photo: PoliticalActivityLaw.com via Flickr

Wow, Hans von Spakovsky has taken a page from Lynn Cheney’s “Al Qaeda Seven” slander ad and launched a patchwork quilt of personal attacks against the senior members of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. In an article appearing in the National Review he goes after each of them in a very personal way. Ultimately, I think the article backfires and Hans has jumped the shark.

The article is actually wildly entertaining if you read it as satire. How can pointing out that someone was smart and talented enough to clerk for a federal Court of Appeals judge and a Supreme Court Justice actually count as an insult?

I’m not going to dignify this hysterical screed with a link because The National Review did not earn any click-through props by printing this crap. Normally, I respect them even when I disagree with them, but this tripe is so far below their standards as to make me wonder what sort of shouting must be going on in their editorial meetings this week.

For example, Hans castigates Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez for the sins of having worked for Senator Edward Kennedy, having been elected to the Montgomery County, Maryland legislature and belonging to Casa de Maryland.  Oh, the horror of it all. Worse yet, according to Hans, is Mark Kappelhoff’s sin for daring to have worked for – wait for it – yes, the ACLU. OMG!

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Samuel Bagenstos is the aforementioned victim of Hans’s insult who clerked for 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt. Bagenstos also clerked for my personal SCOTUS fave, Justice Ruth Ginsberg. Evidently, Hans thinks these credentials are something to be ashamed of; he really enjoyed “outing” Bagenstos.

The National Review piece reads like something from The Onion. If it was meant as an April’s Fool’s piece, they are a few weeks early. I know that Hans gets paid by the Heritage Foundation to come up with attacks from the right, but are they getting value for money?  If the best he can turn out sinks to the Liz Cheney level of Epic Fail, might they want to rethink how they are allocating their resources?

Last semi-related point:

I know that Attorney General Eric Holder thinks that the work of the Civil Rights Division is going to be his legacy—that the Civil Rights Division (CRD) is, as Senator Schumer described it,  the  “crown jewel” of DOJ.  I have to put a pin in the AG’s party balloon.

It won’t matter one tiny little bit how much or how great the work of the Civil Rights Division is if we fail to restore the rule of law in this country.

If DOJ does not have the independence to make charging and venue decisions free from political interference; if people can be captured and held indefinitely without trial or due process, then every single civil right in this country is an illusion and the talented lawyers with sterling resumes in the CRD are wasting their time as we speak.

Hans von Spakovsky’s and Liz Cheney’s efforts to delegitimize these lawyers and their work cannot compare to the effects of failing to adhere to the rule of law.

Mr. Attorney General, during your confirmation hearings you promised to restore the rule of law and you told Senator Herb Kohl that there were some things worth resigning over. Don’t let Senator Lindsey Graham destroy everything else you are trying to do.

Whether or not you are able to restore the independence and integrity of DOJ is the only legacy that matters. All of the work of the CRD or the entire DOJ hinges on this effort.

Tags: Eric Holder, Hans von Spakovsky, Lynn Cheney, The National Review

Last week, Pew released a survey with the headline ‘Support for Alternative Energy and Offshore Drilling.’ The piece begins, “The public continues to favor a wide range of government policies to address the nation’s energy supply…”

That is accurate, but it doesn’t get at the most striking data. The most important finding in the survey is the fact that clean energy and mass transit investments are vastly more popular than nuclear investments and offshore drilling.

Here is how Pew presents the data (Figure 1):

As a mini-case study on how informational graphics can add significant meaning to this sort of data, I’ve created a few simple charts.

This chart (Figure 2) shows the approval and disapproval numbers for the four policy options:

And this chart (Figure 3) shows the net approval numbers for the four policy options…

Presenting the information in text only format, as Pew chose to do in Figure 1, leaves the reader to their own devices to identify the most compelling data. While the data is technically accurate, it fails to bring the meaning of the data to the forefront. Pew’s accompanying analysis of the polling data also somehow fails to identify the massive gap in net approval for the policies they surveyed.

Creating a simple chart (Figure 2) based on the data itself adds significant value to the presentation of the data, especially for the casual reader. The reader can tell at a glance that clean energy investments are significantly more popular than polluting energy sources, and that unpopularity follows the opposite pattern.

Going one step further and doing simple arithmetic to determine the net approval for each of the policies in the survey, as I’ve done with Figure 3, brings the most striking data to the forefront. The fact that more than 50% of Americans support a variety of policies to produce-more or consume-less energy is not, in itself, especially meaningful. But the fact that the net approval for some of these policies is 40-60%, while it is barely 10% for others, is fairly compelling.

Originally posted at EnviroKnow.

Tags: alternative energy, green jobs, mass transit, nuclear energy, offshore drilling

In reconciliation, affordable education for all meets affordable health care for some (photo: Tofu Sue)

As you may know, FDL has launched the Students Not Banks campaign to get the student loan bill passed through reconciliation this year, enabling hundreds of thousands of students to afford college and ending the needless subsidies to the big banks for the privatization of the student loan market.

FDL campaigns get results! Already today, senior Democratic aides have proposed combining the student loan and the health care bills through reconciliation, the only way to pass SAFRA this year:

Senate Democratic leaders have decided to pair an overhaul of federal student lending with healthcare reform, according to a Democratic official familiar with negotiations.

“It’s going in,” said the Democratic source, in reference to the student lending measure.

But leaders may have to reverse themselves if they receive strong pushback from Democratic colleagues who represent states where lenders employ hundreds of constituents.

I’ve been working on this for most of the day, and aides aren’t really talking. But there are risks and rewards to tie in SAFRA with the reconciliation process.

First, some background, although I did go over this yesterday. SAFRA does not currently have 60 votes for passage in the Senate to clear the expected filibuster. Instructions were given last year to move SAFRA through the reconciliation process. However, you can only move one reconciliation bill a year, and the long wait on SAFRA was dictated by Senate leaders waiting to see if they needed reconciliation for health care. Now that reconciliation is the plan, the leadership has a choice: pass SAFRA tied in with health care, or basically wait another year, as higher education costs skyrocket and a major Obama Administration initiative goes by the boards. Adding to this decision is the fact that Democrats would want a tangible success for young voters, those most likely not to vote in the November midterms.

The leadership may see risks in adding student loan reform to the reconciliation bill, however. As The Hill notes, several Democrats who are likely votes for health care, particularly those in states like Delaware and Pennsylvania with a high concentration of the private student loan market, may back away from the reconciliation fixes if SAFRA gets attached. Would that be enough to sink the reconciliation bill entirely? Maybe not in the Senate, where Democrats can afford to lose 9 votes; an industry analyst only sees 7 no votes among the Democratic caucus. But in the House, where the whip count is tight, adding SAFRA could peel off needed votes.

I thought yesterday that, when push came to shove, Democratic leaders would drop SAFRA from their reconciliation plans if it threatened the health care bill. The newfound advocacy and activism around the bill will make that harder to do.

Tags: budget reconciliation, Health care, higher education, House of Representatives, Reconciliation, SAFRA, Senate, student loans, Students Not Banks

graphic: Lance Page/Truthout.org; Adapted: takomabibelot, Poe Tatum via Flickr

Yesterday when I raised the question of what techniques DOD wanted to use in spring 2004, I said there was some ambiguity about what DOD was trying to get approved. In this post I’m going to lay out the conflicting sources of information. Given the totality of information, though, it appears that what DOD asked to use in spring 2004 was extended isolation.

