The Commentariat -- February 13

Yesterday, I linked to Joby Warrick's fascinating WashPo account of the behind-the-scenes workings of the Obama Administration as it wrestled with the rapidly-changing situation in Egypt. Today, here's an account by Helene Cooper and others of the New York Times: "A president who himself is often torn between idealism and pragmatism was navigating the counsel of a traditional foreign policy establishment led by Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Biden and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, against that of a next-generation White House staff who worried that the American preoccupation with stability could put a historic president on the wrong side of history." ...

... CW: if these reporters' accounts are relatively true -- and remember, they are stories that Administration CYA sources are spoonfeeding the media after Mubarak's unceremonious departure -- then we are better off with Obama as President than we would have been with Hillary Clinton. This sort of difference between Obama & Clinton, again -- if true -- is the reason I favored Obama over Clinton in the primary. ...

... Nicholas Kristof: "Even in the last month, we sometimes seemed as out of touch with the [Middle East] region’s youth as a Ben Ali or a Mubarak." Kristof "suggest[s] four lessons to draw from our mistakes." ...

... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "For Mr. Obama, the challenge may be to define the spread of liberty and democracy as a nonpartisan American goal, removing it from the political debate that has surrounded it in recent years." ...

... Mubarak Doesn't Think Much of Arab Democracy. Reuters: "Hosni Mubarak had harsh words for the United States and what he described as its misguided quest for democracy in the Middle East in a telephone call with an Israeli lawmaker [former cabinet minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer] a day before he quit as Egypt's president." ...

... Neil MacFarquhar, et al., of the New York Times: "Now with Hosni Mubarak out of power, there are growing calls for an accounting [of his finances] to begin. Within hours of Mr. Mubarak’s resignation on Friday, Swiss officials ordered all banks in Switzerland to search for — and freeze — any assets of the former president, his family or close associates. In Egypt, opposition leaders vowed to press for a full investigation of Mr. Mubarak’s finances. Tracing the money is likely to be difficult because business in Egypt was largely conducted in secret among a small group connected to Mr. Mubarak."

As we salute and we cheer the coming of democracy in Egypt, it is time for democracy to come to our nation’s capital.... Take the opportunity to talk to three people and say, 'We need to bring democracy to the people of the District of Columbia.' -- Vince Gray, Mayor of Washington, D.C. (Via Ben Smith)

Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "A week from Tuesday, when the Supreme Court returns from its midwinter break and hears arguments in two criminal cases, it will have been five years since Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken during a court argument." ...

... CW: I personally dislike Harvard Law Prof. Noah Feldman, because I think he's an insufferably pompous ass, but his New York Times op-ed in defense of Supreme Court Justices' politicking is at least an interesting read on the history of Supremely judicial politicking, and it's getting a lot of buzz. Update: as reader Jim T. points out, "the extension of [Feldman's argument] is the excuse '...everybody does it.'"

Katy Steinmetz of Time: "The Transportation Security Administration ... is field testing a new technology ... called Automatic Target Recognition, or ATR, [which] displays only a generic stick-figure image, rather than the actual outline of the traveler being screened.... An image only pops up if there’s something unusual detected on the body -- otherwise there’s just a big green screen that says 'OK.' ..."

Right Wing News

Boehner Bats for Birthers: says people & members of Congress have a right to be ignorant:

News Ledes

New York Times: "A lawyer for victims of sexual abuse by priests says he plans to seek depositions from Archbishop Timothy R. Dolan and other church officials over the lawyer’s accusations that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee, while Archbishop Dolan was its leader, moved $130 million off its books to avoid paying abuse claims."

Washington Post: "President Obama will ... propos[e] sharp cuts of his own in a fiscal 2012 budget blueprint that aims to trim record federal deficits by $1.1 trillion over the next decade. Obama would reach his target in part by raising taxes, an idea that Republicans refuse to consider. But two-thirds of the savings would come from spending cuts that are draconian by Democratic standards and take aim at liberal priorities, such as a popular low-income heating assistance program and community development block grants. Obama also targets the Pentagon ... by adopting $78 billion in savings proposed by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. ...

