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January 31, 2006

Morning Report 1/31/06
U.S. On High Alert

Caveat emperor: Bush to speak, but not under oath

If ever we needed a good laugh, the time is ripe, because we're only a few hours away from George W. Bush's State of the Union speech.

For background, check out the History News Network's perspective on past speeches by past presidents. I'm partial to that site anyway. You see, historians tend to sneer at journalists, and journalists tend to sneer at historians, and HNN tries to explain why that separation between journalism and history just won't cut it these days, or any day:

Given how public opinion is shaped today, whipsawed emotionally on talk shows this way and that in response to the egos of the guests, the desire for ratings by the hosts and the search for profits by media companies and sponsors, historians are especially needed now. They can help remind us of the superficiality of what-happens-today-is-all-that-counts journalism.

Among the many duties we assume are these: To expose politicians who misrepresent history. To point out bogus analogies. To deflate beguiling myths. To remind Americans of the irony of history. To put events in context. To remind us all of the complexity of history. & Because we believe history is complicated our pages are open to people of all political persuasions. Left, right, center: all are welcome.

Back to Bush: The POTUS is likely to be more soothing and less bellicose tonight, as I've pointed out, but now he has even more reason to get his handlers to place a twinkle in his eye: The chief investigator of the Wampumgate scandal, Noel Hillman, has just left the building, for a presidentially appointed federal judgeship in New Jersey.

This move may delay the deadly fallout from that massive scandal long enough for the GOP to keep its death grip on Congress in this year's elections. Now another prosecutor will have to get up to speed.

It's enough to make you go postal, but someone in Santa Barbara, California, already beat you to it.

No, Bush won't mention Wampumgate, but he'll probably wax warmly about the Supreme Court, because 19 Democrats have caved in to the GOP. As the Washington Post's Charles Babington writes this morning:

The Senate voted 72 to 25 to end debate on Alito's nomination and to allow a roll call on his confirmation today, shortly before noon. Alito's supporters garnered a dozen more votes than the 60 they needed to choke off a Democratic filibuster effort, which would have allowed debate to continue indefinitely.

Leaders of both parties said Alito, 55, will comfortably win confirmation today, although not by the 78 to 22 margin that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. received last fall. Legal analysts say Alito's 15-year record as an appellate court judge suggests he may be more consistently conservative than Roberts. Moreover, they say, Alito is poised to make a larger impact on the court because he will replace Sandra Day O'Connor, the deciding vote in numerous 5 to 4 decisions over the years. Roberts succeeded a fellow conservative, the late William H. Rehnquist.

All the more reason for those of you who browse via Firefox to install Mike Ely's Homeland Insecurity Idiocy Level extension, which keeps you current with the regime. I couldn't agree more with one Firefox denizen who wrote, "Useless, but funny!"

Ely, a web brainiac in southern Oregon (check out Taupe Hat Systems), has raised a ruckus, especially among the humorless, with his funny extension. He explains it this way:

Based closely (a rewrite, basically) upon the excellent work of Scott Stroz (www.boyzoid.com), this extension is designed to display, in humorous language, the current threat level at the US Department of Homeland Security.

More seriously, Ely's just one of many smart computer jocks who have questioned the creepy new computerized voting machines purveyed by Bush partisans like Diebold's Walden O'Dell.

But Ely doesn't just speak in code. His extension has generated lots of comment from Firefox users, and he's not afraid of the heat, explaining:

There is a difference between arguing one's point of view and flat-out saying, "You're wrong, I'm right, period." While it's arguably true that referring to George W. Bush as "an idiot" falls within this category, I'd have to say that lampooning our political figures is very much a time-honored tradition in this country. Remember poor Gerald Ford? The public really believed that the man couldn't take two steps without tripping over his feet. Not to mention some of the jokes that went around about John Kerry - I think calling him "Lurch" was pretty funny, personally …

Ely tries to tell die-hard Republicans to get a funny bone and continues:

Bill Clinton tries to lie his way out of a blow job, fails, and you treat him as though he were the Second Coming of Lucifer or some shit. Meanwhile, Bush lies (deliberately, duh) about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, incidentally killing about 2,000 US soldiers so far, at least 27,000 Iraqi civilians, more than half of whom were women and children, and destroying any ounce of credibility, respect, and most importantly, support that we had from our neighbors. So he's a hero? He's got backbone? Doubtful. But let history judge his hubris, and may God forgive him in ways that I cannot.

As I write this, Ely's "idiocy level" extension translates the DHS's fearmongering "elevated" level of "threat" to "scared." Me, I just know that God must have a sense of humor or she wouldn't have scheduled Bush to speak tonight.

Posted by wharkavy at 9:12 AM

January 30, 2006

Morning Report 1/30/06
Leaving Us Speechless

Global warning: Toxic emissions to be dangerously high on Tuesday night

Looking out for our welfare, for a change, George W. Bush gave the planet fair warning late last week during his sneak peek press conference about the upcoming State of the Union address:

"For those of you watching, we seem to have a mechanical flaw."

Unfortunately, that won't stop him from delivering the constitutionally mandated address Tuesday night.

Considering the state of siege he and his handlers find themselves in, the speech is likely to be much tamer than last year's. Doyle McManus gives an adequate analysis in this morning's Los Angeles Times, if you're interested. But I'd rather focus on the sneak preview the doofus POTUS gave us on January 26. Like this gem:

I will tell you this, that after five years of war, there is a need to make sure that our troops are balanced properly, that threats are met with capability. And that's why we're transforming our military.

Yeah, as if he were stuffing geese into boxes to make paté, Bush is transforming our troops, one coffin at a time. Since he proclaimed "mission accomplished" on May 1, 2003, 2,096 soldiers have been killed in the Iraq debacle. That's as of 10 a.m. EST on January 27, according to the Pentagon's latest published casualty report.

For some reason, the Defense Department took time out last week from counting corpses to present its Medal for Distinguished Public Service to retired Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, saying that "as a result of his leadership, the United States remained prosperous and free." Those of you in the bottom 95 percent of Americans might want to take another slice of cake while you still can.

Bush himself gave the most ominous warning and, simultaneously, the best advice during his preview of tomorrow night's speech when he said:

We're going to continue to lead the cause of freedom in the world. The only way to defeat a dark ideology is through the hopeful vision of human liberty.

Is anybody other than government spies listening?

You'd better be when Bush starts talking about his plans to keep picking your pocket. As he warned last week:

Of course, we'll talk about fiscal policy in my State of the Union, talking about the Congress to be wise about how we spend the people's money and to make the tax cuts permanent.

The thought of those tax cuts for the wealthy becoming permanent just made the dark ideology seem even darker.

But not as immediately threatening as what's going on in the Middle East, where Hamas scored a stunning victory that is sure to mark a major change — one way or another — in what happens during the Israeli-Palestinian death dance.

One of the best sources to help you sort out the newly complicated Middle East is P.R. Kumaraswamy's sober analysis this morning in the excellent Power and Interest News Report. A professor who teaches Israeli politics in New Delhi, Kumaraswamy focuses on the realpolitik aspects the Palestinian election. Here's a passage:

For one, the international community, including Israel, will have to come to terms with the election results. It is not possible for the outside world to ignore the choice of the Palestinian people.

At the same time, the will of the public also comes with a price. Palestinians who opted for Hamas cannot escape from the consequences of such a choice. Just as the international community will have to recognize the voice of the Palestinians, the latter will have to address the concerns of the wider world.

It is here that the Hamas victory might end up creating more problems for the Palestinians than for what they had bargained. If the outside world, especially Israel and its Western allies, were to accept Hamas as a negotiating partner, then the militant group will have to exhibit political maturity. It will have to move from being a militant group to a more political actor.

