A final note on going 'off the record'

In my post the other week regarding Senate staffer Joe Goffman's attempt to unilaterally go "off the record" during a recent panel discussion before hundreds of people, I referred to another instance where a congressional aide at another public forum likewise inexplicably tried to take her banal remarks off the record -- as the event was being recorded for broadcast on the Internet.

At a congressional briefing hosted this past December by the Energy and Environmental Study Institute (EESI), Marci Harris, an aide to Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA), opened the question-and-answer session by declaring that her remark -- that lawmakers would be losing an "enormous opportunity" if they chose to return carbon tax revenues directly to the public, ala the proposal favored by NASA's Jim Hansen, rather than using them to subsidize "clean" energies -- should be considered "off the record" by those in the professional media.

If you go to EESI's website to watch the video (Harris' comments start a little after the 1 hour and 48 minute mark), however, you'll find that the staffer's hilarious-in-its-arrogance attempt to go off the record in the middle of a public event is in fact the only aspect of her comments that was expunged from the record -- possibly to save her the embarrassment. To EESI's credit, the rest of Harris' comments are available in their mundane entirety.

Again, congressional staff: uttering "off the record" anytime you please and expecting reporters to dutifully comply is not how it works, and the ghost of Edward R. Murrow will not come down and smite any uppity journalist who dares report what you say. How comments are to be attributed is something that must be cleared before you speak, and can only be granted by the press. Going off the record at an event open to the public is never justified -- not when one is speaking on a panel, and least of all when one is merely in the audience asking a question.

Still, there is some value in the attempt by clueless congressional staff going "off the record" at public forums: it exposes how completely unjustified most attempts to conceal information are here in Washington. Remember that the next time the Obama administration invokes the so-called "state secrets" doctrine (a doctrine nowhere to be found in the U.S. constitution) to block the release of politically sensitive information under the auspices of "protecting national security," as it has in an attempt to stop lawsuits challenging the NSA's illegal warrantless wiretapping program.

Quite often the U.S. government classifies information for no discernible reason other than that it can, hiding information from the public being the standard modus operandi rather than the exception. When national security is invoked, it's usually less because the U.S. homeland needs protection than it is the political establishment's collective backside. The very case establishing the state secrets doctrine, United States v. Reynolds, after all, was based on the lie that divulging information regarding the 1948 crash of an Air Force plane that killed several defense contractors would have harmed national security; documents declassified in 2000 show the only thing that would have been harmed by the information would've been the careers of a few Pentagon officials.

When some Senate staffer seeks to forbid the press from reporting their comments, they're usually but stroking their own ego; when a federal official seeks to do the same through classification, assume there's some criminal wrongdoing being covered up.

Some crazies don't always 'appreciate' US-backed dictators, wars

At a press conference following the Summit of the Americas, President Obama denied any U.S. role in an apparent attempt to assassinate Bolivian President Evo Morales. But in the process of doing so, he phrased opposition to U.S. intervention in Latin America in a rather interesting way, stating:

"The United States, obviously, has a history in this region that's not always appreciated from the perspective of some."

With the U.S. having supported the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Chile favor of the iron rule of a military dictator, and having fueled a long-running conflict in Colombia in the name of the war on drugs, there are certainly some in the region who haven't always "appreciated" U.S. intervention in the region: the people who live there.

Lying about Iran: an American tradition

With the Obama administration publicly stating its desire to find a diplomatic solution to Western concerns over Iran's nuclear program, one would think top White House and State Department officials would go to great pains to ensure their statements about Iran comport with the facts. And with Admiral Dennis Blair, the top intelligence official in the U.S., stating Iran has not decided to pursue nuclear weapons and in fact suspended years ago any weapons work it may have engaged, one would think this fact-checking task would be made that much easier. One would think.

The reality? Obama's chief spokesperson and his top foreign policy officials have shown a remarkable lack of concern for the truth, choosing to repeat the Bush administration line about Iran pursuing or developing nuclear weapons despite the fact there is no evidence they are doing so -- and contrary to the view of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran suspended any weapons-related work back in 2003.

Just this week, the administration's most prolific liar on Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during a joint press conference with the prime minister of Haiti stated:

We will continue to work with our allies to make it clear that Iran cannot continue to pursue nuclear weapons. We will stand behind the sanctions that have already been implemented, and we will look for new ways to extend collective actions vis-a-vis Iran's nuclear program.

Meanwhile, a day earlier White House spokesman Robert Gibbs discussed the Obama administration's efforts to halt Iran's "pursuit of its illicit nuclear program":

As you all know, Bill Burns went last week to meet with the P-5 plus one, to discuss the next steps involved. There was unity among the participants about the strategy moving forward, and that the goal remains very clear. The goal is, and remains, a suspension of Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program.

