Politics

Kevin Drum reports the following:

“Democrats have been threatening to “bring the Senate to a halt” if Republicans go ahead with plans to eliminate the filibuster, but today the Senate Dems announced a plan to do just the opposite. Via email, Harry Reid’s office announced this afternoon that “As a matter of comity, the Minority in the Senate traditionally defer to the Majority in the setting of the agenda. If Bill Frist pulls the nuclear trigger, Democrats will show deference no longer.” “

What does this mean? Well, Kevin tells us, but I’m going to quote a press release from Sen. Reid instead, since it contains additional details:

“Invoking a little-known Senate procedure called Rule XIV, the Democrats put nine bills on the Senate calendar that seek to help America fulfill its promise.

“Across the country, people are worried about things that matter to their families – the health of their loved ones, their child’s performance in schools, and those sky high gas prices,” said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. “But what is the number one priority for Senate Republicans? Doing away with the last check on one-party rule in Washington to allow President Bush, Senator Frist and Tom Delay to stack the courts with radical judges. If Republicans proceed to pull the trigger on the nuclear option, Democrats will respond by employing existing Senate rules to push forward our agenda for America.””

Below the fold are the nine bills, with Reid’s descriptions; I have added their numbers, and links to the bills’ text.

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Amidst my various requests that Mr. Bolton fall on his sword, I think it’s worth pointing out that opposing John Bolton’s nomination to U.N. Ambassador does not mean that you’ve thrown in with the French perfidistas or think the oil-for-food scandal is a-OK.  Nor does it mean that you’re categorically opposed to tough-talking scamps putting the blunt end of their business to the U.N.  (And no one’s disputing that the U.N. is one messed up mofo, Mr. Simon.)  Indeed, yours truly would very much like a U.N. Ambassador who can not only discern the difference between sh_t and shinola, but who has the intestinal fortitude to occasionally alert others to it. 

Rather, the relevant question is whether this man, John Bolton, is the right person for the job of U.N. Ambassador.  It’s become very clear to me that the answer is "no." 

Pass for a moment that some people think he’s a grade-A asshole; as Macallan has pointed out in comments to my original post, the real shock would be to find universal praise for Bolton.  You don’t rise to the top without making a few enemies — although it is rarer to make enemies willing to testify against you under oath.  The real issue is Bolton’s apparent disregard for accurate intelligence, and the resulting effect on our national credibility.  Post-Iraq, it is simply not acceptable for the U.S.’s Ambassador to the U.N. to be among those alleged to be willing to "change" the facts to suit their wants.*

This concern is not put to rest by saying that other criticisms of Bolton’s management style are unsubstantiated, or reiterating the oft–reiterated theory that because certain Senators are asses, every ass gets a free pass.  Indeed, these kinds of elliptical, off-point arguments only highlight the fact that no one seems to be defending John Bolton on the merits of the charge that he attempted to misportray or misuse intelligence.

Whatever the truth to the allegations against Bolton (and there are now at least five people who have contradicted Bolton’s sworn testimony on the intelligence "shaping" incident, adding perjury to the list of claims against him), it is clear that Bolton no longer has the credibility that he needs to be our U.N. Ambassador.  Indeed, we — and by this I mean both Republicans and Democrats — need to keep in mind that, whatever the merits of the Iraq war, our national credibility took a terrible hit when we promised that WMDs existed in Iraq, but failed to find them.  The nation needs a U.N. Ambassador who can begin to repair the damage.  Bolton isn’t it. 

Yes, it would be good to have a U.N.-critic as our U.N. Ambassador; if ever a place needed criticism, the U.N. is it.  But being a critic of the U.N. is not, by itself, a sufficient qualification for the job of U.N. Ambassador.  One must also be a credible representative of the U.S., who can not only put forward our national case, but whose factual assertions will also be believed by the rest of the body.

All this may be profoundly unfair to Bolton.  But, at base, this isn’t about what is fair or unfair to Bolton.  This is about doing what’s right for the nation. Once again, I respectfully ask that Mr. Bolton step down from his nomination, and instead seek to serve his country in another way.

UPDATE:  Macallan points to this defense of Bolton at the National Review, which suggests that Bolton was upset with Mr. Westerman for a different reason:

But Bolton aide Fred Fleitz has testified that the analyst in question, Christian Westerman, wasn’t straight with Bolton or his staff — giving Bolton plenty of reason to be upset.

