GOP Hired the Right Crook for the Voter Suppression Job

It should be a scandal eclipsing Mitt's 47-percent comments -- but it's not.

Raw Story:

The Republican National Committee fired a voter registration firm owned by a paid consultant to the party’s presidential candidate Mitt Romney Thursday, after Florida officials traced more than 100 possibly fake registration forms back to the company.

NBC News reported that the RNC cut ties with Strategic Allied Consulting (SAC), run by party strategist Nathan Sproul, had been paid $2.9 million this year to register voters in five swing states before being dismissed.

Sproul is also the founder and managing partner of another company, Lincoln Strategy Group, which records show was paid by the Romney campaign paid to do “field consulting.”

The Romney campaign told NBC News, "We used this vendor for signature gathering services during the primary but have not used them since 2011." The question should be why Romney or the RNC hired Sproul at all. The man should be washed up and unemployable in the voter registration business -- or in anything to do with elections.

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A Drastic Solution for a Phony Crisis

Another short one today. Here's the Wisconsin Capitol rotunda, courtesy of Associated Press:



Thousands of protesters have been jamming the building daily, hoping to convince state lawmakers of the foolishness of Governor Scott Walker's plan to basically dismantle most public employee unions. It's a plan that moves the budget burden from those who can afford it, to middle class families. Not only is this incredibly unjust, but it's a recipe for economic disaster, driving down consumer demand as thousands of public employees are forced to cut back drastically.

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Auction House Democracy

You've probably heard the name, now meet the Koch Brothers, as introduced by Jane Mayer on NPR's Fresh Air (Video courtesy of Crooks and Liars):



OK, so a couple of rightwing nutjobs are giving money to the GOP -- who else would these days? There are two possible intentions in giving a political donation and it always pays to keep this in mind. People will give to candidates or parties because they agree with them, which only makes sense. If candidate Bob believes what you believe, you're going to want him to win. So you're going to do what you can to help him.

The other intention is as a legal bribe. If candidate Bob is sort of squishy on your issues, then maybe a big campaign contribution will give him an incentive to be a little more solidly on your side. Where the first intention is the political system as it was meant to operate, the second is corruption -- and there's a very fine line between the two. Unfortunately, both are legal. Which only makes sense, since it would be nearly impossible to distinguish between the two with any level of certainty.

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The GOP's $100 Billion Lie

Yesterday, I mentioned that Republicans began their first day of their new House Majority by breaking one of their oaths made in their Sacred Pledge. Where the party had sworn in their "Pledge to America" to make cuts that "will save $100 billion in first year alone," they now say the number -- which they'd apparently reached into their pants to retrieve -- was merely "hypothetical."

But words mean things. The only way that number could be hypothetical would be if the GOP had asked voters, "If we promised you an insanely large, made-up number -- say, $100 billion -- in spending cuts, would you elect us?" But they didn't. At least, not straight out like that. "Will save" means "will save," not "could save." It's a definite statement and, when written in the body of a signed document with the word "pledge" in the title, constitutes a concrete promise. Once again, Republicans -- with the help of a credulous and/or uncritical media -- lied to the American people. Clearly, there was no math behind the figure, no one sat down at a ledger book and added up all the savings. It was merely an impressively large number that could be used for a bait-and-switch.

If you doubt that $100 billion was an invented number, consider that the new House Republican Budget Czar, Paul Ryan, has no idea what they're planning on cutting. "That is what is gonna happen in the appropriations process down the road," he said when asked for specific cuts. "So I can't tell you the answer to that because, as a budget committee person, we simply lower the cap and then those things go down. We're gonna be reducing all domestic discretionary spending. I can't tell you by what amount and which program, but all of it is going to be going down, and the aggregate amount will be back to 2008 levels before the spending binge occurred."

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American Aristocrats

Maybe it's geography, but I often find Madison-based John Nichols and myself thinking along the same lines. While conservatives call the estate tax a "death tax," Nichols comes up with a much more accurate term for it -- the aristocracy tax (the link is mine):

The estate tax agreement is a giveaway to millionaires. Indeed, as the group United for a Fair Economy notes, "The deal (Obama accepted) would make the estate tax even weaker than it was under President Bush, and the weakest it has been in seven decades."

"Originally," the group OMB Watch notes, "President Obama had been calling for extending 2009 estate tax levels as a compromise on the issue. An extension of the 2009 estate tax would exempt the first $3.5 million ($7 million for couples) of an estate's value and tax any amount above that at a rate of 45 percent. This proposal was more than generous to the wealthy of this nation, as it would affect less than 1 percent of estates each year."

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Megaleak

According to Wikipedia, Wikileaks was founded in 2006. That sounds about right to me. I remember reading about it at the time and thinking it was a good idea -- a sort of investigative journalism without the journalist middleman. I checked it from time to time, but soon found that -- ironically -- all that raw info was a little hard to make use of without someone taking the time to weed out all the trivia. In short, what I'd originally thought of as direct journalism required a journalist to make sense of it.

Still, in just four short years, Wikileaks has gone from a backwater site of interest to few to an international controversy. Founder Julian Assange has become an international fugitive on Interpol's Most Wanted list, for rape charges which may be trumped up. He's a frontrunner for Time's "Person of the Year" for 2010. He's hated by some and beloved by others. To lift a line from an ad campaign, he is "The Most Interesting Man in the World."

It's probably a mistake to think of Assange in journalistic terms. A former hacker, he's more of an information extremist. After releasing video of US soldiers mistakenly gunning down journalists in Iraq, Wikileaks had to move their site to the same host that filesharing site The Pirate Bay uses -- Pirate Bay founders are likewise free-information activists. It's a strange world these people operate in, where legal and illegal aren't as important as right and wrong and there's no need to obey unjust laws. The very existence of both Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay are acts of civil disobedience and protest. And, while they're making enemies around the world, they're gaining political support and power elsewhere, mostly as part of global anti-corporate and transparency movements.

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Private Contractors Failing Just as Spectacularly in Afghanistan

Let's talk about how superior the private sector is to the public sector for a bit. We're going to hear a lot from Republicans about how government is evil and corrupt and incompetent, and how the private sector is the only entity that can really get things done -- and does it cheaper. The first problem here is that the math doesn't work at all. Let's say a project will cost X when all is said and done. You look at materials, labor, equipment you may need, gas, etc. and that's what you wind up with. A private contractor would need X + profit to get the job done. Government can do it for X, because it doesn't have to turn a profit. Last time I checked, X + anything is more than just X, so the idea that a private company can do the same thing for less doesn't really pan out, arithmetically. The only way you can pull this off is to subtract from X -- and that means skimping on something somewhere and winding up with a cheap piece of crap. Doubt it? Then explain why military personnel were being electrocuted in showers in Iraq or why they were served rotten meat.

In 2006, Business Week reported, "The losses to fraud and waste in Iraq are almost certainly in the billions, current and former government officials agree. The Special IG for Iraq Reconstruction says it has more than 80 open investigations and has referred 20 more cases to the Justice Dept. for prosecution. A spokesman for the criminal investigative arm of the Defense Dept. says that office expects a 'rise in referrals of potential fraud or corruption cases' because of the recent deployment to Iraq of additional Pentagon investigators and FBI agents."