As you’ll recall, Jack Goldsmith originally told Jim Haynes not to rely on the March 2003 Yoo memo in late December 2003. But the OPR report describes a request to use some technique in early March 2004 that set off the more active withdrawal and replacement for the memo.

Here’s how Goldsmith describes his conversation with Haynes in December 2003 in Terror Presidency:

“Jim, I’ve got bad news,” I began. “We’ve discovered some errors in the March 2003 opinion that John wrote you on interrogation. The opinion is under review and should not be relied upon for any reason. The twenty-four techniques you approved are legal, but please come back for additional legal guidance before approving any other technique, and do not rely on the March 2003 opinion for any reason.”

Of those 24 techniques Goldsmith said he told Haynes were legal, Rummy had listed four (incentive/removal of incentive, pride and ego down, mutt and jeff, and isolation) that required advance notification (though not approval) from the Secretary of Defense.

The OPR Report described that conversation slightly differently.

Accordingly, Goldsmith telephoned Haynes in late December 2003 and told him that the Pentagon could no longer rely on the Yoo Memo, that no new interrogation techniques should be adopted without consulting OLC, and that the military could continue to use the noncontroversial techniques set forth in the Working Group Report, but that they should not use any of the techniques requiring Secretary of Defense approval without first consulting OLC.

The Working Group Report approved 26 techniques generally and another 9 in exceptional circumstances. The 26 included three not among those techniques Rummy approved (hooding, mild physical contact, and threat of transfer), and one of the techniques Rummy did approve–isolation–was among those requiring exceptional circumstances in the Working Group.

The working group recommends that techniques 1-26 on the attached chart be approved for use with unlawful combatants outside the United States, subject to the general limitations set forth in this Legal and Policy Analysis; and that techniques 27-35 be approved for use with unlawful combatants outside the United Stam subject to the general limitations as well as the specific limitations regarding “exceptional” techniques as follows: conducted at strategic interrogation facilities; where there is a good basis to believe that the detainee possesses critical intelligence; the detainee is medically and operationally evaluated as suitable (considering all techniques to be used in combination); interrogators are specifically trained for the technique(s); a specific interrogation plan (including reasonable safeguards, limits on duration, intervals between applications, termination criteria and the presence or availability of qualified medical personnel) is developed; appropriate supervision is provided; and, appropriate specified senior level approval is given for use with any specific detainee (after considering the foregoing and receiving legal advice).

And while the Working Group did place limits on those exceptional techniques, it did not require SecDef approval. Here’s what they say about Secretary of Defense approval.

That a procedure be established for requesting approval of additional interrogation techniques similar to that for requesting “supplementals” for ROEs; the process should require the requestor to describe the technique in detail, justify its utility, describe the potential effects on subjects, known hazards and proposed safeguards, provide a legal analysis, and recommend an appropriate decision level regarding use on specific subjects, This procedure should ensure that SECDEF is the approval authority for the addition of any technique that could be considered equivalent in degree to any of the “exceptional techniques” addressed in this report (in the chart numbers 27-35, labeled with an “E”), and that he establish the specific decision level required for application of such techniques.

The SASC Report has a third version of the Goldsmith-Haynes conversation.

Mr. Goldsmith told the Committee that he called Jim Haynes in December 2003 and told him the March 14,2003 OLC opinion was under review and could not be relied on by the Department. 1140 That opinion had been presented to the Working Group as the controlling authority for all questions of domestic and international law and was the legal foundation for the Secretary’s April 2003 authorization oftechniques for GTMO. Mr. Goldsmith told the Committee that he informed Mr. Haynes in December 2003 that he had determined that only 20 of the 24 techniques authorized by Secretary Rumsfeld were lawful, and that the remaining four techniques were under review. 114 Mr. Goldsmith also advised Mr. Haynes in December that the Department should come back to OLC for additional legal guidance before approving any technique not among those 24 specifically identified in the Secretary’s April 2003 memo.1142 Mr. Goldsmith told the Committee that Mr. Haynes did not inquire about the use of additional techniques during his tenure at OLC, which ended in June 2004.1143

1141 In his interview with Committee staff, Mr. Goldsmith said he eventually determined that all 24 were lawful. That account differs slightly from Goldsmith’s account in his book, in which he said that he told Mr. Haynes in December that all 24 techniques were lawful.

I agree with SASC: Goldsmith’s version in his book conflicts with what he told the committee, which are both somewhat different from what OPR Reports. But a May 11, 2004 memo from Goldsmith may shed some light on this issue. It memorializes Goldsmith’s prior approval, on April 23, 2004, of the four techniques approved by Rummy in April 2003 but which required advance notification before using.

On April 23, 2004, OLC advised the Department of Defense that four techniques for interrogation of a prisoner at Guantanamo would be lawful, if justified by military necessity and if conducted in accordance with the Secretary of Defense’s memorandum of April 15, 2003,

At the very least, this supports Goldsmith’s explanation to the SASC that he went on to approve these four techniques.

Curiously, to justify approving isolation, Goldsmith cites the March 2003 Yoo memo!

The fourth technique was isolation for a limited period. We had earlier advised the Department of Defense that “[a] brief stay in solitary confinement alone is insufficient to state a deprivation” of basic human needs and thus would not constitute “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment under the Convention Against Torture, let alone meet the higher standard for “torture” under that Convention and the United States criminal law implementing it, 18 U.S.C. 2340-2340A. See Memorandum for William J. Haynes, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, from John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, Re: Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States at 64 (Mar. 14, 2003).

While Goldsmith is not here relying on the more problematic aspects of the memo, according to the OPR Report, he and Bradbury started drafting replacements for the Yoo memo by this point.

Finally, this memo may reveal what the conflict was about: DOD appears to have been requesting 60-day isolation for this detainee.

The Department of Defense proposed that the solitary confinement might continue as long as 60 days, with an internal review after 30. We stated, however, that our advice was limited to the legality of the 30-day period and that we ought to be consulted again if the Department of Defense wished to extend that time.

The description of isolation in Rummy’s April memo only permitted 30 days of isolation. So it appears the request may not have been for a new technique, but for an extended use of isolation.

Just one caveat to that point: SASC also includes a largely redacted paragraph just below the discussion of Goldsmith’s withdrawal of the memo that suggests DOD insitutionalized its “Frequent Flyer” program, in which detainees were moved every few hours to prevent them from sleeping, on March 26, 2004.

Tags: isolation, Jack Goldsmith, Jim Haynes, OPR report

(photo: Yersinia)

A big part of the final push for this health care reform effort is focused on how terrible the private insurance companies are. On the White House blog, communications director Dan Pfeiffer is attacking the huge premium increases and monopoly power of some private insurers. HCAN is doing a “mass citizens’ arrest of the insurance companies.” On the stump, President Obama is hitting the terrible practices of the private insurance corporations hard. From Washington Post:

Obama and his health secretary staged a two-pronged attack Monday in a stern letter to health insurance chief executives and a speech in which the president castigated insurance companies 22 times. “How much higher do premiums have to rise,” he demanded, “before we do something about it?”

The messages are part of a strategy that Obama and those around him have begun to employ lately, to ratchet up the pace and the populist appeal of their rhetoric against the health insurance industry. The barbed tone moves far beyond that of the 2008 presidential campaign, when Obama began to say that medical coverage should be accessible and affordable for more Americans.