Dana Perino couldn't have said it better. Indeed, as Gibbs noted:

The concern remains the same. The goal remains the same. And that is, as I said, the suspension of Iran's illicit nuclear program.

Gibbs might have added that the tactics also largely remain the same: profess a commitment to diplomacy, extend economic sanctions, and lie lie lie.

Deja Vu

With President Obama committed to nearly doubling the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, promising to draw down as the Afghan security force stands up, its hard not to get a sense that America’s transformative new leader is merely copying his discredited predecessor’s “surge” strategy used in Iraq. That Obama praised said escalation of the Iraq war as having succeeded “beyond our wildest dreams” does not allay these fears.

That Obama is escalating his way into Afghanistan and Pakistan ("Af-Pak" to those who view the rest of the world as the U.S.'s imperial playground) much like President Bush may be lost on his more earnest liberal sycophants at the Center for American Progress, but it isn't on Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In an interview earlier this week on ABC's Chris Cuomo, Mullen made a telling mistake. Here's the exchange:

CUOMO: A year from today, do you think that there's a very different situation in Afghanistan than there is today?

MULLEN: I look forward to a very active year. I want to be clear that my expectations are as we add more troops, the violence level in Iraq -- or, sorry, Afghanistan -- is going to go up.

That said, it'll put us in a position to start to turn the tide and provide security for the Afghan people, which is absolutely critical, in addition to training the Afghan forces, which I expect to improve significantly over the next 12 months.

There is at least one way the Afghan surge will be different than its Iraq counterpart: it will receive the uncritical backing of nearly all Democrats in Congress and their supporters in the liberal blogosphere. So there's that.

Happy War-funding Day

While statist clowns like Democratic strategist Paul Begala spend this April 15th issuing overwrought paeans to the glories of taxes and the centralized state -- "On this day, our government asks that we pay our fair share of taxes to keep our beloved country strong and safe." -- it's useful to remember just what exactly those taxes help pay for (hint: it's not teddy bears and health care). Though Begala and his ilk tend to favor casting firemen and schoolteachers as the recipients of the bulk of U.S. tax dollars, Lockheed-Martin and nuclear weapons would be a more accurate portrayal, though that stark reality might cause some cognitive dissonance over at MSNBC and Daily Kos, where all opponents of federal taxation are said to be rabid, Glenn Beck-watching militiamen.

As Amy Goodman of Democracy Now noted this morning, a new report from the National Priorities Project finds "that more than thirty-seven cents of every income tax dollar goes to military spending. By contrast, environment, energy and science spending projects split 2.8 cents of every tax dollar, while housing, community and food programs split 3.8 cents.

So while Democrats are getting in a good, deserved laugh at the right-wing "tea party" protests today -- rightly pointing out that big government-bashing Republicans were noticeably silent when President Bush ramped up federal spending more than LBJ -- one should remember that, with Obama ramping up U.S. wars overseas and bailing out evermore failed Wall Street firms with taxpayer money, the last laugh is on you.

A note on going 'off the record'

It’s a phrase many congressional staffers in DC love to say but few understand, The West Wing having ruined an entire generation. But unlike what some may imagine, going off the record is typically the prerogative of the journalist, who usually lays out ground rules before an interview and grant requests for secrecy as they come up, and not something an interviewee normally unilaterally declares. However, these days all too many staffers believe they can utter a magic three word phrase -- “off the record” -- at any given point and in any given situation, including at public forums before hundreds if not thousands of people, and expect their trivial remarks to be treated as secret.

For instance: Last week I attended a conference on energy and climate policy hosted by a federal agency at the convention center here in Washington. The conference itself was fairly unremarkable, as these things tend to be, but for the attempt by a veteran Senate aide to go “off the record” while participating in a panel discussion on the future of energy/climate policy.

Speaking before a crowd of over 1,000 people, Joe Goffman, a top aide to Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), implored reporters to not report on his remarks, and asked those in attendance to not to utter a word about the nature of his remarks to any seedy journalists that might cross their path. That Goffman, a former legislative director for Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), was participating in a recorded discussion at a public (i.e. on the record) event appeared not to matter, nor did the fact that none of the other congressional and White House staff on the panel requested such a privilege.

After the panel and some not-exactly-groundbreaking remarks -- the Senate isn’t going to do a whole lot on climate change legislation until the House does -- Goffman spoke to a group of people that had gathered around him to ask some followup questions. In the middle of answering a question about cap-and-trade, however, it occurred to him that the middle-aged woman questioning him just might be a journalist. Naturally when asked if she was, she responded in the affirmative -- as if her notepad and tape recorder were not evidence enough -- prompting an uncomfortable Goffman to halt his answer and reiterate that all his comments, including those he just made to the reporter, were “off the record.”

The reporter in question, showing more spunk than one might have expected at first glance, reminded Goffman that she told him she was a reporter when she first approached him. After he denied this, she reminded him that he had repeated her affiliation back to her. He shrugged.

