hilzoy

NY Times Endorses Kerry

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The New York Times has issued its endorsement in the Presidential race, and it is truly extraordinary. They come out clearly for Kerry: “We have been impressed with Mr. Kerry’s wide knowledge and clear thinking – something that became more apparent once he was reined in by that two-minute debate light. He is blessedly willing … Read more

More Torture.

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From Ha’aretz, via American Street: “The Central Intelligence Agency declined Wednesday to comment on a Haaretz report that it is holding 11 susepcted senior Al-Qaida members in Jordan, the BBC reported. Haaretz has learned from international intelligence sources that the CIA is running a top-secret interrogation facility in Jordan, where the detainees – considered Al-Qaida’s … Read more

Update: Voter Registration Fraud And Other Delightful Tactics

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Via Josh Marshall: Six people recently resigned from the Republican Party operation in South Dakota over allegations of voter fraud, which are now the subject of an investigation by the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation. According to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, “When South Dakota Republican Party Chairman Randy Frederick announced the resignations of … Read more

“It was allllll a dream… it was alllllll a dream!”

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That’s what Fafnir says our soldiers should say, as they leap backwards and get pulled into the sky by the cords on their backs so that they can be airlifted to aircraft carriers cleverly disguised as banana boats, allowing us finally to make our getaway from Iraq. Treasury Secretary John Snow has obviously been reading … Read more

Health Finance Experts Speak Out

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President Bush has repeatedly characterized Kerry’s health care plan as involving government taking over individual healthcare decisions. For instance, he recently said that : “My opponent’s proposal would be the largest expansion of government-run health care ever. And you know something, when the government pays the bills, it makes the rules. His plan would put … Read more

Oops! They Did It Again!

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Our Congress, that model of prudence and fiscal discipline, passed yet another tax cut yesterday. This one is projected to cost the government $140 billion over the next ten years. It started as an attempt to repeal a subsidy that had been ruled illegal, and had resulted in tariffs on some US goods. That would … Read more

Words Fail Me.

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From the LA Times, via Atrios: Bush Administration Plans to Delay Major Assaults in Iraq By Mark Mazzetti Times Staff Writer 7:45 PM PDT, October 10, 2004 WASHINGTON — The Bush administration will delay major assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after U.S. elections in November, say administration officials, mindful that large-scale military offensives … Read more

Dred Scott: All Is Revealed

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Silly me. I couldn’t understand why on earth Bush mentioned the Dred Scott decision last night. I put it on my list of three informative moments from the debate, but only because, as I said, it seemed to me to provide an answer to the question, does Bush not know what’s in the Constitution, or does he just not care? (My reasoning being that in both cases there is a fairly straightforward constitutional argument in support of the decisions he mentioned, whether you agree with it or not, and therefore neither is a remotely plausible candidate for the title ‘decision requiring judges to interject their personal opinions’.) The Dred Scott example raised some other minor questions — did Bush think that slavery was likely to be an issue in this race? If not, why mention Dred Scott? And why would someone who knew enough to be able to mention Dred Scott not also know that at the time the Constitution did allow slavery, which is why we needed the 13th Amendment? But at bottom I thought it was just another bizarre Bush moment, like his reference to medicines from ‘a third world’.

Boy, was I wrong. It turns out that ‘Dred Scott’ is actually code for ‘Roe v. Wade’. From Paperwight (the first link):

“Some people seem to be a bit boggled by Bush’s Dred Scott remark last night. It wasn’t about racism or slavery, or just Bush’s natural incoherence. Here’s what Bush actually said:

If elected to another term, I promise that I will nominate Supreme Court Justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade.

Bush couldn’t say that in plain language, because it would freak out every moderate swing voter in the country, but he can say it in code, to make sure that his base will turn out for him. Anti-choice advocates have been comparing Roe v. Wade with Dred Scott v. Sandford for some time now. There is a constant drumbeat on the religious right to compare the contemporary culture war over abortion with the 19th century fight over slavery, with the anti-choicers cast in the role of the abolitionists.”

