Paul Krugman points his finger at the ever-more-visible source of the problem. Our economy is extremely fragile and we are all about to pay the price–we’ll not all of us . . .

Now the bill is coming due, and almost everyone - that is, almost everyone except the people responsible - is having to pay.

[The] people who should have been alert to the dangers, and taken precautionary measures, instead blithely assured Americans that everything was fine, and even encouraged them to take out risky mortgages. Yes, Alan Greenspan, that means you.

But another part of the answer lies in what hasn’t happened to the men on that Fortune cover — namely, they haven’t been forced to give back any of the huge paychecks they received before the folly of their decisions became apparent.

Around 25 years ago, American business — and the American political system — bought into the idea that greed is good. Executives are lavishly rewarded if the companies they run seem successful: last year the chief executives of Merrill and Citigroup were paid $48 million and $25.6 million, respectively.

According to this post at Alternet, there are many forms of rampant self-indulgence.  The GOP specializes in the most pernicious forms:

While the culture at large was adjusting to the idea that families don’t all look the same and that private sexual morality was not the business of the state, the decadent economic elite and right wing ideologues had systematically defined deviancy down to the point where Moynihan’s deviant “altruism” can be illustrated as giving bonuses to workers who denied cancer patients their medicine; his deviant “opportunism” is seen as giving hundreds of millions of dollars to failed business leaders who lost their companies billions; and his deviant “normalizing” can be observed as society tossing aside its taboo against government-sanctioned torture.

If you think it’s difficult to read about the way America is wasting lives in Iraq, it’s just the beginning.  In an article entitled “The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush,” Vanity Fair has examined the ways in which the Bush Administration has wrecked the American economy.  There is lots of bad news to share, including this:

Think of the interest we are paying, year after year, on the almost $4 trillion of increased debt burden—even at 5 percent, that’s an annual payment of $200 billion, two Iraq wars a year forever. Think of the taxes that future governments will have to levy to repay even a fraction of the debt we have accumulated. And think of the widening divide between rich and poor in America, a phenomenon that goes beyond economics and speaks to the very future of the American Dream.

Joseph Stiglitz, the author of this article, is the former chief economist of the World Bank and a Nobel laureate.  On the heels of this scathing report, consider this additional article reporting near-panic in light of recent Congressional testimony by Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke.

Whenever we take the time, we are better able to see that all issues are anchored by deep issues.   That’s the kind of day it was for me today. 

I’m in Washington D.C., attending the Consumer Rights Litigation Conference sponsored by the National Consumer Law Center.   NCLC is an invaluable resource for those of us who advocate and litigate for consumer rights.  At one of the afternoon sessions today, I had a chance to hear a panel of consumer advocates discuss recent developments in federal law regarding consumer rights. 

It’s quite depressing, for the most part.  You see, well-monied corporate financial interests own Congress.   Consumer rights are on the ropes.   Many industries are free to lie, cheat, steal and to impose onerous terms on consumers, thanks to the best federal laws money can buy.  They do this through corporate immunity, preemption and the imposition of mandatory binding arbitration before biased arbitrators.  All of these were gifts from Congress in return for huge amounts of money contributed by lobbyists.

I’ve been to Washington D.C. several times before, and I’ve always reveled in the history and the architecture.  

Now, I can’t help but feel ambivalent.  It’s a city awash in immense amounts of corrupt money. 

We are a country that preaches that the People are the government, but that is less true than ever.  If you don’t believe me, just try to call your Congressional representative, mentioning that you are a concerned citizen.  See if you can get five minutes with him or her.  Then offer to contribute $100,000 to his or her next campaign and see what happens. Here’s more proof that our lawmakers have little or no conscience when it comes to bribes:  note last week’s revelation that the head of the Consumer Products Safety Commission sees no problems taking $60,000 in gifts and trips from businesses she is charged with regulating.

Back to NCLC.  Here’s what kind of work NCLC does.  NCLC members represent the interests of un-powerful people (which includes many middle class folks these days).  It provides consumer lawyers like me with information that we need to litigate cases against powerful corporate interests.  I’ve sued predatory lenders that include payday lenders, title lenders and sub-prime mortgage companies; for each of these suits, I’ve drawn upon the guidance of NCLC.  When big corporate interests break state laws, many of them are allowed to hide behind mandatory arbitration clauses that they unilaterally impose upon their customers.  The ability to do this was yet another gift from Congress. 

Before I go any further, let me make one thing clear.  Many consumers plunge themselves into debt irresponsibly and get exactly what they deserve when the debt collector comes calling.  When a people can’t afford medicine for their children, they should never go out and put a big-screen TV on the credit card.  Again, there are many (many) irresponsible consumers.  But not all consumers who struggle financially are irresponsible.  That is why consumer lawyers feel compelled to do the work they do.

NCLC helps me (and other consumer lawyers) by providing an excellent set of legal reference books, updated by practitioners.   They offer advice to those who are new to the consumer law field.   This information is invaluable.  (more…)

The story was published by the Washington Post:

Testimony that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention planned to give yesterday to a Senate committee about the impact of climate change on health was significantly edited by the White House, according to two sources familiar with the documents.