A friendly reminder to congressional staff: if you don’t want your comments publicized, don’t agree to speak at major conferences before hundreds of people -- or, as in another instance, during a panel discussion being broadcast on the web for whoever wants to see it. In the age of the Internet and blogs, carving out special exceptions for the professional press -- maintaining they can’t disseminate the great knowledge you impart but lobbyists and others can -- is discriminatory and of dubious value. Stop it.

Yup, still lying

In case anyone is wondering, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is still making unsubstantiated claims about Iran's nuclear program, ignoring the testimony of the Obama administration's own Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair -- just like the president, the CIA director and the ambassador to the United Nations. Here she is today in a press conference with Panamanian Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro:

And obviously, we believe that, you know, pursuing very careful engagement on a range of issues that affect our interests and the interests of the world with Iran makes sense, and there's nothing more important than trying to convince Iran to cease its efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon.

When up is down

Reading an op-ed in Tuesday's issue of The Wall Street Journal from the American Enterprise Institute's Thomas Donnelly and Gary Schmitt, one might be forgiven for thinking the Obama administration had just "gut[ted] the military" with its 2010 budget proposal. Write Donnelly and Schmitt, both members of the pro-empire Project for a New American Century:

The budget cuts Mr. Gates is recommending are not a temporary measure to get us over a fiscal bump in the road. Rather, they are the opening bid in what, if the Obama administration has its way, will be a future U.S. military that is smaller and packs less wallop. But what is true for the wars we're in -- that numbers matter -- is also true for the wars that we aren't yet in, or that we simply wish to deter.

While I'm glad to know the military geniuses at AEI are still preparing for "the wars that we aren't yet in" -- war of course enabling the likes of Donnelly and Schmitt to write evermore odes to Winston Churchill from the safety of their air-conditioned think-tank sinecure in DC -- there happens to be one small problem with their analysis: while Defense Secretary Robert Gates has indeed made a big show of cutting a few Cold War-era programs like the F-22 fighter jet, he is also overseeing the largest defense budget in U.S. history, and one that equals the military spending of the rest of the world combined.

As Lawrence Korb of the slavishly pro-Obama Center for American Progress approvingly notes:

President Barack Obama’s topline budget projections for fiscal year 2010 allocate $534 billion to the Department of Defense, the largest allocation of any department. The amount represents roughly a 4-percent increase over the $513 billion allocated to the Pentagon in FY2009 under the Bush administration, and $6.7 billion more than the outgoing administration’s projections for FY 2010.

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The defense budget has nearly doubled in real terms in the last decade, and this year’s $534 billion baseline provides adequate funding to maintain the quality of our troops and military infrastructure, and modernize the force. This amount does not in any way undermine the war effort, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are financed in separate supplementals, which to date total nearly $1 trillion. Obama has promised $130 billion more for these efforts in FY2010.

During the presidential campaign, the lunatic right spent much time casting Obama as the modern day George McGovern (if only), doing their part to maintain the fiction that there exists a great gulf in the ways the two parties conduct foreign policy. While neoconservative organizations like AEI might find it beneficial financially to scare their wealthy donors with the specter of Barack Obama ceding the Eastern seaboard to al-Qaeda, it's as far from the truth as AEI's case for invading Iraq.

If anything, Obama is continuing and expanding on the Bush administration's foreign policies, from escalating the war in Afghanistan to intensifying the destabilizing drone attacks within Pakistan. Though there have been some welcome efforts at increasing diplomacy with Iran and Syria, honest neoconservatives (speaking relatively) such as Max Boot have conceded Obama is more McCain than McGovern.

But just as certain Democratic groups (*cough* MoveOn.org) have sought to cast Obama as this century's Mahatma Gandhi, neocons like Schmitt and Donnelly are too invested in the Red Team-Blue Team dichotomy to admit the Democrats are largely just Republicans with more intelligent sounding imperial rhetoric.

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In other news, I had no idea Blackwater author and Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill had a blog. You should read it.

The Bush/Obama line on Iran

Last Friday, The Financial Times reported that the Obama administration may be considering relaxing a long-held U.S. demand that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program as part of any deal over its nuclear program. While welcome news if true -- there’s no chance Iran would outsource its energy production to the very colonial powers that exploited it in years past -- it was this aspect of the FT story that caught my eye:

The US line that Iran is seeking the capability to develop nuclear weapons – but not necessarily such weapons themselves – contrasts with Mr Bush’s insistence while in office that it sought nuclear weapons.

While Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has indeed declared Iran has not made the decision to pursue nuclear weapons, the rest of the Obama administration has been busy regurgitating the same discredited talking points about Iran “pursuing” or “developing” nuclear weapons that the Bush administration trotted out. Secretary of State Hillary "obliterate" Clinton, for instance, has alone unequivocally stated Iran is developing nukes on more than a half dozen occasions, the views of the IAEA and the U.S. intelligence community be damned.