Billions in waste and fraud, often covered by unfinished and unusable projects, doesn't really strike me as big savings. It strikes me as waste and fraud. The military used to do a lot of this stuff themselves -- do we really need to outsource mess halls and laundry duty, for example? -- but now it has, for reasons nobody seems to be very good at explaining, become completely impossible. The military can fire a long range missile straight down the chimney of some terrorist hide out with pin-point accuracy, but they couldn't possibly cook a damned hamburger.

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Arizona's 'Papers Please' Law is Worse Than You Think

I've been on kind of a tear against the media lately, so I think it's worth pointing out when a media outlet does it right. KPHO in Phoenix covers SB-1070 -- otherwise known as Arizona's "papers please" law -- and finds out two very important points: Republican election-year fearmongering is wrecking the state's economy by driving away tourism and top people in Governor Brewer's office stand to benefit from from the law, which goes into effect tomorrow.

Yeah, it turns out that if top politicians tell you you're going to get your head chopped off if you go to Arizona, people don't want to go to Arizona. I imagine you're as surprised by that fact as I was. And it reminded me of how conservatives echoed Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's complaint that Obama's talk about the Gulf oil gusher was driving away tourists. It's typical rightwing upside-down reality twisting; an existing oil slick doesn't drive away tourists, people talking about it drive away tourists -- but politicians talking about a crime wave that doesn't exist is fine, even though it drives off tourists. If this makes no damned sense to you, remember this handy rule of thumb; anything, no matter what it is, is fine when a Republican does it.





But more disturbing is the very real possibility that a law has been passed to benefit a private corporation. And worse, it may result in terrible injustices. We've seen a state go down that road before and the result was corruption. And not just your normal, everyday, money-under-the-table corruption, but a miscarriage of justice that should shock anyone with anything approximating a conscience.

CNN, February, 2009:

...As scandals from Wall Street to Washington roil the public trust, the justice system in Luzerne County, in the heart of Pennsylvania's struggling coal country, has also fallen prey to corruption. The county has been rocked by a kickback scandal involving two elected judges who essentially jailed kids for cash. Many of the children had appeared before judges without a lawyer.

The nonprofit Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia said [14-year-old Phillip Swartley] is one of at least 5,000 children over the past five years who appeared before former Luzerne County President Judge Mark Ciavarella.

Ciavarella pleaded guilty earlier this month to federal criminal charges of fraud and other tax charges, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Former Luzerne County Senior Judge Michael Conahan also pleaded guilty to the same charges. The two secretly received more than $2.6 million, prosecutors said.

Among the bloated sentences Ciavarella and Conahan handed down were sending "15-year-old Hillary Transue to a wilderness camp for mocking an assistant principal on a MySpace page," "13-year-old Shane Bly, who was accused of trespassing in a vacant building [to] a boot camp for two weekends," and "Kurt Kruger, 17, [sentenced] to detention and five months of boot camp for helping a friend steal DVDs from Wal-Mart." Swartley was sentenced to nine months in a detention facility for stealing change.

Now, take that mindset and apply it to undocumented people. As we've already established, Arizona politicians are whipping up hysteria over illegal aliens and, as a result, they are widely hated. If you can make a lot of money selling kids to a private corrections company, imagine what you could make selling pariahs. It could be a gold mine.

Of course the company, Corrections Corporation of America, says it never lobbied Brewer. But why would they have to? She has two lobbyists on staff. You don't have to convert the already pious. And, just as predictably, Brewer's office denies any connection -- but we've already established what her word is worth.

Back to my media-bashing; why was it that it was up to a local TV station to uncover this in the week the law is set to kick in? SB-1070 has been a big story for how long? And no one nationally dug this up, no one wondered why Brewer was so dead-set on this bad idea. I suppose they figured that it was just political grandstanding, but shouldn't someone have dug a little deeper? It seems a little late in the game to have this come out now.

Better late than never, I guess. But "better" is not the same as "best."

-Wisco


UPDATE: Not so fast there, Sparky.

Houston Chronicle:

A federal judge today issued an injunction barring Arizona from enforcing key provisions of its controversial immigration law, prompting promises to appeal from supporters and tears of joy from opponents outside the state capitol.

The parts of the law that Judge Susan Bolton included sections that required officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws.

The judge also put on hold the law's requirement that immigrants must carry their papers at all times, and made it illegal for undocumented workers to solicit employment in public places.

Bolton ruled that those sections should be put on hold until the courts resolve the issues.

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Putting the 'Party' Back into the Republican Party

Being in opposition, after eight years of a Republican presidency and 12 years of GOP rule in Congress, suits many of them just fine. It's not that they were glad to lose. There are a lot of indignities involved in being the minority, and a pretty small minority at that. But talk to Republican lawmakers and insiders these days, and they speak as if an enormous weight has been lifted from their shoulders. Some of that weight was named George W. Bush, but in a larger sense, Republicans are relieved to be free of the burden of running things.
-Byron York, DC Examiner (via Political Wire)

"We weren’t very happy with the results of the election, and on through the inaugural, but I guarantee you, I’ve never seen the spirit of Republicans as high as it was at the GOP retreat,” Arizona Rep. John Shadegg told the Examiner's York. "When we held our guys together [on the House stimulus vote], that had people extremely excited. Then there were the ongoing scandals with Democratic tax cheats, and I think Republicans are beginning to say, ‘Ah, there could be some fun in the minority.'"

The joy is felt in the Senate, as well. "I’m much happier,” said Sen. Jim DeMint. “Our message was so muddled with Bush in the White House, often going the big-spending approach, that we could not define ourselves in any other way.”

Joy! Republicans don't have to worry about "the burden of running things" anymore. They're free to dick around and have fun. Of course, the problem with this new Republican happiness is that they're still Representatives and Senators -- their job is still to govern. "The burden of running things" is still squarely on their shoulders, as much as they seem to believe that it's not. And I'm not sure if their constituencies would approve of many of their ideas of "fun."





Take Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson. He managed to get a boneheaded provision into the compromise stimulus bill that Dean Baker calls the "House Flipping Subsidy." Isakson, a former realtor, created his own bailout for the realty industry, with a $15,000 tax credit for those buying new or existing homes. In all the howling about provisions that don't create jobs, this one was lost. Since it applies to existing homes, there's no incentive to build. As stimulus provisions go, this isn't very stimulating. In fact, since it's available to all homebuyers -- not just first-timers -- it really doesn't even do much to create a new market. Current homeowners leave an empty house behind for every one they buy, making that market a wash.

Worse, Isakson low-balled what this subsidy would cost the government -- it'll actually costs about $30 billion more than he said. By comparison, $16 billion for school construction was cut because building schools is porky -- despite all the kids these schools would educate and all the jobs building them would create. Much better to have some amateur speculator buying properties to sell later, while taking out balloon mortgages on those properties. That's right, Isakson thinks we need to encourage one of the practices that got us into this mess in the first place.

But here's where things get really fun -- Isakson's not going to vote for the stimulus. He'll complain about all the "pork" in the bill and vote against it, secure in the knowledge that it's going to pass anyway. He'll get his pork, while pretending to be outraged by it. And that's just one example of a Republican loading the stimulus with crap, then announcing they'll vote against it because it's too loaded down with crap. There are plenty more.

