The Commentariat -- May 13, 2013

Robert Pear of the New York Times: "Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, has solicited sizable donations from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and H&R Block, the tax preparation service, as part of a multimillion-dollar campaign to ensure the success of President Obama's health care law, administration officials said Sunday, even as a leading Senate Republican raised questions about the legality of her efforts.... The senior Republican on the Senate health committee, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, said the fund-raising 'may be illegal.' He likened it to efforts by the Reagan administration to raise money for rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua in the 1980s, after Congress had restricted the use of federal money.... Administration officials said private donations were needed because Congress had provided much less money than Mr. Obama requested to publicize the new law and get people enrolled in health plans subsidized by the government." CW: yes, educating Americans about affordable health coverage is just like funneling money to rebels fighting another sovereign nation.

Joseph Stiglitz, in the New York Times: "America is distinctive among advanced industrialized countries in the burden it places on students and their parents for financing higher education. America is also exceptional among comparable countries for the high cost of a college degree, including at public universities.... Total student debt, around $1 trillion, surpassed total credit-card debt last year.... merica — home of the land-grant university, the G.I. Bill and world-class public universities from California to Michigan to Texas — has fallen from the top in terms of university education. With strangling student debt, we are likely to fall further. What economists call “human capital” — investing in people — is a key to long-term growth." ...

... Here's One Reason for the High Cost of Higher Ed. Tamar Lewin of the New York Times: "... the median total compensation for the presidents of public research universities was $441,392, up 4.7 percent from the previous year’s $421,395. The median base salary, $373,800, was up 2 percent from $366,519 the previous year." The highest paid of all last year (largely because of his plum severance deal): "Graham B. Spanier, the president of Pennsylvania State University, who was forced out in November 2011 over his handling of a child sex abuse scandal involving a football coach." Creep.

Jonathan Weisman & Matthew Wald of the New York Times: Republicans plan to turn up the outrage machine over disclosures that some IRS personnel were targeting conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. Also, looks as if the IRS (run, don't forget, by a Dubya appointee) didn't quite come clean, providing more material for the outrage machine. ...

... John McKinnon & Siobahn Hughes of the Wall Street Journal have more details on the extent of the IRS's targeting practices & what IRS honchos knew & when they knew it. ...

... Kevin Drum: "... even if, as seems likely, this whole thing turns out to have been mostly a misguided scheme cooked up by some too-clever IRS drones, it doesn't matter. Conservatives are right to be outraged and right to demand a full investigation.... What's really unfortunate about all this is that ... more than likely, though, Congress will step in to neuter them completely on this score, and the current Wild West character of 501(c)4 fundraising will continue unabated."

Peter Baker of the New York Times: Darrell Issa will be subpoenaing (a) any person who can spell Benghazi, (b) any person who cannot spell Benghazi but know it is not the name of a tiny dog. Also, Issa got into an on-air fight with former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering -- a Bush Pere appointee. CW: consider the foregoing a paraphrase. ...

... Kevin Liptak of CNN: Thomas Pickering, "the leader of a panel charged with reviewing September’s attack in Benghazi, Libya, said Sunday that criticism of his report was unfounded and did not accurately reflect how his review was carried out." ...

... Jake Miller of CBS News: "Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, [a Republican,] forcefully defended the Obama administration on Sunday against charges that it did not do enough to prevent the tragedy in Benghazi, telling CBS' 'Face the Nation' that some critics of the administration have a 'cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces.'" With video. ...

... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) tore into Fox News’ Chris Wallace and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) for obsessing over the talking points U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used when talking to the media in the days following the attack in Benghazi, Libya rather than focusing on identifying the perpetrators of the killings." With video.

... Jordan Chariton of Mediate: John McCain isn't ready to impeach President Obama over Benghazi, but he'd like to see the House pre-emptively impeach Hillary Clinton. Or something. With video. ...

... Michael Tomasky of Newsweek expects Congressional Republicans to try to impeach President Obama over Benghazi. ...

"SIX POINT THREE TRILLION DOLLARS!" Bill Keller: the Heritage Foundation's anti-immigration report "is an unusually stark sign of the transformation of Washington’s think tank culture into a more partisan archipelago of propaganda factories."

Alan Cowell of the New York Times: "A potentially toxic clamor for Britain to consider quitting the European Union appeared to be spreading within the dominant Conservative Party on Monday, even as its leader, Prime Minister David Cameron, prepared to meet with President Obama in Washington as an advocate of closer trade ties between the United States and the European bloc."

"E Pluribus Me." Tim Egan: Ted Cruz may consider himself to be the smartest guy in the room -- no matter what the room -- but his positions are illogical & inconsistent. "Senator Cruz probably doesn’t mind the title that’s been hung on him — most hated man in the Senate. I suspect he also relishes being called a 'wacko bird' (John McCain’s term) because, for now, it’s the avian wing that dominates his party."

