photo: Leo Reynolds via Flickr

We learned Wednesday from The Hill that many Democratic Senators don’t actually support all the great things they claim they have “fought for.” They lied to voters. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) doesn’t really support her health insurance rate-review agency as she claims to do. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) doesn’t really want Americans to have the choice of a public option, though he told people he’d fight for it. Carl Levin (D-MI) doesn’t really support expanding unemployment insurance. Russ Feingold doesn’t really care about using transparency to reduce corporate spending in elections. And so on. . . .

Why don’t these and other Senate Democrats support the policies they claim to if they really want to deliver for the voters? Because they refuse to take the small step that would actually allow them to become law. They refuse to vote to change the filibuster rules, rules that permanently doom every idea they claim to champion. They want to make sure 41 Senate Republicans always have a veto over every piece of legislation, so nothing they claim to care about could ever pass. They publicly state that they care about defending the broken rules of their clubhouse more than any promise they ever made to any constituent about a law.

It is important to understand what these Senators’ support of the filibuster says about their near-total lack of commitment to passing the laws they have campaigned on. Picture a lazy guy sitting on his couch, watching TV, who wants to change the channel. But he doesn’t feel like getting up to look for the remote, so he just keeps watching the same thing. That is nearly identical to how much pro-filibuster Democratic Senators like Feinstein desire the things they fight for, like her rate-review agency. It’s like continuing to watch a 14-episode marathon of “The Hills.” Need I say more? In fact, it would probably take the lazy guy more time and energy to find his remote than for Senators to vote “aye” on Sen. Tom Udall’s motion to reform the filibuster so all the great things they promised can pass. Voters should know this is how little these Democratic Senators will “work” to make sure they pass the laws they promised if they don’t support eliminating the filibuster.

People should keep this in mind when they decide who to vote for, donate money to or volunteer to help on campaigns. These Democratic Senators care nothing for passing the laws you find important. A Democratic Senator who says he or she is fighting for a public option, drug re-importation, EFCA, the DISCLOSE Act, climate-change legislation and more, while insisting 41 Senate Republicans have the power to stop any bill containing these policies, should be made a public laughingstock by any honest media.

Only one thing is stopping Senate Democrats from passing all the laws they promised you. It’s a simple rules change, yet many refuse just to vote yes on changing the rules. I don’t know how they could do any less to make good on their promises.

photo: Mzelle Biscotte via Flickr

The White House wants to add just four words to the law that empowers the government to collect information on you w/o a warrant. But it would represent a huge expansion of the what the government could (legally) collect on you.

The administration wants to add just four words — “electronic communication transactional records” — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the “content” of e-mail or other Internet communication.But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.

Make no mistake. This is one of the most important pieces of civil liberties news in a long time. The Obama Administration is asking Congress to sanction the collection of internet records without a warrant that has been going on–the kind of shit they used to do without a warrant, until people expressed their opposition.

But then Democrats took over and now they want legal sanction and now–voila, a request that presumably provides cover.

Go read this article. I’ll have more to say about it, but for the moment, Julian Sanchez makes sense.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth…

Scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies reported recently that the average global temperature was higher over the past 12 months than during any other 12-month period in history. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released corroborating data, adding that the past four months, including June, have each individually been the hottest on record as well….

The average global temperature, computed over a 12-month period, reached a new record in May and held steady for the month of June, he said. This was despite the recent minimum in solar activity, which should have had a cooling effect on Earth. Apparently, Ruedy said, the solar cycle “has much less impact than the warming trend.”

But…but…Al Gore flies in planes and has a big house.

pic from walknboston at flickr.com

[A] “formula for the decline of the United States.”

Naturally, Kent continues…

There’s no question in my mind that taxes have to go up on the wealthiest among us. The question is when. I don’t think this is the moment.

Yes, god forbid the fabulously wealthy, who have had huge swaths of the national wealth the last eight years concentrated in their hands, release a fraction (now, then, or ever).

It’s just never the moment for them to help reduce the debt, is it “Mr. Deficit Hawk”?

Firepup davedwards1 performing Nascar Justices.

What’s on your mind?

If you’re like me, and I know I am, when you hear the term “Journo-List Scandal,” you yawn like someone’s just got tequila in your Nyquil, or Nyquil in your tequila. But this intensely tedious kerfuffle has nevertheless given Our Right Wing Friends yet another excuse for squawking and preening and fondling themselves about how Exquisitely Horribly they are Oppressed. Which separates this particular episode from, well, nothing whatsoever. Specimens such as, say, Dennis Prager (Dennis the Pissant, ha ha ho) watch the sun go down and contemplate 4,000-word monologues about how Al Gore is Stalinistically plotting to cover the Earth in Satanic Darkness. It’s their gig, you know, for which they get pretty well paid, also.