What fun!

Republicans, in their newly discovered freedom from doing anything constructive, are enjoying themselves in other ways as well. It turns out that freedom from having to govern means freedom from having to make any damned sense at all.

Raw Story:

[N]ewly-elected Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele believes that government-funded jobs don't count as real employment because "a job is something that a business owner creates."

"What this administration is talking about is 'making work.' ... It's not a job," Steele explained during a Sunday appearance on ABC's This Week. "It ends at a certain point... These road projects that we're talking about have an endpoint... There's no guarantee that there's going to be more work when you're done that job."

That's right, if you're working for the government, you aren't really employed. Tell the people at your local police department to get a damn job. And Steele should know -- he used to be the Lt. Governor of Maryland. Which, of course, wasn't an actual job. It was, after all, only temporary. In fact, since he's up for re-election in the future -- Steele is still a temp as RNC chair. Here's hoping he finds a job soon. Being unemployed must be a real hardship for him.

But back to the fun. Steele says everything's just great. What we're seeing now is just "the downside" of a recent period of economic expansion. Who needs a stimulus package and to create jobs when we live in the Land of Milk and Honey?

Of course, the job losses in this Republican Eden looks like this (full-sized graph here):



The blue line represents job losses in the 1990 recession, the red line is the 2001 recession, and the green line -- that one way down there toward the bottom -- is now. Kind of looks like Steele's idea of a "permanent job" is a bunch of crap, doesn't it? It seems all jobs are temporary jobs these days.

But hey, Republicans are the minority now. They don't have to govern or even be responsible, they get to have fun! They're putting the "party" back into Republican party. No responsibilities (or reasons to be responsible), no need to make any sense, no reason to do anything other than grandstand and sneak pork into bills and spread propaganda that only morons would buy. It's not winter for the GOP -- school's out and it's summer vacation. No more work!

What fun...

-Wisco

Not Much of a Cunning Plan

The word of the day seems to be "stupid." That's the general consensus regarding the corruption scandal of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, that he's an idiot. You'd think the first clue would've been his hair; he looks like he got stuck halfway in a morph between The Monkees' Mike Nesmith and Donald Trump. But, if the hair wasn't a giveaway, his actions sure were.

"Blagojevich, it seems, figured he was a Master of the Universe, immune from the scrutiny he should have known he was under," writes CNN's Gloria Borger. "Of course, the feds were listening. Sad for the governor, the wiretaps that prosecutors detailed reveal a stunning and disgusting portrayal of a pol trying to extract personal gain from almost anyone -- whether a potential Senate candidate, a children's hospital or a newspaper."

Why would the feds be listening? Because Blagojevich was already under investigation. And he knew it. The feds were hot on his trail and the governor acted as if everyone thinks he's a solid citizen. As I say, the word of the day is "stupid."





Or "crazy." In February, Chicago Magazine ran a profile of Blagojevich that suggested (actually, more than suggested) that he was a little goofy in the head:

The governor's strange behavior has been fertile ground for local armchair psychologists. Last summer, the downstate newspaper the Peoria Journal Star declared that the governor was "going bonkers." Privately, a few people who know the governor describe him as a "sociopath," and they insist they're not using hyperbole. State representative Joe Lyons, a fellow Democrat from Chicago, told reporters that Blagojevich was a "madman" and "insane." "He shows absolutely no remorse," says Jack Franks, the Democratic state representative. "I don't think he gives a damn about anybody else's feelings. He tries to demonize people who disagree with him; he's got delusions of grandeur."

[Rich Miller, who writes the insider's newsletter/blog Capitol Fax] points out that people shouldn't blame Blagojevich's lousy governing skills on his personality alone: "You can be insane -- totally whacked out psychologically -- and be a good governor or a good president."

I'd like to see evidence of that claim, since Gov. Blagojevich -- like Richard Nixon and, perhaps, George W. Bush -- doesn't exactly prove that hypothesis. I have yet to see an example of a good Caligula.

It's actually hard to write about this at this point, because there are so many holes in the story. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has released a 78 page criminal complaint that mentions few people other than Blagojevich by name. What's clear is that he was trying to play some weird chess game, with Barack Obama's vacated senate seat as his queen. It was his duty to appoint Obama's successor and he wanted something -- anything -- for that appointment from anyone who could give it to him. "Maybe an ambassadorship," says Borger. "Maybe an appointment as Health and Human Services secretary -- a 'trade' as he put it. Or maybe Energy, a loyal aide suggested, because that department is 'the one that makes the most money.'" He wasn't exactly clear on what he wanted, he just wanted something.

Some are already trying to use the Blagojevich scandal as evidence that Barack Obama is a dirty politician. People like the entire Republican party. Based on one quote from Obama in 2006 -- "We've got a governor in Rod Blagojevich who has delivered consistently on behalf of the people of Illinois" -- the GOP is trying to portray Gov. Caligula and Obama as coconspirators. The junior senator from Illinois once said something nice about the governor -- how unprecedented! "That isn't much at all," reports Greg Sargent. "Though Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett is in the midst of the case as the candidate Obama reportedly wanted for the Senate seat, there's no suggestion of any wrongdoing on her part."

Writing for The Nation, John Nichols says:

Intriguingly, one of the charges against Blagojevich is that he demanded appointment for himself as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration -- apparently in return for appointing a senator who would be to the president-elect's liking. That raises the prospect that either Obama or members of his transition team may have cooperated into the federal investigation of the governor's activities. Certainly, Obama fans will hope this turns out to have been the case.

In any case, the idea that Obama is tied into this in any way is made laughable by Fitzgerald's complaint. Barack Obama may have said something nice about Blagojevich once, but Blagojevich has nothing nice to say about Obama. Fitz has him on tape saying of the transition team, "[T]hey're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. F**k them." Doesn't exactly sound like a partnership in crime, does it?

In fact, some speculate it was Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who tipped off the feds. It's probably not true, but you never know. Either way, it's not as if Blagojevich needed Obama's assistance or even cooperation in his big, half-baked plan to use the seat to somehow enrich himself. The appointment was his alone to make, he didn't need any help -- he just needed someone willing to pay for it somehow. From everything I've read, he was having a little trouble with that part of his grand strategy.

The thing is, Blagojevich is still the governor, so the appointment is still his to make. There are the predictable calls for him to resign, but he seems like such a dick that I can't see him leaving until he's thrown out. Some see a remedy for this predicament:

Chicago Sun-Times:

Don’t trust the governor. Let the voters decide.

That was the message of U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin on Tuesday as he called for the state Legislature to order a special election to fill President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat, rather than allow Gov. Blagojevich to pick a replacement.

"No appointment by this governor, under these circumstances, could produce a credible replacement," Durbin said. Seems reasonable to me. Whether it's legally possible might be another question, I don't know. But unless it's absolutely proscribed by the state constitution, I think that's probably the best way to go. When the governor can't be trusted, let democracy do it.

If Blagojevich is as stupid and crazy as his alleged crime (I say "alleged," but it looks like an airtight case), then not only Illinois, but the nation, would suffer from any appointment he made. It could be the finest senator to ever serve and that taint of corruption would still follow them around. It doesn't seem fair to the eventual senator in even in the best possible scenario. The worst possible scenario is that Blagojevich would appoint some corrupt crony.