For more than a decade, Hamas built its reputation as a hardened opponent of Israel and the peace process. Its suicide attacks largely contributed to its popularity and success. It considers historic Palestine as Islamic property and hence is vehemently opposed to the existence of Israel. Many of the provisions of its charter call for the destruction of Israel. It will not be easy for Hamas to abandon its bloody past and present itself as Israel's negotiating partner. Sudden shifts would be domestically controversial and externally hollow.

Without clear signs of transformation, even the international community will not be able to convince Israel to negotiate with Hamas.

Unfortunately, Bush is completely in thrall to Israeli hard-liners. But not all Israelis — or all Jews — are hard-liners, despite the suppression in the U.S. press of news about Israel's vibrant peace movement. Check out this informative Q&A about Hamas from Jewish Voice for Peace. Here's an excerpt:

Q: So is Hamas a terrorist group?

A: Yes. But many terrorist groups have become governments or taken leadership positions in governments in the past. That includes groups like the Irgun Z'vai Leumi and the Lochamei Herut Israel (LEHI or Stern Group), terrorist groups from the pre-state Yishuv, or Jewish settlement in Palestine. From the ranks of those groups came two Israeli Prime Ministers, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. Fatah, the party that had been in control of the Palestinian Authority, also had a long history of attacks against Israeli and other civilian and military targets. It is precisely the fact that Hamas has such a great involvement in the violence of the second Palestinian intifada that gives them much more ability than Fatah had to control that violence, if they wish to do so.

As many of us have tried to point out for years, one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter, despite what you hear from the Bush regime's propaganda machine.

If Bush's handlers dare to have him bring up Hamas during his speech tomorrow night, the words will probably resemble these from his preview last week:

… I don't see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country as part of your platform. And I know you can't be a partner in peace if you have a — if your party has got an armed wing. The elections just took place. We will watch very carefully about the formation of the government. But I will continue to remind people about what I just said, that if your platform is the destruction of Israel, it means you're not a partner in peace. And we're interested in peace.

Yeah? Prove it. Meanwhile, he and his handlers have a bigger problem: the mid-term elections in the U.S. later this year. While Saddam's trial collapses in chaos, the Enron trial begins this week, Dick Cheney's aide Scooter Libby is facing charges, and Wampumgate — the biggest D.C. scandal in generations — has yet to fully unfold. The government's spying on us, when we should be spying on our government. What will Bush say about all this? This is what he said during his January 26 preview:

If there is corruption, I'm not surprised that people say, let's get rid of corruption. If government hadn't been responsive, I'm not the least bit surprised that people said, I want government to be responsive.

The best response would be to handcuff and jail a bevy of congressmen and White House aides. But the Democrats aren't likely to cooperate.

Hold those dark thoughts until tomorrow night.

Posted by wharkavy at 7:14 AM

January 29, 2006

Morning Report 1/29/06
Let Them Eat Cake

Cheney calls economy 'superb,' while new report shows income-inequality gaps widen at frightening pace

Ignoring reality, Vise President Dick Cheney popped up on right-wing radio the other day to confirm his host Hugh Hewitt's observation that we're experiencing "an astonishing run of economic good news."

The two agreed that the press has done a miserable job of spreading this information. As Cheney said:

The bottom line is that a lot of people end up convinced that the economy is not doing very well, when, in fact, it's been performing superbly.

As is so often the case, particularly when he talks about your family's financial future, Cheney lies. A new report by the mainstream Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute paints a scary picture of the growing gap between rich and poor in America. But not just between the rich and poor. The gap is widening between the richest 5 percent and the 300 million rest of us.

I've written about this subject before, but the CBPP outdid itself this time, breaking down the breakdown state by state. So I'm unhappy to tell you that after the first three years of George W. Bush's first term, the income gap in New York state (my residence) between the richest 20 percent of families and the poorest 20 percent was tops in the nation — if you don't count the poor people in the District of Columbia, who are even worse off.

I'm not talking about dollar figures here. Of course, in those terms, the rich always get richer. I'm talking about percentages, and if you're not in the top 5 percent, you're a sucker for supporting the Bush regime's disastrous policies of tax cuts for the wealthy and cutbacks of social programs.

Despite the current regime's disastrous tax cuts for the rich, you can't pin this solely on George W. Bush or the de facto president, Dick Cheney. But the start of the "Reagan revolution" in the early '80s was a watershed. Newt Gingrich's ascendancy hurt, considering that it helped usher in a whole generation of greedy schnooks like Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff. The stock market boom during the Clinton years merely masked the fact that, since the late '70s, the decades-long progress of bringing people into the middle class went into reverse.

This is the flip side of those record bonuses on Wall Street. In fact, the most dangerous trend right now is not the growing gap between the richest and poorest but between the richest and everyone else. The CBPP report, "Pulling Apart," by Jared Bernstein, Elizabeth McNichol, and Karen Lyons, notes:

The incomes of the country’s richest families have climbed substantially over the past two decades, while middle- and lower-income families have seen only modest increases. This trend is in marked contrast to the broadly shared increases in prosperity between World War II and the 1970s.

In addition, while income inequality declined following the bursting of the stock and high-tech bubbles in 2000 — both of which were quite costly to the highest-income families — early national-level data suggest that inequality began growing again in 2003. Incomes at the top have rebounded strongly from the stock market correction, while the negative effects of the recent recession on low- and moderate-income families have lasted longer than usual. Thus, it appears that the two-decade-long trend of worsening income inequality has resumed.

I'll spare you the figures for now, but the report is well worth reading.

Posted by wharkavy at 11:42 AM

January 28, 2006

Morning Report 1/28/06
'Last Chance' for Peacemakers

Religious nuts in Iraq release video of Kember, Fox, Sooden, and Loney

Word this morning, via video shown by Al Jazeera's TV station, that at least the four members of the Christian Peacemakers Team kidnapped in Baghdad two months ago are still alive. But the nuts holding them are issuing an ominous threat, as the Daily Mail reports:

Kidnappers holding British hostage Norman Kember have given US and Iraqi authorities a "last chance" to secure the 74-year-old's release.

The Al-Jazeera television station broadcast a tape, dated January 21, of the veteran peace campaigner and three other Christian hostages held with him.

The Swords of Righteousness Brigade, which has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, issued a statement saying it was the "last chance" for authorities to release all Iraqi prisoners or the four would be killed.

It's a ridiculous demand, but then, it was a ridiculous invasion of Iraq in the first place. And Kember and the others — Tom Fox, Jim Loney, and Harmeet Singh Sooden — are outspoken critics of the war while they have heroically offered and given practical aid to its victims in both Iraq and occupied Palestinian territory. (Read their bios and my December 11 piece on Tom Fox.)

While Hamas and Israel play hardball — denying each other's right to exist — you don't see the Bush regime lift a finger to help the four Christians. Maybe there's some closed-door diplomacy going on, but don't bet that the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal has anybody working on it. The CPT Four are no doubt on the White House enemies list for having strongly criticized the war. You won't see U.S. officials dipping into their slush fund to buy freedom for the CPT Four.

In fact, they criticize all wars and succor all victims. In one of Jim Loney's last letters back to his friends (he's from Toronto), he profiled an Iraqi named Bahr Kadhin Al Saady, who was a draft dodger during Saddam Hussein's brutal rule (he refused to kill Kurds) and got imprisoned and had part of his ear cut off as a "branding." Released in 1996, he was an outcast, stripped of his citizenship.