... AP: "An administration official says President Barack Obama is proposing to cut $100 billion over a decade from the Pell Grant program through belt-tightening, but use the savings to keep the maximum college financial aid award at $5,550."

AP: "Egypt's military leaders dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution Sunday, meeting two key demands of protesters.... The caretaker government held its first meeting since the president was ousted and before it began, workers removed a giant picture of Mubarak from the meeting room." New York Times story here. ...

... Al Jazeera: "Scuffles have broken out in Cairo's Tahrir Square as soldiers tried to remove activists from the epicentre of Egypt's uprising which resulted in the president stepping down. Hundreds of protesters remained in the square on Sunday and organisers said they would not leave until more of their demands are met. Meanwhile, normality was slowly returning to the rest of Egypt, at the start of the first working day since Hosni Mubarak was toppled during the weekend." AP story here. ...

... (London) Telegraph: "Hosni Mubarak used the 18 days it took for protesters to topple him to shift his vast wealth into untraceable accounts overseas, Western intelligence sources have said.

... AP: "Yemeni police have clashed with anti-government protesters demanding political reform and the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Several thousand protesters, many of them university students, tried to reach the central square in the capital of Sanaa on Sunday, but were pushed back by police using clubs. It was the third straight day of anti-government protests."

... New York Times: "The Palestinian leadership announced Saturday that it planned to hold presidential and parliamentary elections by September, apparently a response to the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt calling for greater democracy and government accountability." ...

... AP: "Bahrain's leaders promised Sunday to expand media freedoms in another apparent attempt to quell plans for the first major anti-government protests in the Gulf since the uprising in Egypt. The tiny kingdom of Bahrain is among the most politically volatile in the Gulf and holds important strategic value for the West as the home as the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet." ...

... AP: "Heavily outnumbered by riot police, thousands of Algerians defied government warnings and dodged barricades to rally in their capital Saturday, demanding democratic reforms a day after mass protests toppled Egypt's autocratic ruler." ...

     ... (London) Telegraph: "Internet providers were shut down and Facebook accounts deleted across Algeria on Saturday as thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators were arrested in violent street demonstrations."

AP: "US researchers said Friday they have found that people who used two specific varieties of pesticide were 2.5 times as likely to develop Parkinson's disease. The pesticides, paraquat and rotenone, are not approved for house and garden use."

Familiar Bedfellows

Frank Rich: Irving Picard, the special bankruptcy trustee for the Bernie Madoff estate, may yet prove to be the man who exposes Wall Street -- and in particular, JP Morgan Chase -- for their criminal (or at least actionable) misdeeds that created the financial crisis. And Jamie Dimon, Chase's CEO is "sick of" the "constant refrain" of people badmouthing bankers.

Here's my response to Rich's column:

There’s a good reason Bernie Madoff is the only financier doing time. Sen. Dick Durbin explained it back in April 2009 when he tried unsuccessfully, at the height of the financial crisis, to get mild bankruptcy reform through the Senate:

And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.

 It is hardly surprising that the Congress is underfunding the S.E.C. – they don’t want the S.E.C. catching any big-time crooks. Those crooks are Congress’s bread-and-butter.

But the Congress needn’t have worried. Just as in the days when No One Would Listen to whistleblower Harry Markopolos, the S.E.C. is still pretty much sitting on its hands. Every once in a while, they nab some small-time (by Wall Street standards) crook in a $2,000 suit, but they keep their hands off the big boys. After all, the S.E.C. – in fact, all of the so-called “regulatory agencies” – are beholden to the crooks, too. Most of the high-ranking regulators come from Wall Street, and after they do their “public service” stint, they’ll be right back on the Street, raking in the big bucks.  Just yesterday, Eric Dash of the Times reported that "Joseph Jiampietro, one of the government’s top deal makers during the financial crisis, has joined Goldman Sachs as a senior investment banker covering the financial services industry...." Dash describes Jiampietro as the FDIC's "main liason to hedge funds and broader Wall Street community,” and he adds, “Mr. Jiampietro is the latest in a parade of top federal official to leave Washington for Wall Street." Prior to "his stint in Washington," Jiampietro was an investment banker. Do you really think Mr. Jiampietro's "stint in Washington" had anything to do with public service?