But if the voters choose Barack Obama's replacement, the legitimacy is restored. Every problem has a reasonable solution and any solution that hinges on democracy is a pretty solid one in my book.

The word of the day may be "stupid," but that doesn't mean the way out of the problem has to be.

-Wisco

The Other Side of the Story

Let's take a look at the economic situation. Never mind the naysayers, the gloom-and-doomers, the glass-half-empty types, some of us are doing just fine. If you look hard enough and long enough, you can find good, simple, hard-working Americans who are managing to get along. Good people, with good, honest values, who know the value of a dollar because they've got a boatload of them:

Associated Press:

Riding record oil prices in the third quarter, Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday posted the biggest quarterly profit ever for a U.S. company: $14.83 billion, or about $112,000 a minute.

The results, amounting to $2.86 a share, beat the Irving, Texas, company's previous record and shattered analysts' average expectation of $2.38 a share, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

Consumer groups and politicians saw reason for anger in those numbers.

"Our economy is suffering from many factors, but one of them is the price of oil and our nation's dependence on it," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Markey said that "investments in renewable energy continue to lag with the world's most profitable company, and as an industry as a whole."

"Consumers got credit card debt and empty wallets, while Exxon got double-digit billions," says Judy Dugan of Consumer Watchdog. "Citizens deserve to be mad. They should demand that government get back in the business of protecting them from corporate greed."

Those simple country folk with their good ol' fashioned common sense and small town values continue to make more money than any company in history, quarter after quarter, year after year. Yay for them!





Meanwhile, liberal whiners in Galveston, Texas complain that government isn't coming to hold their hands. "Boo hoo!" these cityslickers say, "Hurricane Ike wiped us out and we're not getting any help! Boo-hoo-hoo!"

"Things are far from normal in Galveston. Take a drive in Channelview or Bayou Shore Drive or the middle-class neighborhoods north and south of Offatts Bayou. Take a drive through the war zone formerly known as downtown Galveston," writes Dolph Tillotson for the Galveston Daily News. "Our town is under siege to destruction, loss and collapse, and middle-class families are wondering whether to return and if they can return."

Tillotson writes that Galveston "needs help, and lots of it, from the Texas Senate and House delegations." That's right, go crying to Washington. Didn't Dolph and the people of Galveston get the memo? Big gummint is bad -- and they should applaud the fact that it's off their backs. No one's taking wealth from other states to redistribute it in Texas; after all, that's socialism. They should build lean-tos from the roofs of ruined buildings and live in those. That's the American way. If they're really lucky, George W. Bush will come by in an armored Ford Escalade and hand out little flags on wooden dowels! Nothing lifts the spirits more than a photo op display of hollow patriotism. Make sure you wave them real hard!

Of course, government understands that some good Americans do need help. Compassionate conservatism and all... That's why we're doling out tax dollars hand over fist to bail out banks. See, banks need to be able to loan money to get the economy back on track, so the government gave them $700 billion to loan out.

Except the banks, with their brilliant business sense, aren't using that money to make loans. They're using that money to buy other banks. So, when you get turned down for a loan, it's because the bank has taken all that money and used it for a merger.

This practice isn't without it's predictable critics -- Democrats want to make sure the money is used to make loans, since that was the whole purpose of the bailout, but they're just liberal whiners. They probably don't even have little flags on wooden dowels. And big government bureaucrats in Washington don't like it either.

"The capital is there both to be lent and to make them stronger, so counterparties will have more confidence in them and lend to them more freely," said Treasury Department regulator John Dugan. Typically, he thinks Washington should decide how to use your money, not humble country bumpkins in corporate suites.

In fact, some believe that government should pay attention to all the tax money they hand out to small town family-values types in limos. For example, the US has paid $6 billion (or more) to private contractors in Iraq. What did taxpayers get for that money? None of your bees' wax, that's what.

The U.S. has spent about $6 billion on private security contractors and related services in Iraq, although the real tally remains unknown because the government has failed to track security costs, according to an audit from Iraq released Thursday.

Since the war began, the U.S has hired some 77 private security firms to provide armed guards to protect U.S. and Iraqi government officials, supplies and buildings in the middle of the war zone, said the audit by the Special Inspector General for the Reconstruction of Iraq.

Another 230 companies have provided related "security services" that range from intelligence gathering for private corporations in Iraq to protecting computer networks from hackers, according to the audit and interviews.

We don't know exactly how much we paid to get... well, no one really knows what. But it's totally worth it, because small business owners like the multi-billion dollar Blackwater USA say it is. Big government not only isn't going to tell them what to do with all that money, but it's not even exactly sure what we've hired them to do. Seriously, what are they doing with that money? No one knows, because big government is off their backs and paying no attention at all. Good for them -- give them little flags on wooden dowels. Maybe they can hand them out in Iraq.

These are the sort of common sense solutions brought to you by the Republican Party. If all of this seems like the best goddam way to run a railroad, then vote for John McCain.

However, if you're a liberal, commie treehugger who thinks none of this makes any damned sense at all, maybe you should just stay home. President McCain will thank you. In fact, maybe he'll drive by your house in a big armored Ford Escalade and give you a little flag on a wooden dowel.

Golly, but wouldn't that be fine?

-WIsco

Occupation, Inc.

The number being reported is "at least $85 billion," but when talking about money and Iraq, the truth is always murky. In a war practically run by war profiteers, the number is likely to be higher. The upper estimate of the amount of public dollars we've paid private contractors in Iraq is more than $100 billion. Normally, erring on the side of caution would require you to assume the lower figure -- which is why that number is being used in the media. But when we consider the history of waste, corruption, and corporate malfeasance involved in the occupation of Iraq, the higher number seems the safer estimate.

The higher figure comes from Voice of America. In their story, the cite Peter Orszag of the Congressional Budget Office [CBO], who said, "The federal government has awarded $85 billion in contracts for work in [the] Iraq theater through 2007. If you included this year, the total would exceed $100 billion: roughly one of every $5 for the cost of the war in Iraq." The piece goes on:

Orszag says the use of private contractors in U.S. military engagements is not new. What is new, however, is the extent of the reliance on private firms. The Iraq war marks the first time in which the number of private personnel has equaled or exceeded the number of military personnel. By contrast, the CBO report notes that, during World War II, military personnel outnumbered private contractors by a ratio of seven-to-one.

Given what they're being paid and how much we're relying on them, you'd think that private contractors are doing just an astonishingly great job of whatever the hell it is we're hiring them to do.

Of course, you'd be wrong.



What a lousy job contractors were doing became one of the early stories of the occupation. Mega-construction company Bechtel -- fresh off royally screwing up Boston's "Big Dig" -- was hired in a no-bid contract to reconstruct Iraq's schools. It didn't go well.

CorpWatch:

Headmaster Abdel-Razzaq Ali's school is located in a predominantly Shi'ite quarter in a poor area of Baghdad. More than 1,500 students attend the Anbariyn School in two shifts: boys in the morning, girls in the afternoon. Looting has never been a problem at his school. But Abdel-Razzaq has his share of problems in the new Iraq. "The parents are constantly complaining to me, but who can I complain to?" he wonders. He is particularly skeptical about the refurbishment plans for the school, which are being carried out by Bechtel Corporation.