And just this weekend, as Obama waxed eloquent about the need for nuclear disarmament (and a missile defense shield in the Czech Republic), his ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice had this to say to ABC News twit George Stephanopoulos while defending Obama's ongoing economic warfare against Iran:

The sanctions that have been imposed by the United Nations and implemented by the United States and others have had some significant effect on the trade and the banking and the financial sector inside of Iran, and we certainly remain open to consideration of possible future measures.

The aim here, though, is to marshal all of the resources at our disposal -- diplomatic, economic, and other -- to try to make this choice as clear as possible to Iran, to give them a path to end their nuclear -- illicit nuclear weapons program, enter the community of nations, or, if in fact they ultimately choose not to do that, then to bring to bear the full force of the international community to put pressure on Iran to stop.

And later:

I think we share Israel's very grave concern about the threat that Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program poses not only to Israel and the other countries in the region, but indeed to U.S. national security.

I don't think it's productive to speculate about what may transpire. As I said, and the president has said on a number of occasions, our aim is to use all of the elements at our disposal, including direct diplomacy, to offer Iran a path away from an illicit nuclear weapons program.

But obviously if that path is not chosen, we have not ruled out any options.

In echoing the Bush administration, Rice shows yet again that liberal interventionists are as capable of distorting the truth as their neoconservative counterparts, despite their overdeveloped consciences and avowed concern for human rights (wherever the U.S. doesn't intervene). But with places like the Center for American Progress getting their imperial groove back now that a good, technocratic liberal is in power, these kinds of (mis)statements don't pack the kind of punch they once did among the establishment left, what with the center’s blog more focused on pointing out the latest outrage from Sean Hannity than the very intelligence distortions decried with such fervor under Bush -- though right-wing deceptions on the matter are still okay to cover.

You see, whereas the Bush administration lied about Iran's program to further their nefarious militaristic agenda, the Obama administration ignores the consensus view of the IAEA and all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies out of a liberal, humanitarian desire to further nuclear nonproliferation (even as it sends nuclear fuel to known proliferator India, undermining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), or so goes the apparent thinking among mainstream Democratic organizations.

Less charitably, one might suggest that members of the liberal foreign policy establishment are always much less inclined to criticize militarism and the killing of innocents abroad (and the lies that enable intervention) when a fellow Democrat is in power -- witness Vietnam -- almost as if their objections to preemptive war and foreign military occupations have always been driven more by a pragmatic desire to attain political power than by any real objection to mass murder and imperialism. But that would just be silly.

Does anyone talk to Dennis Blair?

President Obama, like Bush before him, has long preferred unsubstantiated claims about Iran’s “pursuit” or “development” of nuclear weapons to the reports of the IAEA and the view of his own Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. Over the past few months, time and time again top administration officials -- with the exception of Blair -- have repeatedly contradicted the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate's assessment that Iran halted any weapons program it may have had more than five years ago.

That said, it’s only fair to note when the president says something reasonable. As Steve Hynd notes, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued this joint statement following a meeting this week where the two discussed reducing their respective nuclear arsenals (always a good thing):

"While we recognize that under the NPT [Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons] Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear program, Iran needs to restore confidence in its exclusively peaceful nature.”

As far as declarations from heads of state go, not bad, right? Yet as Haaretz reports:

Obama and his aides were particularly pleased at what they saw as small progress on Russia's position on Iran, with Moscow coming closer to agreeing that Tehran could be pursuing nuclear weapons and thus pose a threat . . ."

Indeed, an unnamed “senior administration official” told reporters that Obama and Medvedev had discussed “Iran and its illicit nuclear program” -- illicit presumably referring to the UN Security Council’s resolutions calling for a suspension of uranium enrichment, since Iran has an absolute right under the NPT to develop civilian nuclear technology -- adding this observation:

”I've dealt with [Russian Foreign Minister] Mr. Lavrov over the last several weeks and they've always said Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon -- "We have no evidence of that, show me that this is there." And this was a different tone than that.

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“We had an assessment of the threat for a long time that they did not accept, and I would say today we came closer to having a mutual understanding of what that threat is.”

And what is that official U.S. assessment anyway?

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI): Now does the intelligence community assess that Iran currently has made the decision to produce highly enriched uranium for a warhead or a bomb?

Admiral Dennis Blair: We assess that Iran has not yet made that decision.

Perhaps that unnamed "senior official" -- along with the entire Obama cabinet -- should have a chat with this Blair guy sometime.