Judd Legum of Think Progress: "Two major tech leaders have resigned from Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group, FWD.us, in protest of the organization’s controversial decision to bankroll ads supporting Keystone XL and drilling in the Arctic National Refuge.... The strategy has alienated Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and David Sacks, the founder of Yammer."

Speaking Ill of the Dead

Maureen Dowd is right about this much:

... in this hottest of hot spots, the State Department’s minimum security requirements were not met, requests for more security were rejected, and contingency plans were not drawn up, despite the portentous date of 9/11 and cascading warnings from the C.I.A., which had more personnel in Benghazi than State did and vetted the feckless Libyan Praetorian Guard. When the Pentagon called an elite Special Forces team three hours into the attack, it was training in Croatia — decidedly not a hot spot.

Hillary Clinton and Ambassador Chris Stevens were rushing to make the flimsy Benghazi post permanent as a sign of good faith with Libyans, even as it sat ringed by enemies.

The hierarchies at State and Defense had a plodding response, failing to make any superhuman effort as the siege waxed and waned over eight hours.

This isn't new or newsy. In December,

an outside accountability review board has released its report on the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.... Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chaired the outside accountability review board.... Overall, the report found that, 'Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies resulted in a security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.' ...

In a letter that accompanied the full report, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it 'a clear-eyed look at serious, systemic challenges that we have already begun to fix.' She said she accepted all of the recommendations. The report didn't single out specific individuals, but three State Department officials ... resigned....

(The unclassified version of the report is here.)

Dowd goes on to theorize about the Benghazi talking points, and here too her suppositions may be partially right:

In the midst of a re-election campaign, Obama aides wanted to promote the mythology that the president who killed Osama was vanquishing terror. So they deemed it problematic to mention any possible Qaeda involvement in the Benghazi attack.

Looking ahead to 2016, Hillaryland needed to shore up the mythology that Clinton was a stellar secretary of state. Prepared talking points about the attack included mentions of Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia, a Libyan militant group, but the State Department got those references struck.

But Dowd undercuts her own hypothesis when she reveals that the State Department staff who "got those references struck" was "Victoria Nuland, a former Cheney aide." Raise your hand if you think a former Cheney aide was totally into bolstering Hillary Clinton's presidential creds. No, I don't think Nuland was a Cheney mole determined to undermine Hillary's future political career. But Nuland's first inclination, having worked on the dark side, would certainly be toward more opacity, not less.

However, since we're looking for motivations, we should acknowledge that the talking points are a subject of discussion whose sole purpose is political. They were first an issue Fox and Friends raised to undermine President Obama's chance for re-election in 2012. Mitt Romney's debate meltdown put an end to that. (And thanks again, Candy Crowley.) So now, the National Republicans Congressional Committee and Karl Rove are moving on dot org to 2016:

Francis Wilkinson of Bloomberg News explains, at least in part, why Darrell Issa, et al., have been so enamored of Susan Rice's talking points:

Unlike Whitewater, a convoluted, shady-sounding and quite possibly greasy real-estate investment deal, Benghazi consists of a discrete event, a brief aftermath and not much of a paper trail. After all, how much paper is produced in the course of a frantic night of violence in a faraway place?

So paper production is the first order of business. We will need lots and lots of documents citing multiple sources whose large and small discrepancies in memory, perspective and testimony can subsequently be magnified, scrutinized and exploded into controversies.

What's a scandal without a paper trail? A Congressional scandalmonger needs something to subpoena, preferably something that the executive branch can claim is privileged or too classified for the likes of Darrell Issa to view. Hooray! More wrangling with the administration. More facetime on Fox!

Forget all that. The real question goes back to the beginning: WTF was Ambassador Chris Stevens doing at an unsecured consulate in Benghazi -- "this hottest of hot spots" -- on September 11? It suits no one's political purpose to lay the blame where it belongs, so Stevens is portrayed, even in the Accountability Review Board (ARB) Report, as an heroic martyr to Libyan democracy and American values.

In fact, Chris Stevens was a hotdogger who put himself, his staff and his security personnel at undue risk. He is a tragic figure only in the classical sense: he was directly reponsible for his own death and -- the deaths of three others. The ARB obliquely acknowledges this: "Embassy Tripoli did not demonstrate strong and sustained advocacy with Washington for increased security for Special Mission Benghazi" and describes the facility as having an "insufficient ... security platform." The Benghazi staff consisted of

relatively inexperienced American personnel often on temporary assignments of 40 days or less.... Plans for the Ambassador's trip [to Benghazi] provided for minimal close protection security support and were not shared thoroughly with the Embassy's country team, who were not fully aware of planned movements off compound. The Ambassador did not see a direct threat of an attack of this nature....