I agree with the message. I can’t decide if I dislike the industry more for its morally reprehensible practices or its bloated, inefficient, and completely unnecessary nature. Attacking the private insurers is smart politics and should have been done months ago.

The big problem is that the messaging is incompatible with pushing for Obama’s official health care proposal. That program will use the IRS to force Americans to buy insurance from the same, terrible, private insurance industry everyone is now rallying against.

If the private insurance industry is so evil, why would you ever possibly force me to be their customer?

The messaging would make sense of Obama were pushing for a Medicare-for-all system that would completely marginalize or eliminate the private insurers. It would make sense even if the bill only had a simple public alternative, like a public option or Medicare buy-in. I could understand the message even if the bill had a broad state waiver provision that would allow for states to possibly create single payer plans. I might even except the messaging if Obama was pushing for what Switzerland did by forcing all private health insurance companies to become highly regulated non-profits. It might even be accepting if there were only the new consumer protections but no individual mandate.

The issue is that Obama’s health care proposals don’t do any of those things. It places a few good, new regulations on the private insurance companies (which will probably see a very spotty record of enforcement because that function is left up to the states), but it will now force you to buy insurance from these same, terrible, private insurance companies Obama is now attacking, or you face a fine.

To me, this sounds like pushing for a bill that would force factory farmers and slaughter houses to treat livestock 15% more humanely, but in exchange, the laws would require every American to buy triple the amount of meat.

If everyone pushing for health care reform is pointing out how awful the private insurance companies are, why is Firedoglake the bad guy for saying it is therefore immoral to force people to be customers of these admittedly terrible companies (especially when health care reform could be done without an IRS-enforced individual mandate to buy private–and only private–insurance)?

Tags: Barack Obama, Dan Pfeiffer, HCAN, Health care, health insurance, individual mandate, IRS, public option

(based on photo by Toban Black)

Student loan lobbyists have been distributing a memo around Capitol Hill, with the misleading claim that if the FFEL program is eliminated in favor of direct lending, 35,000 jobs will be lost. The claim has been repeated in Time, The Hill, the National Journal and the New York Times, just to name a few.

Read the memo here.

In fact, there are only 30,000 people employed in the entire industry, which includes three different sectors: origination, guarantee agencies and loan servicing. The number comes from a survey conducted by the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs — an association for student loan companies. The only sector that would be replaced entirely by direct lending is origination, the least labor-intensive of the three. According to Ben Miller at the Quick and the Ed:

Loan origination in its most basic form is the process of obtaining the money for student loans and transferring those funds to borrowers or to their institutions. This is a very inexpensive activity. According to information from the U.S. Department of Education, its complete cost of originating a Direct Loan last year was around $5.50. That figure includes around $1.50 in administrative and other expenses.

When you compare that with the $75 per loan that the student lenders are currently being paid for loan origination under ECASLA, you get an idea where the savings in SAFRA are going to come from.

Servicing jobs would actually increase, because private companies are being awarded contracts to service all of the direct loans made by the government. Nelnet (Ben Nelson’s biggest donor) saw their servicing revenues increased 13% in 2009 as a result of a contract they won to service student loans for the Department of Education, and their stock rose 6% on the news.

And most of the jobs in the guarantee agencies (roughly 4000-5000) are being saved courtesy of money stipulated in the SAFRA bill itself.

Tim Ranzetta of the independent Student Lending Analytics estimates that more realistically, “the number of U.S. based jobs related to federal student loans is likely to range from a net increase of 300 jobs to a net loss of 4,750 over the next several years.” Pedro de la Torre at the Nation puts the number “between 170 net US jobs lost under the worst interpretation, and 1,870 US jobs gained under the best.”

Whether the jobs on the origination side are even in jeopardy is open to speculation. Sallie Mae says that 2,000 of their 8,000 employees may lose their jobs, but they are also bringing 3,500 jobs back to the US in order to qualify for the servicing contract on direct loans they were recently awarded. Citibank, the second biggest student loan originator, recently reassigned 5% of its loan origination and servicing employees (43) to the company’s credit card business rather than laying them off. Citi CEO Vikram Pandit said “whether or not the government makes the loan, somebody needs to process them, and we’re doing that right now.”

None of these estimates factor in the jobs that would be saved or created by money going to state education programs with the passage of SAFRA.

Ranzetta has done a series of posts on the true jobs situation. You can read more here, here, here and here.

The bottom line: job losses in a tough economy are nothing to treat lightly, but the claims made by lobbyists don’t hold to close scrutiny, and the jobs impact must be weighed against the number of students currently enrolled in each state if money that could be going to schools is instead propping up a costly and unnecessary industry that is surviving only because of government subsidy.

Find out more about the Students, Not Banks campaign and sign the petition.

Tags: FFEL, guarantee, job loss by state, Lobbyists, memo, Nelnet, origination, Pedro de la Torre, SAFRA, servicing, Student lenders, student loans, Students Not Banks, Tim Ranzetta

Every lender tries to borrow low and lend high. The best lenders lend into no-lose situations. By this standard, either Sallie Mae is a genius, or the federal government is a sap.

Sallie Mae specializes in student loans. Many of its loans are guaranteed by the government at 98% of face value. On top of that, at least through September 30, 2010, the government will purchase the loans for an amount equal to the sum of a) the face value of the loan, b) accrued interest, and c) $75 per loan. 2010 10-K, p. F-53.

On the borrowing side, Sallie Mae has figured out a great trick. It has an insurance subsidiary, HICA Education Loan Corporation. In January, 2010, HICA became a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines. The FHLB of Des Moines agreed to lend it money at unbelievably low rates. 2010 10-K, p. F-55. Sallie Mae can borrow up to $11 billion from the FHLB. The first draw was $25 million at a rate of .23%. That’s right: 23 basis points. I’m going to assume that this fabulous rate is because FHLB is lending at 1 month LIBOR, the London Interbank Offered Rate. If so, it’s a really great deal. Sallie Mae has arranged to borrow $10 billion from a group of lenders to make government guaranteed loans. The rate is commercial paper plus .5%. 2010 10-K, p. 95. Commercial paper is earning about .3%, so the FHLB gets about .57% less than private lenders.

Between the low interest rate and the government’s purchase program, Sallie Mae is guaranteed to get a gross profit to SLM equal to the difference between the face interest rate of the loan and .23% plus $75, whether or not the borrower ever makes a payment.

Here’s an example. Suppose Sallie Mae makes a subsidized loan of $10,000 to your kid for second semester at Private U. The loan bears interest at 5.6%. Sallie Mae borrows $10,000 from the FHLB, and advances the money to Private U. on January 1. It has until September 30, 2010 to sell the loan to the Department of Education. Even though you didn’t make a payment (that’s the way subsidized loans work), Sallie Mae can sell the loan to the Department of Education for $10,492.31. If the interest rates charged by the FHLB don’t change, total interest due to FHLB is $15.88. Sallie Mae repays the FHLB loan with interest, and picks up a gross profit of $476.43. The government gets the money back only when you pay the loan.

The President wants to change this and Sallie Mae and its fellow privateers are fighting to kill the House Bill with a fake compromise. Will Congress continue to let Sallie Mae play the government for saps?

