A Bad Day In The White House

There aren’t many good ones as the effect of six and one/half years of Bush decisions manifest themselves on a daily basis, but yesterday seemed just a bit worse then normal.

Republicans in Congress, when they are not announcing that they don’t plan to run for their own seats in 2008, are faced with the prospect of defending the Bush planned veto of legislation aimed at providing medical insurance for poor children. No matter how the Administration tries to claim that the veto is an attempt at a broader bill (that apparently stands no chance of passage) this is just one more example of Republican pro-life policy that deals with children from conception to birth and then forgets about their existence. To quote Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), one of the leading sponsors of the children's health bill, "it's a bizarre thing that a president who believes in testing kids for math does not believe in testing kids for measles and mumps."

One of their loud claims about progress in Iraq is the decrease in sectarian killings. Karen Young, in today’s Washington Post, identifies how Pentagon numbers are being used selectively to bolster this argument. A team of analysts reviews each death in Iraq and based on “evidence” determines whether it is a sectarian killing or just a plain every day event. The latter don’t show up in the statistics. The Government Accountability Office said it "could not determine if sectarian violence had declined" since the U.S. troop buildup began in the spring and saw no decrease in overall attacks against civilians as of the end of July. The GAO recommended that the administration expand its statistical sources to include "all relevant U.S. agencies" and that it use "broader measures of population security" to establish trends.

A reconciliation gathering (the hallmark of the Petraeus counter-insurgency strategy) of Shiite and Sunni tribal leaders, provincial officials and security commanders in Baqubah on Monday, saw a suicide bomber kill at least 21 people, including the city's police chief, despite the presence of thousands of US troops in the area.

The Taliban is back and is extending its reach. Not content to reside in Pakistan’s tribal region and concentrating on southern Helmand Province, they are now staging attacks just outside the capital, according to Western diplomats, private security analysts and aid workers. "The Taliban ability to sustain fighting cells north and south of Kabul is an ominous development and a significant lapse in security," said a recent analysis by NightWatch, an intelligence review written by John McCreary, a former top analyst at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

Since Bush will never reverse a position he has held, no matter how egregious, he cannot be expected to admit that climate change is a world problem that requires action. Not doing anything is bad enough, but the Bush administration is now stopping states from dealing with this problem in their own. California, along with 11 other states, is hoping to enact rules that would cut global warming pollution from new motor vehicles by nearly 30 percent by 2016. To do so, California needs a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency, a request that has been pending for nearly two years. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has threatened to sue if EPA does not rule on the waiver by Oct. 22. The Bush administration has conducted a concerted, behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to try to generate opposition to California's request to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, according to documents obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform as reported in today’s Washington Post.

Violent crime in the United States rose more than previously believed in 2006, continuing the most significant increase in more than a decade, according to an FBI report released yesterday. The uptick presents a significant political challenge for the Bush administration, which has faced growing criticism from congressional Democrats, big-city mayors and police chiefs for presiding over cuts in federal assistance to local law enforcement agencies over the past six years.

Inequality

Jonathan Chait, a senior editor at The New Republic, has just published The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics. Following are some excerpts that appeared in The New Republic:

On February 2006, the conservative journal Policy Review published an essay that was shockingly heretical, though perhaps unintentionally so. In it, Carles Boix of the University of Chicago argued that there is a link between democracy and economic equality:

In an unequal society, the majority resents its diminished status. It harbors the expectation of employing elections to drastically overturn its condition. In turn, the wealthy minority fears the outcome that may follow from free elections and the assertion of majority rule. As a result, it resorts to authoritarian institutions to guarantee its social and economic advantage.

Of the many taboos that prevail among conservatives, the one forbidding any serious discussion of inequality is perhaps the strictest. Any forthright examination of this topic will lead one quickly to the realization that American society has been spreading apart rapidly for three decades and that Republican economic policies have without a doubt contributed mightily to this gulf. So conservatives usually ignore the subject of inequality, except perhaps to minimize its scale or importance.

Why, then, did Policy Review, which is published by the staunchly conservative Hoover Institution, open its pages to such apostasy? Well, it didn't intend to. Boix's essay (which was brilliant and widely discussed) concerned the inculcation of democracy abroad and did not deal directly with the United States. And the circumstances Boix envisioned--mainly, developing countries attempting a transition to democracy--are different from those in an advanced democracy. Americans, fortunately, do not have to worry about kleptocrats, political violence, and massive vote fraud.