The chair of the S.E.C. – Mary Schapiro – has a long history as a regulator, beginning way back in the days when Ronald Reagan appointed her to sit on the S.E.C. You might think that would make her a tough cookie. Not really. Like the rest of her regulator colleagues, she’s in it for the dough. Back in 2008, her last year as head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street’s (ha ha ha) self-policing arm, Schapiro hauled in compensation of $3.3 million. According to Wikipedia, “on departure from FINRA, she received additional lump sum retirement benefit payments that brought her total package in 2008 to $8,985,334 (about the same as Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein made in that year.”

You might suppose that kind of payout would raise eyebrows in the Senate, which had to “advise & consent” to Schapiro's appointment to head the S.E.C. After all, the Senate regularly puts on hold for months or even years confirmation votes for minor appointments. But, no, in the wake of her big payoff and again during the height of the financial crisis, the Senate cleared Schapiro with a voice vote. The Senate in its wisdom Dr. Schapiro would follow that part of the Hippocratic Oath that reads “first, do not harm.” Just think of the great job Schapiro will get with all those marketable “on-the-job” skills she’s acquired at the S.E.C.

Which, to follow Frank’s structure, brings us back to Bernie Madoff. It is hardly surprising that Irving Picard is the prime mover in connecting the dots between Madoff and his enablers at JPMorgan Chase. Despite Mr. Markopolos’ many pleas to the S.E.C. and the extensive documentation he sent them, it wasn’t the S.E.C. that brought down Madoff. It was Madoff’s own sons who told the F.B.I. that their father was running a Ponzi scheme. Where was the S.E.C.? They had previously “investigated” Bernie Madoff. They didn't find a thing. They wouldn’t, would they?

The Commentariat -- February 12

** As the Worm Turned. Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "Mubarak's defiant speech - described by some U.S. officials as bordering on delusional - was a final, wild plot twist in a saga that had played out in Egypt and Washington over the past 18 days. The likelihood of Mubarak's departure alternately rose and dipped as U.S. military officers and diplomats quietly worked with their Egyptian counterparts in a search for peaceful resolution to the country's worst unrest in six decades." CW: Warrick's report reads like a thriller. ...

Kareem Fahim & David Kilpatrick of the New York Times on Egypt -- and the Arab world -- the day after Mubarak's forced resignation.

... Tom Shanker & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times attempt to profile the two Egyptian military officers who will probably lead the government: Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi & Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan. Not very attractive portraits. ...

... Marcus Baram of the Huffington Post on how the Mubarak family acquired its billions.

Bob Herbert: "As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States.... We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only."

Obviously, Gibbs's departure is not the biggest one today.
-- Barack Obama

Dana Milbank on Robert Gibbs' testy tenure as President Obama's press secretary. Yesterday was Gibbs' last day on the job.

CW: President Obama is ready, willing & able to conspire with Republicans and ConservaDems in Congress to cut Social Security benefits. If you don't think so, read this post by Susan Madrak of Crooks and Liars; she heavily cites a Wall Street Journal article which is firewalled.

Eric Lipton & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: a group of firms that indirectly worked for the Bank of America & the Chamber of Commerce proposed to make misrepresentations to discredit and/or to blackmail their critics. BoA and the Chamber claim they never knew a thing about it. WikiLeaks, Glenn Greenwald and Think Progress were among their Targets. ...