[...]

At the start of the program Abdel-Razzaq received a visit from a representative of the Iraqi company, Adnan Mussawi, which Bechtel subcontracted to carry out the work. The headmaster was asked to sign a declaration that the work had been completed, which he refused to do until the work had actually been done. Twenty days later, the walls were painted, the rusty doors painted over, new electric cables laid, and some of the sanitary facilities replaced. However, the real problem with the toilets -- namely the sewage pipes -- were left untouched. So Abdel-Razzaq is sure that next winter once more, there will be a lake of sewage in the bathrooms.

Most of the cheap plastic cisterns are already broken. Even a broken banister that resulted in one child falling one floor down - was not considered to be part of Bechtel's renovation plan. So the director ordered to weld it again, paying the work out of his own pocket. The work on the school, according to Abdel-Razzaq, was completed without a single person from the Bechtel corporation appraising the work. "Why do we need Bechtel? They have done absolutely nothing," he said.

"Cronyism is an important factor in our Iraqi debacle. It's not just that reconstruction is much more expensive than it should be," wrote the New York Times' Paul Krugman in 2003. "The really important thing is that cronyism is warping policy: by treating contracts as prizes to be handed to their friends, administration officials are delaying Iraq's recovery, with potentially catastrophic consequences."

Other examples of the great job these corporate cronies/US contractors did were serving contaminated water and spoiled food to troops (while overcharging the government for it) and the scandalous conditions wounded vets were forced to deal with at Walter Reed. We won't even go into mercenary forces like Blackwater.

To add insult to injury, all of this privatization didn't save us anything. "According to the report, the yearly cost of maintaining a single private contractor in Iraq can approach half a million dollars -- far exceeding the annual pay of even the most senior military commanders," VOA reports.

None of this should surprise anyone who's had elementary school math. Where corporations must turn a profit, government doesn't have to. If something costs X, it costs a for-profit X+profit. For the record, the latter is more than the former. The only way to squeeze X+profit out of X is to reduce the value of X. The line given by privatization fans is that this is done magically with "increased efficiency," but history and the facts show that this is done by cutting corners and doing what is normally referred to as a "half-assed job." When you get right down to it, corporations increase their profit margins by doing as little as they can get away with, while charging as much as they can get away with.

And so we have contractors electrocuting troops with lousy wiring. We have contractors whose employees' idea of a good time consists of kidnapping and rape. We wind up spending $100 billion for lousy, sub-standard work performed by corrupt contractors and their sociopathic employees.

And our problems here aren't ending any time soon. A new study finds that troops returning from combat face "the unholy trinity" of "alcohol abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression." For all the drawbacks and limitations of the care these returning vets get, at least it exists. Returning contractors have no such support structure. The war comes home with them.

All in all, I'd say that if the occupation of Iraq proves anything, it proves that privatization of the military turns out to be a real bad idea. It's a failed experiment whose result was entirely predictable -- more business in war means more war profiteering means more corruption, more waste, more crime, and more death.

By having more contractors than troops in Iraq, we've proved that a stupid idea is a stupid idea. Here's hoping that lesson sticks.

-Wisco

McSellout

I've been writing about John McCain a lot lately, but let's face it, John McCain's not talking about John McCain and someone has to. Lately, when the media talks about John McCain, it's to repeat some attack McCain's made on Barack Obama. Lately, with the help of a media more concerned with sensationalism than substance, McCain has been able to be a serious candidate for president who doesn't seem to stand for a whole lot.

One of the worst aspects of this whole thing is that no one's looking at the fact that McCain doesn't stand for a whole lot. Mr. Leadership generally leads by following. His opinions go where the votes are or the money is. McCain is a candidate openly for sale.

An example; in June, John McCain opposed a Constitutional amendment to make same sex marriage illegal. He didn't support marriage equality, but he took what would've once been the default Republican opinion on issues like this and said it was up to the states to decide.

But, as I said, that was once the default. That was before Bush's 2004 campaign that highlighted the Homosexual Menaces' Threat to America. McCain was behind the times; the new default was to panic over same sex marriage, foretell the destruction of the family and, with it, the end of America. Under Bush, the GOP has become the party of fear and if your reaction to an issue isn't to try to get everyone to wet their pants over it, then you aren't a real Republican.

So John McCain made a trip to see the Apostles of Republican Jesus, that they might impart their wisdom upon him and anoint him a True Republican. And, lo, so it was done.



McCain had made very public splits from two of the Apostles -- Rod Parsley and John Hagee. It was time to appease the religious right. McCain met with the Apostles of Republican Jesus on June 26. The next day, the scales fell from Baghdad Johnny's eyes and he saw the light. He was now sufficiently freaked out over gay marriage.

Press release from ProtectMarriage.com:

United States Senator John McCain today announced his support for the California Protection of Marriage initiative on the state's November ballot, leaders of the ProtectMarriage.com campaign announced. In an email received by the ProtectMarriage.com campaign, Senator McCain issued the following statement:

"I support the efforts of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman, just as we did in my home state of Arizona. I do not believe judges should be making these decisions."

A complete U-turn. One that had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he'd just dumped influential Ohio nut Rod Parsley and the Ohio Republican machine was displeased. It had nothing to do with the fact that the Apostles of Republican Jesus he spoke with the day before were also from Ohio. It had nothing to do with the fact that McCain needed the swing state to have any chance in Hell. Of course, if it wasn't for those reasons, the real reasons he'd abandon a position he'd held for years is anyone's guess.

To be fair, McCain isn't exactly known as an actual activist on the issue of marriage inequality -- a little flip-flop for Ohio's corrupt political machine was no big deal. McCain's activism is saved for another high profile flip-flop -- offshore drilling. McCain had previously opposed offshore drilling, but then this happened:



Public Campaign Action Fund tells us, "McCain has received more than twice as much money from the oil and gas industries in the 2008 cycle than in all other cycles since 1989." Presto-chango-rearrango, McCain's an activist for oil companies.

And some of his donors are really digging deep to give McCain money. McClatchy Newspapers tells us the story of one drilling true believer:

Alice Rocchio is an office manager at the New York headquarters of the Hess Corp., drives a 1993 Chevy Cavalier and lives in an apartment in Queens, N.Y., with her husband, Pasquale, an Amtrak foreman.

Despite what appears to be a middle-class lifestyle, the couple has written $61,600 in checks to John McCain's presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee, most of it within days of McCain's decision to endorse offshore oil drilling.

Not surprisingly, some people find this story a little incredible. It appears that Hess is money-laundering campaign contributions through employees, to give beyond the legal maximum a corporation could give to McCain -- that'd be the same McCain you might remember as a former campaign finance reform champion.

In all, Hess employees have given McCain a subsantial portion part of the $1.2 million he's collected from Big Oil. 73% of that has come after McCain reversed his position on offshore drilling.

