Author: Matthew G. Saroff

A ‘Phant Disavows Norquist

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If he is the only ‘Phant to repudiate his “no taxes of any kind” pledge to Grover Norquist, he’s toast, but if he is the first of a few, i.e. double digits, he becomes a a leader of some sort of wing of the Congressional Republicans

Still, it’s a gutsy move:

In answer to one question, the 1st District Republican congressman revealed he informed Grover Norquist and his anti-tax organization he no longer is committed to that organization’s pledge to oppose any form of tax increases.

“I did sign that pledge when I was first running” for the House in 2004, Fortenberry said. “I no longer sign any pledges.”

A pledge “restrains your ability to think creatively,” he said, noting Norquist attempts to interpret and define what is considered a tax increase.

“I informed the organization I don’t consider (the earlier pledge) binding,” Fortenberry said. “I don’t care to be associated with it. It’s too constraining.”

Fortenberry said he remains committed to reducing federal spending, but suggested an openness to tax reform.

“We have a broken tax code that is skewed to the wealthy and corporations (who) know how to move capital around,” he said.

Tax reform could close loopholes and perhaps lower tax rates, Fortenberry said, and the result might be more revenue.

Not only is he saying that taxes are on the table, but he’s talking about how fat cats game the system.

Note that this from a Republican, from Nebraska.

I don’t expect sanity to break out in the Republican party, but if this is the first step toward Grover Norquist becoming irrelevant, it’s a good step, assuming that he is not replaced by someone even more evil and crazy.*

H/t Think Progress.

*Considering the history of the Republican Party, which makes me yearn for the intellect, liberalism, and moral rectitude of Richard Nixon, I would say that the chance of him being replaced by someone more evil are pretty good

It’s Official, RICO Time for Rupert

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There are credible reports that the FBI and the DoJ are considering a RICO investigation of Newscorp.

This is significant because the standards of RICO are very lax. You are not showing criminal activity, you are showing a pattern of corrupt behavior within the organization*:

Well-sourced information coming out of the Department of Justice and the FBI suggests a debate is going on that could result in the recently launched investigations of News Corp. falling under the RICO statutes.

RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, establishes a way to prosecute the leaders of organizations—and strike at the organizations themselves—for crimes company leaders may not have directly committed, but which were otherwise countenanced by the organization. Any two of a series of crimes that can be proven to have occurred within a 10-year period by members of the organization can establish a pattern of racketeering and result in draconian remedies. In 1990, following the indictment of Michael Milken for insider trading, Drexel Burnham Lambert, the firm that employed him, collapsed in the face of a RICO investigation.

Among the areas that the FBI is said to be looking at in its investigation of News Corp. are charges that one of its subsidiaries, News America Marketing, illegally hacked the computer system of a competitor, Floorgraphics, and then, using the information it had gleaned, tried to extort it into selling out to News Corp.; allegations that relationships the New York Post has maintained with New York City police officers may have involved exchanges of favors and possibly money for information; and accusations that Fox chief Roger Ailes sought to have an executive in the company, the book publisher Judith Regan, lie to investigators about details of her relationship with New York police commissioner Bernie Kerik in order to protect the political interests of Rudy Giuliani, then a presidential prospect.

Pass the popcorn.

*One of the reasons that I’ve never been a fan of the statute, particularly as embraced and extended by Giuliani when he was US Attorney.

Advice to the Yids* Out There

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Yes, the market tanked today, so there is likely a bounce tomorrow, but if you are Jewish, don’t invest on Tisha B’av, which starts this sun down.

I’m not particularly superstitious, but when you consicer that this date gave us:

  • The reports of the spies, which led the Jews to spend 40 years in the desert.
  • The destruction of the 1st temple.
  • The destruction of the 2nd temple.
  • The crushing of the Bar Kokhba rebellion.
  • The first crusade, which set of an orgy of pogroms and murder.
  • The expulsion of the Jews from Spain.
  • The expulsion of the Jews from England.
  • The start of WWI.

So, seriously, not a good day for Jews to invest.  I’m just saying. 

*I’m a Yid myself, so I can use the term.

Busy Day at the Casino

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All the major stock indices fell over 5%.

The term here is “Bloodbath”.