Tags: Department of Education, FHLB, sallie mae, student loans, Students Not Banks

It’s pretty clear Marco Rubio is going to be the Republican candidate for US Senate in Florida. He’s crushing Charlie Crist, who was a popular Republican governor until he had the gall to support a black muslim’s generational theft the stimulus bill, the funds of which Rubio has admitted he would’ve accepted.

Anyway, Byron York’s sickening beat sweetener contains this little nugget about what Rubio thinks are the “central” issues of the times.

For Rubio, that means the economic issues — “national debt, job creation, how our tax code and government spending are discouraging job creation, and entitlement reform.”

This list could’ve been written on Sarah Palin’s hand. Let’s roll the tape, shall we?

The national debt doubled under George W. Bush and tripled under Reagan. George W. Bush had the worst job creation record in 60 years. Taxes are historically low and have been for twenty years.

But Rubio wants to continue the policies that produced all of those outcomes.

And notice: no mention about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and their $4 trillion dollar price tag, and how that’s affecting the deficit. No mention of the spiraling costs of health care, and how that’s bankrupting the country. No mention of the annual $700B bill for “defense.”

Just a vague reference “entitlement reform” — which means “less money for poor and old people.” And of course, Rubio can’t mention Social Security by name in Florida, so he just punts.

What you see in Rubio is what you see with the Republican Party as a whole today — a complete pathological refusal to accept any responsibility for the failures of Republican policies, which produces an utter unseriousness in dealing with the country’s challenges.

It really is the perfect party for Sarah Palin.

Tags: Marco Rubio, Republicans, Senate

Blanche Lincoln, directly contradicting previous statements about using reconciliation to finish off the health care bill, pronounced herself open to the process yesterday.

A moderate Democrat who had vowed to oppose any effort by party leaders to push a health care bill through the Senate with a simple majority vote is rethinking her position.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln said Tuesday that she wants to see what is in the companion bill before deciding.

If I had to guess, I would say that Lincoln’s sudden need for support from current and former Presidents drove this change. But it’s not really crucial. Reconciliation is a measure that requires only 50 votes, and public whip counts show support at that level without Lincoln. The beauty of the reconciliation process is that ConservaDems like Lincoln become irrelevant, although the fixes on offer don’t really take advantage of that fact.

But clearly, Lincoln wouldn’t need to curry favor with those who could help her re-election in Arkansas without the presence of Bill Halter’s primary challenge. So despite her insistence that she doesn’t bend to the will of any party but the people of Arkansas, clearly by her actions Lincoln shows that to be false.

The New York Times ran a “Lincoln sits in the virtuous center” story yesterday.

Tags: AR-Sen, Bill Halter, Blanche Lincoln, budget reconciliation, Health care, primaries, Reconciliation

Julian Sanchez makes a wonderful observation about the Guantanamo lawyers:

Charles Katz really was involved in illegal gambling, but it’s his case that established a Fourth Amendment right to be free from warrantless wiretaps. Klansman Clarence Brandenburg really was advocating “revengeance” against Jews and African Americans (though in the latter case I’m paraphrasing)—but I owe him my right to express radical political views as long as I’m not directly inciting violence. Crucial Fourth Amendment cases protecting the sanctity of the home involved cocaine smuggling rings, marijuana growers, and thieves.

Many of them were, to put it mildly, unsympathetic characters whose “values” I would not want to be “shared” by high-ranking attorneys in the Justice Department. Fortunately, competent attorneys argued both sides of those cases, not because of their personal feelings about the defendants, but because the legal questions at the hearts of those cases had larger implications for the kind of country we’re going to live in.

I’m sure the FDL Lawfare Crew can add much to this, but I saw Ken Starr, of all people, making the case on ‘Countdown’ that we want to “encourage young lawyers” to follow in the tradition of defending controversial clients like the Guantanamo detainees. Marc Thiessen, upholding his deeply-felt commitment to embarrassing himself and the Washington Post, responds that there was no such backlash among lawyers to the cruel slights visited upon John Yoo and David Addington and Jay Bybee for creating legal pretexts for torture. Well, yes: Lawyers tend to like it when their colleagues uphold the law rather than figure out how to evade it.

A digression on Thiessen, because his piece is indicative of a juvenile conservative persecution complex. Yoo et. al., at the behest of Bush/Cheney/Tenet et. al., create a circumstance whereby U.S. personnel violate the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, ratified by the U.S. Senate; place U.S. servicemembers under greater likelihood of being tortured themselves if captured by an enemy force; and place CIA operatives, officials and contractors in legal jeopardy, as they are now; and, of course, set the conditions for fellow human beings to be brutalized. And the problem, as Thiessen sees it, is that people are too mean to John Yoo.

Tags: al-qaeda seven, Countdown, Guantanamo, Guantanamo Lawyers, John Yoo, Julian Sanchez, Ken Starr, Marc Thiessen, Washington Post

Photo of March 4 demonstration at SFSU by Steve Rhodes

Today, FDL launches its Students Not Banks campaign, with a petition calling on Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and members of Congress to pass student loan reform quickly through reconciliation.

One of President Obama’s most ambitious plans for both education and the budget was the transition from a system of government subsidized student loans using bankers as middle men to direct student lending. But as The Hill notes this morning, the Senate can only move one reconciliation bill until they pass a new budget resolution. If they try to “fix” health care and don’t pass student loan reform at the same time, it will be another year until they can take it up.

Colleges across the country that are already slashing programs and hiking tuition in the wake of state budget crises. They desperately need the $4.7 billion that student loan reform will bring to them in 2010 alone.

Background

In September, the House passed H.R. 3221, the Student Aid and Financial Responsibility Act (SAFRA). It put an end to private lending, which the Congressional Budget Office has said will save $87 billion over 10 years.

Anticipating that they might have a rough time getting 60 votes in the Senate, the White House pressed Harry Reid to include student loan reform under the 2009 reconciliation instructions, just as they did health care reform. So SAFRA only needs 50 votes to pass the Senate. But that also means that when the Senate deals with health care reform, they must also deal student loan reform — or it gets put off until the next year’s budget reconciliation.

Colleges across the country can’t wait another year for relief. On March 4, there were student demonstrations in 30 states — 100 in California alone — protesting tuition hikes and program cuts.

Enter the Lobbyists

JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon made $17 million in 2009

Tony Podesta, Jamie Gorelick and other lobbyists working on behalf of the big student lenders such as Sallie Mae, Citicorp, JP Morgan and BofA, want to kick the can down the road. Working through Senators like Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, they claim that moving to direct student lending would be too chaotic before next year — which coincidentally happens to guarantee the student lenders another year and $8.7 billion in government-subsidized profits in “middlemen” fees.

But the government’s Direct Lending program is already up and running at the colleges that are responsible for 96% of all the student loans in the country, and originated 26% of all federal student loans last year. The Department of Education has a program ready to make the switch, and collges will be able to use the same on-site system currently used to administer Pell Grant scholarships.

Now that most student lenders are immediately selling the bulk of their loans to the government anyway, the need for their services as originators is questionable at best. Sallie Mae originated $21.7 billion in government subsidized loans last year — but also sold $20.5 billion in loans to the government. The GOP claim that the student lenders perform an important function by using their own money and sparing the government’s resources has long since ceased to be true.