In fact, Hess employee contributions to McCain look stupid-suspicious when you get up close. It's like looking at a crooked accountant's books and seeing that he doesn't have a lot of imagination. TPM Election Central supplies the specifics:

J. Barclay Collins, Hess Corp., Attorney, $28,500, 19-Jun
John B. Hess, Hess Corp., Executive, $28,500, 24-Jun
Susan K. Hess, Homemaker, Homemaker, $28,500, 24-Jun
Norma W. Hess, Retired, Retired, $28,500, 24-Jun
John J. O'Connor, Hess Corp., Executive, $28,500, 24-Jun
Lawrence Ornstein, Hess Corp., Senior VP, $28,500, 24-Jun
John Reilly, Hess Corp., Executive, $28,500, 24-Jun
Alice Rocchio, Hess Corp., Office Manager, $28,500, 24-Jun
John Scelfo, Hess Corp., Senior VP of Finance, $28,500, 24-Jun
F. Borden Walker, Hess Corp., Businessman, $28,500, 24-Jun

"Norma W. Hess is the widow of oil magnate and company founder Leon Hess, and Susan K. Hess is the wife of Hess chairman and CEO John Hess.," we're told. All exactly the same amount, most on the same day -- you'd think they'd at least try to hide it.

After all this, where McCain's position had previously been to oppose drilling, he told an audience yesterday, "[W]e need to drill here and we need to drill now."

Drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, drill! Do it now! Freak out! Run! Go, go, go, go, go! For the love of freakin' God, don't stop to think for a second -- just run and drill!

McCain endorsed the Republican stunt in Washington -- a phony session while Congress is in recess. And he did this despite the fact that people in Washington are beginning to forget what Baghdad Johnny looks like -- he hasn't been at work since April.

"Let's start working for the American people and not for ourselves," McCain said yesterday.

That's good advice, John -- why don't you take it?

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; elections; 2008; Barack Obama; religious right; Ohio; oil; energy; corruption; law; John McCain's pretty much for sale

Senate GOP Going Down the Series of Tubes

Yesterday turned out to be a bad day for Republicans in Washington. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens found himself into a little trouble. Stevens, who'd made himself famous with a bridge to nowhere and his assertion that the internet is "not a big truck. It's a series of tubes," was indicted on seven felony counts of concealing $250,000 in gifts and services given to him by an oil company.

"This is very bad for the party," a retiring GOP Senator told Politico. "The timing on this couldn’t be worse." According to Politico's piece, "Now, there’s an arrest warrant out for the 84-year-old senator. He’s been stripped of his top committee rankings. His iconic career is crumbling. His hopes for reelection are in serious doubt.

"And Senate Republicans have no idea what to do about it. "

Of course, the "what to do about it" question isn't so much about pulling Stevens' fat out of the fire, it's about their own political careers. Republicans, never ones to embrace the "we're all in this together" mindset, have adopted as their motto "every man for himself!"

The indictment pretty much pounds the final nail in the coffin containing Stevens' reelection prospects. He was nine points down in polling against rival Mark Begich, Mayor of Anchorage, before the indictment. To give you an idea of how far Ted has fallen in public opinion, Stevens was reelected six years ago with a nearly unheard of 78%.

-Continued after the jump-


The series of tubes has been abuzz with the news of Stevens' fall. Republican chances in November, which had previously seemed as if they couldn't possibly be worse, had just gotten worse. Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen sent an internet reading, "As for the big picture, I think it’s fair to say the Republicans’ Culture of Corruption hasn’t been front-page news for a while, but it hasn’t gone away, either."

Which is the real problem this year, helping to explain why Barack Obama's message of change has been a winner. Scandals and outrages and crimes follow Republicans everywhere they go.

And it's costing them. In another piece, Politico finds that nine Republican Senate seats are extremely competitive -- including Stevens'. They are Virginia, New Mexico, Alaska, New Hampshire, Colorado, Oregon, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Maine. Many of these states are also expected to go for Obama, which -- because of a coattail effect -- makes it that much more of an uphill battle for the GOP.

To give you an idea of just how desperate the GOP is this year, I give you this story from Virginia:

[Chairman of the Republican Party Jeff] Frederick is calling on Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) and Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell (R) to launch an investigation. Frederick is also urging residents to avoid giving their names or social security numbers to canvassers seeking to register voters.


"Identity theft is widespread problem in Virginia," Frederick said. "Today, I am encouraging voters who have filed out any of these voter registration forms to immediately contact their registrars, and Virginians should exercise caution when approached by a stranger who asks them for their information."


Frederick's warning comes as Obama is deploying volunteers across Virginia to try to register 151,000 new voters by the Oct 6 deadline. Various non-profit organizations are also trying to register new voters, especially African-Americans.

That's right, the Armies of the Unholy Obama are massed on the Virginia border and the best the Republican party can come up with to forestall imminent doom is to discourage people from registering to vote. The problem, ID theft isn't a widespread problem in Virginia. Called on his claim, Chairman Frederick refused to answer.

This shows a party out of ammo. There are no arguments left for Republican ideology. And, where there are no arguments, there are only defenses. These defenses can be rhetorical or they can just be dirty tricks. TIME's Karen Tumulty called Frederick's move the "Sleazy Campaign Tactic of the Day." People without ethics or morals are guaranteed to cheat. The unscrupulous and the shameless have only their lack of scruples and shame for strengths -- witness Karl Rove. Their arguments are disproved, their claims of moral superiority have been shown to be lies, and the shallowness of their patriotism (an issue they claim to own) is revealed in their deep, deep contempt for democratic principles.

So, if you can't win the debate, you don't have one. If at all possible, shut it down. Which, of course, is part of the Republican problem this year; people don't actually like that approach -- only 27% of voters identify themselves as Republican this year. Senate Republicans, who've used the filibuster more than any Senate session in history, hope they can filibuster the elections.

With Ted Stevens reminding voters of rampant Republican corruption, it's pretty much the only chance they have.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; corruption; crime; scandal; Virginia; voting; Alaska; Ted Stevens; Senate Republicans are so screwed in the 2008 elections

McCain's Favorite Pork Product

Iran, late in joining us in celebrating the Fourth of July, shot off a few rockets yesterday. They plan to make up for their tardiness by firing off more today. According to the media and the right, the proper response to this news is, "Oh my freakin' God, oh sweet Jesus, we're all gonna die!"

Although some think the big news is that Iran apparently Photoshopped an extra missile in a photo released to the press, the actually story is that Iran shot off some rockets -- that's the big deal here.

In fact, the Photoshop story's not even secondary -- or tertiary or quaternary. It's trivia. "Authoritarian state releases propaganda" is not exactly earth-shattering news. No, the other story was the US presidential candidates' reactions to the Iran's action. Where Obama called for a diplomatic response, John McCain called on the US to shovel more money down a useless rathole.

Continued after the jump

Associated Press:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that Iran's missile tests highlight the need for direct diplomacy as well as tougher threats of economic sanctions and strong incentives to persuade Tehran to change its behavior.

John McCain, the Republican seeking the presidency, said the tests demonstrate a need for effective missile defense, including missile defense in Europe and the defense system the U.S. plans with the Czech Republic and Poland.

There are a couple of problems with McCain's whole missile defense idea. The most obvious is that no one thinks Iran is going to launch missiles at Europe. And the missiles launched yesterday have an extended range of 1,250 miles. If you're in the US, go change your pants, you've got nothing to worry about. McCain's offering a solution to a problem no one believes exists.

