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Cheney Says Torture Works

... never mind that torture is a war crime.

The AP headline from Tuesday reads, "Cheney: US gained information from interrogations."

Cheney said Monday that what hasn't been revealed publicly is what the U.S. gained as a result of these actions.

"I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country," Cheney said.

Cheney said he has formally asked the CIA to declassify the memos.

However, a senior intelligence official said Tuesday the CIA has received no such requests from the former vice president. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose it publicly.

Why would Cheney try to justify war crimes by claiming that committing them created desirable "consequences?" If I understand his reasoning, he doesn't care whether waterboarding or other means constitute torture because the ends justify the means. It's as simple as that. (Oh, and why would Cheney claim that he requested declassification of the memos if he did not? Because Dick Cheney is a pathological liar.)

It doesn't take a legal scholar to explain the dangers of heading down this slippery slope. Still, Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley did so smartly back in December on Countdown with Keith Olbermann:



Whether Dick Cheney thinks torture works or not is irrelevant. Torture is a war crime. The law is not in question. The question is whether we will continue to stand silently and watch men break our laws without question, without prosecution.


posted by Dingo at 4/24/2009 10:38:00 AM

 

Life Imitates Art

In some circles Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Shi'ite TV reporter who threw his shoe at former President George Bush is a barbarian. In other circles, he is a hero. But no matter your opinion of al-Zaidi, it is hard to argue his indelible impact on modern culture. Writes Bappa Majumdar for Reuters, "India's politicians contesting in the general election, fearful of shoes hurled at them by disgruntled voters, have asked for more security and are erecting metal nets at rallies." [Emphasis added.]

The idea of showing your disapproval (or in some cases approval) by hurling objects is by no means a novel idea. Made in 1980, the following video stands as evidence that al-Zaidi has simply redefined an age-old tradition:



posted by James Stroud at 4/20/2009 11:12:00 PM

 

F*ck Cornyn!

I realize I haven't contributed to this site in a LONG time, but this item compelled me to say something.

If the president releases the Bush torture memos, Republicans are promising to “go nuclear” and filibuster his legal appointments. Scott Horton reports on a serious threat to Obama’s transparency.

Since I am now a resident of the great state of Texas, the respectable senator from Texas is MY representative in the Senate. Ya know what I say!? Fuck John Cornyn! Call their mother fucking bluff! If the Republicans want to have their entire agenda based on protecting a failed - whatever you want to call the last 8 years - then LET THEM! They want to shoot their wad for W's sake - LET THEM! In fact - MAKE THEM put their money where their mouths are! Call their bluff and make them go on the record (Officially) as supporting the continued suppresion and denial of Bush ero defiance of international and human law.

Don't back down. Do not compromise. Do not strive for bipartisan cooperation. Do not adjust policy to avoid the filibuster. Let them go on the record as officially condoning and supporting the suppression and denial of a failed adminstration's defiance of international law. In the end, what do they have to lose?!


posted by Voltaire's Child at 4/06/2009 07:25:00 PM

 

"AIG is chump change -- let's find corporate America's hidden billions"

Joe Conason writes in Salon.com ("AIG is chump change") that, "it's time to reform offshore banking, and see what untaxed wealth big business is hiding in overseas tax shelters."

According to the Government Accountability Office, nearly all of America's top 100 corporations maintain subsidiaries in countries identified as tax havens. As the GAO notes, there could be reasons other than avoiding the IRS to set up branches in places such as Singapore, Luxembourg and Switzerland, where taxes are light or nonexistent and keeping clients' illicit secrets is considered a matter of national pride.

But what reason other than evasion could there be for Goldman Sachs Group to set up three subsidiaries in Bermuda, five in Mauritius, and 15 in the Cayman Islands? Why did Countrywide Financial need two subsidiaries in Guernsey? Why did Wachovia need 18 subsidiaries in Bermuda, three in the British Virgin Islands, and 16 in the Caymans? Why did Lehman Brothers need 31 subsidiaries in the Caymans? What do Bank of America's 59 subsidiaries in the Caymans actually do? Why does Citigroup need 427 separate subsidiaries in tax havens, including 12 in the Channel Islands, 21 in Jersey, 91 in Luxembourg, 19 in Bermuda and 90 in the Caymans? What exactly is going on at Morgan Stanley's 19 subs in Jersey, 29 subs in Luxembourg, 14 subs in the Marshall Islands, and its amazing 158 subs in the Caymans? And speaking of AIG, why does it have 18 subs in tax-haven countries? (Don't expect to find out from Fox News Channel or the New York Post, because News Corp. has its own constellation of strange subsidiaries, including 33 in the Caymans alone.)