Perhaps the most telling of the recent revelations of the liberal/left Journolist, a list consisting of about 400 major liberal/left journalists, is the depth of their hatred of conservatives….

Every one of us on the right has seen this hatred. I am not referring to leftist bloggers or to anonymous extreme comments by angry leftists on conservative blogs — such things exist on the right as well — but to mainstream elite liberal journalists. There is simply nothing analogous among elite conservative journalists.

I don’t believe it! This is absurd!

There are “elite conservative journalists”…?

Perhaps this notional class of creature includes Ann Coulter, who is given lots and lots of real estate over at Townhall, where I discovered Prager’s yammering? Or Townhall regular Jonah Goldberg, of Liberal Fascism: I Flick My Boogers at FDR repute? Or Townhall favorite Rush Limbaugh, Prager’s current presumptive candidate for unfairly-maligned Conservative Hero? (Enjoy that clip!) Or, well, our buddy Dennis Prager, shown here making a spectacle of himself, discussed here offering completely nutty marital advice, and in this very column, where Prager says that the Left is a gang of sissies for opposing stupid foreign wars?

Pretending they’re oppressed is about all they have. But I don’t hate them! I wanna give them all a great big kiss, with tongues.

James Clapper (Department of Defense photo)

As Josh Rogin and Marc Ambinder note, James Clapper is scheduled to get a vote tomorrow in the Senate Intelligence Committee on his nomination to be Director of National Intelligence. Ambinder reports that Kit Bond is most dissatisfied with Clapper at this point, the rest of the committee really ought to join in Bond’s dissatisfaction given his answers to their post-hearing questions. Take this response to Russ Feingold:

Success in the area of counterterrorism requires that the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense coordinate their activities, and that congressional oversight not be fragmented. One example is Section 1208 of U.S.c. Title 10, which authorizes assistance to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals supporting U.S. counterterrorism military operations. The Senate Armed Services Committee has expressed concern that U.S. Special Operations Command may be leveraging this authority for long-term engagement with partner nations, rather than exclusively to support operations, particularly in countries other than Iraq and Afghanistan. Information about the use of Section 1208 is therefore critical if the Intelligence Committee is to conduct oversight of how the U.S. government as a whole is fighting terrorism around the world.

• Will you ensure that this information is provided to the Committee?

Section 1208 of the FY 2005 National Defense Authorization Act, PL 108-375, requires the Secretary of Defense to submit an annual report “to the congressional defense committees on support provided to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating ongoing military operations by United States special operations forces to combat terrorism.”

If confirmed as the DNI I would not view the provision of DoD clandestine military operational information to the SSCI as being within my authority or responsibility; however, I would fully support an arrangement agreed to by the affected oversight committees for the submission of information to Congress concerning this matter. [my emphasis]

[Cont'd]
Feingold’s question pertains to this issue.

• Section 1208 (Support to Foreign Forces)

Section 1208 of the FY 2005 NDAA authorized DOD to reimburse foreign forces, groups, or individuals supporting or facilitating ongoing counter-terrorism military operations by U.S. special operations forces (SOF). The FY 2009 NDAA authorized $35 million a year for this authority through FY 2013. The Obama Administration did not request a change to Section 1208.

The HASC bill increases the annual budgetary authority to $50 million in order to limit funding restraints during the planning of Section 1208-funded operations. The HASC was generally supportive of Section 1208 programs and was pleased with more effective reporting of Section 1208-related activities. The HASC voiced concern, however, that Section 1208 should not to become a “train and equip” program managed by Special Operations Command (SOCOM). The HASC also expressed uneasiness over the use of private contractors to carry out Section 1208 activities and thus required additional reporting requirements to track such contracting.

The SASC bill does not raise the Section 1208 funding level, and the committee expressed dissatisfaction with current reporting. SASC voiced concern that SOCOM may be using 1208 funds to leverage long-term engagement with partner nations rather than exclusively for supporting military operations by U.S. special operations forces to combat terrorism. The SASC asked SOCOM to review their Section 1208 execution to eliminate such leveraging. [my emphasis]

In other words, the House Armed Services Committee has expressed concern that DOD is using this Special Ops provision to train allies in military operations, and using contractors to do so. As Feingold notes, the Senate Armed Services Committee is concerned that in the guise of supporting distinct operations, DOD is engaging in long-term operations.