Even after Saddam's fall, Bahr and thousands of other war resisters have remained disenfranchised — while the exiles the Bush regime and preposterous pasha Jerry Bremer welcomed back have gotten fat. As Loney wrote:

When I met Bahr in January 2004, he was living in a looted government building. As president of the Committee of People Who Refused Wars, he spent his days organizing for the repeal of Resolution 115, seeking compensation and arranging auricular reconstructions for his fellow war resisters. Internal conflicts have since pulled the Committee apart. Bahr is still homeless, jobless and penniless, his suffering unknown and unacknowledged. Sometimes he struggles with whether or not to continue living.

And Loney added:

I thank God for you, Bahr. You have set your face like flint against the war machine. By your wounds you are healing the world; the punishment you accept brings us peace. You are the suffering servant, all that is holding the world together.

Posted by wharkavy at 8:25 AM

January 27, 2006

Morning Report 1/27/06
Study Reveals Lack of Funds

All-purpose headline a perfect fit for mostly ignored U.S. slush-fund scandal in Iraq. (This subhead also works, but it's too long.)

The road to peace in the Middle East runs through Jerusalem, not Baghdad, as Marine General Tony Zinni and numerous other non-neocon experts have long contended.

So it's quite possibly good news in the long run, no matter what Israel says or what the headline writers at the Times (U.K.) pen — "Islamic Bombers Triumph at Ballot" — that Hamas dominated the Palestinian elections and now will have to be dealt with by Israel in political negotiations, in addition to the usual lobbing of grenades and mortar shells by both sides. In turn, Hamas will now have to deal with Israel across a table, instead of just sending suicide bombers into Tel Aviv.

The fact is that both Hamas and Israel were founded by bomb-throwing terrorists. Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, remember, was a terrorist back in the day. And long before Jack Abramoff bilked Indians out of their casino money and sent it to Israel to finance a sniper school, American Jews smuggled dynamite and weapons to Israel to help terrorists blow up Brits and Arabs, as Leonard Slater's loving 1970 portrayal The Pledge noted. (Check out "Pipeline to Palestine," my 1997 story in Denver's Westword.)

The dicey problem of what to do about Jerusalem — at least that's now going to be on the agenda. But what about Baghdad? Well, that road is paved with gold — missing gold.

A major report on the Bush regime's oil-for-slush scandal has been released by independent-minded Bush regime appointee Stuart Bowen, and it has garnered relatively little attention.

Oh, the overseas press is interested in Bowen's explosive latest installment. Tim Reid, the Times (U.K.) Washington correspondent, wrote January 26, under the headline "How US Lost Billions in Wild West Gamble to Rebuild Iraq":

An audit of US reconstruction spending in Iraq has uncovered spectacular misuse of tens of millions of dollars in cash, including bundles of money stashed in filing cabinets, a US soldier who gambled away thousands and stacks of newly minted notes distributed without receipts.

The audit, released yesterday by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, describes a country in the months after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein awash with dollars, and a Wild West atmosphere where even multimillion-dollar contracts were paid for in cash.

The findings come after a report last year by the inspector general which stated that nearly $9 billion (£5 billion) of Iraq’s oil revenue disbursed by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which governed Iraq until mid-2004, cannot be accounted for.

Yes, under the unwatchful eye of preposterous pasha Jerry Bremer, who's traveling around the U.S. at this very minute in a publicity tour promoting his book My Year in Iraq — which makes no mention at all of this chicanery.

Knight Ridder reporter Andrew Maykuth did a nice job summing up Bremer's appearance earlier this week at the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia, site of an earlier revisionist history lesson by former Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim.

Maykuth covered the bases in his piece, noting:

A growing number of voices are calling Bremer's memoir into question. He is facing more difficult questions on the talk-show circuit from critics who say his recollections of events in Iraq do not correspond with statements he made at the time.

Much of the controversy surrounds Bremer's contention that he had lobbied for an increase in troop levels in Iraq to counter the deteriorating security situation. This seemed to place Bremer in opposition to the Bush administration. Now Bremer is spending much time qualifying his criticisms and making sure his loyalty is unquestioned.

You can't believe anything Bremer says. Beyond that, the guy had blinders on while he was ruling Iraq. To illustrate that, Maykuth didn't just cover Bremer's Philly speech but also provided admirable perspective:

The publication of the book has provided an opportunity for Bremer's critics to come forward, renewing debates about his decisions to decommission Iraq's military and to exclude former officials from Saddam Hussein's government from the occupation forces, depriving Iraq of many of its experienced officials. Bremer said he stood by those decisions.

Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University who wrote a book called Squandered Victory about his time as a coalition adviser, said in a telephone interview Monday that Bremer "doesn't recognize that the biggest mistake was to have an occupation in the first place. … "

"If you wanted to stabilize Iraq," Diamond said, "putting an American brand on the thing pretty much guaranteed there was going to be a violent resistance. But he fails to reflect on the grand mistake."

Not all the U.S. press is ignoring the oil-for-slush scandal that happened on Bremer's watch. The Miami Herald, also a Knight Ridder paper, editorializes this morning:

So far, at least four Americans have been arrested in a related investigation involving Iraq reconstruction projects in Hillah, and more arrests are expected. What's needed, however, is better oversight and accounting by a Congress that has been loath to look into irregularities in Iraq, whether it involves policy or the inexcusable mishandling of public funds.

More on Bremer and this scandal later. In the meantime, don't bother with his book. Read Bowen's latest reports, especially this one.

Posted by wharkavy at 10:10 AM

January 26, 2006

Morning Report 1/26/06
Top Gambling Lobbyist's Daughter Probes Corruption at World Bank

Leaving nothing to chance, Wolfie hires GOP operative Fahrenkopf's progeny to keep an eye on staff

What are the odds? Paul Wolfowitz has tapped America's top gambling lobbyist's daughter — she was once a spear carrier for Wampumgate casino scandal figure Grover Norquist — to help 'probe' corruption at the World Bank.

Allison Brigati is now the bank's "senior counselor for U.S. Affairs," serving right under Suzanne Rich Folsom, one of Wolfie's top advisers — and herself the wife of former International Republican Institute chairman George Folsom.

You wouldn't know from the World Bank's own propaganda arm that Brigati is the daughter of Frank Fahrenkopf, the former GOP national chairman who is now president and CEO of the American Gaming Association and co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which undemocratically squeezes rules to protect the two major parties from third-party challenges. The World Bank presents her as simply "Allison Brigati." That's not the way she presents herself to the rest of the world. So much for transparency for this supposed corruption-fighter.

And thus you wouldn't realize that her sister, Leslie A. Fahrenkopf, is a gag writer at the White House as Associate Counsel to the President, having honed her skills under Spygate apologist Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers.

But insiders at the World Bank, outraged at the GOP cabal Wolfie is setting up at the planet's most powerful development bank, alerted me to the fact that Allison Brigati is Fahrenkopf's daughter and that she was Folsom's first political appointee upon taking over the bank's Institutional Integrity department.

Sources, whose confidentiality I will protect to the death (unless George W. Bush blows us up first and I have time before the fallout hits us for one more item in which to thank my sources), tell me that Folsom, who is right next to Wolfie on the bank's new organizational chart, has long been close to Fahrenkopf and his family.

Brigati's just another brick in the wall. As I've previously noted, Wolfie's other top people include Robin Cleveland, who was a figure in a major Boeing scandal when she worked at the White House's Office of Management and Budget, and Kevin Kellems, former flack to Vise President Dick Cheney.

And now the watchdog Bank Information Center reports that Wolfie as brought on board his buddy Karl Jackson (a former NSA official in Bush the Elder's regime) as an adviser.

Enough about those dumbkopfs and back to Fahrenkopf: In the world at large, of course, Brigati calls herself Allison Fahrenkopf Brigati, as she announces her identity on the website of the hoity-toity National Cathedral School when planning a parents' dinner.