And you know what? Paperwight is right. Here are a few quotes:

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A Completely Non-Partisan Policy Conundrum

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In an effort to provide an occasion for political discussion that engages our political and moral views but not our partisan passions, I offer the following policy question, which I and some colleagues have written about (registration required). (A longer relative of this paper with more biology and a less developed moral argument is here.) It’s about embryonic stem cells, but nothing about the moral question we raise turns on whether or not it’s OK to use human embryos to derive stem cells. It also assumes that we have figured out how to use stem cells to cure diseases.

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Post-Debate Thread

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So what did you think? Personally, I didn’t think it was a slam dunk like last time. But I did think that Kerry had the President on the defensive for most of the debate, and that the way the President kept trying to claim time for rebuttals when the rules said that whether there were … Read more

Business School Professors Write Open Letter To Bush

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We’ve already had diplomats and former military commanders, more retired generals and admirals, Nobel laureates, eminent pediatricians, and others signing statements against President Bush and his policies — and those are just the ones that leapt to mind. Some of these are interesting: diplomats and former military generals, for instance, don’t organize to endorse candidates all that often, and I take the fact that they are doing it now as a sign of real alarm. But now comes the most unlikely group of all: Business School Professors have written a stinging letter to President Bush.

Now: Professors are a diverse and often unruly bunch, and attempts to generalize about them are usually a mistake. However, I will take the risk and say: Business School professors are, by and large, fairly conservative. The letter these B-School professors have written pulls no punches. After trying to excerpt it, I’ve decided to post the whole of it: the first two paragraphs here, the rest after the fold. These are very serious points made by very serious people.

Dear Mr. President:

As professors of economics and business, we are concerned that U.S. economic policy has taken a dangerous turn under your stewardship. Nearly every major economic indicator has deteriorated since you took office in January 2001. Real GDP growth during your term is the lowest of any presidential term in recent memory. Total non-farm employment has contracted and the unemployment rate has increased. Bankruptcies are up sharply, as is our dependence on foreign capital to finance an exploding current account deficit. All three major stock indexes are lower now than at the time of your inauguration. The percentage of Americans in poverty has increased, real median income has declined, and income inequality has grown.

The data make clear that your policy of slashing taxes – primarily for those at the upper reaches of the income distribution – has not worked. The fiscal reversal that has taken place under your leadership is so extreme that it would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. The federal budget surplus of over $200 billion that we enjoyed in the year 2000 has disappeared, and we are now facing a massive annual deficit of over $400 billion. In fact, if transfers from the Social Security trust fund are excluded, the federal deficit is even worse – well in excess of a half a trillion dollars this year alone. Although some members of your administration have suggested that the mountain of new debt accumulated on your watch is mainly the consequence of 9-11 and the war on terror, budget experts know that this is simply false. Your economic policies have played a significant role in driving this fiscal collapse. And the economic proposals you have suggested for a potential second term – from diverting Social Security contributions into private accounts to making the recent tax cuts permanent – only promise to exacerbate the crisis by further narrowing the federal revenue base.

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Fact Check: Stem Cell Funding

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The Bush campaign has put out a statement about his record on funding stem cell research. It reads, in part:

“The Facts Are:

President Bush delivered the first funding ever for embryonic stem cell research.  Prior to the President’s announcement of new funding, federal funding of embryonic stem cell research was $0.

The President’s announcement did not ban, limit or restrict stem cell research.

It is inaccurate to say the President “limited federal funding” of stem cell research, as such funding did not exist to limit.  This language misleads voters to believe that the President put restrictions on existing federal funding.

The President did announce the first ever federal funding of stem cell research with ethical requirements on which stem cell lines are funded.”

Since various claims and counterclaims are being made about this, I decided to provide some background against which to assess them. I am not doing this in a partisan spirit; I work on this stuff, and I just thought it would be good to have a clear account of the history.

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Guantanamo’s Evil Stepson

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(12th post in a series on the House GOP’s attempt to legalize “Extraordinary Rendition”. Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.)

Please read this very, very important Newsweek story. As I feared, Gonzales’ letter is not worth much.

Hastert’s spokesman John Feehery said that Homeland Security had requested the extraordinary rendition provision, but “for whatever reason the White House has decided they don’t want to take this on because they’re afraid of the political implications.”