When the cost of these shenanigans was last estimated two years ago, the U.S. government's annual loss in revenue due to tax avoidance by major corporations and super-rich individuals was pegged at about $100 billion -- considerably more than a rounding error, even today. But of course that is only a rough assessment, as is the estimate of $12 trillion in untaxed assets hidden around the world. Nobody will know for certain until the books are opened and transparency is established.

posted by jieister at 3/23/2009 06:59:00 PM

 

"Are We Home Alone?"

Thomas Friedman writes in today's New York Times ("Are We Home Alone?"):

I ran into an Indian businessman friend last week and he said something to me that really struck a chord: “This is the first time I’ve ever visited the United States when I feel like you’re acting like an immature democracy.”

You know what he meant: We’re in a once-a-century financial crisis, and yet we’ve actually descended into politics worse than usual. There don’t seem to be any adults at the top — nobody acting larger than the moment, nobody being impelled by anything deeper than the last news cycle. Instead, Congress is slapping together punitive tax laws overnight like some Banana Republic, our president is getting in trouble cracking jokes on Jay Leno comparing his bowling skills to a Special Olympian, and the opposition party is behaving as if its only priority is to deflate President Obama’s popularity.

I saw Eric Cantor, a Republican House leader, on CNBC the other day, and the entire interview consisted of him trying to exploit the A.I.G. situation for partisan gain without one constructive thought. I just kept staring at him and thinking: “Do you not have kids? Do you not have a pension that you’re worried about? Do you live in some gated community where all the banks will be O.K., even if our biggest banks go under? Do you think your party automatically wins if the country loses? What are you thinking?”

posted by jieister at 3/22/2009 06:55:00 PM

 

Obama Takes the Offensive

In today's New York Times ("On the Edge") Nobel Economist Paul Krugman criticizes Republicans for stalling and prods President Obama to move forward on the stimulus package, before it's too late.

Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

I'm hopeful that President Obama is now taking the offensive, based on comments he made earlier this week:

"Now, in the past few days, I‘ve heard criticisms that this plan is somehow wanting, and these criticisms echo the very same failed economic theories that led us to this crisis in the first place—the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems. I reject those theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change."

There are other indications that Obama is losing his patience with the Republicans.

In an off-the-cuff moment during his speech to House Democrats at a retreat in Virginia, the president ribbed Republicans, including former rival John McCain, who call the recovery package a "spending bill."

"So then you get the argument, 'well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.' What do you think a stimulus is? That's the whole point," Obama said to laughter.

Obama, who cultivated the image of a post-partisan leader, has been hitting campaign themes in recent days, accusing Republicans in media interviews, an op-ed in The Washington Post and public speeches of reverting to the failed policies of tax cuts. He referenced his own political capital Thursday night and Friday.

"They did not choose more of the same in November," Obama said Friday. "They sent us here to make change."

He dismissed what he called "phony arguments and petty politics" Thursday.

"You can nit and you can pick and, you know, that's the game we all play here. We know how to play that game. What I'm saying is now we can't afford to play that game. We've got to pull together," Obama said.

On Monday, President Obama, in his first formal press conference as president in prime-time, will make his case directly to the American people. Let's hope that they're listening.


posted by Dingo at 2/06/2009 08:56:00 AM

 

"Is President Obama losing the stimulus battle?"

I thought that I could relax for just a bit, maybe catch my breath after Obama was elected...but it's not possible. Republican politicians are beyond self-reflection and logic.

Joan Walsh writes in Salon ("The new Great Communicator ... isn't"):

Obama is the Democrats' Great Communicator, our Ronald Reagan. It's fitting that his highest priority will be reversing the tax and spending priorities Reagan enshrined as a new American compact almost 30 years ago, and reviving the notion of government as an engine of capitalist growth -- not merely the safety net provider, but the catalyst for organizing our public resources around what makes the economy strong. We've been arguing at the margins during these last two years of pain: Government should regulate more, or less. Tax rates should be higher, or lower. But there's a dangerous civic illiteracy in our country about what the larger role of government in a modern economy is, or should be, and I don't think Obama will ultimately prevail if he doesn't start to take it on.

Obama is the most remarkable Democratic communicator of my lifetime, I think, and even he's not rising to the task, yet. He needs to lay out his priorities, clearly; he needs to simplify his pitch, yet he also needs to add some depth to his and our understanding of how we got here. This economic crisis is not just about bad mortgages and/or the housing bubble bursting, and it won't be solved by reinflating that bubble, the Republicans' latest dumb idea.

