Category: Government

Obama To Maine – ‘Drop Dead’

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Lets be clear, normally, I find Rense to be an unreliable source, but this is analysis and, there is a video on CNBC where Austan Goolsbee says what Rense says he said.

video where he is dismissive of LIHEAP.

Obama To Maine – ‘Drop Dead’

Blocked Emergency LIHEAP Money For Maine This Winter
2-8-8

AUGUSTA — Barack Obama’s chief economics adviser Austan Goolsbee today boasted that the Obama campaign had helped to prevent emergency heating assistance for low-income families from being included in the just-approved economic stimulus package which is now on its way to President Bush’s desk for signature. An increase in federal low-income heating assistance (known as LIHEAP), Goolsbee pointed out, had been championed by Obama’s opponent, New York Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton. Goolsbee’s remarks came in an interview this morning with Carl Quintanilla of CNBC business news television.”

It’s clear in the video, where Goolsbee dismisses LIHEAP as bureaucratic and wasteful.

Keeping poor people from freezing is a core Democratic Party value. In Maine, it’s a bipartisan value, but the folks who made it to the caucuses there are clearly too well off to qualify for the program, or to care about those who do.

George W. Bush has spent 7 years trying to make the poor poorer, and to denigrate this program, which helps the poor heat their homes in the winter is repulsive.

Goolsbee is “Chicago School Lite” on his economics, which may be useful for contacts with the press, which is increasingly overpaid, overfed (Candy Crowley), and self importantly proclaiming its support for the low wage economics that have prevailed since the mid 1970s, but it is not good for the American people or the Democratic Party.

Cleveland Sues Banks as “Public Nuisances”

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I do not think that this lawsuit against 21 lenders will succeed, but we know what my prediction record is.

I think that the judges will throw it out of court in the early stages, but if they don’t, and it goes before a jury, I think that it will be far more likely that they will prevail.

That being said, the idea that major banks and Wall Street firms are being called public nuisances, “The Cleveland suit, filed Thursday in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court under the state’s public nuisance law, asserts that the financial institutions created nuisances across broad swaths of Cleveland because their loans led to widespread abandonment of homes,” does represent an interesting change in attitude.

For the past 25 years, the rule for municipalities and states was to please Wall Street, and now these institutions are being view, accurately IMNSHO, as parasites and near-criminal enterprises.

Thoughts on Kenya

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I don’t know a lot about the place. I’ve never been there, and I’ve never been to Africa, and that continent has never figured prominently on my radar.

That being said, the current conflict appears to be driven by tribal rivalries, which in turn are driven by arbitrary colonial boundaries.

While I do not think that the US should be in the position of drawing boundaries in, or creating countries in, Africa (preventing Genocide is a moral imperative, despite the cowardice of GHW Bush, Bill Clinton, GW Bush, and Condoleeza Rice on this).

However, I do not think that the US should support the policy of the African Union that the colonial boundaries are sacrosanct.

Countries and boundaries have been fluid throughout history, and much of the strife in Africa comes from the insistence that barely viable nation states are forced to muddle on.

Kenya is a tribal conflict, exacerbated by corruption, but the corruption is largely driven by tribalism.

Simply put, when the primary consideration is tribal, clean effective government is at best an afterthought, because your guys have to beat their guys, but if the society is largely homogeneous, ethnic baiting becomes far less effective.

Regulation Encourages Innovation

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Bradford Plumer makes a very good point.

While the free market evangelicals constantly say that deregulation is the heart and soul of innovation, this graph of patents for sulfur dioxide emissions:

The Government spent money on reducing sulfur dioxide emissions before 1963, but when they started regulating the actual emissions is when we saw the technology develop?

It’s information like this that leads me to be suspicious of “market driven” procedures. A cap and trade system is a carbon tax, it’s just that speculators, rather than the government get the money….Let’s get it for the tax payers instead.

State Department Contractor Who Created Corrupt and Unsafe Baghdad Embassy Still Running Construction (and Krugman Owns Cheney)

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Note that this guy is not career State Department.

State Dept. retains manager of troubled embassy project

Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: December 06, 2007 08:22:34 PM

WASHINGTON — A State Department project manager banished from Iraq by the U.S. ambassador and under scrutiny by the Justice Department continues to oversee the construction of the much-delayed new American embassy in Baghdad from nearby Kuwait, State Department officials disclosed Thursday.

