The Commentariat -- February 17

Wisconsin teachers, other state employees, protest in Madison, Wisconsin's capitol building. AP photo.Here's the above photo, in motion:

Everybody's got to make some adjustments to new fiscal realities. But some of what I've heard coming out of Wisconsin, where you're just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seems like more of an assault on unions.
-- Barack Obama, today ...

... Jennifer Epstein of Politico: "Teachers unions, historically one of the most powerful interest groups in American politics, are being besieged like never before – under attack from conservative GOP governors with a zeal for budget-cutting even while taking fire from some Democrats, including President Barack Obama, who has suggested he agrees that unions can be an impediment to better schools.... The backlash threatens to undercut one of the Democratic Party’s most stalwart backers — and upset a mutually beneficial relationship where the unions provided financial support and foot soldiers for Democratic campaigns, in return for political cover to protect their prerogatives in the U.S. Congress and state capitals across the nation."

Illustration for Rolling Stone by Victor Juhasz.** Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone: "... the entire system set up to monitor and regulate Wall Street is fucked up.... Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted.... When it comes to Wall Street, the justice system not only sucks at punishing financial criminals, it has actually evolved into a highly effective mechanism for protecting financial criminals." Read the whole article. ...

... Shahien Nasiripour of the Huffington Post: "The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees lenders like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America..., is pushing for a quick and modest settlement to the months-long federal and state probes into abusive mortgage practices, frustrating other federal agencies and state egulators and raising questions over President Barack Obama's delay in naming a pro-consumer chief to head the agency.... The agency is negotiating an agreement that would cost the industry less than $5 billion in fines and mortgage modifications." By contrast, "in 2008, state attorneys general reached an $8.4 billion agreement with just one company -- Countrywide Financial -- to settle predatory lending accusations. The money was used to aid distressed homeowners." ...

Simon Johnson in Bloomberg News: the too-big-to-fail banks are the biggest government-sponsored entities today. And "top bankers are ... pressing hard for the right to increase dividend payments. That’s effectively a transfer from creditors and taxpayers tomorrow (because of the guarantee) to shareholders today."

Michael Grunwald of Time: the Obama Administration is using the stimulus bill to reform the Washington bureaucracy by diverting "funds into competition-based, peer-reviewed, results-oriented grant programs that reward only the worthiest applications."

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Obama ordered his advisers last August to produce a secret report on unrest in the Arab world, which concluded that without sweeping political changes, countries from Bahrain to Yemen were ripe for popular revolt, administration officials said Wednesday.... The administration kept the project secret, officials said, because it worried that if word leaked out, Arab allies would pressure the White House, something that happened in the days after protests convulsed Cairo." ...

... Fareed Zakaria in Time: "The central, underlying feature of the Middle East's crisis is a massive youth bulge. About 60% of the region's population is under 30. These millions of young people have aspirations that need to be fulfilled, and the regimes in place right now show little ability to do so." ...

... Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times profiles Gene Sharp, an 83-year-old American intellectual whose "practical writings on nonviolent revolution — most notably 'From Dictatorship to Democracy,' a 93-page guide to toppling autocrats, available for download in 24 languages — have inspired dissidents around the world, including in Burma, Bosnia, Estonia and Zimbabwe, and now Tunisia and Egypt."

Ed Pilkington, et al., of the Guardian: "Colin Powell, the US secretary of state at the time of the Iraq invasion, has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein's bio-weapons capability. Responding to the Guardian's revelation that the source, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi or "Curveball" as his US and German handlers called him, admitted fabricating evidence of Iraq's secret biological weapons programme, Powell said that questions should be put to the US agencies involved in compiling the case for war." CW: see yesterday's Commentariat for video & a link to the original Guardian story.

Steven Mufson of the Washington Post: "Interest payments on the national debt will quadruple in the next decade and every man, woman and child in the United States will be paying more than $2,500 a year to cover for the nation's past profligacy, according to figures in President Obama's new budget plan." ...

... E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post: "I hope [President] Obama has the spine to keep calling the bluff of the deficit hawks until they get serious about changing the politics of deficit reduction. We can't afford another 30 years of fiscal evasion."

Mark Arsenault & Christopher Rowland of the Boston Globe: "Senator Scott Brown reveals in his soon-to-be-released autobiography that he was sexually abused by a male camp counselor and suffered repeated beatings at the hands of a stepfather. His book, to be released on Monday ..., vividly details a childhood in Wakefield and other Massachusetts towns that was punctuated by violence, family strife, and petty crime":

Former Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold founded "Progressives United" yesterday:

... You can join up by going to his site, which is at least partially down because it got so many hits.

