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January 9th, 2012
Posts filed under 'Obama administration'
Voices from Occupy Chicago
Blocks from Obama’s election headquarters, Occupiers discuss their goals and their opinion of the President:
1 comment October 31st, 2011
Democratic National Committee wants to crush inconvenient Occupy protest
In a further sign that large factions of the “Democratic” Party are enemies of democracy, the Charlotte Observer reports that the Democratic National Committee is asking the site of the 2012 Democratic Convention to ban camping in order to avoid Occupy-inspired protests:
o prepare for the Democratic National Convention, the city of Charlotte is considering an ordinance that would prohibit camping on all city property, which could stifle the ongoing Occupy Charlotte protest.
In addition, the ordinance would prohibit the possession of “noxious” substances, along with items such as pipes, chains or padlocks if their intended use would be to block a street, sidewalk or building entrance.
The proposal comes as some cities are trying to evict “Occupy” protesters, including Oakland, Calif., where a protester was injured this week when police dispersed a crowd. In addition, Charlotte and Tampa, the host city for the Republican National Convention, are studying how to manage expected crowds and protests for next year’s conventions.
The DNC and many Democratic mayors and Governors around the country are working hard to convince the progressive base, especially activist young people, to stay home come election day 2012. They may just succeed.
October 28th, 2011
Obama budget still a disaster
Jeffrey Sachs reminds us that even the “new, improved” Obama spouting tax-the-rich language to aid his reelection has a budget plan that is an absaolute disaster for the country and those of who live in it:
Grim Realities in the Obama Budget Plan
By Jeffrey Sachs
President Obama is defending a basic principle of budget fairness against the wretched selfishness of the Republican candidates. The Republican anti-tax position is so stark and greedy that Obama will win the political debate and probably the polls next year. He deserves our support for facing down the extreme right.
Yet we should not kid ourselves about the real direction of this country. Obama may be leaning against the right-wing juggernaut, but he is not changing its direction, only slightly blunting its force. Obama has already given in where it counts by agreeing with the Republicans in August to slash the core of the discretionary civilian budget (non-military spending other than the entitlements programs).
Readers can check this out for themselves by downloading two recent documents from the White House website. I must give advanced warning: they are turgid documents and hard to decipher, even for an expert in budget analysis. Their real meaning is hidden in the fine print, which is why I write about the documents here.
“The Mid-Session Review for Fiscal-Year 2012,” released on September 1, describes the state of the budget after the August debt deal, and on the eve of the new super-committee. Monday’s plan, “Living Within our Means and Investing in Our Future,” takes the story forward by making specific recommendations to the super-committee. Taken together they form the President’s fiscal blueprint, and most likely his re-election platform. If for some reason you’re not worried yet about America’s future, start worrying.
The essence of Obama’s plan comes to this. Obama would protect most but not all entitlements spending against the Republican axe, and would modestly trim military spending. On the tax side, he would raise tax collections as a share of GDP slightly, around 1 percent of GDP. Roughly half of that would come from repealing the Bush tax cuts on incomes above $250,000, and the other half from eliminating various tax breaks, such as for the oil industry.
Both tax changes are good but modest. It is a testimony to Republican extremism that they virulently oppose even these modest measures. And sadly, even with these modest revenue-raising actions, Obama holds out the prospect of cuts in tax rates to offset these revenues.
Now here comes some basic arithmetic, taken from Table S-5 of the Mid-Session Review. (To his credit, Obama called on the Republicans to face some basic arithmetic, so my observations follow in the same vein). Obama’s tax policy would raise a projected 19.8% of GDP a decade from now (2021). He would spend around 3.5% of GDP on the military (compared with 5.6% this year). He would spend 14.4% of GDP on mandatory entitlements programs, mainly Social Security (5.3%) plus Medicare (3.5%) plus Medicaid (2.4%). Interest payments will eat up another 3.4% of GDP.
Note that the military plus entitlements plus interest account for more than the total tax payments! We would still have a budget deficit even before getting to the parts of the budget that help America to be productive, educated, energy secure, and environmentally safe. To be specific, once we account for the revenues needed to pay for mandatory programs, the military, and interest, there are no revenues left over to pay for the rest: highways, long-distance transmission lines, dams, levees, inland waterways, water and waste treatment facilities, national parks, climate safety, renewable energy, clean air and water, conservation, pre-school, student loans, federal courts, prisons, homeland security, international diplomacy, hazard preparedness, disaster response, biomedical research, energy research, agricultural research, public administration, job training, job matching, data collection, space science, computer science, and dozens more areas of federal responsibility.