It’s actually worse than I thought. It’s not just a legal justification to keep doing what they’ve been doing. It’s not justa way to get rid of the Maher Arar case. It still might have been a political ploy, but not only a political ploy. Torture outsourcing was going to be–still may be–the substitute for Guantanamo Bay after the Supreme Court decision:

He said the provision, mainly laid out in Section 3032 and 3033 , was designed as a way of addressing the problem created by last summer’s Supreme Court decision. The justices ruled that the administration couldn’t detain people indefinitely without trial or charges. As a result, the government has ordered the release of suspects such as Yaser Hamdi, a dual citizen of the United States and Saudi Arabia who was captured in Afghanistan and held for three years as an enemy combatant.

Now, Feehery said, “we’ve got a situation where we’ve got these people in the country who ought not to be in the country. We have to release them because of the Supreme Court case. So Homeland Security wanted this provision.”

The DOJ spokesman confirmed this:

Justice spokesman Mark Corallo also said it was Homeland Security’s call. “It’s their issue,” Corallo said. “They’re the immigration people now. Not us.”

The House is still pushing for the provision, and I’m sure the White House has no objection. They just need to keep a safe distance. They can’t be allowed to. The press must ask Bush about this directly.

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Our President Lies.

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Last Saturday, in Columbus OH, our President said this: “Think about this, Senator Kerry’s approach to foreign policy would give foreign governments veto power over our national security decisions. I have a different view. (Applause.) When our country is in danger, the President’s job is not to take an international poll. The President’s job is … Read more

We Should Be Ashamed.

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Here’s a story from the Washington Post: Thousands of U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with physical injuries and mental health problems are encountering a benefits system that is already overburdened, and officials and veterans’ groups are concerned that the challenge could grow as the nation remains at war. The disability benefits and health … Read more

David Brooks: Wrong On The Debates, Wrong On Morality

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I have vowed, repeatedly, never to read David Brooks again: I have low blood pressure, as it happens, but a person can never be too careful. Still, every few months or so I spot a sentence out of the corner of my eye before I realize it’s his, and it’s so completely inane that I can’t help myself. Today, the sentence in question was this: “In weak moments, I think the best ticket for this country would be Bush-Kerry.” With a horrible sinking sensation, I knew that I was going to have to read on.

Fortunately, Brooks did not dwell on the supposed merits of a Bush-Kerry ticket. Instead, he analyzed the debates. I was not surprised that what he said was inane. I was surprised, however, at how entirely false it was. People like Brooks are, as Emerson once said, “not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.”

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More Debate Responses

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But first, shameless collective-self promotion: Obsidian Wings has been nominated for ‘Best Group Blog’ in Rox Populi’s Best Political Bloggers Contest. OK: On to the reactions, which I have chosen on the basis not of profundity or erudition, but of how much I enjoyed them. Michael Berube has a lovely post that begins: Well, Wolf, … Read more

Quick Factchecking: Homeland Security

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There were a few points in the debate where I thought Bush said something that was just wrong. For instance, he said that “There are 100,000 troops trained, police, guard, special units, border patrol.” Last Friday Reuters reported that “The Pentagon also said on Monday that only about 53,000 of the 100,000 Iraqis on duty now have undergone training.” However, rather than going over lots of statements, I want to focus on one that I worry will be passed over, namely Bush’s claim, on a question about homeland security, that “Of course we’re doing everything we can to protect America.” This statement is clearly, flatly false.

I wrote about this several weeks ago here. The quickest way to find a list of things that we have not done to make our country safer is to download a GAO report on the status of key recommendations made by the GAO to the Department of Homeland Security, and flip to p. 30, where you will find a list of recommendations that have not yet been implemented. And the quickest way to show that Bush did not tell the truth is to note that in eight of the cases where DHS provided an explanation of delays in implementing recommendations, it cited funding problems. Those recommendations include, among other things, deploying isotope identifiers to detect radiation in ports, finding people whose visas have been revoked because the government suspects them of involvement in terrorism, and controls over foreign military sales. These are all things that would have made our country safer, and that we did not do simply because we were unwilling to commit the necessary funds.

Below the fold I go over some areas in which this administration has failed to secure our country. Many of them are shortened versions of points I made my earlier post; sorry for the repetition. But I think it’s important to ask, about each of the items listed (and the list is far from exhaustive): is this something that Bush thinks his administration cannot do? If so, what does that say about the capabilities of his administration? If not, how does he square this with his claim that “we’re doing everything we can to protect America”?