Wrong on Iraq, wrong on Iran

On Friday, a group of seven key House Democrats -- including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the chairs of the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, and long-time grandstander Henry Waxman -- wrote President Obama to offer qualified support for his diplomatic overtures to Iran. But in their letter (pdf), the esteemed group of lawmakers caution that the practice of engaging the Iranians can’t be “open-ended”, and argue that unless the Iranian regime suspends its uranium enrichment program, the U.S. should pursue a new round of the type of trade sanctions that worked so well at affecting change in places such as Iraq and Cuba.

Since the letter is about Iran’s nuclear program and is written by U.S. politicians, it also contains a number of, shall we say, misstatements (or as they're known in the real world: lies). Indeed, in the opening paragraph the lawmakers -- six of seven of whom backed the illegal invasion of Iraq, which should give you a good sense of the group’s collective foreign policy acumen -- state:

"We are distressed by the recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report that Iran has already stockpiled enough low enriched uranium to generate one nuclear weapon."

Unfortunately for this merry band of bullshitters, the most recent IAEA report (pdf) says that international inspectors have “been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran” to a weapons program. It also says nothing about Iran possessing enough low enriched uranium for a bomb, probably because you can’t make a nuclear weapon from low enriched uranium.

As Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin noted at a hearing in early March, “uranium for civil nuclear power production has to be enriched from two to four percent,” whereas “highly enriched uranium which is necessary for a nuclear bomb or warhead, needs to be enriched to about 90 percent.”

The February 19 report from the IAEA, meanwhile, states that Iran has enriched its uranium to 3.49 percent, a far cry from the level necessary to build a nuke. And as Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair stated at the same hearing, “We assess now that Iran does not have any highly enriched uranium.”

Furthermore, if Iran were to decide to build a nuclear weapon -- which Blair, echoing the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, says the Iranian government has not chosen to do -- it would need to kick out the IAEA inspectors currently overseeing its enrichment facilities and withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, thus alerting the whole world to its intentions.

Now perhaps Mr. Waxman and Mr. Hoyer et al are simply unaware of these widely reported facts. Or, perhaps, they’re just liars who prefer politically convenient fear-mongering to nuanced, reality-based analysis of Iran's nuclear program.

"Institutionalized Injustice"

. . . that's the term former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper applis mandatory minimum sentencing, but it could equally apply to the entire war on drugs -- a war Stamper has become a forceful and eloquent opponent of since retiring from law enforcement. Speaking with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman this morning, Stamper did not merely call for a greater focus on "harm reduction" or other half-measures designed to put a kinder, gentler face on the drug war, but struck at the root of the problem -- and laid out a simple solution:

I actually support the legalization of all drugs. And in fact, the more dangerous or sinister or sensationally reported the experience of certain drugs, the greater the justification for the government, as opposed to drug cartels and street traffickers, to regulate that commerce. There’s been more harm done by the drug war than good. We have spent a trillion dollars prosecuting that war since Richard Nixon proclaimed drugs public enemy number one and declared all-out war on them.

And what do we have to show for it? While rates can fluctuate, drugs are more readily available today at lower prices and higher levels of potency than ever before. So it’s a colossal failure. And the only way to put these cartels out of business and to restore health and safety to our neighborhoods is to regulate that commerce as opposed to prohibiting it.

Be sure to check out the rest of the interview for similarly blunt statements about the U.S.'s disastrous and destructive drug war. Also check out Stamper's response to President Obama's smirking dismissal of marijuana legalization over at the Huffington Post.

Do they even realize they’re lying?

In his recent prime time press conference, President Obama declared that his delayed response to the AIG bonus scandal was because “I like to know what I talk about before I speak.” One wishes Obama would apply the same principle to his statements on Iran’s nuclear program, which have consistently defied reality and the views of the U.S. intelligence community (not always the same thing). Even this week -- in the midst of defending his video overture to the Iranians -- Obama again contradicted the findings of the IAEA and the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, suggesting that Iran actually has nuclear weapons right now:

When it comes to Iran, you know, we did a video sending a message to the Iranian people and the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And some people said, "Well, they did not immediately say they were eliminating nuclear weapons and stop funding terrorism." Well, we didn't expect that. We expect that we're going to make steady progress on this front.

It may seem a bit trifling to criticize Obama while he tries to defend reaching out to the Iran, but it’s important to remember that words actually have meaning. Obama does not appear as ready to attack Iran as the Bush administration sometimes appeared -- which explains much of the muted progressive reaction to his repeated distortions of U.S. intelligence -- but neither did President Clinton seem ready to do much else but bomb and starve Iraq. Still, his policies, and his signature on a bill declaring regime change in Iraq official U.S. policy, contributed to the successful selling of a war with Iraq in 2003.

So far, Obama doesn’t seem to be calling for regime change, and his overtures to Iran are certainly welcome, if a bit showy. But those overtures have not yet been backed by a change in policy. For instance, in early March, Obama, following in the footsteps of the Clinton and Bush administrations, extended sanctions against Iran, declaring that, “The actions and policies of the Government of Iran are contrary to the interests of the United States in the region and pose a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

And here I thought frugal Asians were to blame for America’s economic woes.