To me, this reads like DOD is using this provision to engage in war in countries against which we’re not at war: like Somalia and Yemen. This sounds like the authority DOD is using to engage in operations–including drug related ones–in 75 countries, as Jeremy Scahill has reported.

So Russ Feingold, presumably thinking of the way in which the Bush Administration started using Special Ops for covert actions partly to hide them from the intelligence committees, asks the retired general nominated to head the Intelligence Community whether he would share information with the intelligence committees about the activities. And Clapper responds, I’m not legally obligated to. But, if the Armed Services Committees agree, we can do some info sharing. Nothing, incidentally, about sharing the information in as timely fashion as the CIA would have to share information on less risky covert ops. Just a yearly report, I guess.

Now perhaps Clapper’s willingness to share information is all well and good and I shouldn’t worry.

But then there’s Clapper’s answer about how to improve information sharing in the Intelligence Community. The answer: to give ODNI the same secrecy provisions that CIA and NSA have.

In addition, if confirmed, I will also look to Congress if legislative changes are needed to facilitate information sharing. For example, information sharing and the IC’s ability to analyze intelligence information would be enhanced if Congress enacts legislation to give the ODNI the same operational files exemption granted to CIA, NGA, DIA, and NSA.

As an example why this is important, the operational files exception is what CIA has used to explain why it didn’t reveal the existence of the torture tapes in response to legal inquiries on records on torture. And further note, this is the single, solitary change that Clapper said he’d like to make legislatively, even while he suggested that legislative fixes weren’t needed for other broken aspects of the IC.

And that extends to putting our satellite and telecom surveillance under civilian control. When Kit Bond asked Clapper why he had flip-flopped on his earlier stated desire to move NGA and NSA under civilian control, one of his stated newfound concerns with doing so pertained to civil liberties.

In your meeting with me last week, you said that while you once believed that the DNI should have departmental authority over military intelligence agencies like NGA, you no longer believed that would be wise. Please take me through the evolution of your thinking on this important issue.

• What led you to believe it would be a good idea and what changed your mind?

I don’t recall saying that the DNI should have “departmental authority” over military intelligence agencies like NGA, however when the IRTPA was being debated in the Congress, Gen Hayden (then serving as Director of NSA) and I (then serving as Director of NGA) suggested that another paradigm should be considered: moving the agencies who’s first letter is “N” (as in national) out of the Department of Defense, and under the operational control of a DNI, might have merit. Putatively, although not expressed that way at the time, this would mean a “Department of Intelligence.” I have since come to believe that this arrangement would not be workable, since it could pose profound civil liberties challenges, and the “donor” Department (DOD) would, over time, regenerate the capabilities lost to the “Department of Intelligence,” since the support rendered by these agencies is so integral to warfighting.

Now, to be fair, Clapper may well be right about DOD’s interest in recreating these entities (though Congress would have to approve their budgets!). But it seems to me moving NSA and NGA might be better for civil liberties, as it would make it harder for some clown like John Yoo to claim that the military in hot pursuit could wiretap apartment buildings as he did in one of his opinions.

But it’s the last two issues might be of greatest concern.

First, as Kit Bond noted, Clapper somehow managed to overlook the timeline stipulated by transparency questions and neglected to list his 2006-7 affiliation with a number of intelligence contractors, including GEOEYE, 3001, Inc., Sierra-Nevada Corp, CSIS, US Geospatial Intelligenc Foundation, and DFI International (the last as COO). For a discussion of why this is important, see Tim Shorrock’s post on itl.

Then, finally, there’s Clapper’s answers about the Iraq NIE:

During your confirmation hearing you noted that you agreed with the findings of the Committee’s Iraq report. that you were very familiar with the flaws in the NIE. having had your “fingerprints on it” as a member of the National Intelligence Board, and that you could “attest. since [you were] there, [the failure] was not because of politicization or any political pressure. It was because of ineptness.”

• Did you see any evidence during this period that the Intelligence Community provided intelligence assessments of Iraq to the Administration that differed, in substance, from those provided to Congress and the public?

No, from my vantage as Director of (then) NIMA, I did not see any evidence that the Intelligence Community provided intelligence assessments on Iraq to the Administration that differed, in substance, from those provided to Congress and the public.

• Did you ever hear a member of the Administration say something publicly about the intelligence on Iraq that you believed at the time was not supported by the intelligence?

I wondered about the certitude with which some in the administration spoke about the presence of WMD in Iraq, but I had no basis from my position as Director of NIMA to question those statements.

Of course, Congress never saw the full NIE, so by definition, the Administration got substantially different information–like some key footnotes–than most of Congress got.