James L. Golden, a contract employee, is still managing the $740 million project, said Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, the department’s top management official.

“Mr. Golden is still . . . our project manager, and still is working with the contractor, at their base in Kuwait,” Kennedy said.

One State Department official with detailed knowledge of the unopened embassy expressed outrage that his superiors haven’t replaced Golden.

…

(Emphasis mine)

So, this guy is so bad at what he does, that he got thrown out of the Green Zone, but he’s still managing construction.

When one considers the shoddy and unsafe construction, and allegations of corruption and slavery, one wonders why this guy is still getting paid.

So, which company does he work for, and what sort of political connection with Bush and His Evil Minions™ is keeping him on the job?

I should note that the inestimable Paul Krugman puts in his two cents on this too:

Back when Hillary Clinton described Dick Cheney as Darth Vader, a number of people pointed out that this was an unfair comparison. For example, Darth Vader once served in the military.

Here’s another reason the comparison is invalid: the contractors Darth Vader hired to build the Death Star actually got the job done.

Corruption in Alaska Too Severe for Company

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This surprises me…..From ages 1-7, I lived in Alaska, and for most of that time, my dad was on Governor Bill Egan’s (D) cabinet, and it was not a particularly corrupt place. Now, it appears to resemble Nigeria.

Too corrupt for an energy company, in this case MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. is a level of corruption that I did not expect to see in the US.

“As you are painfully aware the ongoing corruption investigations coupled with previous indictments, guilty pleas and convictions draw into question virtually every major Alaskan project participant and governmental levels from State to Federal,” says the letter from MidAmerican CEO David Sokol. “Obviously your administration had no involvement in these previous shenanigans nor did we; however, you and we alone cannot develop the pipeline project through AGIA’s expected process.”

MidAmerican was expected to be among the companies applying by Friday’s deadline for a package of financial and other pipeline incentives under Palin’s Alaska Gasline Inducement Act.

Oil creates bad government, which explains Texas.

State Money Market Fund in Montana Now in Trouble

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I get the sense that the serious of complex investmentsts that Atrios calls “The Big Sh@$pile” were aggressively dumped off on a lot of states and municipalities over the past few years, because it now appears that
Montana’s Short Term Investment Pool, another money market like investment. And again, there appears to be a run on this.

We’ve got the same thing going on in King County, WA (Seattle).

But here is the scary quote:

Montana has completed a thorough review of its subprime exposures. Less than 1% of the underlying assets of its SIVs are subprime, South said, with the rest being bank debt and prime and commercial mortgages.

“It’s not a subprime issue anymore, it’s an asset-backed commercial paper issue now,” South added.

Translated into English, this means that the entire us investment system is now unsafe.

The Myth of Christian Founding Fathers

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Well, religious nutbag Mike Huckabee claimed that most of the signers of the declaration of were clergy, which means that according according to Republican math, 1 out of 56 equals most. John Witherspoon* was the only active clergymen. The right wing Heritage Foundation claims that there were two signers who were former clergymen, and Adherents.com said four signers of the declaration were current or former full-time preachers.

George Washington was probably a deist, who refused communion. All indications are that he was more involved with Masonic theology (God as creator and now not involved on a day to day basis with the world). He rarely if ever, referred to Jesus.

John Adams became a Unitarian, rejecting fundamental doctrines of conventional Christianity, such as the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus

In his, “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” [1787-1788], John Adams wrote:

“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

“. . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”

Jefferson believed in materialism, reason, and science. He never admitted to any religion but his own. In a letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, 25 June 1819, he wrote, “You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.”

James Madison found established religion pernicious.

In 1785, Madison wrote in his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments:

“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

“What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.”

Then there is the treaty of Tripoli, ratified in 1979

As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen†; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

What is clear is that however spiritual the founding fathers were, they were disdainful of organized religion, considering it to be ignorant superstition.

*Who is an ancestor of the delectable Reese Witherspoon.
†An archaic term referring to Moslems.

What Republican Government Gets You

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Only, unlike New Orleans, they are not drowning the city in a bathtub, they are burining it in a furnace.

The LA Times has a fascinating interview with the former Fire Chief of San Diego.

