of the panel early next year. Sanford’s lawyer, however, predicted the governor would be cleared and said none of charges are criminal but "limited to minor, technical matters."

The commission said details – which should include whether the accusations involve civil or criminal allegations – will be released next week. Questions about Sanford’s use of state, private and commercial planes arose after he disappeared from the state in June and admitted he had been in Argentina visiting his mistress…

The outcome of the commission’s work is pivotal for the once-popular conservative governor. Many lawmakers were waiting for it to decide if they will join an effort to impeach Sanford when the Legislature reconvenes in January. The governor repeatedly has rebuffed calls from fellow Republicans to resign before his second term ends in January 2011. State law prevents him from seeking a third…

Panel finds probable cause for charges against Sanford
The State
November 18, 2009

The S.C. Ethics Commission Wednesday said there are “probable causes” for several charges against Gov. Mark Sanford stemming from the commission’s probe into Sanford’s travel and campaign spending. The commission, however, declined to say after its marathon, closed-door meeting what Sanford may have done wrong. Nor did the commission say whether it thinks Sanford may have violated state ethics laws or more serious criminal laws.

S.C. lawmakers have been waiting on the conclusion of this investigation into Sanford’s travel to determine whether it will move forward with possibly removing Sanford from office. Tuesday, House lawmakers formally filed a bill seeking to impeach the governor…

I want Mark Sanford to be impeached. It’s not particularly rational for me to even care. I’m not even a South Carolinian. When I think about it, it comes down to several things. First, he is a reflex Conservative. He followed his Ayn Rand style economics to the detriment of the State of South Carolina – ideology over common sense. Second, his jaunt to Argentina was incredibly arrogant – he might as well have mooned his constituents. He’s an angry, self-centered guy, and it shows. He mistreated his wife and children without cause. But if I’m honest, my interest in seeing him removed from office has to do with a very anachronistic southern thing.  It’s the honorable thing to do. Funny how those things stay around – things like honor. I know I wouldn’t care so much if he were from New Jersey, or Montana. But he’s not – he’s the governor of South Carolina. And he left his battle station and went A.W.O.L. Rip off his epaulets and drum him out of the corps…

I suppose we already know this, but Reaganomics was a code word for the takeover of the United States by the business elite, the wealthy. In the twenty-eight years that followed Reagan’s election [twenty of which were under Republican Administrations], we’ve basically sold off a lot of American business, outsourced an untold number of American jobs, and allowed dangerous Trade Deficits to develop. The Reagan revolution, as it was called, was a boon to the wealthy, but a growing disaster for the  vast majority. In the process, we moved from a product based economy to a service based economy [service jobs disappear in times of Recession – like now].

We really cannot "recover" from this Recession. Our only choice is to gut our way through it and try to undo some of the damage done by letting Wall Street’s short term whims direct [and destroy] us. That’s our only choice. If we fall back under another Republican Administration like Reagan/Bush/Bush, our course will be to simply dig a deeper hole. I certainly hope we don’t have to get sicker, in order to finally start trying to get well. We’re sick enough already. In some ways, I can see why the Republicans like to scream "Socialism" or "Communism." It’s because it is a Class War, only it’s being driven by the destructive behavior of the uppermost Class. Maybe that’s the way it always goes. It’s funny. Nobody is after the wealthy. They just need to think about the rest of the country while they sit around and be rich together.

Well, here are some more graphs from the BEA [Bureau of Economic Analysis]. All are corrected against the GDP [Gross Domestic Product]. The top is the Balance of Trade [Exports – Imports]. The middle one is the NIIP [Net International Investment Position = domestically owned foreign assets – foreign owned domestic assets]. And the bottom graph is the National Debt.

It looks to me like something happened around 1980 that lasted into the early 1990s, but then improved for a while – worsening again about 2000 and thereafter. I wonder what it was?

Parties for the Parrots!
Hoopla for Whores!
Shindigs for Shills!
Biotech Lobby Rewards Reliable Reps
By emptywheel
11/17/2009

Remember those Republicans and Democrats who took Roche/Genentech’s script and inserted it, barely touched, into the Congressional Record? It will surprise none of you that there were parties involved.

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) was scheduled to attend a breakfast fundraiser at the Phoenix Park Hotel on May 7. The event was hosted by lobbyists David Jones and former Senate Finance Committee staff director James Gould, who count Roche as clients.

Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) held a fundraising breakfast at Bistro Bis on September 17. Lobbyist hosts included Darin Gardner and Anna Sagely, who lobby exclusively for Hoffman-La Roche, as well as lobbyists Mat Lapinski, Chris Myrick, and Christine Pellerin, who have Roche on their client lists.

Darin Gardner and Christine Pellerin, legislative assistant to former Congressman Henry Bonilla (R-TX), also hosted Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) for breakfast at Bistro Bis, also in May of this year.

Finally, Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) held a cocktails and cigars fundraiser for Women Impacting the Nation, a project of her leadership committee Common Sense Common Solutions, on September 21. More than two dozen lobbyists hosted the event, four of whom represent Roche: Darin Gardner, Christine Pellerin, Anna Sageley and Mat Lapinkski–the same lobbyists responsible for the Conaway and Poe events.