What 'free market'?

It has become a key aspect of liberal dogma that deregulation and the "free market" are to blame for the collapse of the global economy. But blaming laissez-faire for the world's economic malaise is a lot like blaming U.S. "isolationism" for 9/11: it ignores years of government interventions -- like bailouts, cheap credit from the central bank and overseas military campaigns -- that contradict the ideologically convenient retellings of history preferred by those eager to cast every crisis as the fault of anyone but the state and the political establishment.

Claiming that a non-existent free market is what got us to where we are today is to pretend that the Bush administration was in good faith, if naively, pursuing a hands-off approach to the economy -- in essence, arguing that if they were guilty of anything, it was being too ideologically committed to allowing people to exchange goods and services with minimal state intervention. But if anything, the Bush administration modeled its economic policy more off Mussolini than Adam Smith, actively expanding state power to enrich its corporate cohorts through the type of crony capitalism best embodied by quasi-private firms like Halliburton and Goldman Sachs.

As economist Dean Baker writes on his blog for The American Prospect:

The media are busy perpetuating a myth that the United States has been a beacon of "free market" capitalism. This is a lie. The United States never had free market capitalism and certainly the system in place over the last three decades hardly qualifies.

The U.S. put in place policies designed to transfer income from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. This is most evident now with the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent bailing out the banks. For the last three decades, the banks and their top executives, made vast fortunes using a free government insurance policy called "too big to fail," under which bond holders and other creditors could lend money to the banks knowing that the government would honor their debts if they ever got into trouble.

It is an outright lie to call this a "free market." This is a huge government handout. This insurance policy is enormously valuable and the banks did not have to pay a penny for it. The banks are ardent opponents of free market capitalism. None of them have advocated that they be allowed to collapse.

Recently, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan -- conscious of his fall from "economic genius" in the 1990s to Man Most Responsible for Our Economic Demise now -- has taken to blaming the menace of Asian savings for the economic collapse. In an op/ed for The Wall Street Journal, "Great Depression II: No Really, It's Not My Fault", Greenspan blames the "free market" as well as the Chinese for the world's problems, the latter for simply saving too much money -- the commie bastards -- and then injecting it into our economy. This caused the U.S. housing bubble, Greenspan argues, rather than, say, the central bank's dramatic expansion of the money supply under his stewardship during the artificial boom of the last decade.

Back in 2007, however, Greenspan conceded in a revealing interview with The Daily Show's Jon Stewart -- a journalist masquerading as a comedian, as opposed to the usual other way around -- that insofar as there exists a government institution with the monopoly power to literally create money out of thin air, which it can then dole out to a politically connected elite in the financial sector, then there is not a free market.

More importantly, Greenspan admits that after more than four decades of experience in the economic forecasting "profession", loosely defined, he still has no better understanding of market forces than he did when he started out -- and neither does any other would-be central planner. Now that the full brunt of the policies he pursued has been realized, however, Greenspan is quick to argue that a free market existed, and that, if anything, people like him were guilty of just not intervening in the market forcibly enough. One should take the more recent explanation as the last attempt at legacy-saving that it is.

Whatever one's views on whether a genuine free market -- which would include an abolishment of "intellectual property" and corporate personhood, a repeal of restrictions on organized labor such as Taft-Hartley, and other aspects of laissez-faire curiously absent from the propaganda of many supposed free-marketeers -- that central planning can never adequately substitute for the distributed, decentralized knowledge of human society should weigh heavily on those willing to trust the likes of the Greenspans and Geithners with constructing a more enlightened and sustainable economic policy.

More of the same from the agent of change

Back when he was still a candidate seeking to capitalize on liberal outrage over the Bush administration's raids on medical marijuana facilities and arrests of cancer patients for the sin of smoking pot and inhaling, Barack Obama had this to say:

I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It's not a good use of our resources.

Asked later in the campaign pointblank whether he would put a stop to the federal raids on voter-approved medical marijuana dispensaries in states like California, Obama declared:

I would because I think our federal agents have better things to do, like catching criminals and preventing terrorism.

And just a few weeks ago, Attorney General Eric Holder said respecting state pot laws was "now American policy", leading the credulous The New York Times to procaim: "Obama Administration to Stop Raids on Medical Marijuana Dispensers".

You know where this is headed . . .

Feds raid S.F. medical marijuana dispensary
The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO—A medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco that gave out free marijuana to poor people is mostly empty after a raid by federal agents.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents descended on Emmalyn's California Cannabis Clinic Wednesday afternoon.

Agents loaded up several pickup trucks parked outside as they carried out marijuana plants, grow lights and other equipment.