Local News

Gail Collins: Former First Lady Barbara Bush pleads against spending cuts to education in Texas, which has fallen to "47th in the nation in literacy, 49th in verbal SAT scores and 46th in math scores," but Gov. Rick Perry & Republicans in the state legislature have no intention of heeding Bush's warnings. "Besides reducing services to children, Texas is doing as little as possible to help women — especially young women — avoid unwanted pregnancy."

Right Wing World

Forget Motherhood & Apple Pie. Jay Newton-Small of Time: "This morning, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America that the tax code needs to be changed – citing the example that the Internal Revenue Service recently deemed breast pumps a valid medical deduction. (This is related to Bachmann's assertion that First Lady Michelle Obama's encouragement of mothers to breast-feed in order to prevent childhood obesity is the latest example of the “nanny state,” though the IRS and Obama acted independently of one another.)" With video.

A. G. Sulzberger of the New York Times: "A state bill to expand the definition of justifiable homicide in South Dakota to include killing someone in the defense of an unborn child was postponed indefinitely Wednesday after an uproar over whether the legislation would put abortion providers at greater risk."

Dave Leach, an Iowa anti-abortion activist, praised the bill, saying it could end abortions in South Dakota by scaring away doctors or by establishing grounds for someone to kill those who stay. 'There may be something I'm overlooking, but from all appearances, this bill would certainly justify an individual taking the life of an abortionist in order to save human lives,' he said. ...

... As Amy Sullivan of Time points out, "... whether or not the bill actually would permit such acts hardly matters if anti-abortion activists think that it does. "

News Ledes

Undisclosed Locations. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "... law enforcement officers are searching for Democratic senators boycotting a Senate vote on Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair plan Thursday in an attempt to bring the lawmakers to the floor to allow Republicans to act on the bill. One Democratic senator said that he believed most of the members of his caucus have gone to another state...."...

... AP: "Wisconsin lawmakers are prepared to pass a momentous bill that would strip government workers of nearly all collective bargaining rights over the loud objections of thousands of teachers, students and prison guards who packed the Capitol for two days of protests. The nation's most aggressive anti-union proposal has been speeding through the Legislature since Republican Gov. Scott Walker introduced it a week ago." CW: also, see yesterday's ledes.

Al Jazeera: "Troops and tanks have locked down the Bahraini capital of Manama on Thursday after riot police swinging clubs and firing tear gas smashed into demonstrators in a pre-dawn assault, killing at least four people. Hours after the attack on Manama's main Pearl Roundabout, the military announced a ban on gatherings, saying on state TV that it had 'key parts' of the capital under its control." ...

... AP: "The Obama administration is expressing alarm over a violent crackdown on anti-government protesters in key U.S. ally Bahrain and urging authorities there to use restraint. The State Department said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Bahrain's foreign minister on Thursday to register Washington's 'deep concern' about overnight developments." ...

... New York Times: "Without warning, hundreds of heavily armed riot police officers rushed into Pearl Square [in Manama, Bahrain] early Thursday, firing shotguns, tear gas and concussion grenades at the thousands of demonstrators who were sleeping there as part of a widening protest against the nation’s absolute monarchy. At least five people died, some of them reportedly killed in their sleep with scores of shotgun pellets to the face and chest, according to a witness and three doctors who received the dead and at least 200 wounded at a hospital here."

AP: "Libyan protesters seeking to oust longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi defied a crackdown and took to the streets in four cities Thursday on what activists have dubbed a 'day of rage,' amid reports that at least 14 demonstrators have been killed in clashes with pro-government forces."

New York Times: "A provincial court gave the Pakistani government three weeks on Thursday to decide whether the American official in custody for killing two Pakistanis has diplomatic immunity, a decision that amounts to a slap to the United States.... The decision came a day after a whirlwind visit by Senator John Kerry who tried to find a quick resolution to the case which has severely damaged relations between the two countries and exposed the weakness of the pro-American government headed by President Asif Ali Zardari."

Washington Post: "CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress on Wednesday that if Osama bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri is captured they will be held by the military and probably will be sent to Guantanamo Bay, the first time any senior administration official has outlined a detention plan for al-Qaeda's top leadership."