Now, I’m at a bit of a loss because my books are all packed up, so I won’t find this detail directly. cBut implicit in Clapper’s answer is a claim that the NGA never gave the Administration information on–for example–what it was seeing in the Tora Bora area that didn’t get passed onto Congress. Clapper is claiming that all the wackadoodle satellite reports of WMD that Scooter Libby made the Iraq Survey Group chase down got shared with Congress.

I don’t buy it.

Then there’s the view Clapper did endorse: the claim that Saddam had snuck all his WMD out of Iraq before we got to it–something that, as head of NGA, he presumably should have had information to rebut.

Frankly, it pains me to see Kit Bond taking the lead on raising questions about Clapper’s nomination here while Dems help the Obama Administration rush him through before the August break.

This is a guy who appears to disagree with everything the Senate Intelligence Committee purports to believe about the DNI position. And yet even while they’re not getting cooperation on making changes to the position itself, they’re giving the Administration everything it’s asking for about its nominee.

photo: bitzcelt via Flickr

With the HAMP program clearly failing, in fact beyond expectations, government officials have closed in on two strategies to react to the problems. First, they’ll try to bury the data, although Shahien Nasiripour won’t let them get away with it.

The Obama administration has revised its latest monthly report on its signature foreclosure-prevention plan, deleting a heavily-criticized performance metric used to measure whether assisted homeowners are re-defaulting on their taxpayer-financed mortgages [...]

In an otherwise bleak report on the state of the program — more homeowners have been bounced from HAMP than have received permanent relief — the re-default rate was seen as overwhelmingly positive.

But economists and Wall Street analysts weren’t impressed. In a Wednesday note to clients, Sandeep Bordia and Jasraj Vaidya of Barclays Capital wrote that the data was “misleading.” Celia Chen, an economist and specialist in housing for Moody’s Economy.com, said in an interview that the incredibly low re-default rate “just doesn’t sound right to me.”

The problem they identified had to do with how Treasury was calculating the rate. In the report, Treasury stated that a “HAMP permanent modification is canceled for nonpayment if it is more than 90 days delinquent.” To the Barclays Capital analysts, it appeared that Treasury was thus not including those homeowners with five-year modifications who were kicked out of the program. More than 8,600 homeowners have been bounced from HAMP.

The Barclays analysts said the move made the re-default rate look “too low” and “fail[s] to capture the full magnitude of re-defaults from these modifications.”

To their credit, Treasury deleted the re-default metric after it was proven false. A previous Administration might have just kept spinning the numbers. But honesty does nothing for the quality of the program, which grows worse.

The second thing that Treasury is doing, aside from re-jiggering data, is running an ad campaign:  . . .

In a move designed to encourage more at-risk borrowers to seek help with their mortgages, the U.S. Treasury and the Department of Housing and Urban Development Wednesday announced the launch of a nationwide public advertising campaign to increase awareness about the government’s Making Home Affordable Program.

“We want to do all we can to help make sure that struggling homeowners know about these free resources for help,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement accompanying the announcement.

Sounds great! Let’s design a program that does almost nothing but gouge homeowners, increasing the amount of payments banks can glean from them without lowering their principal or putting them in a position to afford the mortgage, and then promote that program heavily.

If the program helped people in any way, an ad campaign would make sense. Instead, this helps only those banks and lenders with toxic mortgages on their books, allowing them to “extend and pretend” at the expense of the borrower.

I have an idea for improving the program – improve the program.

SEC Chair Schapiro speaking at US Chamber of Commerce meeting (photo: talkradionews on Flickr)

Credit were credit is due, and this time it goes to S.E.C. Chairwoman Mary Schapiro. Yesterday, Schapiro announced improved public participation procedures for opening up SEC’s rulemaking proceedings to the public.

Ms. Schapiro spoke at a forum sponsored by the United States Chamber of Commerce at which she outlined the new procedures and noted that the commission had set up a Web site for submission of comments.

The new law calls for the S.E.C. to draft regulations that could, for example, govern corporate disclosure of executive compensation, allow shareholders to nominate candidates for company boards, tighten oversight of credit rating agencies and, together with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, impose new capital and margin requirements on derivatives trading.

The S.E.C. began the first of the act’s required studies on Tuesday, asking investors for feedback on whether the practices of stock brokers and investment advisers should continue to be subject to different regulatory standards.

By law, the S.E.C. regularly seeks comments on proposed rules after a regulation has been drafted and published, a practice that will continue. By expanding the process beyond the legal requirements, Ms. Schapiro said “the idea is to offer maximum opportunity for public comment and to provide greater transparency.”