It’s not that Obama plans to close these down entirely. Rather, his plan would bleed them dry gradually. Without adequate budget revenues, the plan proposes to pay for these programs through deficit financing. To shrink the budget deficit, Obama must therefore shrink the “discretionary” spending. Specifically, the deficit is set at 2.2% of GDP in 2021, with domestic discretionary spending set at 1.8 percent of GDP. This compares with non-security discretionary spending equal to 3.4% of GDP today.
Here’s how I look at this. America today is suffering today from a shortfall of federal efforts on renewable energy, job training, pre-school, higher education, climate change mitigation and adaptation, epidemic disease control nationally and globally, highways, fast rail, water and sewerage systems, and much more. We feel the burden of under-investments in countless ways: poorly trained youth; an epic scale of highway congestion in many places; unprecedented flooding and droughts; and declining global competitiveness.
Instead of addressing these challenges, the Obama plan would cut government roughly in half from today’s level! Obama’s plan calls for 20% of GDP in revenues in 2021. This is simply too low for a decent, productive, and fair America. Taking into account our real needs, revenues as of 2021 should be around 24% of GDP, opening the space for real investments in America’s future.
That level of revenues would still leave the U.S. with one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the high-income world. The higher taxes could be collected heavily from the rich and the corporate sector, still leaving them with ample incomes and profits. Obama’s plan, in short, does not solve problems. It outflanks the Republicans.
Don’t get me wrong. Outflanking the Republicans is vital work, and merits our full backing. George Bush almost brought us to catastrophe, and there should be little doubt that Rick Perry would finish the job.
Still, we need to do better than merely to survive. Those of us who believe that the federal government has a vital role to play in ensuring a productive, fair, and sustainable society need to press ahead beyond Obama’s plan. Let’s find our voice to press for much more. To the cynics today who say that can’t be done, I urge you to revisit the history of Progressivism, when social activists a century ago changed the course of America in the face of similarly grievous ills and corrupted politics. Our shared contribution today should be a new progressivism, to put core values of decency and responsibility back into the American political system.
Jeffrey Sachs is author of “The Price of Civilization” due out October 4.
September 21st, 2011
Greenpeace message to Obama
And here is a related Al Gore statement:
On Friday afternoon, as brave and committed activists continued their non-violent civil disobedience outside the White House in protest of the tar sands pipeline that would lead to a massive increase in global warming pollution, President Obama ordered the EPA to abandon its pursuit of new curbs on emissions that worsens disease-causing smog in US cities. Earlier this year, the EPA’s administrator, Lisa Jackson, wrote that the levels of pollution now permitted — put in place by the Bush-Cheney administration– are “not legally defensible.” Those very same rules have now been embraced by the Obama White House.
Instead of relying on science, President Obama appears to have bowed to pressure from polluters who did not want to bear the cost of implementing new restrictions on their harmful pollution—even though economists have shown that the US economy would benefit from the job creating investments associated with implementing the new technology. The result of the White House’s action will be increased medical bills for seniors with lung disease, more children developing asthma, and the continued degradation of our air quality.
[H/t Americablog.]
September 10th, 2011
A chink in the armor: Donald Rumsfeld can be sued for torture
So far, the Obama administration has managed to close off virtually every avenue of accountability for torture by US officials. But the courts has refused to join the Obama DOJ in declaring torture of anyone anywhere anytime by US officials totally protected. In two weeks two US courts have ruled that former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld can be sued by US citizens who claim they were tortured on his orders. While not much, this does break a tiny hole into the Obama doctrine of sovereign immunity for torture. Dahlia Lithwick explains:
It’s important to understand that the court makes no judgment on Vance and Ertel’s claims. But for the purposes of Rumsfeld’s motion to dismiss, the court is legally bound to treat their claims as if they are true. That’s hugely consequential because, as Adam Serwer explained last week: “When deciding whether or not these cases are allowed to go forward, judges have to assume that the plaintiff’s version of events is ‘reasonable.’ So part of what Rumsfeld and his team have to argue is that even if the allegations were true, the law doesn’t allow Doe to sue the government for torturing him and detaining him without trial.” Rumsfeld and the Obama administration have taken precisely this position. Even if everything Vance alleges is true, he still loses. They claim, in short, that Rumsfeld should be immune from suit because it was unreasonable to have expected him to know that the abuse he authorized was unconstitutional. They also raise claims about the dangers of judicial intrusions on the executive branch’s war-making powers and—of course—about the danger of disclosing state secrets.