Saying the specific reason for the raid is under court seal, the DEA would only say the dispensary is suspected of violating federal and state law.

Perhaps Obama will really end the federal raids during his second term, when he plans on implementing all those great progressive policies many of his supporters are convinced he believes in. Indeed, maybe he'll end the raids right after he brings the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and ends the use of warrantless spying and rendition.

My suggestion for those hoping for more sane drug laws in the U.S.? Don't hold your breath.

Poland's safe, but what about my $100 billion?

The U.S. government has for years justified building an unworkable “missile defense system” in Eastern Europe, allegedly -- and I’m serious -- because of the threat posed by Iranian (not Russian, definitely not Russian) missiles, despite the fact that Iran has not attacked another country in centuries, a record the U.S. could do well to copy.

But in a March 25th press briefing, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell suggested that there may be no need to defend Poland from the specter of Persian rocket fire, telling reporters that “if the Iranians were to abandon their pursuit of long-range ballistic missiles or a nuclear weapon, it would to some degree obviate the need for a European missile defense.”

As Morrell certainly knows, of course, the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, the consensus opinion of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies -- including, presumably, the Defense Departments intelligence outfits -- declared “with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” Translation: a major declared rationale for the so-called missile defense system may not be true.

And here I thought we were going to waste more than $100 billion on a military-industrial boondoggle that doesn’t even work. What a relief!

Legalize it

The U.S.-led war on drugs has been a colossal failure, a senior U.S. official said last week. And while numerous administrations have sunk tens of billions of dollars into the effort to combat illegal drugs, “we have gotten nothing out of it, nothing.”

Refreshing honesty from the Obama administration’s newly appointed “drug czar”? If only. Rather, the words in question are those of Richard Holbrooke, special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who was speaking more narrowly of the efforts to eradicate opium production in one of America’s colonial possessions (no, that one).

But while Holbrooke’s remarks were focused on solving the U.S.’s imperial dilemma in Afghanistan, they could just as easily apply to the entire model of the drug war -- a war which has led the land of the free to become the land of the incarcerated, with more than 7 million Americans either imprisoned or on parole, many because of the laws the current vice president helped enact during the ‘80s and ‘90s.

But attempts to combat illegal drug production with law enforcement and military force have failed, Holbrooke noted, with efforts to crack down on opium cultivation in hopes of cutting a key source of funding for the Taliban having not hurt the fundamentalist militia “one iota, because whatever money they're getting from the drugs trade, they get whatever they need whether we reduce the acreage or not." In sum, “it is the most wasteful and ineffective program I have seen in 40 years." Indeed, the BBC points out that despite poppy cultivation allegedly being reduced 19% last year, Afghanistan is still the source of 90% of the world's heroin supply.

Meanwhile, here in the United States government officials are as oblivious as ever, plowing ahead with their efforts to ramp up the drug war, both within the U.S.’s borders but also in neighboring Mexico, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates promising increased military cooperation and joint exercises with the U.S.’s southern neighbor.

Just this week, the Obama administration announced a massive new effort (read: futile) to stem the flow of illicit drugs from Mexico, while also aiding the Calderón government in its militaristic and demonstratively counterproductive approach to taking on the drug trade. But any plan that seeks to curb the supply of illicit drugs is bound to fail so long as there remains demand, as any limits on supply will only increase the street costs of the drug -- and the profits to be made selling it -- thus ensuring there will be an endless supply of would-be dealers attracted by the prospect of astronomical earnings, whatever the risks.

To get a glimpse of the scope of the "new" plan -- which represents as much fresh thinking as a Jerry Bruckheimer production -- consider Homeland Security Department Secretary Janet Napolitano's remarks at the press conference announcing it:

First, we are doubling the number of law-enforcement personnel that are working in border enforcement teams . . . . We are also strengthening Operation Armas Cruzadas. . . We are tripling the number of Department of Homeland Security intelligence analysts located on the southwest border. . . . We are increasing . . . . We will be increasing . . . . We are doubling . . . . We're quadrupling . . . We are bolstering technology and resources . . . . We are embarking on increased screening . . . . We are moving mobile x-ray units to the border . . . . We are moving today a hundred more CBP personnel to the border . . . We are moving three mobile response teams . . . . etc.

In late 2007, I wrote about the Bush administration’s proposed Mérida Initiative for Inter Press Service -- including the opposition to it from human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, on the other hand, made clear that the new administration remains committed to the program, under which “we are investing $700 million this year to work in collaboration with Mexico on law enforcement and judicial capacity.”

With President Obama showing no signs of backing away from the U.S commitment to the war on drugs in Latin America and beyond (having openly campaigned on stepping up said war), he appears set to follow in the footsteps of every president since Richard Nixon in pursuing a militarized approach to combatting the use of substances not sanctioned by the U.S. government. He should expect the same results.

Anti-semites!