The standard meme is that Standard & Poor’s downgrade of US debt had investors fleeing the stock market and buying US debt.

So, standard wisdom is that because people are worried about the credit worthiness of the USA, they are buying debt from the the USA.

Me, I just think that they are realizing that we are heading to a double dip recession.

Pelosi Got Played

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It appears that John Boehner convinced Nancy Pelosi that he could supply the required majority for the debt ceiling deal:

I also think, though, that passing something and getting it over with and moving on was necessary and compared to default it is preferable because default would really lose a lot of jobs. That is my way of saying, I don’t think this is the best path we could have taken. And especially I’m unhappy about the fact that this was developed with a premise that the Republicans would have the 218. Since they didn’t we should’ve had more influence.

I was in all the meetings, I’m not saying that isn’t the case. But if we had days, instead of backed up to hours, we could have said ‘you don’t have the votes, let’s go back in and how do we move this way in order to cut some of those cuts and have a better bill and get the votes.’ So I think we could’ve done better. I think they were successful at just prolonging it to the last minute so that we didn’t have that option and it was default or no default.

While I do think that Pelosi is the best of the Democratic leaders in Washington, it’s clear that she got played.

It was clear from early in this debate that there would have to be a significant number of Democratic votes for this to pass. The Teabaggers were saying that they would vote against this under any circumstances, and Eric Cantor doing his level best to sabotage Boehner, because he wants to displace him as speaker. (Not gonna happen. Republicans will never vote to put a Jew 3rd in line to the presidency)

Not one of her finer moments.

Talk About Damning With Faint Praise…

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One of the memes about Barack Obama is that his constant capitulation and negotiating with himself is some sort of eleven dimensional chess.

I think that this is unmitigated bullsh%$, and I think that James Fallows does too, but one of his readers buys into it seriously, but turns what he considers to be a compliment into an insult by comparing Barack Obama to Chess master Bobby Fischer.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Fischer, he is a classic example of someone who by hubris and temperament destroyed himself, and whatever skills he might have had in chess, they never translated to anything useful, even before his descent into paranoia, mental illness, and bigotry.

He was a man so unpleasant, that much of the American public was rooting for the Russian when he won his Chess championship.

The reader states that, “From a political and a policy standpoint, he’s pushed the Republicans so far to the right that they are called terrorists without humor by the national media.” is so lost the alternate reality of the Obama fanboi it beggars belief.

I rather think that Fallows found this provocative, and published this even though he is dubious of this theory; he is no way a fanboi.

In any case, I look forward to reading his readers responses.

S&P Downgrades the US, Well, Isn’t That Special

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Well, Isn’t that Special!!

Standard and Poors has just downgraded the United States from AAA to AA+.

I think that Jane Hamsher and Scarecrow have nailed what is going on here. This is a shakedown by the credit ratings agencies:

On July 21, 2010 President Obama signs Dodd-Frank into law. Prior to Dodd-Frank, the courts found that credit ratings are expressions of opinion that were protected under the first amendment, subject to a demonstration of actual malice:

The Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act stripped away those protections, so that CRA’s were now subject to the same expert liability as an auditor or securities analyst, and required only a “knowing” or “reckless” state of mind for liability, rather than proof of scienter. It also repealed Section 436 of the Securities Act of 1933, which granted “safe harbor” for ratings, which were part of a prospectus.

Which, for obvious reasons, made the ratings agencies extremely nervous.

In October 2010 S&P issued its first threat to downgrade US debt: “If the U.S. government maintains its current policies for the next 40 years in the face of rising health care and pension spending pressure, it is unlikely that Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services would maintain its ‘AAA’ rating on the U.S.” The report paints a target on the back of Social Security and Medicare, says nothing about the wars, the Bush tax cuts, private health care costs or the absurdity of 40 year projections.

………

It’s becoming more and more obvious that Standard and Poor’s has a political agenda riding on the notion that the US is at risk of default on its debt based on some arbitrary limit to the debt-to-GDP ratio. There is no sound basis for that limit, or for S&P’s insistence on at least a $4 trillion down payment on debt reduction, any more than there is for the crackpot notion that a non-crazy US can be forced to default on its debt.