All comments submitted to the new Web site will be posted for public viewing, Ms. Schapiro said. In addition, when industry or consumer groups meet with members of the commission’s staff to discuss rule proposals, the meeting’s agenda will be publicly released, she said. The commission will also conduct public hearings on selected topics.

Publishing an agenda is a good first step: it tells the public that agency staff are meeting with industry, and when, and what they’re discussing. But the SEC needs to go much further.

The changes Schapiro announced move in the direction I wrote about here — Banning Secret Meetings Isn’t Hard — in which I criticized the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) for holding secret meetings with industry reps and lobbyists on how to undermine net neutrality. From the original Wall Street Journal article (subscription required):

WASHINGTON–Federal Communications Commission officials are quietly holding talks with phone and cable companies about a legislative compromise that would give the agency authority over Internet lines without the need to adopt a controversial proposal to reregulate Internet lines.

FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus and other senior FCC staffers are holding closed-door meetings with a small group of lobbyists representing Internet providers, including AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and Internet services providers, such as Google Inc. and Internet phone provider Skype Ltd.

I emphasized then that government agencies can do a lot more to open their proceedings to public participation, including noticing all meetings with industry/applicants, posting all comments, allowing public attendance at all key meetings between industry and staff (and commissioners), and so on.

Mary Sharpiro’s SEC seems to be moving in this direction, and that’s good, but it’s not enough. She should also notice all meetings, and let the public attend, and if agency staff create any documents summarizing meetings with industry, make those public. It takes a little more work, but it’s essential if they really care about genuine, effective public participation.

In the meantime, President Obama’s not really about deficit reduction (catfood) commission continues to function in secret on public policy matters of utmost importance to the public and the democratic process, and there is no public policy excuse for allowing it to continue to operate behind closed doors. The catfood commission’s behavior is a dark stain on the entire concept of government transparency and public access, making a mockery of the Administration’s claims about transparency and honest government.

The Deficit (Catfood) Commission should be opened up, or shut down. It’s continuing secrecy and exclusion of the public is a national disgrace, and those who defend this affront to democracy — in Congress or the White House — should be condemned by the media and everyone who believes in open government.

– All meetings of the Commission and working subcommittees should be noticed and open to the public with an opportunity to be heard. No exceptions.

– All documents, reports, analyses, proposals, recommendations, including drafts circulated among Commissioners should be immediately disclosed and posted on a public website. No exceptions.

– All meetings between individual Commissioners and/or Commission staff with affected interest groups relating to matters before the Commission should be noticed and a summary of the content of each meeting posted. Any documents used, circulated or referenced in each such meeting should be posted.

– Any proposals and recommendations should be supported by independent expert analysis, which should at least respond in writing to every significant counter-proposal presented by the interested public, explaining why the counter-proposal was rejected and why the recommended solutions are preferable.

Open it up or shut it down. Which part of this does the WH not understand?

John Chandley, who has done this, so it ain’t that hard

Foreclosed home in Nevada (photo: Cartographer on Flickr)

When I was leaving Las Vegas (don’t break into song), I encountered a guy on the elevator who was talking to his friend about his loss of home equity. “It’s like playing at the casino,” the man said. “You have a bunch of chips, and after a few hands, you look down, and they’re gone.”

This was a common theme at the Netroots Nation conference. Not specifically a guy relating home equity to a loss of blackjack chips, but attendees casually mentioning their interactions with people in Nevada who are struggling. Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney, in a superior piece, basically extend out that anecdata by talking to numerous residents about the state of things in Nevada during the Great Recession. They muse that the reality of Nevada could equal the future of America.

On a cul-de-sac in the once-pleasant neighborhood of Silverado Ranch, Larry Wood is the last remaining resident. Two of the four homes are in foreclosure and a third is a “party rental” only occupied by rowdy tourists on weekends. One of his neighbors made a few bucks before abandoning the home, he says. “They sold all the palm trees and just walked away from it,” says Wood, sporting a “Freedom Isn’t Free” T-shirt. “It’s a great neighborhood. I guess that people weren’t financially set up to get through the crash.”

Wood takes little comfort in being the last resident. “Sometimes it’s scary. There’s a possibility someone would try to rob me and I wouldn’t have any neighbors to help me,” he says, recounting a previous attempted intrusion when his then-neighbor called to warn him not to answer the door because there was a group of thugs knocking. Armed and ready, he huddled near the door but the gang gave up and left.

You don’t have to go far to find these stories in Nevada, where the unemployment rate sits at 14.2%, and where nearly 6% of all homes received a foreclosure filing in the first half of the year. . . .