But this is scandalous in more than name only. She was calling herself Allison Fahrenkopf Brigati back in 1995, when, as the Republican National Committee associate counsel, she threatened a lawsuit against New York artists Marshall Reese and Nora Ligorano if they continued to put the trademarked — yes, trademarked — logo of the GOP's "Contract With America" (plus Newt Gingrich's face) on satirical underwear. They were exercising their right of free speech, but that didn't stop Fahrenkopf's daughter.

She's the perfect person to work directly under Suzanne Rich Folsom, who has been appointed by him to "fight fraud and corruption" in the bank's operations abroad and handle "allegations of staff misconduct."

Never mind that Folsom is focused mostly on prying into staffers' e-mails to see who's squealing to outsiders. And as I've noted, the staff are extremely restive as Wolfie keeps adding partisans to the payroll.

But keep in mind that, as the Financial Times recently noted, Folsom was hired by the bank by Wolfie's predecessor, Jim Wolfensohn, "with the task of improving the bank's relations with Congressional Republicans."

No doubt that was a shrewd move. In the mid-1990s, the start of the salad days of the congressional GOP, Grover Norquist was an "intellectual architect" of the Gingrich "revolution" in the House and a "muse" for Gingrich himself, who was about to become House Speaker. The Washington Post recently dredged up that history on Norquist because he's now, as I've noted, a major figure in the Wampumgate scandal, captured in e-mails greedily asking for more loot from crook Jack Abramoff, his long-time pal.

Meanwhile, Wolfowitz, chief architect of the Iraq debacle, is promising to fight corruption. To that end, the bank conducted a workshop earlier this month titled "Where Lies Corruption?: Tracking the Elusive Beast." Check out the agenda of that January 12-13 session. Leading the discussion of "Corruption Prone Processes in the Public Sector" was Allison Fahrenkopf Brigati. Good choice.

But who says corruption is an "elusive beast"? It's the elephant in our living room, as I've pointed out before.

And that elephant has been stinking up the place for a long time. Let's go back to the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas. Oh, it was a glorious time. Ronald Reagan was about to get renominated for a cinch second term. (For more history on those early days of the GOP's Radical Right, see my May 2000 story "Left Behind.")

Young Republicans were streaming onto Capitol Hill and into newly formed think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation, which was set up mostly on beer money from the Coors family. Typical that the GOP's self-righteous wing has relied so heavily on money from alcohol and casinos.

On August 20, 1984, a Monday, the convention formally began, called to order at 10 a.m. by Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf. A few speeches followed, including one by Fahrenkopf himself. The very next speaker was a representative of the new generation of Republicans, the chairman of the College Republican National Committee: Jack Abramoff.

Posted by wharkavy at 11:04 AM

January 25, 2006

Morning Report 1/25/06
Gag Orders

On Wampumgate, Katrinagate, Spygate — OK, OK, we're gagging already

As if they were pressing a Band-Aid onto a bloody stump, George W. Bush's handlers are trying to stanch the flow of information about scandals past, present, and future. It's enough to make us gag.

In fact, it even makes Joe Lieberman gag. The absurd war on Iraq doesn't make him lose control, but the hawkish conservative Democrat finally reached his limit with the revelations about a Katrinagate coverup. As the AP's Lara Jakes Jordan reports this morning:

The White House is hampering a Senate inquiry into the government's response to Hurricane Katrina by barring administration officials from answering questions and by not handing over documents, senators leading the probe said yesterday.

In some cases, staff members at the White House and other federal agencies have declined to be interviewed by congressional investigators, said the top Republican, Susan M. Collins of Maine, and the ranking Democrat, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut. …

"No one believes that the government responded adequately," Lieberman said. "And we can't put that story together if people feel they're under a gag order from the White House."

We need a full probe of Katrinagate if only to figure out which parts of that scandal of malign neglect stemmed from incompetence by Bush and toxic clown Mike Brown and which from craven politicking related to the war on Iraq and other schemes.

And what about the White House's contacts with criminal Jack Abramoff (seen above with fellow scumbag Mike Scanlon)? Bush's aides say photos and other info are irrelevant. Uh-huh. And how are we supposed to matriculate at the Wampumgate school for scandal?

Meanwhile, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defends the Bush regime's right to spy on us.

At least people are starting to visibly protest this outrageous behavior. Gonzales was met with a silent, but effective, protest at his Georgetown Law School speech, as the Washington Post's Dan Eggen reports:

Gonzales's appearance, which was part of a three-day White House campaign to defend the NSA program, was punctuated by a silent protest from more than a dozen students who turned their backs to Gonzales, who continued to speak without acknowledging them and did not take questions afterward.

Five of the students wore black pillowcases over their heads — an apparent reference to the mistreatment of U.S. detainees overseas — and held a banner roughly paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

And the secrets and secret deals continue to tumble out. Another Post story, this one by Jonathan Weisman, reveals that House and Senate negotiators cut a deal behind closed doors to save the health-insurance industry $22 billion.

Pssst. Pass it on.

Posted by wharkavy at 8:08 AM

January 24, 2006

Morning Report 1/24/06
Wolfie at the Door

Preaching against corruption at World Bank, he practices it — and staff rebels

Huffing and puffing, Paul Wolfowitz continues to try to blow down the door to the World Bank. But this is no fairy tale because, at the same time, Wolfie is promoting his three little pigs.

One of Wolfie's key aides is Robin Cleveland, who had a key role in the smarmy — and little-noticed — Boeing tanker scandal that reached high into the Pentagon and the White House. But with Cleveland as now one of his top advisers, WB president Wolfowitz is claiming that he's fighting corruption.

I'd call that chutzpah. I wonder what his Arab girlfriend, a British national named Shaha Ali Riza, would call it.

Insiders tell me that Riza got a $50,000 raise, to an annual salary of $170,000, before (as I reported earlier) Wolfie arranged to ship her to the State Department to work with Dick Cheney's daughter Elizabeth Cheney, where the two women are operating what amounts to a slush fund at State's Middle East bureau.

So far, Wolfowitz's attack on the planet's most powerful development bank is going much better than the ill-fated war on Iraq, of which he was chief architect.

But not if the bank's increasingly rebellious staff can help it.

The latest counterattack against Wolfie came yesterday in the form of a memo from Alison Cave, chair of the Staff Association, the formal, in-house voice of the bank's nearly 10,000 employees, that talked of an "increasing disconnect" between Wolfie's executive office and "staff at large."

The staff, already upset about Wolfie's previous trust-busting at the bank, are steaming about Wolfie's installation of Dick Cheney's former flack, Kevin Kellems, as not only a "senior advisor" to Wolfowitz but also "director of external strategy." And they're dismayed by the naming of another confidant with high-level GOP ties, Suzanne Rich Folsom, as the bank's chief corruption fighter. (Her husband is former president of the International Republican Institute.)

Cave's memo to the staff read in part:

The Staff Association has heard from staff across the institution —representing all grade levels — expressing concerns over recent staff announcements.

The overwhelming sentiment expressed has been one of dismay at the perceived lack of consultations by the Office of the President.

Staff were particularly offended by senior management’s dismissive depiction of staff concerns in the press, ascribing them to a “handful of disgruntled staff," and to "an effort to undermine efforts to go after corruption on bank projects."

Staff of this institution are highly responsible and professional; we uphold Bank guidelines against corruption on a daily basis. These comments only underscore the increasing disconnect between EXC and staff at large.

That's the polite language typically used inside the bank. But as one insider tells me, "The bank staff see themselves as employees of an international organization, not a GOP think tank or a mom-and-pop shop subject to the whims of its politically appointed — and temporary — boss."