For commentary see this post from Huffpo.

I wish I could have taken credit for writing an article I just read:  The presidential primary scam: Why the game is rigged, and why true democracy is only a secondary factor in the nation’s rush to nominate the next president.   The author is Michael Scherer. Here a taste of the article:

The whole stinking process was designed by dead men in smoky parlors and refined by faceless bureaucrats in hotel conference rooms. It is a nasty brew born of those caldrons of self-interest known as political parties. At every stage, advantage is parceled out like so much magic potion.

. . . This election cycle, a top Democratic candidate shaking someone’s hand in Miami before the end of January is breaking the rules, unless that someone is handing the candidate a check at the same time. To put it another way, Democrats’ communicating with voters has been barred in Florida, but taking money from voters is OK. To put it a third way, the system is not only irrational but offensive to the nation’s most basic values. “The only way that you can hear a candidate campaign is if you are willing to pay a campaign contribution,” explains Steven Geller, Florida’s exasperated state Senate Democratic leader. “It is astounding.”

They don’t teach all of this in school, because even a fourth-grader would get up from his desk and walk out of the classroom in protest.

The devil is in the details and this article provides plenty of details. 

Here a meta-aside.  Have you ever seen a parent dealing with an obstreperous three-year old?  A time-tested parent trick is to offer the child trivial choices, making the child believe that she is empowered with regard to the endeavor (“Would you like to clean your room before lunch or after lunch?”).  The trick is that the choices function as distractions, whereas the basic outcome is fixed from the get go. 

It’s the same thing with voting.   By the time Election Day rolls around, all of the deal-making has already occurred, much of it according to Byzantine political party procedures detailed by this article.  By the way, political parties are not even mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.  Good luck voting for a candidate who doesn’t ally himself with a political party.  The bottom line is that you get to vote for this corporate money corrupted candidate or that corporate money corrupted candidate.  It’s your choice!   That is the essence of the “freedom” to vote, that you have a choice that is not much of a choice at all.  

Why isn’t it a wide open field?  Because the whole process is corrupted by money (And see here and here). And because most highly qualified people want nothing to do with politics. And because even good people can be swift-boated into ignominy.  I recently disparaged the belief in free will.  The faux vote is a good example of how things feel wide open free when they are anything but (I can vote for this candidate or that one or I can throw away my vote on a write-in candidate).  The political system treats adult voters like three-year-olds.  

It takes immoral lawyers to make it all OK, according to this comprehensive article from the NYT.

Glenn Greenwald’s column at Salon.com shows how business is really done in the bowels of Washington D.C.   Yes, it’s always been ugly.  But has it ever been this ugly?

Speaking of the disease of the Washington Establishment, yet another report, this one from the Washington Post, indicates that “Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee have said there is consensus that the [telecom] companies should have some form of relief” for past lawbreaking with regard to allowing the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping on their customers in violation of the law.

The same article details the generally commendable effort of some House Democrats at least to compel the telecoms to disclose what they actually did here, but the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee — the Dianne Feinsteins and Jay Rockefellers — are pronouncing a “consensus” that telecoms should receive amnesty even though they have no idea what the telecoms actually did and have little interest in finding out. I’m in the process of trying to work with the ACLU and other groups and bloggers to determine what, if anything, can be done to derail this absolute travesty, but as is often the case when there is bipartisan Beltway support for some corrupt Establishment-protecting measure, outside pressures are irrelevant.

The behavior of telecoms and their bipartisan cast of lobbyists and advisors, meeting in secret with key Democratic Senators and administration officials to concoct their amnesty scheme, becomes an impenetrable process. This is a perfect microcosm of the Beltway disease.

It’s called the American Dream because “you have to be asleep to believe it.”

I’ve rarely agreed so many times in four short minutes.

Here’s what Edwards had to say on August 23 in New Hampshire: 

Real change starts with being honest — the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It’s rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It’s rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become even wealthier. At the end of the day, it’s rigged by all those who benefit from the established order of things. For them, more of the same means more money and more power. They’ll do anything they can to keep things just the way they are — not for the country, but for themselves.

[The system is] controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water. And it’s perpetuated by a media that too often fawns over the establishment, but fails to seriously cover the challenges we face or the solutions being proposed. This is the game of American politics and in this game, the interests of regular Americans don’t stand a chance.

This is spot on.  But Edwards wasn’t finished, as reported by Alternet:

“Let me tell you one thing I have learned from my experience,” Edwards said last week. “You cannot deal with them on their terms. You cannot play by their rules, sit at their table, or give them a seat at yours. They will not give up their power — you have to take it from them.”

Now we need a dozen other candidates telling it like it is, plus hundreds of elected officials willing to do something about it.  All of that is a long way off.   Edwards’ speech was important, though.  All important journeys begin with a single step. 

This short video is from an antiwar protest covered by the Jackson Hole Planet online.