I’ve done a quick pass through both Mr. Fleitz’s and Mr. Westerman’s public testimony (available as a PDF here). 

Mr. Fleitz does allege that Mr. Westerman lied to Bolton and went behind his back during the intelligence clearance process, and that this alone was the cause of Mr. Bolton’s dispute with Mr. Westerman.  But, from the staff’s questioning of Fleitz, it appears that — at a minimum — Messrs. Bolton’s and Fleitz’s impressions of how the clearance procedure should work is not necessarily the same as how it does work.  Indeed, it appears that Mr. Bolton attempted to clear his speech in a very unusual way.  With the caveat that I’m a layperson in matters such as these, and assuming that the flap was (at least in part) over Mr. Westerman’s clearance procedure, my reading is that Mr. Bolton was at least partially responsible for any miscommunication. 

Mr. Westerman’s testimony contradicts Mr. Fleitz’s testimony on this point, and backs up the original story, i.e., that Mr. Bolton improperly attempted to influence his intelligence analysis.  Mr. Ford’s testimony also partially contradicts Mr. Fleitz’s testimony on this point.  Moreover, Mr. Fleitz himself appears to partially contradict Mr. Bolton’s sworn testimony that he never suggested that Mr. Westerman should be removed from his position.  (There’s some grey area in this, however; it may simply be a difference in word choice.)

By the bye, Fleitz comes across as extremely loyal to Mr. Bolton; see, for instance, the fencing that occurred at about pages 76 adn 77 of the transcript over whether Mr. Bolton raised his voice in a meeting with Mr. Westerman.  Credit his testimony accordingly.

On balance:  I think that the Mr. Fleitz’s testimony is helpful to Mr. Bolton against the most serious charge, but I wouldn’t go nearly so far as the National Review in suggesting that it exonerates Mr. Bolton.  Even taking Mr. Fleitz’s testimony as the gospel (and, I note again, Mr. Fleitz’s testimony is partially controverted by the testimony of others), it at most spreads the blame around, and suggests that Mr. Bolton was not completely candid with the Committee.

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by hilzoy

I’ve been mulling over a post on John Bolton for a while, but what with work and all, I only just got around to starting it when I found this article in the Washington Post:

“John R. Bolton — who is seeking confirmation as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — often blocked then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and, on one occasion, his successor, Condoleezza Rice, from receiving information vital to U.S. strategies on Iran, according to current and former officials who have worked with Bolton.

In some cases, career officials found back channels to Powell or his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, who encouraged assistant secretaries to bring information directly to him. In other cases, the information was delayed for weeks or simply did not get through. The officials, who would discuss the incidents only on the condition of anonymity because some continue to deal with Bolton on other issues, cited a dozen examples of memos or information that Bolton refused to forward during his four years as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

Two officials described a memo that had been prepared for Powell at the end of October 2003, ahead of a critical international meeting on Iran, informing him that the United States was losing support for efforts to have the U.N. Security Council investigate Iran’s nuclear program. Bolton allegedly argued that it would be premature to throw in the towel. “When Armitage’s staff asked for information about what other countries were thinking, Bolton said that information couldn’t be collected,” according to one official with firsthand knowledge of the exchange.

Intra-agency tensions are common in Washington, and as the undersecretary of state in charge of nuclear issues, Bolton had a lot of latitude to decide what needed to go to the secretary. But career officials said they often felt that his decisions, and policy views, left the department’s top diplomat uninformed and fed the long-running struggles inside the agency.

Bolton’s time at the State Department under Rice has been brief. But authoritative officials said Bolton let her go on her first European trip without knowing about the growing opposition there to Bolton’s campaign to oust the head of the U.N. nuclear agency. “She went off without knowing the details of what everybody else was saying about how they were not going to join the campaign,” according to a senior official. Bolton has been trying to replace Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who is perceived by some within the Bush administration as too soft on Iran.”

This is one instance of a general concern I have about Bolton, which I’ll explain below the fold.

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I am beyond disgusted at today’s news that Senator Bill Frist is joining a chorus of right-wing extremists next Sunday to attack liberal Christians:

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush’s nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

[…]

Dr. Frist’s spokesman said the senator’s speech in the telecast would reflect his previous remarks on judicial appointments. In the past he has consistently balanced a determination "not to yield" on the president’s nominees with appeals to the Democrats for compromise. He has distanced himself from the statements of others like the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, who have attacked the courts, saying they are too liberal, "run amok" or are hostile to Christianity.