But the larger problem is that this missile defense system doesn't actually work. Ronald Reagan jotted the idea down on the back of a matchbook once, so Republicans believe it's divinely inspired. Ron came up with his big idea in 1983 (then called the Strategic Defnese Initiative or SDI) and, since then, it really hasn't gotten much farther. Even SDI true believers say that missile defense is "like hitting a bullet with a bullet." Not surprisingly, that turns out to be every bit as impossible as it sounds. The only "successful" tests of missile defense systems have been ridiculously skewed in favor of success -- missiles had GPS systems the interceptors could home in on, people on the ground had the precise trajectory of their targets, and they knew far, far in advance that the missiles were coming. Even then, in these insanely unrealistic scenarios, the success rate of tests have been mixed. Even when the tested are rigged, success is not guaranteed. The thing is just extremely expensive junk. Even these joke "tests" are expensive, costing taxpayers $100 million each.

And it's the "expensive" part that justifies its existence. We've spent $120 billion on missile defense since Reagan had his notion. By 2013, the annual cost will be nearly $19 billion. That marks 25 years of really expensive failure, with no end in sight. Missile defense is very lucrative busywork for defense contractors. The whole thing's been a scam on the American taxpayer.

And John McCain's been in on it. In fact, McCain's been trying to get one of these defense systems deployed in Poland. Poland -- knowing full well the "missile shield" doesn't do squat -- is holding out for military aid. After all, accepting the system alone would mean annoying Russia and getting nothing in return. That's not much of an incentive to help corrupt American politicians funnel money to corporations. They want something other than a pile of crap for their trouble. Poland wants some of that scratch too.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur:

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the daily Dziennik his recent trip to the US was important to clarify the Polish stance amid a deadlock in negotiations on a proposed American anti-missile shield in Poland.

Sikorski held talks with US presidential hopeful John McCain, and called them 'so cordial and precise that it surprised us.' Sikorski added that presidential candidate Barack Obama's skepticism about the shield is 'widely known.'

But McCain's opinion strengthens the Polish stance in negotiations, Sikorski said, and serves as an important point in talks.

'It shows the possible future president and one of the main strategists of that country thinks Polish demands are sensible,' he said.

Not only would McCain continue to blow money on this BS "shield," he'd actually spend more money -- in the form of military aid -- to deploy it. There is no part of that that makes any sense at all.

That is, unless you consider the obvious. "If you think of missile defense not as a military project, but as a... corporate picnic, it begins to make perfect sense," wrote Steve Lopez for the LA Times in 2001. "They spent $75 billion on Star Wars and got nowhere. Fifty Nobel laureates felt compelled to sign a statement declaring the whole thing insane."

That's exactly what it is -- a big pork picnic for corporations and the politicians who love them. In fact, John McCain's such a big booster he puts his love for this money vacuum right on his website. "Effective missile defenses are critical to protect America from rogue regimes like North Korea that possess the capability to target America with intercontinental ballistic missiles, from outlaw states like Iran that threaten American forces and American allies with ballistic missiles, and to hedge against potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia and China," we're told. "Effective missile defenses are also necessary to allow American military forces to operate overseas without being deterred by the threat of missile attack from a regional adversary."

Too bad there's no such thing as "effective missile defenses" -- just this ineffective piece of crap people like John McCain have been screwing us with for the past quarter century.

When the guy who tells you he's going to balance the budget in just four years tells you he's going to keep shoveling billions down a hole, you've got to wonder just how "straight" all of this straight talk can actually be. After all, he plans to do this all while keeping Bush's tax cuts and blowing money on occupying Iraq. If he's not going to cut BS pork like missile defense, what will he cut to keep it? What could possibly be less important than this corporate pork feast?

Someone should ask McCain that. Somehow, I doubt anyone in the press ever will.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Iran; Poland; military; corruption; corporations; science; technology; John McCain loves missile defense -- mostly because it tastes like pork

Life and Death in Baghdad

Los Angeles. Miami, maybe. If you were to guess where that photo above was taken, Iraq would probably not be your first guess. In our minds, that country looks more like this:



Both are accurate portrayals of a nation that struggles to maintain some semblance of normalcy, while dealing with death and madness on a daily basis. Journalist Robert Fisk brings these "snapshots of life in Baghdad" to our attention and it's no accident that the examples of life in Baghdad include death in Baghdad. But you wouldn't know that from US news reports.

"Signs are emerging that Iraq has reached a turning point," Associated Press reports. "Violence is down, armed extremists are in disarray, government confidence is rising and sectarian communities are gearing up for a battle at the polls rather than slaughter in the streets."

Violence is down, violence is down, violence is down. Republicans have taken that as proof that we're "winning" in Iraq -- whatever that means. I have yet to have someone explain what constitutes a "win." I don't think anyone knows. It isn't until farther in the piece that we learn why the violence is down.

"The wave of sectarian massacres that pushed the country to the brink of all-out civil war in 2006 has calmed," we're told. Violence is down because violence had spiked. Violence is down to pre-2006 levels. And that level of violence is unacceptably high.

The photos Fisk points us to come from photographer Geert van Kesteren's Baghdad Calling, a collection of photos taken by Iraqis with cellphones. The photos show the often confusing juxtaposition of horrific violence and ordinary people.

[T]here are also families; even a Muslim family celebrating Christmas, all dressed in Santa Claus hats, and a graduation party where the girls wear Bedouin black dresses with gold-fringed scarves and the boys wear Arab headdress and white abayas -- something quite foreign to the middle classes of what was once one of the most literate and educated cities of the Middle East.

But it is the cell phone that has captured this terrible, fearful, brave face of Baghdad. Western photographers can no longer roam the streets of the Iraqi capital -- and few other cities in Iraq -- and in south-west Afghanistan, the same phenomenon has occurred.

So much for this new period of safety and calm. It's so "safe" that western journalists can't even go there. Iraq is calm by no sane measure. Even Iraqis are subject to violence by extremists that seems almost random. Fisk relays an email van Kesteren recieved. "This summer," said the message, "a workman wanted to quench his thirst by putting ice in his tea. A car pulled up, the driver stepped out and began to beat and kick the man, cursing him as an unbeliever. 'What do you think you're doing? Did the Prophet Mohamed put ice in his water?'

"The man being attacked was furious and asked his assailant: 'Do you think the Prophet Mohamed drove a car?'"

If it didn't actually happen, you might think it was a joke. The madness of your average religious fanatic knows no limit. Nor does their resistance to reason or their hypocrisy. Someone this crazy isn't going to stop being this crazy. Until Iraq is able to put every one of these nuts behind bars, violence in Baghdad is always going to be high. I keep saying it because it's so damned true, but we've taken a place that was a hellhole under Saddam Hussein and have made it worse.

And, of course, there's nothing we can do about it. The story relayed in that email is clearly a case of assault and battery. It's a crime, not a battle. That guy being beaten by the religious nut needed a cop, not a lance corporal. But Iraqi police, trained by US mercenaries, are widely corrupt. Whether or not that man on the street would've gotten any help might depend on whether he had any money. And many of those police who aren't corrupt are religious nuts themselves. Law in Iraq is pretty much theoretical. Someone's bothered to write a bunch of them, but no one seems too interested in enforcing them.