The Washington Post's Paul Blustein reports this morning on the staff rebellion, noting:

With a worldwide staff of nearly 10,000, the World Bank lends about $20 billion annually to developing nations for projects aimed at reducing poverty. To the relief of the staff and most of the executive board representing the bank's 184 member countries, Wolfowitz has not significantly changed the policies of his predecessor, James D. Wolfensohn. But disquiet has mounted in recent weeks over a small group of high-level American staffers with GOP connections — Folsom and Kellems prominent among them — with whom Wolfowitz consults on nearly all major decisions.

The most powerful is Robin Cleveland, who worked with Wolfowitz in her capacity as the top national security specialist at the Office of Management and Budget and now serves as his chief adviser. Folsom is an attorney specializing in ethics issues who came to the bank in 2003, prior to Wolfowitz's arrival; she worked for various Republican causes and for Bush's parents during the 1980s.

But Blustein neglects to mention Cleveland's entanglement in the Boeing/Pentagon tanker scandal that cost Air Force Secretary Jim Roche his job. E-mails revealed that Cleveland, while an official at the White House's OMB, was angling to get a relative a job at Northrop Grumman, where Roche had been a top executive before George W. Bush's handlers hired him at the Pentagon.

Here's how Amy Klamper described it in a September 2004 CongressDaily story:

In a May 9, 2003, e-mail to Roche, Cleveland requested the secretary's endorsement of her brother, Peter, in obtaining a position with Northrop Grumman. Cleveland supplied her brother's relevant employment information and cited his qualifications for the job.

After forwarding the information to Northrop Grumman and offering his endorsement, Roche wrote to Cleveland: "Be well. Smile. Give me tankers now." In a subsequent sentence, he qualified the statement as a joke.

It is unclear whether Cleveland took Roche's comments seriously, but two days later, in a May 11, 2003 e-mail, Cleveland's brother thanked her for helping him secure an interview with Northrop Grumman. She replied that she hoped it would work out "before the tanker leasing issue gets fouled up."

Lt. Col. Michael Caldwell, a spokesman for Roche, described the secretary's e-mail in a Sept. 23 statement as "a light-hearted exchange between two longtime friends and colleagues," and asserted that no expectations were attached to it.

Uh-huh. Check this out, as Klamper's story continued:

Before May 2003, OMB appeared to be in staunch opposition to the Air Force's tanker proposal. Although differences between the Air Force and OMB over the details of the tanker lease continued, a shift in OMB's position on the tanker lease became apparent after Cleveland and Roche exchanged e-mails. According to a document reviewed by CongressDaily, Roche, Cleveland and Pete Aldridge — then the Pentagon's acquisition chief — met with two top Boeing executives May 15, 2003.

A second meeting between Cleveland and Boeing personnel was referenced in a May 16 e-mail among Boeing staff in which Cleveland's name appeared. In the e-mail, Boeing executive Andrew Ellis said Cleveland had detailed OMB's concerns with the lease, and had suggested ways to address the concerns of White House Chief of Staff [Andy] Card. In a subsequent May 22 e-mail from Boeing executive Jim Albaugh to Boeing executive Randall Simons, Albaugh states "OMB and Robin are on board."

Yes, Andy Card, one of Bush's key handlers. The Boeing scandal never got the play it deserved. But who can keep track of all the chicanery?

Meanwhile, Wolfie appears to have assembled a fine corruption-fighting team at the World Bank.

Posted by wharkavy at 9:04 AM

January 23, 2006

Morning Report 1/23/06
Going Nuclear

Short fuses in Iran and Israel, plus presidential bomb-throwers. From paranoia to reality.

I can't tell you the number of times I've picked up the phone on the rewrite desk of newspapers and had some caller tell me:

I have every reason to believe that the federal government listens to my phone calls to family members and friends about purely personal matters.

That's what Richard Hersh said the other day. But he wasn't talking to me. Unfortunately, he was not some poor addled person spewing his paranoid delusions to a newspaper. The 59-year-old peace activist was on Capitol Hill, saying this in all seriousness to the Democrats of the House Judiciary Committee during their rump hearing Friday on Spygate.

And it was no delusion. It's the presidency — Vise President Dick Cheney and Secretary of War Don Rumsfeld, channeling through their front man George W. Bush — that is paranoid and delusional.

What a scary thought as we edge closer and closer to some sort of nuclear war — or at least a war ostensibly about nuclear weapons. An even more delusional leader, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by denying that the Holocaust ever happened and calling for the immediate destruction of Israel, is helping edge us closer to another, even bigger, holocaust, as Bloomberg News and others report this morning.

Ahmadinejad is merely channeling the thoughts of Iran's clerics, a dangerous situation considering that another group of religious fanatics, the hard-line Israeli government, won't take such threats lying down.

As Martin Walker of UPI reported January 21:

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz warned the Iranian people Saturday that they faced "destruction" unless they managed to restrain their new President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"Look at the fate of others who sought the destruction of the Jewish people. They only brought havoc and destruction to the own people," Mofaz said.

"I know that a large part of the people of Iran do not support his policies but his despicable acts could bring destruction to all of you. You understand what must be done to prevent this," Mofaz added, directly addressing the Iranian people.

We'll do just about anything to ensure the safety of Israel — look at our unwarranted invasion of Iraq. And for a draft dodger, Bush is bellicose to the extreme. Lost in all the current bluster are the past bomb-throwing statements of our own Phineas T. Bluster — except that Bush is not nearly as lovable (or harmless) as that Howdy Doody character.

In its November 28, 2005, "The Futility of Secrecy," the New Statesman put Bush's B.S. in perspective:

He's done it several times before on a smaller scale, so it seems eminently conceivable that George W Bush should want to finish the job properly. In November 2001, a US missile destroyed al-Jazeera's Kabul offices; in April 2003, coalition forces attacked the station's bases in Baghdad and Basra. Now the Daily Mirror reports that the US president told Tony Blair of his plans to bomb al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha, capital of the emirate of Qatar. Downing Street, when asked to respond to the story, initially gave a non-committal response. Subsequently it warned editors that publication of the contents of documents relating to their discussion would be a breach of the Official Secrets Act.

Before the planet explodes, check out Tom Engelhardt's "Bush v. Reality: War, Trials, Leakers, Investigations, Packed Courts, and a Constitutional Crisis." That rundown of what Engelhardt, the auteur of tomdispatch.com, calls the "year of living dangerously" aptly sums up the explosive issues surrounding the doofus POTUS.

To keep track of that half-wit Bush, you have to have all of your wits — and plenty of wit. So Slate editor Jacob Weisberg, who collects Bushisms, is must reading when he goes beyond Bush's bone mots to provide a scouting report from this side of the Atlantic on the U.S. president's own bomb-throwing arm. In a piece last December 7, "Beyond Spin: The Propaganda Presidency of George W. Bush," Weisberg noted:

According to a recent report in the British press, Bush last year proposed bombing Al Jazeera's headquarters to Tony Blair. This may or may not have been a joke, but given our military's record of accidental assaults on journalists in Iraq, it's not impossible to imagine that the president thinks smart-bombing would be a good way to respond to hostile coverage.

Is there anything to be done about any of these bomb-throwers? Sure, but it's not being done in this country. As Noam Chomsky recently said:

George Bush would be in severe political trouble if there were an opposition political party in the country. Just about every day, they're shooting themselves in the foot. The striking fact about contemporary American politics is that the Democrats are making almost no gain from this.

So far, there are only losers, and all of us are among them.

Posted by wharkavy at 8:21 AM

January 22, 2006

Morning Report 1/22/06
Paying Attention

Time to start doing some spying of our own

As details unfold about the Bush regime's spy plot against its citizens, one thing is becoming clear: The government and its operatives are listening much more closely to us than we are to them.