The telecast, however, will put Dr. Frist in a very different context. Asked about Dr. Frist’s participation in an event describing the filibuster "as against people of faith," his spokesman, Bob Stevenson, did not answer the question directly.

The organizers of this hate-a-thon who slanderously equate "Liberal" with "anti-Christian" are truly nauseating (and if you think I’m being harsh, you should see Joshua Marshall’s take on this):

Sick, dark and demented….I don’t know which is more amusing — the wingnut jihad against a federal judiciary that is already predominantly Republican or the fact that the intellectual and often literal descendents of the upholders of Jim Crow now seek to enlist the dark legacy of segregation as some sort of arrow in their rhetorical quiver.

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During the election season, factcheck.org (not factcheck.com, Dick) did a stellar job at evaluating the truthfulness of advertising and claims made by the respective presidential campaigns.  After the election, the non-partisan group did not go completely dormant, and has set its primary sights on the Social Security reform debate.  Importantly, the organization has taken no positions yea or nay on Social Security, seeing its role as debate referee.  In its first entry, the group analyzed an ad produced by the pro-reform group Progress for America Voter Fund, and one made by AARP agin the Bush reform package:

A pro-Bush TV ad gets the central fact right about Social Security: by the time today’s young workers retire there are projected to be only two workers paying Social Security taxes for every one person receiving Social Security Benefits. Today there are 3.3 workers per beneficiary.

But a different ad opposed to Bush’s efforts uses a misleading photograph. It shows wild trading in commodities like cocoa futures to depict the risk that workers could face with private Social Security accounts. Actually, what’s being proposed is not  investment commodities, but in far less risky stock and bond mutual funds, which would be broadly diversified.

The AARP ad was misleading because it showed commodities traders whooping and hollering in a trading pit free-for-all, inaccurately portraying the actual proposal of investments in bond and stock mutual funds.  In factcheck.org’s next offering, Bush and Cheney are taken to task for claiming that Social Security faces an $11 trillion shortfall if no action is taken:

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by hilzoy

Tomorrow Congress will consider whether to make the repeal of the Estate Tax permanent. From the Washington Post:

“WITH MEDICAID and food stamps on the chopping block, the House of Representatives is about to vote for a $290 billion tax break for the richest sliver of Americans. The subject is, once again, the estate tax. Under the convoluted, dishonest plan Congress approved in 2001, the estate tax was to be gradually reduced and eliminated by 2010, only to spring back the following year to its 2001 level: a tax of 55 percent on estates of $1 million or more. Tomorrow the House is set to vote to keep full repeal in place after 2010.

This is unnecessary, irrational and unaffordable. Those who inveigh against the “death tax” point to the travails of family farmers and other small-business owners whose heirs are supposedly forced to liquidate enterprises to pay the tax bill. In fact, even if the estate tax were to revert in 2011 to its 2001 level — and no one believes that the exemption will remain at $1 million — it would affect the estates of only 2 percent of those expected to die that year. At $3.5 million (and $7 million for a couple) — the level proposed in a Democratic alternative sponsored by Rep. Earl Pomeroy (N.D.) — a mere three-tenths of 1 percent of estates would be covered. In other words, no one but the richest Americans would be asked to pay estate tax.

Moreover, an analysis by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center supports the contention that the family forced to sell its farm to pay the tax is, if not a fiction, close to it. Looking at situations in which farm and business assets represent most of the estate, the Tax Policy Center found that there would be just 50 affected in 2011 in the entire country if the exemption were set at $3.5 million.

The true cost of repeal is far higher than $290 billion, an amount that covers only the first few years of making repeal permanent. The bill for a full 10 years without estate tax would be $745 billion — close to $1 trillion if you throw in increased interest payments. In contrast, raising the exemption level to $3.5 million and setting the tax rate at 47 percent would cost less than a third of that; $21 billion in 2015 compared to $71 billion for full repeal. The effective rate would be far less than 47 percent, because the tax is levied only on the amount above the exemption and state payments and charitable bequests also reduce the tab.