But, while Boix's theory may be less applicable to the United States than it is to the Third World, it is still somewhat true. Indeed, this theory offers an uncannily precise description of what has happened in American politics over the last 30 years. The business lobbyists have turned the Republican Party into a kind of machine dedicated unwaveringly to protecting and expanding the wealth of the very rich. As it has pursued this goal ever more single-mindedly, the right has by necessity grown ever more hostile to majoritarian decision-making for the obvious reason that it's hard to enlist the public behind an agenda designed to benefit a tiny minority. The old ways of conducting politics have broken down in the face of this onslaught. The mores of the old Washington establishment--the assumption of some basic intellectual goodwill on both sides, the focus on character over substance, the belief in compromise--all developed during an era when there were few ideological differences between the parties. The old ways may have done a decent job of safeguarding the national interest when the great moderate consensus prevailed, but they have proven unequal to the challenge of a more ideological time.

All this has happened at the same time as a massive increase in income inequality, which is exactly what Boix's theory would predict. In the same essay, Boix marvels at the fortunes amassed by autocratic ruling elites throughout history:

Rulers such as the Bourbons, the Tudors, or the Sauds seize an important part of their subjects' assets. For example, at the death of Augustus (14 a.d.), the top 1/10,000 of the Roman Empire's households received 1 percent of all income. In Mughal India around 1600 a.d., the top 1/10,000th received 5 percent of all income.

Presumably, readers looking at these numbers are supposed to gape in astonishment at the sheer inequity of those autocratic regimes. But the numbers are less astonishing when you compare them to those in the contemporary United States, which Boix does not. As of 2004, the top one-ten-thousandth of Americans earned over 3 percent of the national income--a somewhat smaller share than that earned by the Mughal elite but several times higher than that enjoyed by the wealthiest Romans.

Meanwhile, the gap between Americans and Mughals is closing rapidly. Since the late '70s, the share of national income going to the top 1 percent has doubled. The share of the top 0.1 percent has tripled, and the share of the top 0.01 percent has quadrupled. This gulf was widened precisely at the same time that the right, growing ever more plutocratic and suspicious of popular demands, was battering away at the culture of American democracy. Many people have looked at the depredations of the Bush era--the bizarre cult of personality, the anti-intellectual demagoguery, the incessant flouting of norms, the prostrate media--as the product of the president's character, or Karl Rove's machinations. But it is, in the main, the consequence of a cult-like fringe taking control of a political party and using it to wage class warfare on behalf of a tiny minority.

Greenspan Speaks

The nation’s economic God; the Republic’s financial savior has spoken. In what is becoming an unseemly race to distance themselves from the failed Bush Presidency, revelations about the Bush presidency continue to emerge from formerly staunch Republicans who were intimately involved. Following are some excerpts from Alan Greenspan’s soon to be published book, in which, according to the NY Times, he describes Bill Clinton as a sponge for economic data who maintained, “a consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth. Even though I clearly was a Republican, I had to admit [Clinton] was an extraordinarily effective president.”

Greenspan says Republican leaders in Congress made a grievous error by spending whatever it took to ensure a permanent Republican majority.

I indulged in a bit of fantasy, envisioning this as the government that might have existed had Gerald Ford garnered the extra one percent of the vote he’d needed to edge past Jimmy Carter. I thought we had a golden opportunity to advance the ideals of effective, fiscally conservative government and free markets.

[Instead] I was soon to see my old friends veer off in unexpected directions.

My friend [he writes of John O’Neill] soon found himself to be the odd man out; much to my disappointment, economic policymaking in the Bush administration remained firmly in the hands of the White House staff.

I’m just very disappointed. Smaller government, lower spending, lower taxes, less regulation — they had the resources to do it, they had the knowledge to do it, they had the political majorities to do it. And they didn’t. In the end, political control trumped policy, and they achieved neither political control nor policy. The Republicans in Congress lost their way. They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.

Well, remember that their economic policy, largely, was to take the proposals made during the campaign when there was a prospective very large surplus, and that those policies continued in place irrespective of what was happening to the surplus. It was wrong. It turned out that Conrad and Rubin were right.

Iraq Strategy

Asserting that there is some military success in Iraq and running with it for all he is worth is the Bush approach to the next year and one-half. His claim of gradual troop reduction is just one more misleading statement that distorts the fact that current troop levels require reduction this coming spring even if the war were to escalate. Tom Friedman in today’s NY Times accuses Bush of abdicating his presidency by hiding behind General Petraeus (who admitted in his Congressional testimony that he had no idea whether our presence in Iraq is making America safer. To be fair to the General, that decision should be made by the President after assessing military advice and measuring the impact on the total interests of the US). He needs to respond to Representative Ike Skelton’s comment during the Petraeus/Crocker testimony:

We must begin by considering the overall security of this nation. It’s our responsibility here in Congress under the Constitution to ensure that the United States military can deter and if needed prevail anywhere our interests are threatened. Iraq is an important piece of the overall equation, but it is only a piece. There are very real trade-offs when you send 160,000 of our men and women in uniform to Iraq. Those troops in Iraq are not available for other missions.