The topic of usury laws and payday loans arises frequently these days. Payday lenders commonly charge interest rates of 300%, 400% or more on their loans to desperate consumers. Why do I suggest these consumers are desperate? It’s because they are writing postdated checks to payday lenders, agreeing to give up a large chunks of their next paychecks, and paying exorbitant interest rates in the process. How many people who are not financially desperate would be willing to sign away the proceeds of a future paycheck and pay 450% interest for this “privilege”? With repeated real-life scenario as the backdrop, the question often arises: do usury laws exist anymore? This topic has been addressed by Christopher Peterson in a comprehensive law review article entitled “Usury Law, Payday Loans, and Statutory Sleight-Of-Hand: an Empirical Analysis of American Credit Pricing Limits.”

It’s not hard to determine what motivates Peterson’s work. He writes that the American consumer is now dealing with “a new, largely unregulated credit marketplace.” The center of the storm is the payday lending industry which, “despite spending millions on lobbying and public relations, is at the center of an inferno of rage and public controversy.” Peterson takes time to discuss the history of usury laws throughout the history of the American republic. Usury laws, according to Peterson, have “historically been the foremost bulwark shielding consumers from harsh credit practices.” At the time our country declared its independence, no state had an interest of greater than 8%. Benjamin Franklin warned of the social and moral dangers of indebtedness:

The borrower is a slave to the lender, and the debtor to the creditor, disdained the chain, preserve your freedom; and maintain your independency: be industrious and free; be frugal and free.

Peterson writes of a “second phase” of the Republic, starting in the late 1800s, when groups of high-cost lenders known as “loan sharks” charged triple digit interest rates exceeding 500%. The did this through “salary-assignment” schemes that were so devastating to borrowers that the FTC eventually cracked down on them (see CFR 444.2(a)(3)). Another approach to social reform was to “raise the old traditional usury limits to a point where more mainstream financial institutions could profitably land of small amounts to working-class borrowers.” States follow the strategy, typically kept interest rates at between 24 and 42% per annum.

Competition among lenders and aggressive law enforcement worked reasonably well. Things changed again in 1978 with the Supreme Court decision of Marquette National Bank Versus First of Omaha Service Corp., 439 US 299 (1978). In Marquette, the Supreme Court ruled that a national bank lending money across state lines must apply the usury laws of the bank’s home state, rather than the usury laws of the borrower’s state. This decision was based upon the National Bank Act of 1864. The Marquette decision was an invitation for national banks to make a lot of money by relocating to South Dakota or Delaware, states that did not have meaningful usury laws. The result, according to Peterson was “a frenzied race to the bottom and American usury law.” State-chartered banks quickly pressured state legislatures to grant them the same power held by nationally chartered banks in the form of “parity laws.” When the dust settled, what remained was

a grand illusion. Every state in the union, save two, had a relatively aggressive usury law on the books. And yet, even though no legislature had ever passed a law saying as much, the new synthesized usury rule became: any bank can charge any interest rate it wants anywhere it wants. (more…)

It’s another chapter of a disturbing and repeating story: Where good science conflicts with the aims of the Administration, science loses.  Stir in the arrogant ignorance of yet another unqualified Republican political hack.  This story is from today’s Washington Post:

A surgeon general’s report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration’s policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate.

Who kept the report from being published?  William R. Steiger, who has no background in public health.  What qualifications does he have to hold a job running the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services?

Steiger, 37, is a godson of former president George H.W. Bush and the son of a moderate Republican who represented Wisconsin in the House and hired a young Dick Cheney as an intern. The elder Bush appointed Steiger’s mother to the Federal Trade Commission in 1989. A biographical sketch of her on the American Bar Association’s Web site states that Steiger’s parents, now deceased, were “lifelong friends” of many members of the same congressional class, including the Rumsfelds and the Bushes.

Football hero Pat Tillman died a military hero, defending the U.S from terrorism, right?  How convenient.  Or did he die of friendly fire?  It depends on what official version of the story you care to believe.  Tillman’s story reeks of cover-up. 

Now take a look at this evidence.

And now take a look at this interpretation suggesting that Tillman was murdered because he planned to return to the U.S. to speak out again the Iraq occupation.  And then look at this article from SFGate.com.  Here’s an excerpt:

[Tillman] started keeping a journal at 16 and continued the practice on the battlefield, writing in it regularly. (His journal was lost immediately after his death.) [Pat's mother] Mary Tillman said a friend of Pat’s even arranged a private meeting with Chomsky, the antiwar author, to take place after his return from Afghanistan — a meeting prevented by his death. She said that although he supported the Afghan war, believing it justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, “Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq war.”

Businesses are increasingly inserting arbitration provisions into contracts to prohibit the employees and consumers from resolving important disputes in courts of law.  Such arbitration provisions compel the employees and consumers to present his or her case to an “private arbitrator,” who need not even be an attorney.  There is no jury trial.  There is no automatic right to engage in pre-trial discovery.  There is no public access.  There need not even be an in-person hearing (unless you pay extra). The arbitrator often has the right to decide the entire case by merely looking at paperwork and you might not even have a right to be there when it happens.  