The estate tax is a tough vote for some lawmakers in part because of the enormous amount of misinformation surrounding it. House members who fear that a vote for the more responsible Pomeroy alternative will be used against them should ask themselves two questions: Will my constituents really punish me for a vote to exempt 99.7 percent of estates from taxation? And how can I justify adding to the deficit, or cutting other programs, to underwrite a costly tax break for the extremely rich?”

Making the repeal of the estate tax permanent would be wrong on a number of counts, which I will summarize below.

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From Marketwatch (subscription required):

“The Bush administration has spent millions of dollars in the past two months on its campaign to overhaul Social Security, narrowly skirting laws that prohibit spending of taxpayer funds to indirectly lobby Congress.

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and more than 20 other administration officials have blanketed the country since early February, delivering more than 100 speeches in 37 states in an effort to rally the public behind Bush’s Social Security plans.

Although no hard figures on costs are available, rough calculations show the White House and other agencies have spent at least $2.2 million on the campaign so far.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has been asked by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to investigate the costs of the pro-privatization effort. Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee have also asked quietly for an accounting, according to the Washington Post.

Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, asked the GAO to determine whether “the Bush administration has crossed the line from education to propaganda.”

Federal law prohibits spending any public funds for publicity or propaganda designed to support or defeat legislation pending in Congress. (…)

Bush himself has spoken at 25 events in 20 states on the topic since his State of the Union address in early February. According to press reports, Bush’s audiences are carefully screened to exclude those expressing disapproval of his plans.

Twenty-two other administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Treasury Secretary John Snow, three other Cabinet secretaries and four top officials at the Social Security Administration, have been on the road talking up the need to overhaul Social Security.

All told, officials in the White House and other executive agencies have delivered 120 speeches in 37 states. The Bush administration is well on its way to its goal of visiting 60 cities in 60 days with the Social Security reform message.”

I don’t know about you, but I resent having the President spend my tax dollars lobbying for his Social Security proposal. I also mind this (from the same article): ” “He’s devoting two days a week to it,” said White House spokeswoman Martin.” That’s not two days a week working on Social Security issues; it’s two days a week traveling around giving speeches about the plan he has yet to put forward. And I mind those 22 other officials who are doing the same thing. It’s not as though actually running the federal government leaves one with a lot of free time. It’s not as though there aren’t other problems to deal with.

If that weren’t enough, there’s also the fact that I, along with the rest of the large majority of Americans who do not support the President’s approach, would be barred from attending the speeches he is spending my money giving. (How he intends to convince people when he bars all those who don’t already support him from coming to his speeches, I can’t imagine.) I think it’s cowardly not to face those who disagree with him, but unconscionable to use our money to pay for speeches we will only be allowed to attend if we share his views. He’s welcome to do that if he’s spending his own campaign funds, but he should not do it on my nickel.

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by Charles

Aside from filibustering judicial nominations, one of the other items loaded into the Democratic Obstruction Machine is the thwartation of nominee John Bolton as UN Ambassador.  Steven Clemons at the Washington Note is on an anti-Bolton jihad (the non-violent kind of course), as is Bush-hating George Soros and his Open Society Policy Center (they published a 60-plus page "briefing book" chock full of opposition research and liberal talking points).  TAPPED is also on the anti-Bolton bandwagon, with obsessive numbers of anti-Bolton posts, and there is also stopbolton.org and Arms Control Wonk and a raft of others.  One of the apparent strategems is to pressure liberal Senators such as Lincoln Chafee and moderate Republicans such as Chuck Hagel into voting "no" against Bolton in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

To be sure, there are questions that need answering, and his confirmation is not a sure thing.  In Newsweek, Mark Hosenball brought up allegations that Bolton "pressured intel specialists on Cuba".  In the WMD report, the commission concluded that intelligence analysts were not pressured by Bush administration officials on Iraqi WMDs, but it did specifically point out that Christian Westermann, a CIA analyst specializing on Cuba, testified that he was pressured by John Bolton on the matter of Cuba and germ warfare.  Another unnamed intelligence analyst also had a run-in with Bolton and it was not pretty.  In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh raised the issue of stovepiping, documenting the conflicted relationship between Greg Thielman, a State Department intelligence liasion, and John Bolton.