Furthermore, the “Sallie Mae compromise” being pushed by lobbyists — which Bob Casey recently submitted for a CBO score — would have the government buy up all of the loans that lenders originate within 100 days. (See Stephen Byrd’s Five Reasons To Opppose the Community Proposal.)

So what is the private student lending industry doing for their $8.7 billion a year?

Well, Sallie Mae used their government money wisely: they spent $3.48 million on lobbying in 2009, and $3.2 million in 2008 to protect their sweet deal. Industry PACS and employees also made $2.1 million in political contributions.

They’re also really good at jacking up penalties and fees before they sell loans in default to the government, often doubling the amount of the original loan — which students are then on the hook for. (See David Brancaccio’s excellent program on forbearance for Now PBS.)

And according to the New York Times, “President Bush’s budget reports that in 2006 for every $100 lent by private lenders, the cost to the government of subsidies, defaults and other items was $13.81, while the same amount lent through the direct loan program cost the government $3.85.”

And then there’s the much-touted “default aversion” services they provide. But as Ben Miller observes, “default rate among students already receiving these services in the FFEL Program, is much higher than students in the Direct Loan Program that do not get this support.”

The Fictional 35,000 “Lost Jobs” Claim

In addition to the claim that a switch to direct student lending would be too “chaotic,” lobbyists are fear-mongering about 35,000 job loss — a figure the Hill article quotes.

But as Pedro de la Torre writes in the Nation, that figure comes from a survey conducted by the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs — an association for student loan companies. The estimate claims that there are 30,000 jobs in the entire industry, and then throw on another 5,000 in associated jobs for good measure.

“Rather than indicate expected job losses, the survey reflects the number of individuals employed by FFEL organizations,” writes de la Torre. “No one, not even the lenders, expects that all the people currently employed by a participating lender will lose their job.”

Tim Ranzetta of the independent Student Lending Analytics estimates that more realistically, “the number of U.S. based jobs related to federal student loans is likely to range from a net increase of 300 jobs to a net loss of 4,750 over the next several years.” Pedro de la Torre puts the number “between 170 net US jobs lost under the worst interpretation, and 1,870 US jobs gained under the best.” And that does not factor in the jobs that would be saved or created by money going to state education programs with the passage of SAFRA.

Student lending reform could have passed the Senate long ago, but because it had to wait on health care, the lobbyists have had plenty of time to chip away at the Senate and make inroads for their “compromise,” which would carve out billions to preserve their role as expensive and unnecessary middlemen. In addition to Lincoln and Pryor, they are targeting Bob Casey and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Tom Carper of Delaware and Tim Johnson of South Dakota — as well as others from states with powerful student lending interests. The complete list can be found here.

If SAFRA passes, many of the savings that result from this transition will immediately begin to flow to programs like early education, K-12 and community college reconstruction and modernization, and ensuring that more students graduate with the skills they need to perform high wage jobs in high-demand industries. Starting in 2011, SAFRA will also increase both need-based Pell grants and Perkins loans.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid need to act quickly to pass a reconciliation-friendly version of SAFRA through the House that will meet the Byrd rule, so that the Senate can pass it along with any other bills in reconciliation. Thankfully, this means the ACORN provision goes bye-bye.

The Students, Not Banks campaign will feature a petition to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and members of Congress, asking them not to forget about student loan reform this year.

It will also focus on calling wavering Senators, asking them to commit to supporting students — not bankers. Students and educators from across the country are invited to blog on FDL’s reader blog, the Seminal, about what is happening to their schools and their communities in the wake of the budget. These diaries will be featured on FDL’s front page.

Find out more about the Students, Not Banks campaign and sign the petition.

Tags: Bob Casey, FDL, Firedoglake, Harry Reid, Jamie Dimon, Jamie Gorelick, Nancy Pelosi, Reconciliation, SAFRA, sallie mae, student loans, Students Not Banks, Tony Podesta

37 Democratic "No" votes to flip and counting (photo: mag3737 via Flickr)

Some movement since I last updated:

Dan Maffei and Bill Owens, two central New York Congressmen who voted yes last time, are undecided.

Larry Kissell is a confirmed no.

According to the Hill, Marion Berry is a member of the Stupak 12 (which I have as a baker’s dozen), and Ike Skelton is a definite no.

So if you add all that up, you get 194 yes votes and 191 no votes. I’ll show my work:

I’m assuming that all Republicans save Joseph Cao are a no, and all Democrats who voted yes before who haven’t definitively come out as a maybe are still a yes.

There were 39 Democratic No votes before. One of them was Parker Griffith, now a Republican, and one of them was Eric Massa, now the saltiest salt not in Congress. In addition, three other Democrats who voted yes last time (Wexler, Murtha, and Abercrombie) have either resigned or died.

Of the 37 remaining Democratic No votes, we have 14 definite nos (I’ve documented all of these with a link somewhere on the site in the past):

Bobby Bright, Mike McIntyre, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, Walt Minnick, Artur Davis, Chet Edwards, Frank Kratovil, Mike Ross, Dan Boren, Gene Taylor, Larry Kissell, Dennis Kucinich, Collin Peterson, Ike Skelton

That leaves 23 potential flippers, though only 13 have made noises in that direction so far:

Jason Altmire, Bart Gordon, Glenn Nye, Brian Baird, John Tanner, Rick Boucher, Allen Boyd, John Boccieri, Suzanne Kosmas, Betsy Markey, John Adler, Mike McMahon, Scott Murphy.

The other 10 haven’t said boo. They are:

Travis Childers, Harry Teague, Lincoln Davis, Heath Shuler, John Barrow, Jim Marshall, Tim Holden, Charlie Melancon, Jim Matheson, Ben Chandler

In addition, there are the Stupak 13, who were all yes votes last time:

Bart Stupak, Jerry Costello, Charlie Wilson, Kathy Dahlkemper, Joe Donnelly, Joseph Cao, Steve Driehaus, Brad Ellsworth, Marion Berry, Marcy Kaptur, Dale Kildee, Dan Lipinski, James Oberstar.

Kildee has said he’s not in the bloc, but he was quoted in the Politico “fix it in reconciliation” article as someone with concerns about the abortion language.

Then there are 10 other former Yes votes who have expressed concerns, though none are an out-and-out no yet:

Mike Arcuri, Zack Space, Chris Carney, Mike Doyle, Paul Kanjorski, Ann Kirkpatrick, Alan Mollohan, Nick Rahall, Dan Maffei, Bill Owens.

Some of those may have something to do with the abortion language, but I haven’t added them to the Stupak bloc yet.

If you add up those numbers, you get 194 confirmed yes, 191 confirmed no, with the rest in the middle. Obviously, this is fluid right now, especially in advance of actual bill language. But you can see why the leadership is still talking to Stupak. The votes are very hard to find without his bloc.

Tags: Bart Stupak, health care reform, whip count

Marines and Afghan national army soldiers on patrol in Marjah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. (photo: DVIDSHUB via Flickr)

Gareth Porter has an excellent piece up on IPS, “Fiction of Marja as City Was U.S. Information War,” in which he breaks down the media disinformation campaign on the size of Marja:

Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers’ homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley.

“It’s not urban at all,” an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPS Sunday. He called Marja a “rural community”.

“It’s a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds,” said the official, adding that the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghan standards.