Bush can offer nothing better then stating that the next President will have to resolve the Iraq situation. What we don’t get is a strategic goal that governs our actions. Why are we there and what are we going to accomplish by staying there? There have been lots of goals proffered in the past three plus years, all successively discarded as each one failed to materialize.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to President Carter, speaking on The Jim Lehrer New Hour prior to Bush’s speech, accurately sums up the Iraq situation:

This is a very sad time for America. We have been involved in a futile war, a war of choice, for four years. There's no end in sight.

The president is not listening to the heartbeat of the country. The country doesn't want this war to continue. I think there's a widening consensus that the war cannot be resolved militarily.

The president is not reaching out at home to the other side, not attempting to shape policy jointly, responding to the overwhelming desire of the American people to end this war. He's not setting in motion a process abroad designed to create some modicum of stability as we disengage.

He's essentially decided to bequeath this war to his successor and to dribble out, essentially, partial withdrawals which at this rate would last five more years, while at the same time stepping up the pressure on Iran, possibly even raising the risk of a larger war.

So this is a tragic and a dangerous time. I hope, at some point, the Republicans would prevail on the president to do what is needed, not to abdicate his responsibility, but to try to fashion a truly responsible, historically relevant policy.

I don't think the president can define that vision all by himself. Sad to say -- as a citizen -- his record in the last four years isn't very good.

I have here a whole folder of quotations from him in which, in effect, unintentionally, he was misleading the American people, talking about turning points, progress and so forth. And where are we four years later?

If he is to provide a vision, he really has to embrace the country and its political leadership, and that means the Republicans and the Democrats.

We have to recognize the fact that the war in Iraq is a colonial war for the people in Iraq. We may not want to face that fact, but it is a colonial war. But we live in the post-colonial age. We cannot tell the Iraqis how they ought to live or what kind of a political system they ought to have. And we have to face that fact.

And in facing it, we have to step forward with a strategic concept, a comprehensive vision of how to deal with the military situation, the political situation, the regional situation, and the humanitarian situation.

"Kicking Ass”

The title is Bush’s nuanced description of how successful we are in Iraq, uttered last week just a few days before the long awaited Petraeus report. In its latest shift in tactics the administration is now centered on Anbar, where our new approach is to arm the Sunni tribes and let them fight off Al Qaeda, and then move this method throughout the country.

Is no one in this group capable of thought beyond the next few days? Apparently we have given up on the idea of a central government made up of Iraqis all working in accord in a peaceful Baghdad and in the rest of the country. Instead Bush, fixated on an Al Qaeda that wasn’t even there when we started, is misreading the turn of events in Anbar.

So the tribes are now building their fiefdoms as we supply them with arms for the glorious goal of getting rid of the foreign terrorists. But then what? Once they have driven out Al Qaeda, the Sunnis, who think they should be in control of the entire country, will turn on the Shia and on us and guess what the Shia reaction will be.

The only long-range thought Bush is capable of is justifying his original disastrous decision by never admitting error and by prolonging our presence until January 19, 2009, so that he can then claim that it is the new administration that failed in Iraq. If 800 or so Americans have to die, if thousands have to be wounded, if countless Iraqis have to be thrown out of their homes or leave the country or be killed due to collateral damage, it is the price we have to pay for Bush’s lack of thought (stupidity?) and cynical political self-justification.

Martha Wainright

Martha Wainright, the daughter of Louden Wainright and Kate McGarrigle, sister of Rufus Wainright, and niece of Anna McGarrigle, has musical roots that are hard to match. She appeared in the 2005 documentary about Leonard Cohen titled "I am Your Man" singing Leonard Cohen's song "The Traitor."

It is a beautiful song enhanced by a searing performance.