Some Tidbits:

  • He quit as fire chief because they did not quitting over staffing and resource issues, what the author of the article calls, “San Diego’s long, [Republican] proud culture of skimping on services to keep taxes low”.
  • San Diego has 975 firefighters for 330 square miles and 1.3 million residents, while San Francisco 1,600 firefighters for 60 square miles and 850,000 people.

As UC San Diego professor Steve Erie puts it:

“It’s paradise plundered,” which happens to be the title of a book he’s finishing “about how developers run this town.”

Erie says that “developers own most of the city councils. In Poway, in Escondido, what they do is put homeowners in harm’s way. They’re able to control zoning processes, and they’re frequently behind initiatives that say no new taxes, no new fire services. It’s insanity.”

It’s not insanity. It’s how Republicans run society, by eating our seed corn.

George Bush: Objectively Pro Crime

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George bush wants to chop more than $1.5 billion from the COPS program and other policing initiatives.

That’s what, like 46 hours of Iraq?

But safe streets, competent and well equipped police officers, locating missing children, rehabilitation programs, that’s bad, because it’s the “evil gummint”.

If George Bush had his way, there would be no public peace officers or firefighters. His model of a society is Blackwater in Iraq.

Malawi Beats Famine by Ignoring Free Market Fundamentalists

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It’s really pretty simple. In 2002, over a thousand people in the country starved to death. In 2005, they had a famine crisis that had NGOs scrambling. This year, there is a 400 ton surplus of Corn (maize) much of which is alleviating the hunger in neighboring Zimbabwe.

So, what happened? The government ignored the free market fundamentalists, who are less idealogical than Osama bin Laden, and they did the right thing.

To quote Paul Harvey, and now, the rest of the story.

“What is different [this year] is the access to inputs,” explained Patrick Kabambe, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security. “People are so poor they use recycled seed and no fertilizer. They can’t meet their needs that way and they grow no surplus. People sink deeper and deeper into poverty. It’s a vicious cycle. We had to do something.”

Starting in 2006, and on a larger scale this year, the government distributed coupons to low-income farmers to allow them to purchase 50-kilogram sacks of fertilizer for 950 kwacha($7) rather than the market price of 4,500 kwacha. As a result, the average farmer’s yield jumped to two tonnes a hectare from 800 kilograms.

Malawi had this program throughout the 1990s, but in 2000, donor nations insisted that they scrap the program, saying that it “distorted the market”.

Some blame fell on poor rains, but it was also true that the 75 per cent of the population who are subsistence farmers could not afford either fertilizer or seeds.

That left them vulnerable to what the development industry calls “shocks” – such as one household member contracting HIV or malaria and being too sick to farm – leaving them with too little to eat and forced to sell items of value to survive. At the same time, larger farmers and traders capitalized on the poor harvest by stockpiling, while the government made decisions that were both ill-advised and corrupt, and mishandled the national strategic grain reserve. The next few years were a disaster.

And the cost?

The fertilizer subsidy cost the government $62-million – 6.5 per cent of the total government budget, a “whack of cash” in the words of one top economist – but that pales in comparison to the $120-million the government spent importing food aid in the 2005 famine. And the sale of maize to Zimbabwe and other countries will inject an additional $120-million into the national economy, a sizable figure here.

I’ve come to believe that a lot of international aid is really about making sure that the economies do not develop, so that, when a famine hits, subsidized western farmers can make a killing selling food aid.

Court Decides that Old Presidential Records Must Be Released

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U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly invalidated part of President Bush’s 2001 executive order, which allowed former presidents and vice presidents to review executive records before they are released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Bush did this because Reagan’s records were to be released, and his dad’s prints would have been all over Iran-Contra.

It might also show evidence of Poppy Bush negotiating with the Iranians in 1980 to keep the hostages locked up to win the election, but I don’t think that Bush pere would be stupid enough to let George, Jr. know about that.

Historians should be seeing some interesting stuff.

Take This for What You Will

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We invited a couple over for dinner tonight. The husband could not make it. He works for a sheet metal contractor (HVAC ducting, etc.), and he got an emergency call to fix something at the White House. That’s all I know.

I’m just hoping that this isn’t something like an runup to an attack on Iran in the next few days, and they are doing emergency testing on a chem/bio filtration or something.