The same post notes that Roche/Genentech has hosted parties for 26 members of Congress since their merger in March. This Congressing thing sounds like great fun! You get invited to all sorts of swell parties, people shower you with money, and they even do your homework for you. A lark! So long as you don’t care about people suffering.

Hasan and War Crimes
By emptywheel
11/17/2009

_{At first, I didn’t make too much over} this report _{that Nidal Hasan may have gone on a killing spree because his requests that his patients be investigated for war crimes was denied.}

Fort Hood massacre suspect Nidal Malik Hasan sought to have some of his patients prosecuted for war crimes based on statements they made during psychiatric sessions with him, a captain who served on the base said Monday. Other psychiatrists complained to superiors that Hasan’s actions violated doctor-patient confidentiality, Capt. Shannon Meehan told The Dallas Morning News…

_{But I am interested that the same article reported that the Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the killing was postponed yesterday. That’s because the House Intelligence Committee has just given Chair Silvestre Reyes’ explanation for the postponement.}

_{Due to the high visibility of the issues surrounding the tragic event at Fort Hood, the President has instructed the National Security Council to assume control of all informational briefings. The NSC has directed that the leadership, as well as the chairmen and ranking minority members of the relevant congressional committees receive briefings first…}

_{As Spencer reported last week, John Brennan got put in charge of what the IC knew of Hasan last week.}

_{On November 6, 2009, I directed that an immediate inventory be conducted of all intelligence in U.S. Government files that existed prior to November 6, 2009, relevant to the tragic shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, especially anything having to do with the alleged shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, U.S. Army. In addition, I directed an immediate review be initiated to determine how any such intelligence was handled, shared, and acted upon within individual departments and agencies and what intelligence was shared with others. This inventory and review shall be conducted in a manner that does not interfere with the ongoing criminal investigations of the Fort Hood shooting.}
_{The results of this inventory and review, as well as any recommendations for improvements to procedures and practices, shall be provided to John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, who will serve as the principal point of contact on this matter for the White House. Preliminary results of this review shall be provided by November 30, 2009.}

_{But now it’s NSC–presumably Brennan–dictating what briefings the various committees will get. The NSC has just basically made this a Gang of Eight briefing [though they seem to be including other Chairs besides Intelligence]–if only for the moment. It may be they’re hiding more extensive known ties to al Qaeda than has been reported … Or it may be they’re trying to keep something else quiet.}

Ever since I read yesterday that Hasan had wanted to prosecute his patients for war crimes based on what they told him in their sessions with him, I’ve been uncomfortable. In my career as a psychiatrist, I saw lots of traumatized people. In my later years, they were mostly adults who had been traumatized as children. But early on, I saw lots of soldiers from the Viet Nam War. They talked about three kinds of experiences: things they saw, things that happened to them; and things they did. It was the latter category that gave them the most trouble. Frankly, it gave me a lot of trouble too. I’ve never been in combat myself, but I could understand that the insanity of war could easily drive the soldiers to do some pretty awful things. But understanding that didn’t make the stories easy to hear. I don’t think it helped much that I wasn’t in sympathy with that war myself.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are even worse than Viet Nam. The veterans back then were never sure which side any Vietnamese person was on. That’s true in our current wars, but there’s the added fact that anyone on the street might well be a walking bomb that can go off any second. I’m sure that Major Hasan heard a lot more of those hard-to-listen-to stories than I did. The stories are hard for the soldiers who lived them to ever shake off, but they’re not easy for those of us who who hear them either. They take their toll.

US Detention System “Essentially Lawless”
By emptywheel
11/17/2009

Just in case you haven’t been following Balkinization since Marty Lederman went to work at DOJ, I wanted to link to this Jon Hafetz* post, which hits on a lot of the points that powwow and Mary raised in this thread yesterday.

But at Guantánamo, the road to justice remains the road less traveled. Holder also announced that five other Guantánamo detainees would be referred back to military commissions, including Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. So, those accused of the 9/11 attacks go to civilian court, while those accused of other crimes are diverted to military commissions. Yes, al-Nishiri is accused of attacking a military target. But the attack occurred before the United States was engaged in any armed conflict and before the passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force that the U.S. has relied on for the claimed armed conflict against al Qaeda. [In Hamdan, Justice Stevens described such retroactive use of military commissions as “insupportable”]. As Deborah Pearlstein points out, the administration has failed to provide a consistent, let alone valid, legal theory why one case goes to a military commission and another to federal court—why one prisoner gets full due process in a federal trial while another receives due process lite in a refurbished commission. Military commissions may have a place in the limited circumstances of true necessity—where the civilian courts are not open, functioning, and capable of dispensing justice. But military “necessity” is not an excuse for the government to deviate from its regularly constituted courts because it lacks the evidence to convict. And even if that were not the reason [or the only reason] for using military commissions, it will be the enduring perception of America’s two-tiered system of justice.
Holder’s announcement, moreover, deals only with one slice of Guantánamo. In the eight years since President Bush first created military commissions, only three men have been tried by these supposed “war courts.” By contrast, more than 750 have been detained without trial and more than 200 remain in legal limbo. Military commissions have helped mask a much larger system of prolonged and indefinite detention without charge. This open-ended detention system has been one of the most brutal, arbitrary, and lawless aspects of Guantánamo.