The full article:
Damages
An appeals court allows a suit against Donald Rumsfeld to go forward.By Dahlia Lithwick
Last week, a federal district court judge in Washington, D.C., determined that a lawsuit filed against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by a former military translator who claimed to have been tortured by U.S. forces at Camp Cropper in Iraq could go forward despite claims from Rumsfeld and the Obama administration that he should be immune from suit. After assessing the claims of “John Doe,” Judge James S. Gwin found that American citizens don’t lose their constitutional rights simply because it’s wartime. “The court finds no convincing reason,” wrote Gwin, “that United States citizens in Iraq should or must lose previously-declared substantive due process protections during prolonged detention in a conflict zone abroad.”
On Monday, a three-judge panel from the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals came to pretty much the same conclusion. Reviewing a different lawsuit, filed by two different military contractors, alleging similar forms of abuse at the same camp, the panel determined, with one judge filing a partial dissent, that their suit against Rumsfeld could proceed.
The case of Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel reads like Catch-22, updated for an even sillier war. In a 2006 profile of Vance for the New York Times, Michael Moss laid out the story: Vance was “a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the FBI about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading. But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there [Ertel] were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.”
Vance and Ertel became suspicious about activities at Shield Group Security the Iraqi security firm that employed them—activities that included stockpiling weapons and offering liquor to U.S. soldiers in exchange for bullets and weapon repairs. When he became an informant for the FBI, he was risking his life to protect national security. Shield Group Security began to suspect Vance and Ertel and things got hairy. A military team sent in to rescue them ended up shipping them to Camp Cropper and warehoused them at Compound 5, the maximum-security unit where Saddam Hussein was held.
Overnight, Vance and Ertel went from U.S. contractors to “enemy combatants,” and both were allegedly subjected to sleep deprivation, aggressive interrogation, blindfolding, shackling, hooding, and “walling.” Both were denied access to legal counsel for their appearances before the Detainee Status Board, and neither was allowed to see the evidence against them. Writing for the majority today, Judge David Hamilton doesn’t mince words about this treatment:
After the plaintiffs were taken to Camp Cropper, they experienced a nightmarish scene in which they were detained incommunicado, in solitary confinement, and subjected to physical and psychological torture for the duration of their imprisonment—Vance for three months and Ertel for six weeks. They allege that all of the abuse they endured in those weeks was inflicted by Americans, some military officials and some civilian officials. They allege that the torture they experienced was of the kind “supposedly reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.” If the plaintiffs’ allegations are true, two young American civilians were trying to do the right thing by becoming whistleblowers to the U.S. government, but found themselves detained in prison and tortured by their own government, without notice to their families and with no sign of when the harsh physical and psychological abuse would end.
The two were never charged with any crime. Instead, in a resolution that looks ever more familiar, both were eventually dumped at the airport in Baghdad to make their own way home. They sued Rumsfeld and other “unknown defendants” for “their roles in creating and carrying out policies that caused plaintiffs’ alleged torture.” Rumsfeld moved to dismiss all claims. The district court agreed to dismiss some claims but allowed the case to proceed on others, including the claim that their treatment amounted to unconstitutional cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.
It’s important to understand that the court makes no judgment on Vance and Ertel’s claims. But for the purposes of Rumsfeld’s motion to dismiss, the court is legally bound to treat their claims as if they are true. That’s hugely consequential because, as Adam Serwer explained last week: “When deciding whether or not these cases are allowed to go forward, judges have to assume that the plaintiff’s version of events is ‘reasonable.’ So part of what Rumsfeld and his team have to argue is that even if the allegations were true, the law doesn’t allow Doe to sue the government for torturing him and detaining him without trial.” Rumsfeld and the Obama administration have taken precisely this position. Even if everything Vance alleges is true, he still loses. They claim, in short, that Rumsfeld should be immune from suit because it was unreasonable to have expected him to know that the abuse he authorized was unconstitutional. They also raise claims about the dangers of judicial intrusions on the executive branch’s war-making powers and—of course—about the danger of disclosing state secrets.