Porter is right on, and you should read the whole thing for an idea on exactly how these disinfo campaigns are spread, but I’m afraid in the case of Marja, we might be missing the point. We’re complaining that Marja is only an excuse for a propaganda victory while at the same time complaining that the victory won’t be worth anything because it’s not a city. This food is terrible, and such small portions!

This shouldn’t be news to anyone, but Afghans live in rural communities! We’re supposedly there to protect Afghans from the Taliban after all. Rajiv Chandrasekaran described the strategy last year in the Washington Post:

The U.S. strategy here is predicated on the belief that a majority of people in Helmand do not favor the Taliban, which enforces a strict brand of Islam that includes an-eye-for-an-eye justice and strict limits on personal behavior. Instead, U.S. officials believe, residents would rather have the Afghan government in control, but they have been cowed into supporting the Taliban because there was nobody to protect them.

Great, so if the plan is to protect Afghans from the Taliban, then you’ll want to go where Afghans actually live, right? That would be in “a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds,” just like the anonymous ISAF official told IPS.

Big cities like Kabul and Herat don’t speak for the entirety of all Afghans, so focusing all of our attention on the major urban centers doesn’t do anything to extend the legitimacy and credibility of the government, much less provide security from the Taliban. President Karzai’s derisive nickname as the “Mayor of Kabul” was one small indicator of just how well the strategy of focusing on city centers, at the cost of conceding rural territory to the Taliban, was working. That is, not working at all. We also can’t discount the effect concentrating on cities had on the Taliban propaganda narrative of western-occupied Kabul (or Islamabad) oppressing the mostly-rural Pashtuns.

In this case, Marja being a small farming community might actually be a positive step. So, ISAF finally went to the population, but are they protecting them? From Military.com:

At least 35 civilians have been killed in the operation, according to the Afghan human rights commission. Spokesman Nader Nadery said insurgent bombs killed more than 10 people, while NATO rocket fire killed at least 14.

Not only are we failing to protect the civilians from the Taliban, but we seem to have killed more Afghans than the militants themselves. Perhaps the Afghans will show their legendary patience, and accept that the government had to massacre 14 of their friends and relatives with rockets in order to have a more peaceful, prosperous Afghanistan. Will they side with Karzai? From the same article above:

“Are you against me or with me?” Karzai asked the elders. “Are you going to support me?”

The men all raised their hands and shouted: “We are with you. We support you.”

But…

[Tribal Elders] complained – sometimes shouting – about corruption among former Afghan government officials. They lamented how schools in Marjah were turned into military posts by international forces. They said shops were looted during the offensive, and alleged that innocent civilians were detained by international forces.

But they still said they said they support Karzai, right?

Mohammad Naeem Khan, in his early 30s, said his loyalty is to whoever will provide for him.

“If the Taliban tap me on the shoulder, I will be with them, and if the government taps me on my shoulder I will be with them,” Khan said.

So we wind up with the exact same bloody stalemate we’ve had since about 2002. They’ll side with the government, except for when they side with the Taliban. That’s not a victory, propaganda or otherwise.

The problem is not the size of Marja, it could be a teeming industrial metropolis of millions, it still wouldn’t matter as long as we continue using military force and propping up a corrupt, illegitimate government. Until we have a strategy that doesn’t involve violently imposing our pet gangsters’ will on the Afghan people, we’ll have a hard time even distinguishing ourselves from the Taliban, much less convincing the citizens to take our side against them.

Had enough? Become a fan of the Rethink Afghanistan campaign on Facebook and join our fight to bring the Afghanistan war to an end.

I am the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. You can read my work on The Seminal or at Rethink Afghanistan.

Tags: Afghanistan, Gareth Porter, Hamid Karzai, Helmand Province, ISAF, Marjah, Taliban, war

Doesn’t he realize that Rahm needs a “win”?

Kucinich’s objections are sincere. And Obama and Pelosi would be wise to listen to them — rather than simply try and “whip” the congressman to vote for legislation that can still be improved.

In particular, Kucinich has demanded that barriers to states developing single-payer “Medicare for All” programs be removed. Kucinich wants Congress to waive existing federal restrictions and to address federal laws that might be interpreted as supporting insurance company suits against states that provide more extensive coverage than is currently proposed by the president.

White House strategists and congressional leaders should know that Kucinich is not an outlier on this issue. The congressman has gained strong support for his practical proposals regarding state-based experimentation with “Medicare for All” initiatives — on key House committees, among members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and from real-reform backers such as the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, Progressive Democrats of America and Physicians for a National Healthcare Program.

He doesn’t sound like he’s in the mood to compromise.

Tags: Dennis Kucinich, Early Morning Swim, Health care

Marc Thiessen and Rummy dwell upon their heroism

One lawyer in the National Security Division of Holder’s Justice Department, Jennifer Daskal, has written that any terrorist not charged with a crime “should be released from Guantanamo’s system of indefinite detention” even though “at least some of these men may … join the battlefield to fight U.S. soldiers and our allies another day.” Should a lawyer who advocates setting terrorists free, knowing they may go on to kill Americans, have any role in setting U.S. detention policy? My hunch is that most Americans would say no.

Do other lawyers in question hold similarly radical and dangerous views?

First of all, nice loading of the assumptions before the actual quotes there a-hole. Second, how awful, an American lawyer believing in the American Constitution [Article I, Sec. 9] — how radical and dangerous! And those known radicals on the Supreme Court have agreed with them.

Surely, only Marc Thiessen understands that “FoxNews Facts” trump the Constitution every time. So bring on the McCarthyism from the man who describes torturers as his real heroes.

Featuring new videos by John Gorka and Dan Auerbach.

What’s on your mind tonight??

Tags: Dan Auerbach, John Gorka

President Obama re-started the health care clock, threatening Congress with yet another deadline [insert eye-rolling emoticon here] to push the moribund health care insurance reform package across the finish line on March 31st.

So does this mean that once he signs off on the original bill’s skeletal remains, he’ll finally turn his full attention to the barons robbing this country blind? If not, I’d suggest he reprioritize, because those amoral parasites are hurriedly reinflating bubbles left and right in order to rip off the American people of their very last pennies. Again.

It would also be in the White House’s best interest, publicity-wise, to get its shit together on reinstating some sort of meaningful banking reform. According to the New York Times, the public is exceedingly interested in seeing these sociopaths brought to heel:

Three-fifths of Americans supported tougher regulation of Wall Street in April 2009, according to Pew Research Center polling. Despite rising disaffection with government, three fifths still supported it last month.

Not everyone, however, thinks Wall Street should be spotlighted for its socially and economically destructive behavior:

Alex Castellanos, a Republican consultant, pointed to another edge: with Americans most anxious about unemployment, calling for stricter regulation of Wall Street is “not a growth argument, it’s a punishment argument.”

You know what? Fuck you for missing the point, Castellanos. Wall Street deserves to be punished for its rapacious hoarding and compulsive deceit that has co-piloted this country right off the cliff. It would be one thing if these “too big to fail” banks were actually returning something to the American public, but they’re not. Despite taking massive payoffs, they’re still not extending credit to homeowners, they’re still not lending to small business, they’re still not taking any action that will help to resuscitate U.S. employment. They’re simply playing round robin with great heaping piles of cash, passing them from one bank to another and back again, and slapping the public with usurious interest rates and the processing fees. The only Americans they’re helping are themselves.