If the arbitrator fails to apply the law correctly or if the arbitrator refuses to consider important evidence, too bad.  There is no appeal.  There is no accountability.  Your claim against a big company will simply disappear.  And here’s another huge concern: the big corporations are repeat customers to the big arbitration companies, while you will be a one-time player.  Under these circumstances, who is the arbitrator likely to favor?

Wouldn’t it be terrible if arbitration clauses started showing up everywhere?  Well, they are.  Arbitration clauses are increasingly appearing in consumer and employment contracts. Too often, these clauses take the form of unreadable fine print boilerplate, slapped onto the back of the contract.  Almost no one reads such fine print, yet large corporations are increasingly killing off important legal claims in Court based on that unreadable fine print.  

Powerful corporations increasingly filing “Motions to Compel Arbitration,” asking Courts to throw important cases out of court and into the hands of arbitrators.   The effect?  For too many people, it’s like putting a padlock on the doors to the courthouse.  If this trend keeps up, our courthouses will become empty museums, places where we used to allow citizens to present their grievances against the rich and powerful.

Senator Russ Feingold and Representative Hank Johnson have both filed bills in Congress to restrict the use of arbitration clauses in certain types of contracts. The proposed legislation is entitled the “Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007.” The new law would amend the Federal Arbitration Act. Senator Feingold’s website describes his bill as making sure that Americans are not forced into signing agreements that mandate arbitration:

to resolve employment, consumer, franchise or civil rights disputes. The bicameral Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007 amends the Federal Arbitration Act to make pre-dispute agreements to arbitrate employment, consumer, franchise, or civil rights disputes unenforceable.

The proposed legislation does not prohibit arbitration, but limits it to situations where it is “knowingly and voluntarily” entered by both parties. Limitations are focused on employment, consumer and franchise disputes, as well as “transactions between parties of unequal bargaining power. The proposed legislation would also restrict bans on consumer class actions. The bill seeks to ensure Americans are not forced into mandatory arbitration agreements in employment, consumer, franchise or civil rights disputes.

Groups supporting the Act include the American Association for Justice, Center for Responsible Lending, Consumer Federation of America, Homeowners Against Deficient Dwellings, Home Owners for Better Building, National Association of Consumer Advocates, National Consumer Law Center.

Binding mandatory arbitration is an issue that affects each citizen of each state. Whether you are an employee who is being asked to sign an arbitration agreement even to apply for your job, or if your are taking out a loan, or if your are a franchisee who is required to arbitrate disputes with the franchisor, binding mandatory arbitration is a real problem that can deprive you of your hard-earned money and your legal rights. 

You can step up and do your part to stop binding mandatory arbitration. You can click here to send an email to your representatives and senators. Please take the time to help fight for our right to open, accessible, and accountable justice. For the full text of the House version of the proposed legislation, go here.

In my “other” life, I work as a consumer lawyer.  To learn more about other developments in consumer law, you are welcome to check this Consumer Law Blog (where I am one of several contributors) at my law firm’s website.

A Hindu chaplain was invited to say the opening prayer in the Senate and some christians slipped in to protest, disrupting the prayer, and generally making fools of themselves and presenting the face of their faith which causes those who feel religious belief is something everyone ought to get over and soon to feel more justified in that opinion. The CNN article, with a video, is at this link:

I stumbled across a very old post I made to a philosophy BBS on the subject, and I thought I’d revise it and repost it here. This present a good opportunity. Upon reading it, though, I admit to having a few second thoughts, but one of the joys of having a mind one is unafraid to use is that second, third, and tenth thoughts are part of the fun.

What is Tolerance? Broad question. It might well be the wrong question. The trouble is, like other things people discuss endlessly without resolution, it has as many exceptions as definitions. Tolerance and its parameters goes to the root of our civilization. Not for the reasons we might immediately assume—which is that we have a pluralistic society and the requirement of such is a broader degree of tolerance than what has ordinarily been found in most history—but for more individualized reasons. Because we all are intolerant of something and someone at one time or another, and it is not always wrong of us to be so. When you look at this so-called “pluralistic society” one feature bobs to the surface that doesn’t seem to fit: we’ve never been particularly tolerant. Wave after wave of newcomer has had to go through the same round of bigotry from those of us who consider ourselves “born Americans.” Not everyone, of course, but look at the record. The Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Hispanics (who were first tossed out of their home and in the subsequent decades came back as if they’d never been here before and had to prove they deserved to live here), and on and on. Today it’s Bosnians, Vietnamese, more Chinese, Africans of various nationalities… Those of us with birth certificates claiming we are, right from the get-go, Americans…well, look at the news. What we have entered is a period of enforced public tolerance, in which it is simply uncouth and, in some instances, illegal to express displeasure at the presence of someone Not Us.