Whatever S&P’s agenda, it has nothing to do with avoiding default risks or putting the US on sound fiscal footing. It appears to be intertwined with their attempts to absolve themselves from responsibility for their role in the 2008 financial crisis, and they are willing to manipulate not only the 2012 election but the world economy to escape the SEC’s attempts to regulate them.

It’s time the media and Congress started asking Standard and Poors what their political agenda is and whom it serves.

Note that Dodd-Frank also lifted some statutory requirements mandating the use of  ratings from accredited agencies as well, so the big 3 (S&P, Moodys, Fitch’s) have even more reason to hate the bill, and are trying to sabotage them at the rule-making stage.

Note that this was written a week ago, and a quick read of the S&P statement (first link) sounds like a hit job, some to the effect of, “That Dodd-Frank thing displeases us, it would be a shame for anything to happen to your credit rating.”

ECB Concludes that Gasoline is not the Best Way to Put Out a Fire

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David Bowie Says the Same

The European Central Bank has caught a clue, and realized, for this month at least, that there is no threat of inflation, so they are buying bonds and not raising their interest rates.

So, after pointless and stupid rate hikes in the teeth of a recession, they have decided that perhaps they were being stupid with their focus on non-existent inflation.

Seriously, if there has been a central bank that a greater record of rank incompetence on dealing with a recession, I’d be hard pressed to name it.

In all fairness, I would note that ECB is very limited in its charter.  Unlike the Federal Reserve, for example, is has no duty to maintain stable employment, just to forestall inflation, and so it’s all that they look for.

Please God Let This Stand on Appeal

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For the second time, a court has allowed a suit to proceed against Donald Rumsfeld for ordering the torture of an American citrizen:

A federal judge has ruled that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld can be sued personally for damages by a former U.S. military contractor who says he was tortured during a nine-month imprisonment in Iraq.

The lawsuit lays out a dramatic tale of the disappearance of the then-civilian contractor, an Army veteran in his 50s whose identity is being withheld from court filings for fear of retaliation. Attorneys for the man, who speaks five languages and worked as a translator for Marines collecting intelligence in Iraq, say he was preparing to come home to the United States on annual leave when he was abducted by the U.S. military and held without justification while his family knew nothing about his whereabouts or even whether he was still alive.

The government says he was suspected of helping pass classified information to the enemy and helping anti-coalition forces get into Iraq. But he was never charged with a crime, and he says he never broke the law and was risking his life to help his country.

Court papers filed on his behalf say he was repeatedly abused while being held at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military facility near the Baghdad airport dedicated to holding “high-value” detainees, then suddenly released without explanation in August 2006. Two years later, he filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington arguing that Rumsfeld personally approved torturous interrogation techniques on a case-by-case basis and controlled his detention without access to courts in violation of his constitutional rights.

Chicago attorney Mike Kanovitz, who is representing the plaintiff, says it appears the military wanted to keep his client behind bars so he couldn’t tell anyone about an important contact he made with a leading sheik while helping collect intelligence in Iraq.

“The U.S. government wasn’t ready for the rest of the world to know about it, so they basically put him on ice,” Kanovitz said in a telephone interview. “If you’ve got unchecked power over the citizens, why not use it?”

The Obama administration has represented Rumsfeld through the Justice Department and argued that the former defense secretary cannot be sued personally for official conduct. The Justice Department also argued that a judge cannot review wartime decisions that are the constitutional responsibility of Congress and the president. And the department said the case could disclose sensitive information and distract from the war effort and that the threat of liability would impede future military decisions.

But U.S. District Judge James Gwin rejected those arguments and said U.S. citizens are protected by the Constitution at home or abroad during wartime.

“The court finds no convincing reason that United States citizens in Iraq should or must lose previously-declared substantive due process protections during prolonged detention in a conflict zone abroad,” Gwin wrote in a ruling issued Tuesday.

…………

In many other cases brought by foreign detainees, judges have dismissed torture claims made against U.S. officials for their personal involvement in decisions over prisoner treatment. But this is the second time a federal judge has allowed U.S. citizens to sue Rumsfeld personally.