Which, of course, goes a long way to explain all the violence and all the dead bodies dumped in alleys. Some of these are ordinary people attacked by insurgents or zealots, some are insurgents or zealots attacked by insurgents or zealots, and some are doubtless insurgents or zealots attacked by ordinary people acting where the police do not. It's a supreme irony that anarchy only exists as a struggle between groups seeking to impose their various ideas of order.

Bush and McCain can talk about laws all they want. They can claim progress. But one thing you never hear them talk about is anything at all that will help those ordinary Iraqis. The big news from Iraq recently is that oil companies are moving in. Iraq's oil used to be nationalized and belonged to the people. Now it belongs to anyone who manages to get it out of the ground. Ordinary Iraqis won't see a dime. Their oil really has been stolen from them. It was taken by a government just as corrupt as the police and sold for personal profit.

Of course, that the Iraqi government thinks it can afford to dick around with oil contracts while neighborhoods burn is an excellent example of just what's wrong. The people want nothing to do with a government that apparently wants nothing to do with them. So they make their own law and police their own streets and fight their own battles, because their government can't be bothered to -- they got important geopolitical stuff to do. Trade agreements and oil contracts. Iraq itself can go choke.

For the US -- especially the TV news audience -- Iraq is a map. We have no idea what the people there are like, because we never discuss them. An Iraqi without a gun is beneath our attention, not worthy of our time. We "freed" them and now we're done with them. Now it's all about the money. The police are corrupt, the Iraqi government is corrupt, and the occupying government is corrupt. When criminals build a nation, I guess this is what you should really expect; a nation of crime.

Those ordinary Iraqis are left to protect themselves and a big part of the problem is that they are. The Mahdi Army, for example, is so popular because they fight crime and bring order. When the government fails, people turn to secondary institutional structures -- in this case, militias.

When you look at those photos by everyday Iraqis. You see a confusing mixture of violence and celebration of life. Graduation photos and burning cars, family gatherings and corpses. That they haven't all gone completely insane is a testament to the strength and adaptability of the average human animal.

Looking through these photos, I realize I admire these people, but wish I didn't have to.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; crime; Bush; neocon; corruption; media; oil; People actually live in Iraq

Your Tax Dollars at Work

There are some out there who would be surprised to learn that the government of Iraq is corrupt as all hell and that the Bush administration -- especially the State Department and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- have been trying to cover up that fact. To those people, I say, "Congratulations on waking from your coma!" I would've sent a card earlier, but I just found you guys were sick.

It was over a year ago that I posted that we'd been sending money into Iraq -- $12 billion in cash -- with absolutely no idea where it went. "In one case, bills were wrapped in plastic, put on pallets and shipped to Iraq," I wrote. In that case, the cash was a cargo shipment that could be measured by its tonnage -- 363 tons, to be exact.

The story came from Reuters, in February of 2007:

The U.S. Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, lawmakers said on Tuesday.


The money, which had been held by the United States, came from Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the U.N.-run oil-for-food program and frozen assets belonging to the ousted Saddam Hussein regime.

Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did," the California Democrat said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.

Of course, Waxman's question is more rhetorical than anything; there are few in this administration who are "in their right mind." Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash to be distributed anywhere? And, more than a year later, not only don't we have anything to show for our largesse, but we don't even know where it all went.

And, it's clear that the Bush administration isn't all that interested in finding out. In a letter [PDF] to Condoleezza Rice in September 2007, House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman wrote, "...Committee staff were informed yesterday that State Department officials with direct knowledge of corruption within the Maliki government would not be allow to provide the Committee with 'assessments which judge or characterize the quality of Iraqi governance or the ability/determination of the Iraqi government to deal with corruption' unless the Committee agreed to treat this information as classified and withhold it from the public."

In other words, State admits that the Iraqi government is corrupt, but argues that the specifics (i.e., exactly how corrupt and who exactly has their hand in your pocket) is a state secret. At a Committee hearing on the subject, Waxman said, "We even asked one of the people at the State Department whether he agreed with the statement by Secretary Rice when she praised Prime Minister Maliki for his efforts to stop corruption. She even praised it. And we asked this fellow from the State Department, 'Do you agree with that?' And he said, 'I’m not allowed to discuss that in an open forum.'"

The official couldn't discuss Maliki and crime at all. Let me repeat that, so the ridiculousness of it sinks in -- a State Department official was censored from agreeing with Rice about the leader of the Iraqi government, because it's some big secret. Condi, apparently, has trouble keeping her big yap shut and has blabbed about a state secret. The big secret being that Nuri al-Maliki is a big Boy Scout.

Yeah, that seems plausible...

At least, seems plausible if that coma resulted in lingering brain damage (sorry about that guys, I'll send flowers). To anyone else it seems like just one more "Do you really expect anyone to believe that?" moment. They're so common with this White House.

Someone didn't get the memo. At a hearing yesterday, Arthur Brennan, the former director of the Office of Accountability and Transparency (OAT) in Iraq, told the Committee that his office's work "was ignored and demeaned by the Department of State, the Department of Justice, and the government of Iraq." If you need an explanation of why this happened, consider the name of his department -- accountability and transparency are the enemies of the hopelessly corrupt and the current administrations of both nations fit that description.

Agence France-Presse sums up Brennan's testimony this way:

He accused the State Department of failing in its mission to thwart widespread corruption in Iraq, and said its policies had instead allowed corruption to fester.

"The actual policies and performance of the State Department in Iraq were not what they are represented to be," he said, his voice shaking with emotion.

"The Department of State has negligently, recklessly and sometimes intentionally misled the US Congress, the American people and the people of Iraq."

"In a sense, the Department of State has contributed to the killing and maiming of US soldiers, the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians; the bolstering of illegal militias, insurgents and Al-Qaeda."

"Billions of US and Iraqi dollars have been lost, stolen and wasted, it is likely that some of that money is financing outlaws and insurgents such as the Medhi Army."

"There was no immediate response to the allegations from the State Department," AFP tells us. Of course there isn't. This story has been barely covered by the press. Last night I bookmarked the Google news page for the issue, so I could check this morning for updates -- today there are a whopping twelve entries. Most of those are likely reprints from wire services. State's dodging a bullet here, if they release a response, the whole story gets repeated once again. Like a good 90% of this administration's problems, if the administration ignores it, the press will make sure it goes away. Corruption, incompetence, and contempt for Americans by the Bush administration is old news.

No, the big news is that Hillary Clinton's going to win W. Virginia. Why this is news is beyond me. She'll probably get twelve delegates out of it, which means that she only needs about nine or ten wins like this to beat Obama. Unfortunately, there are only five other races in the primary. At this point, there's no reason why the Democratic primary should be pushing other news to page four.

But, there ya go. The Bush administration "has contributed to the killing and maiming of US soldiers, the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians; the bolstering of illegal militias, insurgents and Al-Qaeda," which means that all the headlines tomorrow will be "Hillary Wins Beauty Contest!"

If you're one of those people who were in a coma, you're really not all that far behind the rest of us, information-wise. The media's been in a coma, too.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Hillary Clinton; W. Virginia; elections; 2008; Democrat; Iraq; Bush; Condoleezza Rice and the State Department are covering up corruption in Maliki's government -- of course, the media couldn't care less