Religion may be the last bastion of intolerance, as indicated by the fracas in the Senate. It is arguable that we should tolerate all religious views. If one believes that one’s religion demands that he or she kill those who do not believe the same way, should we tolerate the religion? Traditionally in this country, it is more what someone does than what they believe that causes legal action, but we’ve always questioned that. Look at the lives ruined in the 50s because of a flirtation by some with communism. In most instances, the affair ended, nothing lasting resulted, but because “you attended these meetings” you faced the opprobrium of the community. It’s like a politician having sex with the “wrong person”—years go by, it’s never done again, life goes one, but if someone finds out…

Tolerance follows trends. Sad but true. I know devoutly religious people who now accept gay people on their own merits, but would throw a divorcee out of one of their parties. Consistency there isn’t. That’s trendiness, not genuine, thoughtful tolerance. So let’s try for a definition.

Tolerance means: not making a person suffer for being an individual.

Sounds easy enough on the faced of it, but it has some wrinkles that feed into our current, present-day problems. Legally, we place more importance on actions than intent. Intent becomes important when the severity of an action is in question, but there still must be An Action before—legally—we start in on someone. But as we all know, a single action successfully prosecuted leads often to a label that goes directly to an assumption of future intent. A criminal who has been caught, tried, convicted, and serves his or her sentence finds that full citizenship is never restored. The system expects recidivism and so the balance of that person’s life is constrained by assumptions of possible behavior. (Never mind for the moment the statistics on recidivism—we’re talking about ideals here, and who’s to say that our treatment of these folks isn’t part and parcel of the motivating force behind that recidivism?) Basically, such folks have shown themselves capable of certain behaviors of which the community is intolerant and so become part of a population designated as untrustworthy. On that basis, we do not tolerate them. In some instances, our intolerance goes so far as to bar residency to them in certain areas and to post their names in public, making them pariahs. In some instances, no crime has been committed to engender similar, non-legal actions.

But this has, ultimately, nothing to do with the individual so treated. It has to do with our idea of that individual. It’s a box, wherein we place people to make it easy to deal with the complexities of our so-called pluralistic society. Some people get very, very tired of going through this daily coping with Strange People, and demand that “We Do Something About Them!” Hence protests at prayer meetings. Simpler if such people, who think differently, dress differently, talk differently, pray to a different god, were just Not Here. The Nazis had that idea. The problem is, of course, that we are all Strange People if you dig deep enough. But the urge to Belong causes such denial of self that our individuality turns on itself, like an autoimmune disease, like cancer.

Look at Senator Vitter. One of the loudest advocates of so-called Family Values, and look at this, his name is on the client list of a bordello. To reduce him to the simplest explanation, he so abhors his own inability to be someone else that he seeks to eliminate all possibility that he could ever stray, which means vociferously advocating against lifestyles other than the one to which he wishes to adhere. Take away all the temptation and he won’t “stray” again. It never occurs to someone like that that maybe his own self-abnegation is more a problem than the behaviors he seeks to legislate out of existence. (A less kind explanation is that he belongs to a clique of long tradition which seeks to establish conditions in which the behavior for which he’s been pilloried is available only to a self-selected group of elite, and denied to all those “unwashed” and undeserving. This is not at all uncommon, and seems to follow those who are loudest in their condemnations of the very things they secretly indulge. Besides, to be perfectly open and honest about it would mean their spouses ought to be allowed the same privileges and—dare we say it?–rights. Can’t have that. It would be nice to be done with goose-and-gander crap. Alas.)

So how do we tell if we’re being intolerant of someone just for being an individual? How do we know that our intolerance isn’t justified? Well, try this: if you find that you’re condemning someone based solely on a community standard and only that community rule tells you it’s wrong, then more than likely that standard is wrong.

Pretty broad. But consider. Murder is self-evidently wrong. The violent denial of another individual of the freedoms, liberties, options, and potentials that the murderer then retains and that all people who condemn the murderer retain is obvious self-sustaining in the moral sense. You don’t really need a community standard to tell you this, the standard arises from a clearly recognizable maxim. Likewise, theft, lying, rape, battery….the irony being that sometimes community standards are set up to protect certain kinds of theft, lying, rape, and assault.

But conversely, alternate philosophies are not self-evidently wrong in the same way. The value of them must be weighed through examination, comparison, debate, study….a dialogue must occur.

Alternative economic practices are not self-evidently wrong.

Alternative sexual choices are not self-evidently wrong.

Alternative rituals are not self-evidently wrong.

And yet, community standards are established all the time, depending on where you live, to permit and promote the condemnation of people who embrace one or more of the aforementioned, even if only as ideas.

Why? Is such intolerance justified? It depends on how much you value community standards over individuals. People who adhere to a set of community standards not because they believe in them, but because it is easier, because they cannot or will not think for themselves, or out of fear of being expelled from that community are hypocrites and often moral cowards. Lazy at best. But if Joe Bloe and Jane Plane just want to get along, who is anyone to condemn them for not challenging the status quo in the name of personal conviction? Isn’t life hard enough without throwing ideological self-consistency into the mix? Who can blame a person for not wanting to rock the boat in the cause of philosophical freedom?