"The Great Game"

Maureen Dowd goes to the theater to see “The Great Game,” a seven-hour play that uses "real and fictional characters, actual transcripts and imagined scenes, to trace the trellis of foreign involvement in Afghanistan from 1842 to the present."

Here's my comment, scotched again by the Times moderators:

Herman Melville saw the folly of outsiders trying to take Afghanistan. Early in his most famous book, Moby Dick, published in 1851 (nine years after the 16,000 Brits & Indians lost their lives near Jalalabad), there is a scene in which the narrator Ishmael takes account of his place in the world:

 And doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

Here, Ishmael imagines the headlines:

     Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States

     Whaling Voyage by One Ishmael

     Bloody Battle in Affghanistan

Only the headline that describes Ishmael's whaling voyage is fictional. Throughout recorded history, many have tried to conquer Afghanistan, and many have taken it for a short time -- from Darius I in about 550 B.C.E., to Alexander the Great (probably the greatest military leader in history, Alexander took three years to conquer Afghanistan) to various Eastern tribes, to the Moors in the 7th century C.E. to the Turks in the 10th century C.E., etc., etc., to the British in the 19th century to the Soviets in the 20th. The Afghans usually just wait 'em out & commit sabotage & other mayhem in the waiting. They'll do the same with us.

I'm aware that the justification for continuing the Longest War in Afghanistan is our fear of a nuclear Pakistan. But might I suggest that subduing Afghanistan & propping up one more hated dictator (who is stealing millions of U.S. tax dollars) is not the best foreign policy strategy for deterring Pakistani nukes? Let's save our soldiers' lives and direct our attentions, through diplomatic negotiations and other means, to the source of the problem.

The Graveyard of Empires is not the best place for the United States to die.

The Commentariat -- February 16

They had to know. But the attitude was sort of, ‘If you’re doing something wrong, we don’t want to know.’ -- Bernie Madoff, about the banks & hedge funds with whom he did business ...

... Diana Henriques of the New York Times: "Mr. Madoff ... maintained that family members knew nothing about his crimes. But during a private two-hour interview... on Tuesday, and in earlier e-mail exchanges, he asserted that unidentified banks and hedge funds were somehow 'complicit' in his elaborate fraud, an about-face from earlier claims that he was the only person involved.... He also claimed he had been helping the court-appointed trustee who is seeking to recover lost billions on behalf of his swindled clients."

Mark Landler & David Sanger of the New York Times: "The Obama administration has responded quite differently to two embattled governments that have beaten protesters and blocked the Internet in recent days to fend off the kind of popular revolt that brought down Egypt’s government. With Iran..., the administration has all but encouraged protesters to take to the streets. With Bahrain, a strategically important ally across the Persian Gulf from Iran, it has urged its king to address the grievances of his people."

They Knew. Jay Solomon of the Wall Street Journal: "Early last year, a group of U.S.-based human-rights activists, neoconservative policy makers and Mideast experts told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that what passed for calm in Egypt was an illusion.... The[ir] correspondence was part of a string of warnings passed to the Obama administration arguing that Egypt, heading toward crisis, required a vigorous U.S. response. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's 82-year-old dictator, was moving to rig a string of elections, they said. Egypt's young population was growing more agitated. The bipartisan body that wrote to Mrs. Clinton, the Egypt Working Group, argued that the administration wasn't fully appraising the warning signs in Egypt."

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, known to the CIA as the informant "Curveball," was the single source for the main justification the U.S. used to initiate the 2003 Iraq War. In his famous 2003 address before the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell cited Curveball's claims as his primary evidence that Iraq was holding biochemical weapons. Now al-Janabi, a chemical engineer by training, admits that he made up the whole story in an effort to topple Saddam Hussein. BTW, the CIA never talked to al-Janabi before Powell made his WMD claim; all of Curveball's conversations were with Germany's secret service, the BND. Here's the print story -- and the interview:

Ashley Parker of the New York Times: "A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses the Department of Defense of allowing a military culture that fails to prevent rape and sexual assault, and of mishandling cases that were brought to its attention, thus violating the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. The suit — brought by 2 men and 15 women, both veterans and active-duty service members — specifically claims that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, 'ran institutions in which perpetrators were promoted and where military personnel openly mocked and flouted the modest Congressionally mandated institutional reforms.'”