This is a heartbreaking story, and I urge you to read all of it. But sadly enough, Grim and Delaney’s thesis about this being the future of America isn’t all that hard to predict. The White House’s Mid-Session Budget Review predicted 9% unemployment by the end of 2011, and won’t fall below 6% until 2015. But that last bit seems like a wishful scenario. Corporations have figured out how to make money while keeping labor costs down, raising the spectre of long-term structural unemployment. An entire generation of Americans, known as “Generation Y,” is experiencing a lack of jobs, ballooning loans, and a difficult future. The unemployment rate for those aged 20-24 was 15.3%, which significantly retards their career growth and earning potential.

This may not be able to last. I don’t know how you can have consumer confidence down and corporate profits up well into the future. Consumer spending makes up too much of the US economy. At some point, corporations have to give the people some money so they can buy their wares. And maybe the unemployed can organize and take out, one by one, those whose policies are threatening their hope.

Among the biggest sites in the unemployment netroots is LayoffList, managed by Michael Thornton, a native of Rochester, N.Y. Thornton stared LayoffList in 2008; five months ago, he began writing articles and posting legislators’ information. He now receives hundreds of emails and has logged more than a million hits. Thornton is finding that, rather than losing interest in politics since the end of the fight for extended benefits, the unemployed are “energized and motivated” and have started looking forward to the fall.

“Even Republicans say they aren’t voting Republican anymore,” the soft-spoken former technical writer says. “You have millions of unemployed people out there. If even half of them voted, they could swing a nationwide election.”

What I know is this: the middle class has been gutted from the inside, and without a mass movement created to stop those doing the deed, we could submit millions in the middle class to a horrible fate.

pictured: Ben Nelson hearts the filibuster.

If you were hoping that the Democrats in the Senate would do something about the Republicans’ unprecedented abuse of the filibuster, you can forget it.

Senior Democrats say Reid will not have the votes to change the rule at the beginning of next year.

“It won’t happen,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said she would “probably not” support an effort to lower the number of votes needed to cut off filibusters from 60 to 55 or lower.

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) echoed Feinstein: “I think we should retain the same policies that we have instead of lowering it.

“I think it has been working,” he said.

Really?

The Republicans successfully blocked unemployment benefits for months, were able to water down the stimulus, and have essentially killed cap and trade, the Disclose Act, card check and any sort of immigration reform.

That’s all working for you, eh Sen. Akaka?

Oh well, at least one other Democrat is happy as things are.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who is up for reelection in 2012, also said he would like the votes needed for cloture to remain the same.

“I’m not one who think it needs to be changed,” he said.

‘Nuff said.

Timothy Geithner's Secret Thoughts on Elizabeth Warren - watch more funny videos

Michael Hirsh explains precisely why progressives have become energized by the prospect of Elizabeth Warren fighting for consumer protection inside the regulatory apparatus. Hirsh sets up a dichotomy between the Rubinites (Larry Summers, Tim Geithner) on the one hand, who wanted better rules to govern Wall Street without fundamentally changing it; and the New Dealites (Paul Volcker, Warren) on the other, who wanted changes in structures designed to minimize risk and protect the average person. The Rubinites largely won out in FinReg, but with Warren at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the New Dealites could have the last laugh:

Warren is most definitely not a Rubin acolyte. She’s more likely to be the sort of person who reveals to the public just how many administration speed dials Rubin occupies. Warren has long abhorred the sort of inside-the-box thinking that led a lot of smart people in Washington to conclude for more than two decades that Wall Street could be left to sort things out on its own.

And it’s real outside-the-box thinking that may be needed now. Because as “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg’s recent report makes clear, little has changed in how Wall Street operates, and the big banks are even now finding their way through the new law’s many loopholes and continuing to award traders outrageous amounts of money for taking speculative risks [...] it is undeniable that those who have been most aligned with the “progressive” side of the Wall Street reform issue and, often, most farsighted and outspoken about the dangers are still on the outside of the administration looking in. Among them: Brooksley Born, the former chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who famously warned of out-of-control derivatives trading in the ’90s; Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz; and Michael Greenberger, the former Born deputy who as an outside consultant helped to toughen transparency requirements for OTC derivatives in recent months. One leading “progressive” critic told me recently, “Our ruling intelligentsia in economics runs the spectrum from A to A-minus. These guys all talk to each other, and they all say the same thing.” Or as Stiglitz himself put it at one point: “America has had a revolving door. People go from Wall Street to Treasury and back to Wall Street. Even if there is no quid pro quo, that is not the issue. The issue is the mindset.”