The problem here is one of long term moral judgment. If you do not understand the nature of what you believe and merely accept what the community tells you, then when something legitimately dangerous or threatening comes along, how do you tell the difference between it and all the noise that is only your neighbor being intolerant of fashion choices? How do you know how to make choices and judgments about new ideas or protect yourself from con jobs and nonsense posing as Ultimate Truth? If you do not know what it means to Be Tolerant, how will you know when Being Tolerant according to community prescription won’t just lose you your rights to be different? And how will you know the difference between self-defense and bigotry?

It is human nature to fear what is different. It is our responsibility to overcome fear. That axiom, if I may call it such, is, I believe, the seed of true tolerance.

Now here’s the catch—and the reason this is so difficult to manage—Tolerance isn’t a prize you win and then take home like a present. It’s a chore. It’s a challenge. You work at it every day, just as you have to work at being free every day. You die working at it and the job is never done. I think a lot of people sense that and shun it. But there it is. And we have to be willing to turn our backs on the comfort of community if we wish to be tolerant and free. By willing I don’t mean we have to—but if forced to a choice between conscience and community, to opt for community is the first cut in the death of tolerance.

All of your suspicions are true and you can now find them in an article that is intensely compelling and distressing.  It’s the current edition (June 28, 2007) of Rolling Stone.

It’s not every day after all that the leading scientists from 120 nations come together and agree that the entire planet is about to go to hell.  But the Bush administration has never felt bound by the reality-based nature of science–especially when it comes from international experts.  So after the report became public in February, Vice President Dick Cheney took to the airwaves to offer his own, competing assessment of global warming

We’re going to see a big debate on it going forward,” Cheney told ABC news, about “the extent to which it is part of a normal cycle versus the extent to which it’s caused by man.”  We know today, he added, is “not enough to just sort of run out and try to slap together some policy is going to” solve the problem.”  Even former White House insiders were shocked by the vice president’s see-no-evil performance.

The Rolling Stone article argues that the White House has actively worked to distort the findings of climate scientists, playing down the threat of global warming.  This investigation by Rolling Stone goes further, however.  It reveals that

these distortions were sanctioned at the highest levels of our government, and a policy formulated by the vice president, implemented by the White House Council on environmental quality and enforced by none other than Karl Rove.  An examination of thousands of pages of internal documents that the White House has been forced to relinquish under the Freedom of Information Act-as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration scientists and climate-policy officials-confirms that the White House is implemented in industry-formulated disinformation campaign designed to actively mislead the American public on global warming and to forestall limits on climate polluters.

Rolling Stone traces the revolving door through which those who worked for industry polluters have joined and then left the White House. The print version of Rolling Stone offers a telling graphic regarding this industry influence in the White House.  Another graphic in the print version (page 59) Is entitled “Lie by Lie: a Guide to President Bush’s Calculated Deceptions on Global Warming.  Included in that graphic are nine fundamental lies by the White House.  For instance, in February, 2002, Bush announced “we must and we will conserve more in the United States.”  Between 2002 and 2006, however, “Bush slashed funding for federal efficiency programs by nearly one-third.”  Here’s another Bush lie (more…)

This is a detailed article by Expose, starting off with some of the excuses reporters hear:

In 2005, the Associated Press collected and published a list of novel excuses government officials used to deny FOIA requests, many of which failed the “my dog ate my homework” test. The list included, in perhaps a first-of-its-kind denial, a Texas National Guard spokesperson refusing an FOIA request for some of former pilot George W. Bush’s flight records because of the difficulty of searching boxes full of dirt, dead bugs, and rat excrement.

How does the Act really work?

[T]hough the law states that requests be answered within 20 days, there’s a lot of drudgery involved with trying to obtain information through FOIA. Nelson, who was with the investigative units at the LOS ANGELES TIMES and THE WASHINGTON POST before taking her current post at the University of Maryland School of Journalism, describes the process this way: “On paper, you put in a request for documents and wait 20 days for the response. In practice, a request for even simple info can take months or even years.” How can this be? “You’ll get a response in 20 days. It’ll be a one-page letter that predicts how many months it will be until the FOIA office has time to get around to your request. When you finally get the long-awaited envelope, there will be a page or two of non-responsive documents, the rest being withheld under an exemption that you have to spend months fighting.”

Are there any fixes in the works?   Thank goodness for Henry Waxman:

The House bill, championed by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), intends to strengthen FOIA by, among other things, making it easier for requesters to recoup legal fees when they win FOIA cases in court (thus giving agencies less incentive to hold back information they know they’re eventually going to have to give up anyway); penalizing those who don’t respond to FOIA requests within the required 20 days; and “hold[ing] agencies accountable for their decisions by enhancing the authority of the Office of Special Counsel to take disciplinary action against government officials who arbitrarily and capriciously deny disclosure.”