What’s worse, the banksters honestly believe they deserve all this filthy lucre. By now, we’re familiar with the vindictive, un-ironic indignation expressed by the professional victims at AIG-FP, the organization that, with the “assistance” of the syndicate’s kingpin, Goldman Sachs, brought this whole house of cards down on us in the first place:

Another was even more irate, lashing out at the public for scapegoating AIG employees. “To be honest with you, I really hope it blows up. I think the U.S. taxpayer deserves to lose a trillion dollars over this thing for the way they have behaved.”

“They only care about the next election, just like we only care about the next bonus. Well, none of them cares about the country, none of us cares about the institution,” he said, adding: “They really don’t care, and I really don’t care. And frankly, if a trillion dollars gets lost, fine.”

With that kind of institutionalized histrionic personality disorder, Obama had better be willing to get tough — I mean REALLY tough — with these fucking pit vipers, and not “preemptively compromise to conservative elements that won’t get on board no matter what substantive deals they’re offered[.]” Otherwise, we’ll be forced to once again watch as the usual Republican obstructionists and special interest piranhas pick the bill’s bones clean of any significant reform and the American people are left holding the empty bag.

Not really a strategic way to head into the 2010 elections.

Tags: AIG, Bailout, Barack Obama, financial crisis, health insurance, New York Times, Unemployment, Wall Street

Admiral Eric Thor Olson: The most important man you never heard of. But is he being bypassed?

In my most recent diary, I discussed the command structure within the Department of Defense for the war effort in Afghanistan. What is clear from that diary and the links within it is that a number of the most significant activities in Afghanistan have been intentionally carved out of the official command area for General Stanley McChrystal, who is now Commander of the International Security Assistance Force, answering to the US Central Command under General David Petraeus.

Key secret activities appear to be under the control of the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC. But who is in control of JSOC? The current head of JSOC is Vice Admiral William McRaven, who previously reported to McChrystal when McChrystal headed JSOC. Under the command structure I described in the previous diary, JSOC is within US Special Operations Command, which is currently headed by Admiral Eric T. Olson. Olson appears to have kept a very low profile in his career. The only biography I could find is here and it has very little real information about him.

The question of control above JSOC has a very interesting history for the time in which McChrystal was JSOC commander. For example, we have this from Jeremy Scahill:

While JSOC has long played a central role in US counterterrorism and covert operations, military and civilian officials who worked at the Defense and State Departments during the Bush administration described in interviews with The Nation an extremely cozy relationship that developed between the executive branch (primarily through Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) and JSOC. During the Bush era, Special Forces turned into a virtual stand-alone operation that acted outside the military chain of command and in direct coordination with the White House. Throughout the Bush years, it was largely General McChrystal who ran JSOC. “What I was seeing was the development of what I would later see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Special Operations forces would operate in both theaters without the conventional commander even knowing what they were doing,” said Colonel Wilkerson. “That’s dangerous, that’s very dangerous. You have all kinds of mess when you don’t tell the theater commander what you’re doing.”

Wilkerson said that almost immediately after assuming his role at the State Department under Colin Powell, he saw JSOC being politicized and developing a close relationship with the executive branch. He saw this begin, he said, after his first Delta Force briefing at Fort Bragg. “I think Cheney and Rumsfeld went directly into JSOC. I think they went into JSOC at times, perhaps most frequently, without the SOCOM [Special Operations] commander at the time even knowing it. The receptivity in JSOC was quite good,” says Wilkerson. “I think Cheney was actually giving McChrystal instructions, and McChrystal was asking him for instructions.” He said the relationship between JSOC and Cheney and Rumsfeld “built up initially because Rumsfeld didn’t get the responsiveness. He didn’t get the can-do kind of attitude out of the SOCOM commander, and so as Rumsfeld was wont to do, he cut him out and went straight to the horse’s mouth. At that point you had JSOC operating as an extension of the [administration] doing things the executive branch–read: Cheney and Rumsfeld–wanted it to do. This would be more or less carte blanche. You need to do it, do it. It was very alarming for me as a conventional soldier.”

Olson took over SOCOM on July 9, 2007, replacing General Bryan Brown. The bypassing of SOCOM Wilkerson describes clearly began during Brown’s tenure. Olson was second in command at SOCOM at that time, however. In a very interesting article in Air Force Times published on March 6, 2006, Sean D. Naylor offered a revealing glimpse inside the discussion of the reporting structure for JSOC:

Structural changes in the Joint Special Operations Command will give its chief more authority and influence in dealing with other leaders and give his headquarters greater ability to simultaneously lead multiple task forces, said several sources familiar with the report.

But the Pentagon rejected another recommendation to temporarily pull JSOC out of its parent organization, U.S. Special Operations Command, and have it report directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

So, there was talk in 2006 of actually formalizing the structure that Scahill described, where McChrystal was taking orders directly from Rumsfeld and Cheney. The Naylor article reports that the changes he was describing were the result of a task force Rumsfeld assigned to study JSOC after Olson reported that “his command’s capabilities had declined,” apparently setting Rumsfeld off on one of his famous tirades.

Here is more from Naylor on the changes in JSOC implemented in 2006:

“Before 9/11, JSOC was essentially seen as a hostage-rescue unit or ‘render-safe’ unit,” said the retired Special Forces lieutenant colonel. “You train, you train, you train, then all of a sudden you get on a plane and you go somewhere, do a mission, it’s over in 36 hours, and you come back.”

Now the command is deployed somewhere “24/7,” he said. Since the Iraq war began, JSOC has kept at least one task force, and sometimes two, deployed there, with another in Afghanistan.

The command has shifted to “continuous operations,” added the Washington source familiar with the Downing report.

So the question remains, who is directing McRaven and JSOC? Olson has direct command responsibility, but he was second in command when McChrystal began his practice of working around SOCOM and there appear to have been no negative consequences to McChrystal for what should have beeen seen as insubordination. In fact, McChrystal has instead been promoted and praised, while JSOC has been given more influence and funding. Here is Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in an article in Foreign Affairs published during the time he was chosen to remain in office as President Obama took over from President Bush:

As secretary of defense, I have repeatedly made the argument in favor of institutionalizing counterinsurgency skills and the ability to conduct stability and support operations. I have done so not because I fail to appreciate the importance of maintaining the United States’ current advantage in conventional war fighting but rather because conventional and strategic force modernization programs are already strongly supported in the services, in Congress, and by the defense industry. The base budget for fiscal year 2009, for example, contains more than $180 billion for procurement, research, and development, the overwhelming preponderance of which is for conventional systems.

Apart from the Special Forces community and some dissident colonels, however, for decades there has been no strong, deeply rooted constituency inside the Pentagon or elsewhere for institutionalizing the capabilities necessary to wage asymmetric or irregular conflict — and to quickly meet the ever-changing needs of forces engaged in these conflicts.

/snip/

…I just want to make sure that the capabilities needed for the complex conflicts the United States is actually in and most likely to face in the foreseeable future also have strong and sustained institutional support over the long term. And I want to see a defense establishment that can make and implement decisions quickly in support of those on the battlefield.

In the end, the military capabilities needed cannot be separated from the cultural traits and the reward structure of the institutions the United States has: the signals sent by what gets funded, who gets promoted, what is taught in the academies and staff colleges, and how personnel are trained.

Clearly, the increased responsibility and funding for JSOC and the promotion of McChrystal to head ISAF show that Gates, the Pentagon establishment and Obama approve of the covert actions JSOC and McChrystal have carried out.