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Bush’s Support Explained At Last

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For those of you who have been wondering, as I have, how anyone can support a President as disastrous as George W. Bush, a report from the Program on International Policy Attitudes explains it for us: his supporters have no idea what he stands for. Via Kos:

“As the nation prepares to watch the presidential candidates debate foreign policy issues, a new PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll finds that Americans who plan to vote for President Bush have many incorrect assumptions about his foreign policy positions. Kerry supporters, on the other hand, are largely accurate in their assessments. The uncommitted also tend to misperceive Bush’s positions, though to a smaller extent than Bush supporters, and to perceive Kerry’s positions correctly. Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments: “What is striking is that even after nearly four years President Bush’s foreign policy positions are so widely misread, while Senator Kerry, who is relatively new to the public and reputed to be unclear about his positions, is read correctly.””

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Legalizing Torture

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(1st post in a series on the House GOP’s attempt to legalize “Extraordinary Rendition”. Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.) Katherine the Sorely Missed asked me to post this. The rest is hers, though I second it. This is probably the most important post I’ve ever written. Certainly it is the most … Read more

Another Response To A Letter At Horsefeathers

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After I read the letter Edward linked to below, I googled Professor Kozloff, and found his web page, with a link to this letter on it. I also read some of his other papers, and discovered that when he describes the version of education he seems to prefer, he repeatedly invokes philosophers to justify it. (He has the fascinating idea of basing an educational philosophy on Plato, Aristotle, and C.S. Peirce, who, last I checked, didn’t have a whole lot in common.) The philosopher he mentioned most often, in the works I read, was Plato, and in particular Plato’s myth of the cave. Thus he writes: “The classical role of teacher is to educate students—from the Latin word educare, to lead forth—out of the cave of ignorance and false belief and into the open air where students, using observation and reasoning strategies (inductive and deductive logic) can come to know how things are.  (See Plato, Republic, 29, 514a-521b.)”

I would ordinarily assume, out of courtesy, that Professor Kozloff is not just using Plato ornamentally — dressing up his pages with him, as though he were a sort of tony festoon — but that he has actually read the Republic. But I can’t, since the letter he has posted is so flatly at odds with Plato generally, and with the myth of the cave in particular, that no one who had actually read and tried to understand Plato, and who agreed with him enough to cite him approvingly, could possibly have written it.

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Cheer Up! Things Could Be Worse…

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If, for instance, you lived in Kiruna in the north of Sweden, not only would you have to live in, well, northern Sweden*, but your town might be sinking into the earth: “The town of Kiruna in remote northern Sweden is seeking a new home before the earth swallows it up. Its centre is in … Read more

Look, Ma, I Broke The Army!

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One of the interesting things about being involved with the Clark campaign was getting to talk to the various military people who were involved. The ones I met were generally retired career officers, mostly quite senior; and most of them were people who not only served in Vietnam but stuck with the military afterwards, when … Read more

Kat Stevens Update

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From Time via discourse.net: “The Yusuf Islam incident earlier this week, in which the former Cat Stevens was denied entry into the U.S. when federal officials determined he was on the government’s “no-fly” antiterror list, started with a simple spelling error. According to aviation sources with access to the list, there is no Yusuf Islam … Read more

When Candidates Lie

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Once upon a time, my parents assure me, people assumed that politicians told the truth. Of course, they thought, those politicians might tell those truths that put their policies and records in the most favorable light, rather than pointing out the most troubling aspects of them; but they would not actually lie. When they did, … Read more

Have They No Shame? Have They No Sense Of Decency, At Long Last?

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Via Josh Marshall, from the Washington Post:

“President Bush and leading Republicans are increasingly charging that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and others in his party are giving comfort to terrorists and undermining the war in Iraq — a line of attack that tests the conventional bounds of political rhetoric.

Appearing in the Rose Garden yesterday with Iraq’s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, Bush said Kerry’s statements about Iraq “can embolden an enemy.” After Kerry criticized Allawi’s speech to Congress, Vice President Cheney tore into the Democratic nominee, calling him “destructive” to the effort in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism.”

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Why Can’t We Just Leave The Constitution Alone?