Notice how the report employs the passive voice and substitutes "Embassy Tripoli" for "Stevens." What the Board means is that Stevens put inexperienced temps in a dangerous facility with an "insufficient security platform," then popped off to join them (or whatever) without a proper security detail and without even telling staff where he was going and what he was doing because, you know, he just didn't think anybody in an unstable Muslim country would want to kill an American ambassador on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

The evidence is that Chris Stevens saw himself as a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia, with "his knowledge of Arabic, his ability to move in all sectors of the population, and his wide circle of friends, particularly in Benghazi." Well, maybe not "all sectors" and maybe his circle of friends was not quite as wide as he imagined. As the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Stevens had a primary responsibility to protect Americans in Libya. But that responsibility conflicted with his dream of a horde of enthusiastic Libyans shouting, "Ste-VENS! Ste-VENS! Ste-VENS!" He put his personal ambitions before the safety of those in his charge. Stevens -- and other Americans -- are dead only because Stevens himself was woefully irresponsible.

The real scandal is the one that dare not speak its name.

P.S. Please feel free to use the Comments section to vehemently disagree with me.

The Commentariat -- May 12, 2013

See also commentary from MAG & safari in yesterday's Commentariat that got spammed & is now despamified.

Obama 2.Zero. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Just days after Republicans used Senate rules to block two nominees from moving to the next step in the confirmation process despite the fact that both have the support of a majority of senators, Democrats are planning to force committee votes without Republican consent. If Democrats do push the nominees through to the full Senate, they would almost certainly set off a Republican filibuster, which would jeopardize the confirmations and, for now, leave vacancies at the top of two federal agencies."

** What Republicans Are Doing While We're Not Looking. Teresa Tritch of the New York Times: "There are two good things to say about the Working Families Flexibility Act, which passed the House this week with 220 Republican and three Democratic votes. One, the bill is bound to go nowhere in the Senate and, two, even if it did advance, the White House has threatened to veto it. The bill, in brief, is worse than meritless; it is a fraud.... The bill would amend long-standing labor law by allowing private-sector employers to offer compensatory time off in lieu of time-and-a-half pay for overtime.... There is nothing to stop an employer from discriminating against those who prefer payment by cutting back on their overtime hours. Nor would employers face any real deterrent against forcing unpaid overtime on workers who fear losing their jobs if they object. The recourse for coerced workers would be to sue, a far-fetched and unaffordable option for most people." Thanks to Jeanne B. for the heads-up. ...

... Judith Warner of Time has more.

Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon: "Republican members of Congress raised no objections when they first saw internal emails detailing the evolution of the administration's talking points on Benghazi almost two months ago, senior administration officials said..., and House Speaker John Boehner declined to attend or send a representative to that briefing." ...

... CW: I wish I had time to watch this discussion among Bill Maher, Joy Reid, Glenn Greenwald & Charlie Cooke on Benghazzzzzzi. I hope you do.

Lauren French of Politico: "Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew employees were singling out conservative groups for extra scrutiny as early as 2011, according to a watchdog agency's report set to be released next week, POLITICO has confirmed from a congressional source. The disclosure that senior officials knew agents were flagging applications containing the words 'patriot' or 'tea party' contradicts public statements by former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. He repeatedly denied that his agency was targeting conservative groups when asked by Congress last year." CW: Keep in mind this little factoid French doesn't mention: Shulman is a Dubya appointee. But she does write this: "The disclosures are guaranteed to heighten Republican fears that the agency is targeting the administration's political enemies and hands the GOP a fresh issue to use in attacking President Barack Obama's administration." ...

... Stephen Ohlemacher of the AP writes a more balanced report.

Aqua Buddha Is Still Crazy. Ezra Klein: Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Ky.) claims in a fundraiser e-mail that President Obama "is working with 'anti-American globalists plot[ting] against our Constitution.' This [U.N. Small Arms] treaty, [which is the subject of Paul's scary e-mail] at least as described here, is total fantasy. The hoax-busters at Snopes.com will catch you up, and just for good measure, PolitiFact gave similar claims the old pants-on-fire. This is black helicopter stuff from Paul."

Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog summarizes the shocking scandals and "the dangerous Satanic power of Barack Obama." Such a quick read I have a sneaking suspicion Steve is not sufficiently scandalized.

This post by Evan McMurry of Mediate about a Koch-BuzzFeed immigration forum is mostly inside-baseball stuff, but McMurry ends with a lovely knock at the Heritage Foundation: "If you classify everything to the left of 'immigrants are inherently dumb' as amnesty, the world will indeed look like a conspiracy in favor of it."

Judge John d'Amico, writing in Salon, notes that the Tea Party doesn't seem to understand our founding documents.

Gail Collins on corrupt state legislatures. Pathetic &, as usual, funny.