The NSA, the most powerful domestic intelligence agency in the world, is trained on our behavior — on our non-criminal, constitutionally protected behavior.

We need to start spying on our government — no, not the kind of spying that Larry Franklin just got sent to prison for.

The closest thing we've had to a congressional hearing on the Bush regime's illegal spying on Americans is the January 20 rump session by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee: "Constitution in Crisis: Domestic Surveillance and Executive Power."

Spend a couple of hours listening to the hearing, or read the transcripts, and you'll learn that our government considers a Quaker meeting a "threat."

One of the people who testified before John Conyers and the other Democrats — for all the good it did — was D.C. law prof Jonathan Turley, now a celebrity on the talk-show circuit but someone I remember from my days in Denver as a key figure in unmasking government chicanery involving the nation's biggest storehouse of plutonium, the Rocky Flats plant.

In the current (even more explosive) crisis, Turley has pinned the tail on the elephant, accusing George W. Bush of criminal behavior. Turley is correct; check it out for yourself. But he went beyond that to put Bush's actions in context with two former lying presidents:

In some ways, it was inevitable that we would find ourselves at this historic confrontation. Bush has long viewed the law as some malleable means to achieve particular ends, rather than the ends itself. In this sense, there is an eerie similarity between the views of Bush and two of his predecessors: Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

Beyond the fact that these two presidents share the ignominy of being accused of high crimes and misdemeanors, they shared a deep inherent flaw as individuals: They were relativists who treated morals or the law as fluid concepts that could be bent. A relativist believes that there are no absolute truths, but rather that morals or laws differ according to the context and people involved.

If that sounds like a sermon, well, this is Sunday. But Turley's point is something that even Godless atheists need to hear:

George Bush is a study in relativism. He has long claimed unchecked authority after he declared a “war on terror.” He became a maximum leader subject to few, if any, legal limitations. Repeatedly, the White House has engaged in a type of reverse engineering. Rather than explain the scope of lawful conduct and develop operations within those lines, the president routinely creates operations and then asks lawyers to conform the law to them.

In his recent speech defending his eavesdropping policy, Bush explained that “right after September 11, I knew we were fighting a different kind of war,” and so he solicited different ways to gather information. Once he decided on the operation, his legal staff proceeded in justifying the operation as a legal matter. The problem is that the operation called for officials to commit a clear crime under federal law: intercepting telephone calls in the USA without a court order.

Then Turley connects Bush to Nixon to Clinton:

Bush's claim of inherent authority to circumvent federal laws is virtually identical to the argument made by Nixon in his model of the “Imperial Presidency.” Over time, Bush has combined a relativistic view of the law with an imperial model of the presidency. Also as Nixon did, Bush surrounded himself with lawyers — such as former attorney general John Ashcroft and current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — who told him what he wanted to hear: that once he declared a “war” on terror, he vested himself with maximum powers and was free to use virtually any means to achieve his chosen ends.

Ironically, though Republicans will shudder at the comparison, Bush shares this flaw with Clinton, who was a moral relativist. Despite his convenient moments of religiosity, Clinton defined morals solely by their consequences. He did not appear to hesitate to lie under oath or to the American people when confronted with his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Only after a certain blue dress proved that he lied did Clinton embrace contrition and seek forgiveness.

Bush is no moral relativist. He is a legal relativist. While he views morals in absolute terms, he sees the law as fluid and fungible. Just as any moral excuse will satisfy a moral relativist, any legal argument satisfies a legal relativist.

If you missed the C-SPAN broadcast of Turley, James Bamford, former Reagan era Justice official Bruce Fein, and other witnesses, I'm sure you're not alone, because, as I said, Americans aren't listening.

That's not meant to be wordplay. It's a warning of a full-blown assault on the Constitution.

The Bush regime's spying on Americans puts Nixon's "enemies list" to shame.

So we now are learning just how closely the government is listening. Meanwhile, are we hearing what's going on in the halls of government?

You know you have a constitutional crisis when a number of major scandals start colliding with one another and reveal interconnections.

In this case, we know that the government has been listening to innocent dissenters, to people protesting the war in Iraq. That connects the spy scandal to a host of other dangerous behavior by our government. In just a brief attempt to cut through the maze, follow the red dots:

• The most powerful member of the U.S. House, Tom DeLay, is under investigation for ramming through a key gerrymandering of Texas congressional districts that cemented GOP control of Congress. DeLay is also facing monumental influence-peddling and campaign-finance charges, some of them related to Wampumgate.

• The most powerful D.C. lobbyist, Jack Abramoff — the locus of the Wampumgate scandal — has already pled guilty to being the most prominent D.C. gangster in generations.

• The most powerful operative of the Christian right's ascendancy to power late last century, Ralph Reed, is a key figure in the Wampumgate scandal.

• The most powerful White House aide in recent memory, Karl Rove, is not only an old pal of Abramoff's but is also entangled in the Plamegate scandal's coverup of our pre-war plot to unjustifiably invade Iraq.

• The most powerful aide to the most powerful vice president in U.S. history, Scooter Libby, has already been charged in the Plamegate scandal, and Rove could wind up indicted as well.

• The most powerful U.S. lobby for right-wing Israelis, AIPAC, is up to its pupik in a spy scandal. On Friday, Larry Franklin, who worked for putz Doug Feith in Don Rumsfeld's Pentagon, was sentenced to more than a dozen years in prison for spying on the U.S. government on behalf of right-wing Israelis and their U.S. sympathizers.

• Doug Feith helped maneuver lucrative war contracts to Dick Cheney's Halliburton.

Who says our government doesn't work well?

But is anybody besides our government listening?

Posted by wharkavy at 10:27 AM

January 20, 2006

Morning Report 1/20/06
Hearing From the Wrong People

No word from the missing Christian Peacemakers, but plenty from the un-Christian warmakers

The Epiphany passed without George W. Bush's having one, but that wasn't the fault of the Christian Peacemaker Team.

And the frustrating and frightening wait continues for further word from the creepy Swords of Righteousness (or Truth or Justice or whatever bullshit name the radical Islamist group calls itself), who proudly claimed in late November to have kidnapped four members — Tom Fox, Harmeet Singh Sooden, Norman Kember, and Jim Loney — of the CPT's heroic Iraq squad.

CPT leaders can't even get a word with Bush, despite a fast in front of the White House. Along with Cindy Sheehan, they've landed on the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal's enemies list. Considering the public pressure that the Mennonite-based CPT has tried to put on the Bush regime — and the fact that the Pentagon considers a Quaker meeting a "threat," that's no surprise.

I mean, for Christ's sake, now the state of Ohio — one of Bush's key battleground states that voted for him — has passed a law giving its police the authority to throw citizens in jail merely for refusing to identify themselves.

Meanwhile, the people you don't want to hear from are talking: Osama bin Laden, Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney — especially Cheney.

How many times do we have to answer Cheney's challenge to throw words back in his face? This is a continuing chore, but the vise president's speech yesterday in the friendly confines of the Manhattan Institute demand it.

Back in April 2004, the CPT wrote preposterous pasha Jerry Bremer to protest the behavior of the "coalition." As the British NGO Ekklesia reported back then, CPT was typically straightforward:

[CPT wrote:] "We are deeply troubled about the recent escalation in violence throughout Iraq. We hear of overwhelming civilian casualties in Falluja and elsewhere, amid reports of numerous Coalition deaths. Our Iraqi friends in neighbourhoods throughout Baghdad report civilian causalities, as well as great fear of kidnappings and spiralling violence."

"One friend witnessed helicopter fire spraying heavily populated streets in Sadr City. Another tells that his children are terrified by both Coalition and resistance munitions. Yet another, who welcomed the troops with joy last spring, now says, 'I hate Muqtada al-Sadr, but now I can also say that I hate the Americans.'