U.S. District Judge Wayne R. Andersen in Illinois last year said two other Americans who worked in Iraq as contractors and were held at Camp Cropper, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, can pursue claims that they were tortured using Rumsfeld-approved methods after they alleged illegal activities by their company. Rumsfeld is appealing that ruling, which Gwin cited.

In a just world, Rumsfeld should be under criminal investigation, actually, by this point, he should be in jail, but the best that we can expect right now is that a private citizen might get a civil judgement, because Barack Obama decided to be complicit in the cover-up.

Can you say accessory after the fact?  Good, I knew you could.

Signs of the Apocalypse: I think That Larry Summers is Right

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He is saying that we are in danger of having a double dip recession:

On the current policy path, it would be surprising if growth were rapid enough to reduce unemployment even to 8.5 percent by the end of 2012. A substantial withdrawal of fiscal stimulus will occur when the payroll tax cuts expire at the end of the year. With growth at less than 1 percent in the first half of this year, the economy is effectively at a stall and facing the prospects of shocks from a European financial crisis that is decidedly not under control, spikes in oil prices and declines in business and household confidence. The indicators suggest that the economy has at least a 1-in-3 chance of falling back into recession if nothing new is done to raise demand and spur growth.

Considering Larry Summers’ record, I would put this to a stopped clock being right twice a day, but I agree with him.

Guess What, The ADP Employment Numbers Suck

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Their report on job activity in the service sector is the weakest it has been in over a year:

The pace of growth in the services sector ticked down unexpectedly in July to the lowest level since February 2010 and the number of jobs created by the private sector also slowed, reports showed on Wednesday.

Taken alongside disappointing data on the manufacturing sector earlier in the week, the services data showed an economy that was frustrating hopes for a rebound in the second half of the year after a very weak first half.

“It looks like this confirms that we are in a bit of a soft patch here,” said Rudy Narvas, senior economist at Societe Generale in New York.

Gee Rudy, you think?

It’s getting to be a habit:  The economy looks a little bit better, Washington declares victory on the recession, backs off, and we slide back into the abyss.

It’s 1937 over, and over, and over, and over, again.

I Agree With Matt Taibbi

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His thesis is that Obama’s capitulation is by design, not by timidity and cowardice:

But to a bunch of hired stooges put in office to lend an air of democratic legitimacy to what has essentially become a bureaucratic-oligarchic state, what good does such advice do? Would it have made sense to send the Supreme Soviet under Andropov or Brezhnyev a list of policy ideas for enhancing the civil liberties of Soviet citizens?

The Democrats aren’t failing to stand up to Republicans and failing to enact sensible reforms that benefit the middle class because they genuinely believe there’s political hay to be made moving to the right. They’re doing it because they do not represent any actual voters. I know I’ve said this before, but they are not a progressive political party, not even secretly, deep inside. They just play one on television.

For evidence, all you have to do is look at this latest fiasco.

………

We probably need to start wondering why this keeps happening. Also, this: if the Democrats suck so bad at political combat, then how come they continue to be rewarded with such massive quantities of campaign contributions? When the final tally comes in for the 2012 presidential race, who among us wouldn’t bet that Barack Obama is going to beat his Republican opponent in the fundraising column very handily? At the very least, he won’t be out-funded, I can almost guarantee that.

And what does that mean? Who spends hundreds of millions of dollars for what looks, on the outside, like rank incompetence?

It strains the imagination to think that the country’s smartest businessmen keep paying top dollar for such lousy performance. Is it possible that by “surrendering” at the 11th hour and signing off on a deal that presages deep cuts in spending for the middle class, but avoids tax increases for the rich, Obama is doing exactly what was expected of him?

It’s a much simpler thesis than all encompassing incompetence juxtaposed with a messianic complex.

I’ve used the term “Manchurian Democrat,” but Tiabbi is a much better writer.

Quote of the Day

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I just realised that plenty of mainstream US Democrats, having spent the last however long castigating people to the left of them for perceiving some progressive tendencies in the government of Fidel Castro, are now reduced to supporting the re-election of a President who imprisons people without human rights in Cuba, but who has made excellent advances in the field of bringing healthcare to the poor.

—D-Squared Digest

It’s like reading The Onion.  I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry, though I think that any improvements on bringing healthcare to the poor is over stated.