... Greenwald has a thorough analysis of how these saboteurs work and he explains how the Department of Justice figures into the picture: "... the firms involved here are large, legitimate and serious, and do substantial amounts of work for both the U.S. Government and the nation's largest private corporations....  Moreover, these kinds of smear campaigns are far from unusual....  And perhaps most disturbing of all, Hunton & Williams [the law firm which represents BoA & which received the proposals] was recommended to Bank of America's General Counsel by the Justice Department -- meaning the U.S. Government is aiding Bank of America in its defense against/attacks on WikiLeaks." ...

... Lee Fang describes the proposed attacks on Think Progress: "ThinkProgress has learned that a law firm representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ... is working with [a] set of 'private security' companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents, including ThinkProgress, with a surreptitious sabotage campaign."

Ezra Klein: "... the House GOP leadership has little sway and less control over the rank-and-file. The Republican Study Committee seems more powerful than the Republican leadership at this point. The budget proposal produced by Rep. Jim Jordan won out over the one favored by Rep. Paul Ryan.... I'd say the odds of a government shutdown -- either over cuts or the debt ceiling -- just went up dramatically."

Susan Stellin of the New York Times: "... in the wake of the furor last fall over pat-downs and body scanners, several industry organizations are working on proposals to overhaul security checkpoints to provide more or less scrutiny based on the risk profile of each traveler. While the proposals are in the early stages, they represent a growing consensus around a concept that has the support of John S. Pistole, the head of the Transportation Security Administration: divide travelers into three groups — trusted, regular or risky — and apply different screening techniques based on what is known about the passengers." CW: this story is several days old, but an old friend of mine, who is cited in the article, just brought it to my attention. 

The Revolving Door Keeps on Revolving. Eric Dash of the New York Times: "Joseph Jiampietro, one of the government’s top deal makers during the financial crisis, has joined Goldman Sachs as a senior investment banker covering the financial services industry...." He was the FDIC's "main liason to hedge funds and broader Wall Street community.... Mr. Jiampietro is the latest in a parade of top federal official to leave Washington for Wall Street." (Emphasis mine.) Prior to "his stint in Washington," he was an investment banker. CW: why do I think Mr. Jiampietro's "stint in Washington" had nothing to do with public service?

News Ledes

Washington Post: "Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) won the always-anticipated, rarely predictive presidential straw poll Saturday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, but he did so with less than a third of the vote.... Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney came in second with about 23 percent. Beyond that the vote splintered, with no potential candidate rising above the single digits." ...

AP: "Protesters, still partying over their victory in pushing Mubarak out, now pressed for a voice in guiding their country's move to democracy." ...

... AP: "Egypt's military rulers have promised the country will abide by its international agreements, a nod to allay concerns that Egypt's peace deal with Israel could be threatened following the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. The military has also asked the current government, appointed by Mubarak, to continue operating until a new one is formed. It also says it is committed to eventually handing over power to an elected administration." ...

... Los Angeles Times: "Across the Middle East, [Egypt's] euphoria was contagious. Young men waved flags through the streets of Ramallah in the West Bank, spontaneous rallies broke out at the Egyptian Embassy in Jordan, and people across the region ripped through the contact lists on their cellphones to share an empowering sense of incredulity, followed by possibility, that accompanied the news." ...

... Washington Post: "Even as they celebrated their triumph over a dictator, many of Egypt's revolutionaries vowed Saturday to continue their peaceful occupation of Tahrir Square, saying their demands for democracy and accountability were still unmet."

New York Times: "With the government likely to bump up against its $14.3 trillion borrowing limit sometime between April 5 and May 31, and a difficult drama about to play out in Congress, Treasury officials are trying to buy as much time as they can to avoid a default." They are taking a series of emergency steps "which could, in theory, push back the projected date for hitting the debt limit by as much as eight weeks, possibly into July."

New York Times: "Citing Wisconsin’s gaping budget shortfall for this year and even larger ones expected in the years ahead, [Republican] Gov. Scott Walker proposed a sweeping plan on Friday to cut benefits for public employees in the state and to take away most of their unions’ ability to bargain. The proposal ... is expected to receive support next week in the State Legislature...."