NEW. Joe Klein of Time: because it is technically an earmark, "Teach for America, the brilliant program that has sent tens of thousands of elite college graduates to work in the poorest, toughest schools, is about to get stiffed by the federal government."

Lisa Mascaro of the Los Angeles Times: "Criticism mounted at the start of a House debate [on the FY 2012 budget] as Democrats took aim at GOP plans to maintain tax breaks for oil companies and the wealthy while cutting medical research, community policing and funding for 'Sesame Street,' calling the proposal a 'mindless' exercise that would do little to address the nation's $1.5-trillion deficit." ...

... Glenn Thrush of Politico: for Congressional Democrats, President Obama's omission of entitlement cuts "was a gift, in their view, the setting of a political trap for a Republican Party divided between conservatives pushing for major changes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and a GOP leadership wary of the political peril of tinkering with Americans’ retirement security."

If some of those jobs are lost, so be it. -- John Boehner, on job losses resulting from House budget cuts

The Million-Man Unemployment Budget. Dana Milbank writes that about 650,000 government jobs would be lost under the House budget plan & 325,000 indirect support jobs would go, too. "... the cuts Boehner and his caucus propose would cause a shock to the economy that would slow, if not reverse, the recovery.... The dirty truth is that a stall in the recovery would bring political benefits to the Republicans in the 2012 elections.... 'So be it' is callous but rational." Oh, and BTW, Boehner plans to protect his home state of Ohio from job losses: "Rather than take a so-be-it attitude toward jobs his constituents may hold, he's acking an earmark-like provision in the spending legislation to keep funding the unneeded GE engine, [which is built in Ohio]." ...

... UPDATE. Mark Thompson of Time: "... The House ... voted 233-198 against $450 million in funding for a second engine for the F-35 warplane.... The move is a blow to House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, whose state would garner thousands of jobs from building the engine." Defense Secretary Robert Gates has repeatedly said he didn't want the project to go forward. ...

... NEW. CW: for his insupportable claim that President Obama added 200,00 federal jobs, I'm giving the Boner a --

     ... According to Ezra Klein -- who delves into facts, the actual number of jobs added isn't even close to Boehner's figure, & in fact the federal government is shrinking jobs by about 4 percent, outside of security & military personnel. Klein writes, "... the jobs that Boehner is deriding are, broadly speaking, jobs related to the military and homeland security, with perhaps a few more in the Justice and State departments. But the money Boehner is cutting from the government -- which is what his comment is in reference to -- comes from non-security discretionary spending. So the new jobs are coming in the part of the budget Boehner is protecting, not the part he's cutting." ...

     ... Oops, looks as if PolitiFact, the originator of the Pants-on-Fire designation beat me to it. They gave Boehner a mere --

... Mike Hall of the AFL-CIO: "Like their colleagues on the state level, Boehner and his Republican cohorts are trying to demonize and dehumanize public workers, in this case federal employees from aviation workers and food safety inspectors to nurses, immigration officers and teachers. They claim they are going after a so-called “bloated” federal workforce. But the Washington Post reported last September there were only 20,000 more federal employees under Obama in 2010 than under George W. Bush in 2002—and that, on a per capita basis (federal employees per 1,000 Americans), it’s at the lowest level at least since 1962." ...

... Steve Benen: "That's a rather extraordinary acknowledgement. Confronted with accusations that his own budget plan would kill jobs, Boehner not only conceded that the charges are correct, he went on to say he simply doesn't care." ...

... Democracy for America invites you to take on Speaker Boehner & "Join the campaign to stop cuts to vital programs, invest in jobs, and make sure everyone pays their fair share."

What we have is $1.6 trillion in new tax increases, $8.7 trillion in new spending. He's going to be adding $13 trillion to the debt over the course of his budget.
-- Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Budget Committee, chair on President Obama's proposed budget ...

... Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: "It's bad enough to toss around 10-year figures. And Obama could be faulted for not submitting a budget that gets federal government spending back to the 20.3 percent of the gross domestic product. But to demand that he meet a standard no modern president has ever met -- and then label it as 'new spending' -- is highly misleading."

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a Washington Post op-ed: "Democratic governments, including our closest allies, do not always agree with us. Yet they share our most fundamental belief -- that people must be governed by consent. It is as true today as it was when I said in 2005 that the fear of free choices can no longer justify the denial of liberty. We have only one choice: to trust that in the long arc of history those shared beliefs will matter more than the immediate disruptions that lie ahead and that, ultimately, our interests and ideals will be well served." ...