At Salon.com, Glen Greenwald describes it like this:

If even our Beltway media — rather, especially them — argues that criminality by government officials should not be punished, and that light should not be shined on what they do, then pervasive government corruption and deceit are inevitable. That is just obvious. And that is why [Richard] Cohen’s column so perfectly captures what has happened in our country and the truly indispensable role which most of our political press has played in all of it.

Our media stars have not merely stood idly by while our highest government officials engage in endless deceit and corruption. They actively defend it, enable it, justify it, and participate in it. Keeping the lights off is their principal function, one which — with rare and noble exceptions — they perform quite eagerly.

The occasion was the performance of the beltway media during the sentencing of Scooter Libby.  What had Cohen written?

With the sentencing of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Fitzgerald has apparently finished his work, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, to make a mountain out of a molehill. At the urging of the liberal press (especially the New York Times), he was appointed to look into a run-of-the-mill leak and wound up prosecuting not the leaker — Richard Armitage of the State Department — but Libby, convicted in the end of lying. This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off.

The best justice money can buy.   Pretty amazing.   The story was covered on Alternet.org:

The following article is by the lawyers representing the families of four American contractors who worked for Blackwater and were killed in Fallujah. After Blackwater refused to share information about why they were killed, the families were told they would have to sue Blackwater to find out. Now Blackwater is trying to sue them for $10 million to keep them quiet.

Let’s see . . . Blackwater is asked for information by the families of the dead contractors (they were “burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River on March 31, 2004″).   Blackwater refuses to provide the information.  The families sue to obtain the information.  Blackwater loses a series of appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Are the griveing families about to get the information they seek?  Dream on.  Oh, and bring in the heavies to fight the families:

Blackwater quickly adapted its battlefield tactics to the courtroom. It initially hired Fred F. Fielding, who is currently counsel to the President of the United States. It then hired Joseph E. Schmitz as its in-house counsel, who was formerly the Inspector General at the Pentagon. More recently, Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families. To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center.

Blackwater has sued not only the estates of the dead contractors, but also the administrators of the estates, seeking to have them held personally responsible.  What is the real purpose for this suit against the families?

After filing its suit against the dead men’s estates, Blackwater demanded that its claim and the families’ existing lawsuit be handled in a private arbitration. By suing the families in arbitration, Blackwater has attempted to move the examination of their wrongful conduct outside of the eye of the public and away from a jury. This comes at the same time when Congress is investigating Blackwater.

This crisp summary screams U.S. incompentence and corruption.

You’ve got to read this description of the new American embassy under construction in Bagdad (the title: ”The Colossus of Bagdad”).  This monstrous construction project is unbelievably arrogant and excessive.  It will be the largest embassy on the planet.

As an outpost, this vast compound reeks of one thing: imperial impunity. It was never meant to be an embassy from a democracy that had liberated an oppressed land. From the first thought, the first sketch, it was to be the sort of imperial control center suitable for the planet’s sole “hyperpower,” dropped into the middle of the oil heartlands of the globe. It was to be Washington’s dream and Kansas City’s idea of a palace fit for an embattled American proconsul—or a khan.

This is terrific writing characteristic of TomPaine.com.  But this is not just a story about a construction project.  Rather, it is a story of the corrupt leaders of our nation.  This story makes me acutely embarrassed to be an American.  No, I don’t want to leave the U.S.  I want to change it.

Huffpo is reporting what secret papers revealed to Bush before he decided to invade Iraq. 

Intelligence analysts predicted, in secret papers circulated within the government before the Iraq invasion, that al-Qaida would see U.S. military action as an opportunity to increase its operations and that Iran would try to shape a post-Saddam Iraq.

The top analysts in government also said that establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be a “long, difficult and probably turbulent process.” Democrats said the newly declassified documents, part of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation released Friday, make clear that the Bush administration was warned about the very challenges it now faces as it tries to stabilize Iraq.

The question, then, is this:  What if W, Dick, Dick, Colin and Condelezza had made public what U.S. analysts had told them prior to the invasion?  BTW, the conclusions of this “secret” report all seem self-evident. 

My conclusion, then, is that revealing these papers would have seemed credible (if not obvious) pre-invasion and they would have resulted in serious dialogue in the media and Congress prior to the invasion. 

Four years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, politicians are still working hard to define success in Iraq as . . . well . . . nothing in particular.  

According to many (though not all) Republicans, many thousands of deaths and injuries, lack of basic infrastructure, massive displacement of Iraqis and many billions of lost dollars add up to only one thing:  progress.  That’s because no one dares to define progress.  In the absence of any definition, any desperately sad situation in Iraq is compatible with “progress” or “success.”  With regard to the civilian casualties, how do you substantiate progress?  It’s simple.  You refuse to release any statistics regarding those deaths and injuries.  How do U.S. bureacrats characterize the lack of any statistics regarding these civilian deaths?  Progress, I suppose.  Nothing to explain away!

Here’s one Republican’s take on the lack of any meaningful metric:

“No one knows how to define progress in such a mixed-up situation,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia and a member of the subcommittee that overseas military spending. “We’re having trouble measuring it. Imagine building a house without a ruler.”