CPT report that Iraqi people on the streets have told them repeatedly that the Coalition's use of excessive force encourages greater resistance.

"Such use of force, rather than reducing terrorism, actually acts as fuel on the fire," says CPT.

Almost two years later, Cheney is doggedly trying to rewrite history, almost as it happens. Yesterday, the de facto president said:

Some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, we simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact: We were not in Iraq on September 11, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway.

How does one respond to that "fundamental fact"?

By pointing out that one of the hijackers was in Minnesota but that FBI officials in D.C. wouldn't let their agents in the field go after him?

Or by noting that the hijackers were Saudis, not Iraqis, and that they were the progeny of the mujahideen movement in Afghanistan, which was funded by the CIA and our "allies" in Saudi Arabia (plus bin Laden's family fortune) and nurtured by Pakistan's spy service?

Or by recalling that, despite countless warnings and pleas, cabal operative Steve Hadley (and now the national security adviser) didn't come up with a plan to focus on bin Laden until September 10, 2001?

Or by noting that the very next morning, while the hijackers were crashing planes into New York City and the Pentagon, Porter Goss (then the House Intelligence chair, now the CIA director) was having breakfast in D.C. with hijacker Mohammed Atta's bag man?

Cheney needs to get a grip, but so do we. Or did I simply squeeze Cheney's head too hard?

Posted by wharkavy at 8:29 AM

January 13, 2006

Morning Report 1/13/06
Your Bankruptcies, Their Bonuses Break Records

And now the tax cuts just for millionaires have taken effect. Congratulations, America!

What a way to celebrate Friday the 13th: While the press is fixated on Sam Alito (he's in) and Iran (it's out), new reports bring disastrous financial news to Americans — even if you didn't read all about it.

Adding up the damage: Wall Street bonuses for the securities industry are record-breaking, and so are personal bankruptcies for the rest of you.

Oh, and you just got the bill for tax cuts enacted in 2001 for the benefit of millionaires. The cuts took effect at the beginning of 2006. And by the way, "Gramps" Dick Cheney's Halliburton is still charging you millions of dollars for "maintaining" excess, unused Mercedes trucks that are just sitting idle in the Iraqi desert.

Jesus wept, no matter what Pat Robertson says. Dry your own eyes and keep reading:

• New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, nominally a Democrat, is deliriously happy about those bonuses, saying:

"The securities industry had a very good year during 2005. The industry paid record bonuses based on exceptional revenue growth and solid profits."

I wrote about this on December 7, in the context of the Pentagon's recruiting of poor people for its various misadventures around the globe. But now that the bonus news is official, it bears a closer look. As the New York comptroller noted January 11:

Wall Street bonuses will set a new record of $21.5 billion in 2005, surpassing the previous record of $19.5 billion set in 2000 during the peak of the last bull market, according to a forecast released today by State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi. This translates into average bonuses of $125,500 — also a new record. …

After a disappointing first half, profits for member firms of the New York Stock Exchange improved during the third quarter and industry reports suggest an even stronger fourth quarter. Although 2005 profits could be less than last year's level, many bonuses are tied to industry revenues, which have been exceptionally strong this year. Profits have been held down by rising interest rates, which increased the cost of doing business.

Revenues at Wall Street firms grew by 44.5 percent through the first three quarters of 2005 — reaching the highest level since the stock market peaked in 2000. Merger and acquisition activity account for most of the surge in revenues, which is expected to be up 28 percent over last year's level and to exceed $1 trillion for the first time since 2000. Given the surge in merger and acquisition activity, investment bankers received the largest increases and bonuses just like last year.

• One out of every 53 households in the United States filed for bankruptcy protection in 2005. That's the headline on this CNN story, released the same day as Hevesi's statement on the bonuses.

Bankruptcy filings soared 31.6 percent in 2005. Luckily for the ruling class, new laws will severely curb that number, because it now is harder for ordinary Americans to file Chapter 7 proceedings to get a "fresh start."

Corporate America, of course, continues to take advantage of generous bankruptcy laws. Halliburton, for example, took various thriving and profitable units through bankruptcy court to rid itself of asbestos-litigation burdens. And as I just pointed out last week, vultures like Sago coal mine owner Wilbur Ross love to take companies into bankruptcy to escape having to pay for workers' pensions and health-care benefits.

• Tax cuts specifically benefitting millionaires — and costing the Treasury $27 billion over the next five years — just went into effect. As the indefatigable Billionaires for Bush point out:

"It's a class war, and we're really winning!"

The more sober people at OMBWatch summed it up well, also on January 11, which surely was a Black Wednesday for news, even if the rest of the media didn't report it that way:

As a fitting kick-start to a year in which President Bush is expected to push hard to make his expensive and unbalanced tax cuts permanent, two new tax cuts went into effect that almost exclusively benefit high-income households. …

[B]y 2010, taxpayers earning over $1 million will see an average additional tax kickback of $19,234. Those making between $75,000 and $100,000 will see an average of $1, and those making less than $75,000 will see nothing.

To put this into perspective, OMBWatch added:

Together these tax cuts will cost $27 billion over the next five years (roughly two-thirds of the amount Republican leaders claim will be "saved" with the budget cuts bill). These tax giveaways will primarily wind up in the pockets of the rich, who have already benefited enormously under Bush — such as those with annual incomes of over $1 million who have received an average windfall of $103,000 in 2005 from the president's first-term tax cuts.

Just wait until Bush and Congress resume their "tax-cutting." OMBWatch adds a separate piece that is required reading. But the starkest analysis of the dread economic news that is sure to emerge this spring from Congress comes from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — the best antidote to the continual lying about budget matters that oozes out of Capitol Hill and the White House. CBPP's January 9 analysis points out the heavy blows that poor people are about to receive, including "the most substantial — and controversial — changes in welfare policy since 1996."

If the monumental Wampumgate scandal isn't enough reason to vote in a new Congress later this year, this mishandling of your children's and grandchildren's futures ought to at least make you think. You might want to start acting now, before your civil liberties are further curtailed.

Posted by wharkavy at 9:29 AM

January 12, 2006

Morning Report 1/12/06
They Really Bug Us

Jerry Bremer's forgotten role in U.S. spy plot against its citizens

Finally, we have a presidency that really listens to Americans.

The New York Times is unfolding this story after sitting on it for at least a year. (See my colleagues Syd Schanberg and Nat Hentoff for recent riffs on the subject.)

But here's something you may have forgotten: This scary threat to our civil liberties — domestic eavesdropping without warrants — is directly descended from the work of Jerry Bremer, later the Bush regime's preposterous pasha of Iraq.

You have to go back to the Clinton era, when Congress took time out from examining the president's semen stains to authorize a National Commission on Terrorism. Its chair was Jerry Bremer. Its final report, "Countering the Changing Threat of International Terrorism," was released in June 2000, long before 9-11.

Bremer urged the unleashing of our spy agencies. That happened. To his credit, he warned that unless there was "contingency planning," there would be a conflict with civil liberties. But he delivered that warning only verbally. To his discredit, there was no mention of civil liberties in the commission's final report.

In case you're wondering, the report warned of terrorist threats to the U.S. from Iran, Afghanistan, and Syria and even cautioned about Pakistan and Greece. But the words "Iraq" or "Saddam Hussein" are never mentioned once. At all. Never.

However, the National Security Agency, current focus of the unconstitutional spying on Americans, is mentioned. The report urged that we unshackle our spy agencies to gather more and more intelligence. Nowhere in the document is there a specific recommendation to authorize the NSA to spy on Americans.

But in a June 2000 hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bremer himself raised the issue of how spying and other reactions to our country's being attacked might conflict with the civil liberties of Americans.