I think mindset is the best way to describe this. I had the pleasure of spending time on a panel with Warren at Netroots Nation, as well as chat with her afterwards. And she does not share any of these qualities with respect to a mindset of what’s good for Goldman Sachs being good for America. She has firmly placed herself on the side of the middle class, not for sentimental reasons, but because that has traditionally been the path to prosperity and economic stability for all Americans, rich or poor. A bubble-and-bust economy, or one that props up banks who don’t want to admit their own insolvency, does no good for anyone. . . .

Obama came in promising to set up a “team of rivals” in his cabinet and his government. But on macroeconomic issues, that really hasn’t transpired. Geithner and Summers have the upper hand and basically present their narrow worldview. The problem is that just isn’t enough in these particular times, with mass unemployment and low growth. Their ideas have been good for the banks, which they saved, and corporations, which they allowed record profits. It’s even true that they averted a Depression. I have no problem believing that. But we’re at a new stage, and zombie banks, corporate profits and depressed workers makes for a terrible concoction of economic stagnancy.

Can Warren alone pull us out of that? Of course not. But she does have a different mindset, one that will at least give consumers a fair shake, and force the banks to compete on service and quality rather than how well they can rip off their customers. The rules exist in the FinReg law to end predatory lending (it’s a really good anti-mortgage fraud bill), and on the rest, the data gathering and research possibilities for the CFPB alone are enough to whip the banks in line. But only if the right leader forces that on them. And I think she understands that fraud – not cleverness, not ingenuity or innovation – sits at the heart of Wall Street, and rooting out that fraud is the only way to let the markets function again.

I think we ought to have someone in there who doesn’t spend most of their time devising ways for the big banks to stay alive, and who may look over at the regular person and decide that he or she needs a shot when going up against all that power and privilege. Warren embodies this different worldview, and will deliver on her promises. And that’s why she must be appointed.

Yeah. This is more shit about McMegan.

It seems that James Joyner wrote a somewhat passive defense of Our Lady of the Broken TI-84 and in the comments there was some minor quibbling and tut-tutting and a healthy-heapin’ handful of econobonics words like “predictive,” “multi-causal,” “independent predictor,” “differing methodologies,” and “intervening assumptions”, all of which will undoubtedly remind you of the the many reasons why your guest lists for parties are usually fairly light on economists and quite top heavy with strippers.

But just when it starts to get duller than watching Roger Kimball and Ross Douthat put on their hilarious MST3K home-version of My Dinner With Andre, McMegan shows up and gives us a Taste of Things To Come:

Sloppy with data.

Yeah. She wrote that. Megan McArdle wrote that. About someone other than herself.

Megan McArdle who gave us the deathless:

It wasn’t a statistic–it was a hypothetical.

Megan McArdle, who can’t seem to operate a calculator, but no matter, her “point still stands”.

Megan McArdle, who turned $19 billion in additional spending into $105 billion with an airy wave of her hand.

She (Megan McArdle, her) is going to address the “sloppy data” of Elizabeth Warren.

Obviously, this is very exciting.

Part of me admires McMegan’s guts as she pledges to dazzle us all with  this incredible leap over the Snake River Canyon of her own sloppiness, secure in the knowledge that she will safely land with her feet on the ground, and all of the naysayers will have to sadly sheath their long knives and be forevermore shamed into silence by her awesome awesomeness.

On the other hand, it really doesn’t matter if she spirals helplessly, Wiley Coyote-style, into the canyon only to land with a barely perceptible thud in a mushroom cloud of dust. At The Atlantic, her wrongness is part of her charm, it drives traffic to the site. She is a five-car pile-up of clown cars laden with circus geeks who bite the heads off of chickens. You can’t look away, and it is all for free on the internet.

Thank you, Al Gore.

So, in addition to giving Tony “I want my life back” Hayward his life back, the BP Board of Directors this week reported a $17,000,000,000 loss for the quarter and announced that they would set aside $32,000,000,000 to pay claims in their Gulf of Mexico fiasco.

Also this week: oil-spill claims czar Kenneth “9/11″ Feinberg said he’d be real excited to start paying claims, of which he’s received a few I guess. But he doesn’t want the checks to bounce. Which they will, since there’s no BP money in the escrow account for claims. No money at all to pay claims.

Not much you can do to further insult a Gulf Coast resident or business owner at this point, BP — except possibly hold up their “legitimate claims” by not funding the fucking escrow account. Nothing like a rubber check stamped NSF to make folks feel like their “legitimate claims” actually, you know, aren’t.