... Craig Whitlock & Kathy Lally of the Washington Post: "Egypt geared up Tuesday for a breakneck rush to democracy as its military rulers vowed to hand authority to an elected civilian government in six months and ordered legal experts to draft a revised constitution in 10 days. The announcements are the latest signal that Egypt's generals are serious in their pledges to quickly transform the country and relinquish the power they seized when President Hosni Mubarak resigned last week after 18 days of street protests." ...

... How'd They Do That? James Glanz & John Markoff of the New York Times: "For all the Internet’s vaunted connectivity, the Egyptian government commanded powerful instruments of control: it owns the pipeline [CW: it's a series of tubes!] that carry information across the country and out into the world. Internet experts say similar arrangements are more common in authoritarian countries than is generally recognized."

Here's something that will cheer you up: the President & Mrs. Obama honor the 2010 Medal of Freedom winners. CW: I used to know one of the winners, so I was immensely pleased:

Here's a list of the recipients. Here are brief bios of the recipients.

Local News

More on America's Worst Governor from Michael Grunwald of Time: "Florida Governor Rick Scott just killed the Obama administration's marquee high-speed rail project, giving up a whopping $2.4 billion in federal funds for a Tampa-Orlando bullet train. This was the nation's most shovel-ready high-speed project, and the state wasn't required to spend a dime to build it; running through the heart of the politically sensitive I-4 corridor, it had bipartisan support in South Florida, where it was seen as a precursor to a long-awaited Orlando-Miami line." CW: a reminder to Floridians: Scott cannot be impeached.

Today We Are All Cheeseheads. WTAQ, Green Bay, Wisconsin: "Present and former Green Bay Packers are among those urging the Legislature to reject Governor Scott Walker’s proposed union cutbacks.... They called the right to negotiate wages and benefits, most of which Walker would take away, a, 'fundamental underpinning of our middle class.' And they said the current setup has worked for Wisconsin since the 1930’s."

News Ledes

New York Times: thousands of angry public workers stormed the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin, as new Republican Gov. Scott Walker "forge[d] ahead with the plans that had set off the uprising: He wants to require public workers to pay more for their health insurance and pensions, effectively cutting the take-home pay of many by around 7 percent. He also wants to weaken most public-sector unions by sharply curtailing their collective bargaining rights." ...

... Wisconsin State Journal: "Schools and teachers were a central focus at a third day of protests at the Capitol on Wednesday as Madison teachers and students joined thousands of public union workers to blast a plan to strip them of collective bargaining rights. The Madison district canceled school Wednesday after nearly half the district's 2,600 union teachers had coordinated a sickout by late Tuesday."

New York Times: "Funds belonging to the family of Hosni Mubarak, the former Egyptian president, or his senior ministers have been discovered in Switzerland, a Swiss government official said Wednesday. But the official declined to specify how much money had been identified or who controlled the account."

New York Times: "The Federal Reserve revealed Wednesday that its policy makers had substantially upgraded their forecasts for how much the United States economy will grow this year, even though they expect that unemployment will remain painfully high for some time."

New York Times: in Manama, Bahrain, "... hundreds of people carried pro-democracy protests into a third straight day on Wednesday, joining a procession to mourn a demonstrator killed in a clash with security forces.... Around 2,000 people camped out at the major road junction in the city center demanding a change in the government of this strategically-placed Persian Gulf kingdom that is home to the United States Navy’s 5th Flee. Police massed nearby but did not intervene...." ...

... AP: "Yemen sent 2,000 policemen into the streets of the capital on Wednesday to try to put down days of protests against the president of 32 years, a key U.S. ally in battling al-Qaida. The policemen, including plainclothes officers, fired in the air and blocked thousands of students at Sanaa University from joining thousands of other protesters elsewhere in the capital who were holding a sixth straight day of demonstrations." ...

... New York Times: "The wave of turmoil and protests sweeping the Middle East appeared on Wednesday to have reached Libya, ruled for four decades by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, according to news reports." ...

... New York Times: "A day after the largest antigovernment protests in Iran in more than a year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday dismissed opposition attempts to revive mass demonstrations as certain to fail, while members of the Iranian Parliament clamored for the two most prominent leaders of the protest movement to be executed." ...

... AP: "Labor unrest ... flared again Wednesday in Egypt despite a warning by the ruling military that protests and strikes were hampering efforts to improve the economy and return life to normal."