The lyrics:

Now the swan it floated on the english river
Ah the rose of high romance it opened wide
A sun tanned woman yearned me through the summer
And the judges watched us from the other side

I told my mother mother I must leave you
Preserve my room but do not shed a tear
Should rumour of a shabby ending reach you
It was half my fault and half the atmosphere

But the rose I sickened with a scarlet fever
And the swan I tempted with a sense of shame
She said at last I was her finest lover
And if she withered I would be to blame

The judges said you missed it by a fraction
Rise up and brace your troops for the attack
Ah the dreamers ride against the men of action
Oh see the men of action falling back

But I lingered on her thighs a fatal moment
I kissed her lips as though I thirsted still
My falsity had stung me like a hornet
The poison sank and it paralysed my will

I could not move to warn all the younger soldiers
That they had been deserted from above
So on battlefields from here to barcelona
Im listed with the enemies of love

And long ago she said I must be leaving,
Ah but keep my body here to lie upon
You can move it up and down and when Im sleeping
Run some wire through that rose and wind the swan

So daily I renew my idle duty
I touch her here and there -- I know my place
I kiss her open mouth and I praise her beauty
And people call me traitor to my face

Internet Future

An article by Blaine Harden about Internet connectivity speeds in the August 29, 2007 Washington Post shows clearly how the Bush administration’s bias toward large corporations is hindering innovation, stifling technological progress, and hurting consumers in order to safeguard established interests.

Americans invented the Internet, but the Japanese are running away with it. Broadband service [in Japan] is eight to 30 times as fast as in the United States -- and considerably cheaper. Japan has the world's fastest Internet connections, delivering more data at a lower cost than anywhere else, recent studies show. Accelerating broadband speed in [Japan] -- as well as in South Korea and much of Europe -- is pushing open doors to Internet innovations that are likely to remain closed for years to come in much of the United States. The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcast-quality, full-screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the grainy, wallet-size images Americans endure.

Ultra-high-speed applications are being rolled out for low-cost, high-definition teleconferencing, for telemedicine -- which allows urban doctors to diagnose diseases from a distance -- and for advanced telecommuting to help Japan meet its goal of doubling the number of people who work from home by 2010.

Japan has surged ahead of the United States on the wings of better wire and more aggressive government regulation, industry analysts say. The copper wire used to hook up Japanese homes is newer and runs in shorter loops to telephone exchanges than in the United States. This is partly a matter of geography and demographics: Japan is relatively small, highly urbanized and densely populated. But better wire is also a legacy of American bombs, which razed much of urban Japan during World War II and led to a wholesale rewiring of the country.

In 2000, the Japanese government seized its advantage in wire. In sharp contrast to the Bush administration over the same time period, regulators here compelled big phone companies to open up wires to upstart Internet providers.

In short order, broadband exploded. At first, it used the same DSL technology that exists in the United States. But because of the better, shorter wire in Japan, DSL service here is much faster. Ten to 20 times as fast, according to Pepper, one of the world's leading experts on broadband infrastructure.

Perhaps more important, competition in Japan gave a kick in the pants to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), once a government-controlled enterprise and still Japan's largest phone company. With the help of government subsidies and tax breaks, NTT launched a nationwide build-out of fiber-optic lines to homes, making the lower capacity copper wires obsolete.

The burgeoning optical fiber system is hurtling Japan into an Internet future that experts say Americans are unlikely to experience for at least several years. Shoji Matsuya, director of diagnostic pathology at Kanto Medical Center in Tokyo, has tested an NTT telepathology system scheduled for nationwide use next spring. It allows pathologists -- using high-definition video and remote-controlled microscopes -- to examine tissue samples from patients living in areas without access to major hospitals. Those patients need only find a clinic with the right microscope and an NTT fiber connection.

"The experience of the last seven years shows that sometimes you need a strong federal regulatory framework to ensure that competition happens in a way that is constructive," said Vinton G. Cerf, a vice president at Google.

Japan's lead in speed is worrisome because it will shift Internet innovation away from the United States, warns Cerf, who is widely credited with helping to invent some of the Internet's basic architecture. "Once you have very high speeds, I guarantee that people will figure out things to do with it that they haven't done before," he said.

As a champion of Japanese-style competition through regulation, Cerf supports "net neutrality" legislation now pending in Congress. It would mandate that phone and cable companies treat all online traffic equally, without imposing higher tolls for certain content. The proposed laws would probably save billions for companies such as Google and Yahoo, but consumer advocates say they would also save money for most home Internet users.

U.S. phone and cable companies, which control about 98 percent of the country's broadband market, strongly oppose the proposed laws, saying they would discourage the huge investments needed to upgrade broadband speed.

Yet the story of how Japan outclassed the United States in the provision of better, cheaper Internet service suggests that forceful government regulation can pay substantial dividends.

In the United States, a similar kind of competitive access to phone company lines was strongly endorsed by Congress in a 1996 telecommunications law. But the federal push fizzled in 2003 and 2004, when the Federal Communications Commission and a federal court ruled that major companies do not have to share phone or fiber lines with competitors. The Bush administration did not appeal the court ruling.

"The Bush administration largely turned its back on the Internet, so we have just drifted downwards," said Thomas Bleha, a former U.S. diplomat who served in Japan and is writing a history of how that country trumped the United States in broadband.