The BBC reports:

An Israeli military college has printed damning soldiers' accounts of the killing of civilians and vandalism during recent operations in Gaza.

One account tells of a sniper killing a mother and children at close range whom troops had told to leave their home.

Another speaker at the seminar described what he saw as the "cold blooded murder" of a Palestinian woman.

-----

The Palestinian woman and two of her children were allegedly shot after they misunderstood instructions about which way to walk having been ordered out of their home by troops.

"The climate in general... I don't know how to describe it.... the lives of Palestinians, let's say, are much, much less important than the lives of our soldiers," an infantry squad leader is quoted saying.

In another cited case, a commander ordered troops to kill an elderly woman walking on a road, even though she was easily identifiable and clearly not a threat.

As this slaughter took place, it’s useful to remember that the only criticism great humanitarian, progressive political leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could muster was to express meek “concerns” to the Israeli government about “the collateral damage that is occurring in Gaza.” Since Palestinians don't experience Western-style emotions – life is cheap over there, don't you know? 72 virgins and such – they weren’t worthy of much concern from our Botoxed political elite, their deaths at the hands of U.S.-subsidized munitions being unfortunate insofar as they detracted, in the words of Ms. Pelosi, from the “good things that are happening on the ground there as well.”

Ever get the feeling you're being ruled by monsters?

Who will think of the corporation?

The continuing descent of Reason magazine from irrelevant inanity to outright self-parody continues, this time with Katherine “It's quite exciting to inaugurate a war” Mangu-Ward -- last seen defending the use of private jets by the CEOs of failed corporations (which actual libertarian Jim Henley termed an “understated masterpiece” in making the case that “libertarians are just shills for corporate privilege”) -- lashing out against, of all people, critics of the AIG bonuses.

In her latest ill-considered defense of corporate excess, Mangu-Ward implies critics of failed companies using the U.S. Treasury to enrich their undeserving employees object to all instances of firms providing bonuses, including to those who deserve them. Taking the absurdity to the next level, she then suggests President Obama's statement that, “We believe in people getting rich based on performance and what they have add in terms of value and the products that services that they create,” somehow contradicts his (belated) attacks on the AIG bonuses. “Don't know why anyone would think otherwise,” she snarks, linking to this BBC article about the the U.S. government pressing AIG to payback the bonuses (which were only made possible by the federal government's generous gift of more than $170 billion in taxpayer dollars).

But like her fellow Weekly Standard castoff and resident Reason hack Michael Moynihan -- who earlier this week defended poor Jim Cramer from mean old Jon Stewart’s attacks -- Mangu-Ward's chief fault is not so much her views on war or the corporate state, per se, but the fact that her writing is so incredibly dull, dull, dull and devoid of any semblance of actual thought. Her schtick, like her boss Matt Welch, is apparently to poke fun at silly leftists – like those quacks who opposed the Iraq war and earlier sanctions and think bankrupt companies shouldn't lavish their employees with taxpayer-funded bonuses – rather than, say, the actual people in positions of power to, I don't know, start illegal wars and commence the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich in U.S. history.

An actual libertarian might point out that AIG, as an elite financial institution, for years benefited from a state policy of easy credit from the central bank and an implicit guarantee -- now made explicit -- of a government bailout in the face of hard times. Even without a bailout the AIG bonuses would be of questionable morality, seeing as how firms on Wall Street actually authored the state-granted priviledges they benefitted from in the heady days leading up to the current economic malaise.

If opposition to force is the core of libertarianism, and if AIG is using stolen money from you and me to finance tennis lessons for the children of the corporate elite, then that would make them little more than thieves, no? Mangu-Ward, however, sees an attack on rich corporate executives and can't help but reflexively leap to their defense. The takeaway from all this? Some (vulgar) libertarians really are just defenders of corporate privilege -- shocking, I know -- and organizations that advocate "privatizing" prisons are probably not the best allies in the fight against corporatism.

Politicians outraged over their actions

Apparently the folks at insurance giant AIG are using taxpayer dollars to subsidize the lavish lifestyles of the very people responsible for destroying their company and the global economy, prompting faux-populist outrage from everyone from President Obama to Barney Frank -- that is, the very people who overseen or supported the transfer of more than $170 billion to AIG to date. But one shouldn't dwell on the mistakes of the past. After all, who could have possibly foreseen corporate executives at a bankrupt firm using tens of billions of dollars in no-strings-attached bailout funds in ways that are . . . less than ideal?

Also confounding: that granting an elite group of financial institutions access to abundant capital in the form of cheap credit from the Federal Reserve -- including the ability to borrow $40 for every dollar they possessed in assets -- and implicitly guaranteeing a government rescue should the days of Dow 36,000 give way to Bailout $9 Trillion, could lead to reckless speculation and irresponsible behavior.

As Jim Cramer would say, who could have known?