I'm not sure how President Obama makes this point, roughly hourly, for the next four (and I hope eight) years. But this point has to be made, as often as possible, by anyone with an audience. We've had a deliberate shift of resources from middle- and working-class Americans and the poor, to the very rich, supported by our tax codes, twisted political values and the "winner-take-all" ethic that's prevailed at the highest levels of business and government for the last 30 years. Now, unbelievably, Republicans are saying we need even more tax cuts. (What part of tax-cutter George W. Bush's economic catastrophe, and his 22 percent approval rating, do they not understand?) They also back measures to reinflate the housing bubble that let Americans ignore their stagnating wages, as long as they worked more hours as a family and could also use their homes as an ATM. Their plans to reinflate the housing bubble seem as delusional, frankly, as their backing tax cuts, and even more irresponsible. Tax cuts won't work, but reinflating the housing bubble might work -- to encourage more consumption and less savings, and roll this problem a few more years down the road.

Democrats know the Republicans are wrong. Little children know they're wrong. Cats and dogs know they're wrong. But somehow this week, unbelievably, Obama and the Democrats seem to be losing the spin war. There are the worrying poll numbers. And there is the Washington Post report that Senate Democrats don't have the votes to pass a stimulus bill yet, at least not with the 60 votes that would rule out a filibuster. In this economic crisis, with 2.6 million jobs lost last year and thousands more lost in every news cycle, what does it take to create the urgency and responsibility to get this done?

posted by jieister at 2/04/2009 06:54:00 PM

 

"Add Up the Damage"

Bob Herbert writes in yesterday's New York Times ("Add Up the Damage"):

When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry — a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches — over the damage he’s done to this country.

This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job.

The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

Exploiting the public’s understandable fears, Mr. Bush made it sound as if Iraq was about to nuke us: “We cannot wait,” he said, “for the final proof — the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

He then set the blaze that has continued to rage for nearly six years, consuming more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. (A car bomb over the weekend killed two dozen more Iraqis, many of them religious pilgrims.) The financial cost to the U.S. will eventually reach $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.

posted by jieister at 12/30/2008 12:10:00 PM

 

Who is Timothy Geithner?

I got my hair cut at a place near Union Square today during lunchtime. I told the girl who cuts my hair that I planned to head over to San Francisco Centre afterwards, to eat lunch and check out the pre-holiday shoppers. She said, "It's going to be interesting to see what Black Friday is like around here."

Black Friday is next week. Biggest shopping day of the year. Union Square is one of America's top shopping destinations. This Black Friday will likely be one of the worst in decades, if not in several generations. It should come as a surprise to no one, as consumer spending has been on the decline since the beginning of the year.

After my haircut, while I was eating lunch at Panda Express in what is essentially an upscale mall, I read the top Yahoo stories on my Palm Treo. I learned that Timothy Geithner would be President-elect Obama's Treasury Secretary.

Who? I'd never heard of Timothy Geithner until this afternoon. I've been following bread crumbs about the man ever since...

• Geithner worked for Kissinger and Associates in Washington, D.C., for three years.
  
• Geithner served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs under Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers.
  
• Geithner is President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
  
• Geithner is a member of the Group of Thirty, which includes Paul Volcker and Paul Krugman, among other noteworthy financial experts.
  
• Geithner has been referred to by the New York Times as "center-right... the ultimate pragmatist.. neutral... no liberal... keeps his ego well in check. He asks a lot of questions."
  
• Geithner is the "seasoned public servant" who, along with Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, has made "all the key decisions" regarding recent government actions taken with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG.
  
• Geithner is credited for having "engineered the rescue of failing investment bank Bear Stearns." He supposedly "strongly disagreed" with Paulson's proposal to move "day-to-day bank supervision out of the Fed."
  
• The stock market rose after Obama's selection of Geithner to be Treasury Secretary was announced.

So here is an interesting paragraph in tomorrow's Washington Post regarding Geithner:

Geithner's nomination injects some certainty into the markets, analysts said. Wall Street was concerned that additional financial rescue efforts would be on hold until the new administration was in place. The appointment of Geithner could speed the process, said Christopher Low, chief economist at Memphis-based FTN Financial. "It is not just that Geithner is solid and qualified," Low said. "The market has lost faith in [Treasury Secretary] Henry Paulson. The fact that there is finally someone else we can turn to in this crisis is a godsend."

Someone else we can turn to? Does this so-called expert whom the Post cites not realize that Paulson and Geithner, with Bernanke, have been working, and some would say failing, together? If the market has lost faith in Paulson, why would they feel any differently about one of his colleagues?