It’s a pretty high standard for the plaintiffs to meet. As the court explains it, “the inquiry before us is whether the plaintiffs have pled sufficiently that defendant Secretary Rumsfeld personally established the relevant policies that authorized the unconstitutional torture they allege they suffered.” But the majority finds that Vance and Ertel did plead sufficient facts to show that Rumsfeld had personal responsibility for their mistreatment.
Turning to the question of Rumsfeld’s qualified immunity from suit, the majority finds that “plaintiffs have articulated facts that, if true, would show the violation of a clearly established constitutional right.” Judge Hamilton reminds us that the questions about the legality of torture are not really “questions” at all, asking: “On what conceivable basis could a U.S. public official possibly conclude that it was constitutional to torture U.S. citizens?” He then quotes 18 USC, Section 2340A (the statute criminalizing overseas torture); the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; and Siderman de Blake v. Republic of Argentina (a 9th Circuit decision finding that “it would be unthinkable to conclude other than that acts of official torture violate customary international law”). Hamilton writes that “The wrongdoing alleged here violates the most basic terms of the constitutional compact between our government and the citizens of this country. … There can be no doubt that the deliberate infliction of such treatment on U.S. citizens, even in a war zone, is unconstitutional.”
The majority addresses and dismisses the national-security and state-secrets claims. It’s clear that for the majority, the fact that the victims here were American citizens abroad makes an enormous difference to the outcome of the case. When reached for comment today, Michael Kanovitz, who represents Vance and Ertel, reiterated that critical fact: “This court was faced with a choice between protecting the most fundamental rights of American citizens in the difficult context of a war or leaving those rights solely in the hands of politicians and the military. The court sided with the rights of the citizens. It was not an easy choice for the court to make, but it was the brave and right choice.”
That it was a brave and right choice may not be enough to rescue this case if and when it ever comes to a trial. (The case may still be appealed to the full Seventh Circuit or to the Supreme Court.) It will be a challenge for the plaintiffs to show what they say they can prove. But the case, even as it stands today, should suffice to remind the rest of us that this isn’t a case about foreigners at Guantanamo but a case about a Navy veteran caught up in a series of errors in the field. This case isn’t about the rights of an enemy soldier detained on a battlefield with a weapon in his hand. It’s about the rights of brave whistle-blowers who were tortured by bureaucratic mistake.
If you don’t believe the war on terror is migrating into your backyard, this case is confirmation. If you don’t think the state-secrets doctrine will be trotted out to protect the government’s abuse of innocent Americans as well as foreign prisoners, this case proves it. If you worry that “turning the page” means always finding more of the same, this case makes that plain. A country in which nobody is ever really responsible is a country in which nobody is ever truly safe.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor. Follow her on Twitter.
1 comment August 9th, 2011
Obama redux: The unrelenting ever repeating pivot to jobs
Evidently the “pivot to jobs” means concern for only one job, Obama’s. [H/t Huffington Post.]
August 5th, 2011
Deficit steal funnels money to defense budget
Among the obscenities in the Obama-McConnell deficit steal is that it actually give $50 billion more to the defense budget, thus effectively stealing from social welfare to finance the war industry, McClatchy reports:
The last-minute deal that Congress is considering to raise the federal debt limit probably will mean trillions of dollars in government spending reductions for most agencies. But one department stands to gain: the Pentagon.
Rather than cutting $400 billion in defense spending through 2023, as President Barack Obama had proposed in April, the current debt proposal trims $350 billion through 2024, effectively giving the Pentagon $50 billion more than it had been expecting over the next decade….
But the proposed figures — after weeks of drawn-out, vitriolic debate between both political parties — raise questions about what, if anything, could lead to substantial defense reductions. Military spending has more or less survived the drawdown of two wars and a domestic economic crisis. Even now, Congress can’t agree on how much to cut defense spending while maintaining U.S. military strength.
Tom Engelhardt reminds us that the $400 billion in “cuts” were never “cuts” anyway:
In little of the reporting on this was it apparent that Obama’s $400 billion in Pentagon “cuts” are not cuts at all — not unless you consider an obese person, who continues eating at the same level but reduces his dreams of ever grander future repasts, to be on a diet. The “cuts” in the White House proposal, that is, will only be from projected future Pentagon growth rates.
Paul Krugman is fond of calling the US government “an insurance company with an army.” If present trends continue, it will become simply an army.
1 comment August 3rd, 2011
John Stewart weighs in on deficit steal
No one can watch this and not decide that either President Obama is ranked high among the worst politicians in history, or he got essentially what he wanted.
August 3rd, 2011