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OK, I know, even I am in favor of certain changes to it, like eliminating the electoral college. But I wish we could all, liberals and conservatives alike, resolve to mess with the Constitution only after considerable thought, with a sense of real seriousness, and only on very important matters. It is, after all, the … Read more

Where Have You Gone, Fiscal Discipline? (A Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes To You…)

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Woo woo woo. “Suddenly, a tax package designed to extend a trio of popular middle-class tax cuts is being eyed as the legislative vehicle to extend a host of other expiring tax breaks from research credits for corporations to tax credits to promote economic development at ground zero in New York. Overriding Democratic objections that … Read more

Happy Birthday

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to the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which is one hundred and forty two today: That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against … Read more

Just Guessing…

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Yesterday, President Bush responded to the bleak CIA estimates about Iraq’s future as follows: “President Bush, determined to put an optimistic face on deadly conditions in Iraq, said on Tuesday that the CIA was just guessing when it said the war-racked country was in danger of slipping into civil war. “The CIA laid out several … Read more

Why Did I Bother? (Blame Blue.)

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So you might be wondering why exactly I went to the trouble of writing all those long War on Terror posts. (I remember one commentator saying “Why don’t you cast your vote already?”, which made me laugh.) Basically, it’s all Blue’s fault. When I wrote the initial Why I will not vote for Bush post … Read more

Why I will Not Vote For Bush #2d: Homeland Security

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After 9/11, you’d think it would be obvious that we should work hard to secure our country against terrorist attacks. Some of this work has to be done overseas, but some of it involves taking steps here at home to make it more difficult for terrorist attacks against us to succeed. The Bush administration has argued that they have made America safer. But if you examine their record on homeland security, there are very serious problems.

Basically, what has happened is this: in the wake of 9/11, after initially opposing both steps, the Bush administration formed the Department of Homeland Security and federalized airport screening. Since 9/11 had demonstrated glaring holes in aviation security, the Congress passed measures requiring significant improvements in baggage and passenger screening. While there have been a few problems (pdf), like the fact that we still screen only 5% of air cargo, air transportation is now much safer than it was before 9/11.

However, nothing about al Qaeda’s history suggests that having used airplanes to attack us once, they will stick to airplanes in the future. This being the case, we should have worked equally hard to protect ourselves in other vulnerable areas. But we haven’t. As the 9/11 Commission report notes (p. 391), “Over 90% of the nation’s 5.3 billion investment in the TSA goes to aviation — to fight the last war.” Other areas remain dangerously insecure, in a way that, after 9/11, I find it hard to understand. For some highlights, read on.

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Guess What’s Less Important Than Tax Cuts For The Rich?

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Catching Osama bin Laden and disrupting al Qaeda, that’s what. From the New York Times:

“Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency has fewer experienced case officers assigned to its headquarters unit dealing with Osama bin Laden than it did at the time of the attacks, despite repeated pleas from the unit’s leaders for reinforcements, a senior C.I.A. officer with extensive counterterrorism experience has told Congress.

The bin Laden unit is stretched so thin that it relies on inexperienced officers rotated in and out every 60 to 90 days, and they leave before they know enough to be able to perform any meaningful work, according to a letter the C.I.A. officer has written to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

“There has been no systematic effort to groom Al Qaeda expertise” among C.I.A. officers since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the letter, written by Michael F. Scheuer, the former chief of the agency’s bin Laden unit and the author of a best-selling book that is critical of the Bush administration’s handling of the war on terror.” (…)

Mr. Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the C.I.A., served as the first chief of the agency’s bin Laden unit from 1996 until 1999.”

Is there any reason at all why we can’t find a way to adequately fund the CIA unit charged with catching bin Laden? Couldn’t we trim a bit off our agricultural subsidies, or postpone some highway construction, or something? I know I’d be willing to defer my share of the tax cuts for a year or so, if it meant making sure that this unit had enough agents, and that those agents stayed long enough to develop real expertise. I’d even be willing to defer them for two years, just to make sure that the units tracking other terrorists who don’t have bin Laden’s name recognition are fully funded too.

But hey, things could be worse. If John Kerry is elected, we’d go back to a pre-9/11 mindset, and think what a dreadful change that would be.

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