Yes, imagine building a house without a ruler.   But also imagine that house being declared a “success” even though no one ever checks for cracks in the foundation or leaks in the roof.  And no one ever checks for radon or asbestos or leaking gas pipes.  Iraq is a house where dangerous is “safe” and condemned is the same thing as “ready-for-occupancy.“  

Just give us more billions, the Administration says.  Let us “finish the job.”  For a recent example of this disconnect from reality, watch this surreal interview of Condolezza Rice by Charlie Rose.   And why did we invade Iraq?  Rice: “The United States is in Iraq because the Iraqi Government asked us to be there.”

And, Madam Secretary, what are we looking for in Iraq?   Her answer:  “I think that the American People are looking for progress and so are we.”

After reading Erich’s post, I thought I’d put this up.  I wrote it–most of it–some time ago, for a different venue, but I’ve added to it since, and, well, along with Erich’s it might add more flavors to the stew of memory.  So.

I have friends who thought it was a great thing when Reagan became president, who now reject any such accusation, and refuse to believe it when I remind them that they said encouraging things about him when he took office.  One quote, during a ceremony broadcast on television, that I’ll never forget: “He just looks like a real president!”

Time passes, policy comes to the fore, and most of those people no longer recall these initial bouts of near-patriotic enthusiasm.  They have conveniently forgotten.

I didn’t like Reagan’s policies.  I’m sure I would have liked him.  Everybody who met him seems to say the same thing.  When Donna Brazille can say she thought he was a decent man, despite the complete polarization of their politics, you have to admit something was going on with Reagan which is all too often more telling about politics and history than the facts attached to a particular era.

Reagan was presidential.  He had Presence.

I listen now to the talk about putting his face on the ten dollar bill with some amusement.  Reagan already has at least one airport, a couple of highways, no doubt many streets, parks, a library named in his honor.  He may be the most honored president of recent history, although I feel safe predicting that he would never have received a Nobel Peace Prize.  He’s dead now, so legally we can mint currency in his honor.  Let’s not forget that a serious movement was underway to revise the prohibition against a third presidential term on his behalf.  For Reagan personally, the two-term limit was doubtless a good thing–we can’t be sure when his Alzheimers began, but a third term in office would have made his moments of memorative slippage even more apparent.

In my opinion, one of the primary differences between Republicans and Democrats lies in who they count as Citizens.  Basically (and our current president exemplifies this more than any other I can think of since Hoover), Republicans believe people with property are the only legitimate citizens; Democrats think anyone who legally lives here is a citizen.  It’s a profound difference in action.  (One may quibble about Bush’s attempts at getting a guest worker program through Congress for all the illegal immigrants and suggest perhaps this mitigates the Republican stance on property being the determinant of citizenry, but I think not.  These people, in a very real sense, are property, and he’s just serving his constituency by trying to keep them here legally.)

And I’m not saying that the Republican Party is the Party of Money.  They are that, but not in the way most people generally deploy the accusation.  When I say they hold that only those with property are citizens, I mean that they have decided that those who have a material stake in America–those citizens with Something To Lose–are those who shoulder the most responsibility in the political health of our country.  The others they see as transient, disconnected, too easily swayed by outré  ideologies to be depended upon for sound judgement.  It is that sound judgement Republicans treasure most, and traditionally they feel that people with property represent that potential best.  (It doesn’t matter that the soundness of that judgment of late has been lacking–I believe the Republicans as a party are going through a horrible bout of fanaticism unlike any they’ve experienced before, but which the Democrats have had ample experience.  Besides, one person’s sound judgment is another’s folly.)   Because generally, those people have the better education, the broader scope, greater opportunity to be cosmopolitan, the burden of ethical necessity, and in the case of business owners, the added responsibility of community support–they know what it means to take care of others.  There is a quality of noblesse oblige in such an assessment, like the perfect picture of the feudal lord who must care for those who live on his lands and work for his estate.

In theory, anyway,  Like all generalizations, it is fatally flawed.

But we have to remember that historically, that’s where this country got its first leaders and its initial ideas about citizenship.  Jefferson wanted to see a nation of landowners–the yeoman farmer–who, by his estimation, had an investment in the country.  (His theory of land ownership is quite complex and critical of slavery because, he believed, the plantation system which slavery enabled was ultimately destructive to this form of citizenship AND environmentally.  That part certainly bore out–the trail of ecological destruction in the South that followed the migration of the plantations proved Jefferson correct, and a study of it informs every argument about slavery and the subsequent poverty and civil liberties issues of the South and, subsequently, the country as a whole.  Slavery and the economic practices it engendered left a legacy of disparity with which we are still struggling today and which makes such debates about who is a citizen all the more trenchant.)

Not a bad notion in its simplest form, property owners as citizens, since combined with that idea was the notion that property ownership was, theoretically, for Everyone.

Pity it didn’t work out that way.

But then how could it?  Wealth as a concept is based on inequity.  (more…)