In fact, this appeared in today's New York Times:

Along with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Geithner has come under criticism for the original construction of the $700 billion bailout plan, which had to be overhauled and has so far failed to remedy the financial crisis.

Associates say Mr. Geithner is an independent, though he was a Republican when he first was a staff member at the Treasury Department in the late 1980s under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

A former Republican... a protege of Robert Rubin... a former employee of Henry Kissinger... a central-right economist who has been at the helm with Paulson and Bernanke, steering the ship of state into unchartered territory...

Is this the kind of change that Barack Obama promised us?


posted by Dingo at 11/21/2008 10:08:00 PM

 

Why Free-Marketers Oppose US Auto Bailout

I've been following the story about the auto industry's request for a $25 billion loan package with great interest. While I'm concerned about the potential consequences of their bankruptcies, it's hard for me to feel sorry for American car companies, especially when the CEOs of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford show up to Congressional hearings in their private jets.

Here in San Francisco, some of my liberal friends oppose the bailout because they (rightly) blame American automakers for continuing to build gas-guzzling, greenhouse gas-spewing SUVs, and using their leverage with BushCo to make sure that: 1) higher fuel economy standards would not apply to SUVs, minivans and trucks or negligibly so, 2) higher emission and mileage standards in blue states would be struck down as illegal, and 3) their customers would be able to deduct from their taxes up to $75,000 for buying said gas guzzlers.

It's not like no one saw this crisis coming. Back in March 2006, Roland Hwang of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) warned:

"The Big Three automakers are in trouble today precisely because management bet the farm on gas guzzlers. When oil prices soared, the bottom fell out of their market and sent thousands of workers out the factory gates. Those prices aren't coming down soon. In fact most experts say that they will go higher.

"The administration is calling for baby steps at a time when the country needs bold action. By setting the bar low once again, the administration is setting the industry up for a continuing disaster. Engineering better fuel economy performance is the key to survival in today's intensely competitive auto market.

"Simply by raising the fuel economy standard for SUVs and other light trucks by just one mile per gallon per year over the next five years -- to 27.2 mpg by model year 2012 -- we could save one million barrels of oil per day by 2020. That's twice as much oil as we buy from Iraq, and three-quarters of our daily imports from Saudi Arabia."

It's interesting that support and opposition for the auto bailout has played out mostly along partisan lines. Most Democrats support a loan package, if only grudgingly, while most Republicans oppose the bailout.

Paul Krugman makes the case for Democrats:

We are in the middle of a very - you know, the economy is in a nose dive. And this is something that will greatly accelerate the nose dive.

If GM goes under, which looks like a real possibility, then that's a huge blow to huge anti-stimulus program at exactly the wrong moment. If this was 1999 and we had four percent unemployment and the credit markets were working, I would say, let it fail. Let bankruptcy do its work. But this is not a good time to be having a really major industry just turn belly-up.

These [Big Three CEOs] are not good guys. And they took corporate jets to plead for money in Washington, right? They are idiots. This is the theatrics. It was really stupid, right?

But nonetheless, that's not the point. The point is that there are - you know, estimates run from one million to three million jobs lost if GM goes under. And so there's probably 12 guys out of those one million to three million people who are really bad guys and fly corporate jets and really don't deserve any bailout.

But the other 999,000 - I can't do the subtraction right here - all those other people are, you know, people making a living, people who will lose their jobs, and lose their health insurance. That's where you should be putting the priority.

So why would Republicans oppose helping people keep their jobs and their health insurance? I think I know why: it's all about the unions.

Some conservatives suggest the best course would be to allow General Motors and other automakers to head into bankruptcy, which would void their union contracts and allow them to slash the size of their operations and cut costs. A bailout "would hinder the long-overdue restructuring" of the industry, said Dan Mitchell, an economist at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Steven Jonas presents two more reasons why Republicans oppose the bailout ("Why the Republicans Want to Kill GM"):

Two are ideological and one is political... bankruptcy would permit the companies to break their union contracts, both for current employees and for their "legacy" beneficiaries who depend on the U.S. automakers for their pensions and health care coverage.

Modern Republicans, having had their hands on the many or all of major levers of governmental power since the election of Reagan, are closely associated with finance capitalism, much less with industrial capitalism. Thus their strong interest in helping out the former while being perfectly willing to let the latter die on the vine, especially if that death can bring down one of the few remaining major unions.

The Republicans in their gut realize that if Obama even half-succeeds in bringing the country through the recession/Depression, especially if it is identified in peoples' minds as Limbaugh would everso falsely have it be, as the "Obama Recession," they will be in the political wilderness for a long time.

posted by Dingo at 11/21/2008 05:26:00 AM