He's on a book tour now, pushing his lame memoir of his disastrous reign over Iraq, but his words from 2000 make for far more interesting reading.

In his formal statement to the Senate panel about the National Commission on Terrorism report, Bremer said:

"The motives of terrorists seem to be changing, and we have to be concerned about the possibility that terrorist groups will resort to what we call catastrophic terrorism, acts which are designed to kill not hundreds but perhaps tens of thousands of Americans."

Prescient, yes. And here's what the commission recommended, according to Bremer:

"We feel that there are restrictions which are addressed more fully in the report against collection of terrorist information by the CIA abroad and by the FBI at home.

"And we've recommended that some of those restrictions be eased."

Bremer called for more sharing of info by U.S. spy agencies and said:

"I should add, finally, in the area of intelligence we think that there — the intelligence agencies, particularly CIA, FBI and most especially NSA, need more money. They need more resources to fight this fight."

The report itself urged this:

Priority one is to prevent terrorist attacks. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities must use the full scope of their authority to collect intelligence regarding terrorist plans and methods.

And this:

Funding for counterterrorism efforts by CIA, NSA, and FBI must be given higher priority to ensure continuation of important operational activity and to close the technology gap that threatens their ability to collect and exploit terrorist communications.

And what about civil liberties? That phrase doesn't make the report. But Bremer talked about it when he delivered the report. Here's what he said:

"We think, Mr. Chairman, that it is important to think about the unthinkable, to think about the possibility that either a single catastrophic attack or several, or attacks taking place in the American soil while we are in hostilities abroad, that such an attack or series could go beyond the capability of local, state and federal officials to deal with — and that the president should have available to him contingency plans to use the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense to respond to such an attack. That's what we've recommended, that contingency planning should be done."

And here's where Bremer got down to brass tacks:

"Mr. Chairman, sometimes people have criticized this as a potential infringement on civil liberties. We take exactly the contrary view.

"Our view is that in the event of a catastrophic event, such as we're talking about, where you have tens of thousands of people dead, the pressures will be very great on the president and the leadership of this country to impinge on civil liberties unless they've done some contingency planning and thought it through ahead of time.

"And so we strongly recommend that such contingency planning be undertaken, be exercised, and that those plans be put on the shelf, hopefully to remain there forever. We think it is the height of irresponsibility not to at least think about the possibility of that happening."

And here's my point: That planning wasn't done. When the Bush regime took office six months later, as I've pointed out, it didn't do things like fill the key post of Pentagon counterintelligence chief, the job that Brian Sheridan had held in the Clinton era. The 9-11 Commission later pointed out that Don Rumsfeld not only didn't get briefed by Sheridan before Sheridan left his job in January 2001 but Rumsfeld also never even hired a replacement for Sheridan until after 9-11. Instead, the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal focused on Iraq.

So much for "thinking it through," for the "contingency planning" about terrorism that Bremer talked about in June 2000. In fact, it's no wonder that the Bush regime went ahead and unconstitutionally spied on Americans. All bets were off after 9-11, which was the perfect excuse to go ahead and try to make the world safe for Halliburton and other U.S. corporations. After all, the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal made no plans for the aftermath of its Iraq-invasion plot, as the Downing Street Memo and other documents have confirmed.

Bremer, unfortunately, took only some of his own advice when he was sent to Iraq in the spring of 2003. He did unleash himself and the full power of the U.S. to try to rule Iraq like an autocrat: He disbanded the Iraqi army, paid no attention to looting, stifled the press, tried to turn Iraq into a corporate-welfare state, mishandled billions of dollars, and ignored warnings of an insurgency. But he didn't think it through and consider the circumstances. Contingency planning? Forget about it.

And when he finally returned to the U.S. in late 2004, George W. Bush, who believes in spying on his own citizens, gave Bremer a Medal of Freedom.

Posted by wharkavy at 9:25 AM

January 11, 2006

Morning Report 1/11/06
Whose Vault Is It?

Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal solidify power at World Bank, Pentagon

You'd think they had won the Iraq war the way the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal and its minions are dividing the Earth's spoils.

At the world's No. 1 purveyor of arms and spilled blood (the Pentagon), Don Rumsfeld has quietly shuffled the order of succession, replacing the secretaries of the military services with such creepy civilians as Stephen Cambone.

Meanwhile, at the planet's No. 1 source of development finance, the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz has installed former Dick Cheney flack Kevin Kellems in yet another absurdly powerful job. A sweet setup: The World Bank doles out money to "developing countries" only if they play along. The Pentagon does the same with arms.

It's the long arm of Cheney that concerns many of the World Bank's 10,000 employees, quite a few of whom are altruistic about helping spread the earth's wealth instead of just letting the West plunder resource-rich continents. Wolfie's already done a lot of trust-busting inside the bank.

Now Kellems, already a "senior advisor" to Wolfowitz, as I previously noted, is in line to become "director of strategy" at the bank's External Affairs Department.

Insiders tell me that Wolfowitz tried to make Kellems (whom he took to the bank along with Boeing-scandal figure Robin Cleveland) the vice president for external affairs, but the bank's board rebelled at that idea. Instead, Wolfowitz moved him in anyway, under VP Ian Goldin, who will be a figurehead.

The word is that Kellems will get the salary of a VP, about $250,000, still a little under Wolfie's own $300,000. In both cases, insiders note, the World Bank pays for their taxes.

What a racket! And don't forget: Wolfie's girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, is still on the World Bank payroll even though she's now working at the State Department with Cheney's non-lez daughter Liz Cheney as chief flacks of a Middle East agitprop campaign.

Over at the Pentagon, figurehead George W. Bush — the Ian Goldin of the White House — made a recess appointment of cabal handyman Gordon England (the former Navy secretary) as the new deputy secretary of defense.

England, who has been a key player in the handling of Guantánamo prisoners (Cambone was a key player in their rough handling), thus gets to escape grilling by the Senate during a confirmation hearing. Coupled with the recent mysterious shuffling of Pentagon succession, this solidifies the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal's grip on the military. As a State Department release notes:

Recent press reports indicate that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld still has his deputy designated to succeed him should he be incapacitated for any reason. However, he has now designated Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence to be third in line, and then Under Secretary for Policy Eric Edelman, followed by Kenneth Krieg, undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics. Previously the line of succession went from deputy secretary to the Army, Air Force and then Navy secretary.

This is the kind of maneuvering that, in other countries, might signal an impending coup.

Next thing you know, the cabal will be sending canaries like me and other nattering nabobs down into Wilbur Ross's unsafe Sago mine to take over for the dozen who died there.

Posted by wharkavy at 8:38 AM

January 10, 2006

Morning Report 1/10/05
Bremer: Out to Launch

Ex-pasha starts book tour by blaming everyone else for the Iraq debacle

A year after tearfully accepting a Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush for his disastrous reign in Iraq, preposterous pasha Jerry Bremer has rewritten history with a ghosted "diary" and started a book tour by saying, "I didn't do it."

Too bad Bob Woodward hasn't given us the inside scoop on Bremer's conversations with Bush during the past few years. We have to rely instead on NBC anchor/publicist Brian Williams, who over the weekend lobbed some questions at Bremer to get the ball rolling for the ex-pasha's book, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope. Here's a snatch of their Dateline conversation:

Williams: Fairly or unfairly, you may be forever known as the guy who disbanded the Iraqi army. Is that fair?

Bremer: Well, it’s not fair in two respects. (a) It wasn't me, (b) we didn't disband it.

Or (c), you're a liar. And by the way, where are the billions of dollars from the Development Fund for Iraq? You know, the oil for slush scandal and the continuing investigation by special inspector general Stuart Bowen that's grossly underpl