Bolton needs to answer the questions relating to the two CIA analysts and Greg Thielman, and he also needs to answer a whole host of other questions, such as:

• How does he see his role as UN ambassador?
• What will he do on the Darfur genocide?
• Now that UN peacekeepers have shown to be next to useless in Haiti, when will the U.S. take more concerted action?  The only viable options appear to be reconstituting the UN peacekeeping force or kicking them out and bringing in U.S. personnel (or perhaps a joint venture with France).
• Will he support Kofi Annan as Secretary General?
• Does he support Annan’s reform package?
• Will he push for a stronger UN Democracy Caucus?

And many more.  But the problem with this tempest is that politics have completely swamped it.  Former Secretaries of State (all Republicans) have weighed in favor of John Bolton, although Colin Powell is not one of the five.  In response to the letter signed by 59 ex-diplomats opposing Bolton, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy produced a letter signed by 85 "security policy practitioners" endorsing Bolton for the job.  Steven Clemons is right that most of the signatories are also on Gaffney’s advisory council, and why Gaffney thought that crackpot Alan Keyes was a good choice to be on the endorsement list is mystifying.  However, when Dave Meyers at TAPPED wrote the following…

Compare this group to the signatories to the letter opposing Bolton, which is not only non-partisan, but was signed by more Republican appointees than Democratic.

…he was both lying and distorting.  The facts are these. 

• Out of the 59 ex-diplomats opposing Bolton, 39 of them made political contributions in the last three election cycles totaling $268,975, of which 94.3% went to Democrats, Greens and related organizations.
• Twenty-four of them endorsed John Kerry for president.
• Eight of them signed onto Diplomats & Commanders for Change, a group of 27 retirees opposing George W. Bush.
• Fourteen of them endorsed Bill Clinton in 1996.
• A year ago, eight of the ex-diplomats signed a letter opposing Bush’s Middle East policy.  As Joel Mowbray noted, the prime instigator of the letter (former Ambassador Andrew Killgore) has some fevered opinions on Zionism, and is co-founder and publisher of the horribly biased Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Just as Gaffney has partisans on his list (and a crackpot or two), the same goes for the 59 ex-diplomats.  Below are summaries of the more colorful ones.

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by hilzoy

There are two new stories about Tom DeLay, one in tomorrow’s Washington Post and one in tomorrow’s New York Times. Since I’ll quote both stories at some length, I’ll put the rest of it below the fold.

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By Edward

Vigils past and present are making the headlines around the world, but the most currently volatile democracy in the world is still worth watching. In fact, it may soon be very much the center of quite a bit of conflict.

Since we last left our players in the small Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan, exiled president Askar Akayev has been told not to rush home, unjailed northerner Felix Kulov has quit southerner Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s interim government (amid rumors he has his eye on the presidency); folks have begun to recognize that it was poverty, much more than any thirst for democracy (or anything our President said) that fueled the revolution; and the US has been assured by the new Kyrgyz government that we can keep our air base there. So, relatively speaking, all is well, no?

Actually, not even close. More pressing than who will succeed Akayev is the very real threat of a Kyrgyz civil war. The Agonist’s Sean-Paul Kelley offers an excellent analysis of the issues and players in his essay on Global Politician titled "Kyrgyzstan: Why Tulips Are Not Roses (Or Oranges)." As Kelley notes, the potential for war is due to a strong divide between those in the north and those in the south:

Most ethnic Kyrgyz who live in the north are drawn from a cultural milieu of clan-based nomadic horse shepherds loosely affiliated with Islam, whereas Southern Kyrgyzstan is full of Islamized Uzbeks dependent upon the rapidly deteriorating cotton monoculture of the Ferghana Valley. Here it is not uncommon to see women donning the veil, Wahhabist relief organizations and the occasional Saudi built Mosque. Indeed, the IMU (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) derived most of its support from the Ferghana.

[…]

The problem of Kyrgyzstan cannot be reduced into prettified sound bites. It’s not enough to equate developments in Kyrgyzstan as a fight between ‘free peoples’ and ‘despots.’ It is a divided nation sandwiched between several larger, thirstier and hungrier powers, all of who are competing for its attention. While other nations in similar historical circumstances have turned such a geopolitical situation to their advantage, cohesion and shared goals were the rule internally. One resource Kyrgyzstan needs but doesn’t have is stability. It also needs time. It doesn’t have much of that either.

The thirstier and hungrier powers include, Russia, the US, Uzbekistan, and the very worrisome behemoth next door, China:

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