Click through for the rest, including where Hafetz argues that, “U.S. detention policy will remain essentially lawless.”

The worst is yet to come:

Unemployed Americans should hunker down for more job losses
New York Daily News
BY Nouriel Roubini
November 15, 2009

^{Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%. While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession. Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession. So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest…}

^{There’s really just one hope for our leaders to turn things around: a bold prescription that increases the fiscal stimulus with another round of labor-intensive, shovel-ready infrastructure projects, helps fiscally strapped state and local governments and provides a temporary tax credit to the private sector to hire more workers. Helping the unemployed just by extending unemployment benefits is necessary not sufficient; it leads to persistent unemployment rather than job creation…}

^{This is very bad news but we must face facts. Many of the lost jobs are gone forever, including construction jobs, finance jobs and manufacturing jobs. Recent studies suggest that a quarter of U.S. jobs are fully out-sourceable over time to other countries… Based on my best judgment, it is most likely that the unemployment rate will peak close to 11% and will remain at a very high level for two years or more. The weakness in labor markets and the sharp fall in labor income ensure a weak recovery of private consumption and an anemic recovery of the economy, and increases the risk of a double dip recession.}

^{As a result of these terribly weak labor markets, we can expect weak recovery of consumption and economic growth; larger budget deficits; greater delinquencies in residential and commercial real estate and greater fall in home and commercial real estate prices; greater losses for banks and financial institutions on residential and commercial real estate mortgages, and in credit cards, auto loans and student loans and thus a greater rate of failures of banks; and greater protectionist pressures. The damage will be extensive and severe unless bold policy action is undertaken now.}

But there’s another side to this story. It has seemed likely to everyone that this episode is something more than "the business cycle" – the routine expansion and contraction that characterizes our economy [best seen in the unemployment graph]:

It’s been more profound, accompanied by a fall in the Consumer Price Index, and associated with failures or barely averted failures in a number of areas – most notably in our financial institutions. Beyond that, we’ve had runaway capitalism, the abuse of the derivative markets, and a fundamental shift to a global economy [the worst governance in our history didn’t help either]. The consensus of economists seems to be that recovery will take a long time and that we’re going to need to go into debt and have more stimulus in the form of a "work" program of some kind. In spite of all the Republican howling, I suspect that America knows it earned this downturn fair and square.

Something Fundamental: The last time this happened was with Ronald Reagan. He did several things. He cut taxes dramatically. Rather than indebting us directly, he put money in people’s pockets with massive tax cuts and he spent like crazy in the military-industrial complex. He could do that because our debt was low and our taxes were high. We’re in the opposite situation right now. Taxes are low and debt is high. We can’t Reaganomic our way out this time. Actually, his solutions, including deregulation, had something to do with creating our current problems. It was pseudo-reform. He postponed the inevitable and initiated a quarter century of illusion. In my mind, America has to change for us to recover this time. A "work" program is mostly to tide us over until we make that change. "Change how?" is the most important question on the table.

I don’t know much about White House Counsel, Gregory Craig, who just resigned [or was let go]. So I have nothing to say about either Craig’s performance or his exit. But I do have something of a comment about some of the reports about his leaving. Washington blogger Steve Clemons and NPR’s Nina Totenberg see this as a hatchet job by Rahm Emanuel mediated by leaks [The Assassination of Greg Craig]. He mentions other leaks – notably General McChrystal’s report and Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry‘s, memo – both reporting opinions about Afghanistan. I don’t know whether these allegations are right either.

I don’t think "leaks" are a way to do business, but I don’t mind knowing what either  McChrystal or Eikenberry think. I don’t notice President Obama being too worried about those things either. If Steve Clemons is right, that Rahm Emanuel is playing palace intrigue through leaks, shame on him, but it’s not of major concern to me. Rahm  seems a little weasel-esque to me too. But it’s a far cry from the way leaks happened in the last Administration. For example, in September of 2002, the story of the Aluminum Tubes was leaked to Judith Miller. She wrote an article in the New York Times. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, people involved in the leak, used Miller’s report in the Times as if it were independent evidence against Iraq in their television campaign for war. Joseph Wilson wrote an article critical of the Administration’s marching us to war in Iraq. Within not many days, his wife’s secret identity as a C.I.A. Agent was leaked to discredit him. Valerie Plame‘s career was sacrificed to protect the Administration’s lies.

Having a leaky White House is actually sort of okay with me. I’d rather know too much than too little. It was not the leaks themselves that were the problem with the Bush Administration. They used leaks specifically to pull one over on the American people. We invaded Iraq based on information that was weak even if it were true, which it wasn’t. But worse – this shaky information was "leaked" in such a way as to strengthen it. Had we been told everything that was known about the Niger Uranium story, the Aluminum Tubes, and the evidence for Al Qaeda’s ties to Iraq, we would never have gone to war. The Bush Administration used both secrecy and leaks to lie to us – to trick us.