It’s probably a broken air conditioner.

Talking Turkey

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There is a lot of talk about the “shocking” victory of Recep Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party in Turkey’s elections.

Some are touting this as proof that democracy can occur amongst a predominantly Islamic population.

Some are arguing that Turkey is beginning a slide towards theocracy.

Neither is accurate.

There are Islamic countries that have maintained democracys, just not Arab ones, and Turkey is not Arab.

As to the victory of Erdogan, it has very little to do with Islam, or Islamism, and much more to the very basic fact that, absent some sort of major crisis, people vote for government that works.

The secular parties in Turkey have been, at least by western standards, extraordinarily incompetent and corrupt.

Edrogan ran promising competence and relatively clean government, and he has largely delivered.

Whatever concerns that the electorate has, this outweighs the concerns of the population about a possible move toward Sharia law in the long term.

I would note that the same phenomenon is why Hugo Chavez wins elections, despite being far more alarming in some significant ways than Erdogan.

If people want to turn Chavez out of government, what they really need to do is to show that their interest is governance, not divvying up spoils.

Obstruction of Public Access: UK Edition

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This is really about covering up pork, and outrageous uses of expense accounts by MPs.

UK gov fights public spending website
By Kablenet
Published Tuesday 3rd July 2007 09:27 GMT

The government is obstructing a bill aimed at establishing a new website for information on public sector spending.

The bill, which originated in the House of Lords, is now being led by Conservative MP David Gauke. It would require the Treasury to create a government expenditure website, as well as giving the government the power to extend it to other public sector bodies, but the government believes it would cost too much.

…

ICANN Breaks the Law

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It’s interesting how ICANN’s internal meetings are run. This informality is in fact illegal. The by-laws are a legally binding document upon a corporation.

I have had fairly extensive experience with and exposure to (though I am NOT a lawyer) non-profit corporate governance in the US.

It is clear that ICANN is opening up themselves for a lawsuit, and given the millions and perhaps billions of dollars involved in their decisions, if they continue to run their meetings in this manner, they will lose, particularly in California.

Now you see us, now you don’t: ICANN goes transparent
By Burke Hansen in San Juan
Published Saturday 30th June 2007 13:02 GMT

ICANN San Juan 2007 The Wednesday ICANN-arama wrapped up with a session covering ICANN’s ongoing efforts to improve its management and accountability practices: the “Accountability and transparency management operating principles” workshop.

Maybe the title itself had something to do with it, but this very lightly attended workshop had the ring to it of one of those obscure sessions where useful information tends to get swept out of sight and mind. Much of the discussion revolved around making the ICANN board actually accountable to someone other than, well, the ICANN board. There are procedures already in place at ICANN that allow appeals of board decisions, but those procedural appeals always seem to circulate back to the board itself.

Milton Mueller contrasted ICANN’s structure with that of the American Cancer Society, which has a national council that decisions may be taken up with. Mueller also recommended bringing back the short-lived direct election of board members, a suggestion we endorse here at El Reg, too. We believe there are enough clever people at ICANN to work out the technical kinks of direct elections – after all, we’ve given them the authority to run the entire internet.

Of course, ICANN is a California nonprofit corporation, and as such is bound by California law, which means that public or even private attorney general actions are a possibility. However, litigation is never the ideal solution and ICANN is wise to consider some institutional options before someone takes matters into their own hands.

……

Paul Levins, vice president of corporate affairs and moderator of this session, let slip, however, that under Chairman Vint Cerf, formal voting requirements have frequently been relaxed, and the opinions of non-voting members have been given equal weight in the decision-making process. This is clearly a violation of the corporate by laws and clearly not a model for transparent management. That may be a way to encourage wider input and greater consensus, but that also means that non-voting members have more of a say than widely believed, which hardly encourages transparency.

If the board wants those other parties to have a stronger voice, they should amend the bylaws, rather than just ignoring them when convenient. It also creates an unwieldy de facto voting board of 21 members – hardly a model of efficiency. This is also why there is lingering public paranoia about the role the government affairs committee (GAC)-and particularly the US Department of Commerce (DOC)- in the decision-making process, since GAC meetings are typically closed to the public and the GAC is one of these “non-voting” members.

…

Emphasis mine. They are admitting breaking the law here.