It seems likely to me, then, that McRaven’s JSOC may well be taking a page from McChrystal’s playbook in bypassing SOCOM and Olson. Rather than Cheney or Rumsfeld, however, it seems more likely that McChrystal would be the one providing direction to McRaven, his former subordinate. That would give McChrystal the advantage of making his public pronouncements aimed at public relations regarding night raids, civilian imprisonment, secret prisons and target choices for drone strikes, but still having a hand in the more free-wheeling style he pioneered when he ran JSOC. At the very least, it is now unlikely that McChrystal will be unaware of McRaven’s JSOC actions in the way that previous CENTCOM representation in the field was unaware of McChrystal’s JSOC actions.

Of course, Petraeus is just as “politicized” as Wilkerson described McChrystal to Scahill. That gives us then a complete link down from Gates through Petraeus to McChrystal and then McRaven for the secret activities in Afghanistan and the surrounding area, even though it should go from Gates through Olson to McRaven, with McChrystal and Petraeus only being supported, not being in control. Ultimate responsibility in this chain, however, eventually flows all the way up to Obama. How involved is he in decisions relating to JSOC operations?

Although Olson may be the most important person you never heard of, he might also be left entirely out of the loop on decisions that the command structure says should be his.

Postscript: In a number of recent diaries, I have discussed how Obama’s executive order closing secret prisons appeared directed at the CIA and not JSOC. Here is the relevant section of the order itself, which I had not yet quoted:

Sec. 4. Prohibition of Certain Detention Facilities, and Red Cross Access to Detained Individuals.

(a) CIA Detention. The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.

(b) International Committee of the Red Cross Access to Detained Individuals. All departments and agencies of the Federal Government shall provide the International Committee of the Red Cross with notification of, and timely access to, any individual detained in any armed conflict in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States Government, consistent with Department of Defense regulations and policies.

So, yes, the order directs the CIA to close its detention facilities and says nothing about JSOC. Further, in instructing government agencies to make prisoners available to the ICRC, note that such disclosure is to be “consistent with Department of Defense regulations and policies”. That also seems to me to leave a loophole for JSOC, since it is DoD policy that the bulk of JSOC actions are classified.

Tags: Afghanistan, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Eric Olson, JSOC, Robert Gates., Stanley McChrystal, William McRaven

(photo: Americans4FinancialReform via Flickr)

Financial regulatory “reform” is beginning to look a lot like the status quo. We’ve already heard that the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency would be housed inside the Federal Reserve, which already held responsibility over consumer protection (and failed miserably at the task). Now the Financial Times reports that the Fed will also keep their supervision over the biggest banks, another area in which they failed but will face no diminution of power.

Chris Dodd … is set to propose this week that the 23 largest institutions stay under the Fed’s oversight … At issue … was the regulation of several hundred state chartered institutions that also want to remain under the Fed’s supervision.
…
“The Fed feels it is gaining some momentum,” said [an unidentified Senate aide].

As Yves Smith says, the Fed simply is not a functioning agency to check industry abuses. Heck, the largest banks pick their preferred officials for the top positions as the regional bank Presidents. “Keeping them in charge of bank regulation is like reappointing a fire commissioner who let half the town burn down,” she concludes.

The difference between countries who failed during the financial crisis and countries who kept their footing, when it comes down to it, is the presence of a strong regulatory framework, and also strong regulators who were not captured by the industries they were supposed to be regulating.

So what can we learn from the way Ireland had a U.S.-type financial crisis with very different institutions? Mainly, that we have to focus as much on the regulators as on the regulations. By all means, let’s limit both leverage and the use of securitization — which were part of what Canada did right. But such measures won’t matter unless they’re enforced by people who see it as their duty to say no to powerful bankers.

That’s why we need an independent agency protecting financial consumers — again, something Canada did right — rather than leaving the job to agencies that have other priorities. And beyond that, we need a sea change in attitudes, a recognition that letting bankers do what they want is a recipe for disaster. If that doesn’t happen, we will have failed to learn from recent history — and we’ll be doomed to repeat it.

Well, the unfolding nightmare of the Dodd draft indicates that we’ve failed to learn. His quest for bipartisanship rather than putting up a bill on which Republicans would have to make a choice, and then running on the outcome has led to a financial “reform” little changed from the structure that oversaw a massive collapse.

Tags: banking industry, CFPA, Chris Dodd, Federal Reserve Bank, financial industry, financial reform

Howard Zinn’s monumental book,  A People’s History of the United States, lifted the curtain on the traditional American narrative, revealing class struggles, dissent, and the efforts of everyday Americans, people of color, women, day laborers, migrant workers to gain and live with the rights promised in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

In The People Speak, Zinn is joined by a group of talented actors and musicians in bringing these people’s stories to life. Morgan Freeman, Viggo Mortensen, Marisa Tomei, Sean Penn, Rosario Dawson, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, David Strathairn, Danny Glover, Kerry Washington, Benjamin Bratt, Sandra Oh, Jasmine Guy, Bob Dylan, Pink, Eddie Vedder, Chris Robinson, Rich Robinson, John Legend, DMC and Bruce Springsteen are among the stars lending their voices to The People Speak, a documentary based on A People’s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History of the United States, the companion volume of 200 primary sources, co-created with Anthony Arnove.

Co-directed by Howard Zinn and our guests Anthony Arnove and Chris Moore, The People Speak reveals some of the ugly truths about our country that traditionalists would prefer stay buried. Well, we are only as sick as our secrets, and it is important to know that our Founding Fathers owned slaves, that Lincoln would not have preferred to have kept the Union together without freeing the slaves. It is vital to realize that the rights of Native Americans were stripped from them, that Muhammad Ali was jailed for resisting the draft, that hundreds of thousands of Americans have lifted their voices and moved their bodies to make this country live up to the promises on which it was founded.

From the founding of America through the abolition and suffragist movements, civil rights struggles, union organizing and draft resistance, to the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, The People Speak shows that there is more than one perspective on history; the candy-coated rainbows of the traditional versions have shadows beneath that give a greater depth and meaning to our nation. And a greater hope for her future.

The beauty of America is that we can speak up and out, that we have the right to freely assemble; that in America, all are supposedly created equal. The sorrow is that we have to fight for these rights at home, while the government seeks to export to other countries with war what passes as democracy.

One stunning passage from Malcolm X makes this point:

If violence is wrong in America, it is wrong abroad.

The People Speak draws the link between racism, classism and militarism through the experience of real Americans, reminding us for the need to be vigilant, to question authority and to unite for the greater good. We the people can cause change by acting together.

Tags: A People’s History of the United States, Abolition, Afghanistan, Anthony Arnove, Benjamin Bratt, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Chris Moore, Chris Robinson, civil rights, Constitution, Danny Glover, David Strathairn, Day Laborers, Declaration of Independence, DMC, Don Cheadle, Draft Resistance, Eddie Vedder, Howard Zinn, Iraq, Jasmine Guy, John Legend, Kerry Washington, Malcolm X, Marisa Tomei, Matt Damon, Migrant Workers, Morgan Freeman, People of Color, Pink, Rich Robinson, Rosario Dawson, Sandra Oh, Sean Penn, Suffragist Movements, The People Speak, Unions Organizing, Viggo Mortensen, women