I guess we know what Tony Hayward meant by “this is America” in reference to illegitimate claims:

Asked for examples of illegitimate claims, he said: “I could give you lots of examples. This is America — come on. We’re going to have lots of illegitimate claims.”

So far, all of them.

What does “set aside” mean, BP Board of Directors? It had better mean that Kenneth Feinberg can write checks by week’s end. You never know what angry people might do.

Your new man Bob Dudley will be starting from way behind when Tony finally clears out on October 1st, carrying with him his years’ salary “in lieu of notice.”

I mean, how much more notice does that douchebag need beyond two months? When is the last time anyone got two months’ notice to leave a job? Old GHWBush only got ten weeks, and he was the leader of the free world. Just because it was in Tony’s contract? Was destroying the Gulf of Mexico in his contract, too?

Fund the account, BP, or suffer the consequences. People are still hurting and it’s still your fault. Or again. The least you could do is turn your “set aside” into cash.

photo: AFL-CIO via Flickr

Some House Democrats have tried to use John Boehner’s comments about raising the retirement age against Republicans in the fall elections, but that becomes impossible to do when Steny Hoyer keeps going out and undermining the effort by mimicking Boehner.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer reiterated Tuesday that raising the retirement age for Social Security benefits should be on the table as an option for cutting the deficit — even though some of his fellow Democrats have ripped the idea and groups have started airing ads against it [...]

“Age is one of the considerations that is obviously on the table,” Hoyer said. “It was in 1983” when the last major Social Security commission resulted in raising the retirement age to 67 [...]

He sought to portray the split between the two parties on Social Security as one party being for privatization and the other against it rather than on the retirement age issue. Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) also mentioned a higher retirement age as a possibility.

The left hand doesn’t know what the other left hand is doing. The DCCC pounced on Boehner’s comments on the retirement age. Nancy Pelosi told Netroots Nation she was firmly against any increase. But Hoyer and Clyburn have been touting this consistently. If the leadership is split on this issue, you know that the rank and file isn’t unanimously against it. One can only include that a retirement age increase, which is a benefit cut of up to 20%, would pass the House of Representatives, inside whatever package of recommendations comes from the cat food commission.

Raising the retirement age only makes sense if you buy the familiar arguments about increased life expectancy and less workers per retiree, both of which have been debunked. And making the retirement age 70 offers far less bang for your buck in balancing the system than lifting the payroll tax cap so it does what it was designed to do, namely cover 90% of all earnings.

Here’s the punch line. Hoyer and Clyburn will join Pelosi, John Larson, cat food commission member Xavier Becerra and other House Democrats on the Capitol steps this morning for an event honoring the 75th anniversary of the Social Security Act of 1935. I wonder if they’ll celebrate the majesty of forcing ironworkers and tree surgeons to work until the end of their seventh decade, or keep that to themselves just for today.

[Ed. note: Today is the 100th day since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded over BP's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico.]

Apparently, the coordinates given in this video are from a “rig [that] was toppled by Hurricane Ivan some 6 years ago. It still leaks today enough to create a plume 10 miles long.” Along with several reports of leaks on the ocean floor from the same basin into which BP was tapping in the blown out rig in April, we need to ask “How many drill holes leak?”

We need to question whether or not the application of these dispersants was more commonplace than is generally acknowledged before the late April BP rig blowout. With thousands of capped off wells out there, some reported to be leaking unknown quantities of oil, should we have a right to know whether or not the amount applied, mixed with the oil it is meant to hide, is far more than we might have assumed?

NOAA and the USCG need to be more active in protecting our interests, less involved in protecting those of a foreign-owned oil company with a criminal record as long as the slimy trail of this slick.

Can we kill the filibuster yet?

Democrats saw an opportunity to use the debate Tuesday to tie the GOP to corporate interests. That has emerged as a key election-year line of attack. “Make no mistake: With today’s vote, we’re picking sides,” Schumer said on the floor.

Republicans, in turn, said the bill was a politically motivated attempt to curb free-speech rights.

“This bill is about protecting incumbent Democrats from criticism ahead of this November’s elections,” said Senate minority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “It’s a transparent attempt to rig the fall elections.”

Yeah, that’s not Orwellian or anything.

via Rhaaga at Flickr.com

How many layers of fail is the Iraq invasion and occupation onion going to have?

The Defense Department is unable to properly account for $8.7 billion out of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil revenue entrusted to it between 2004 and 2007, according to a newly released audit that underscores a pattern of poor record-keeping during the war.

Of that amount, the military failed to provide any records at all for $2.6 billion in purported reconstruction expenditure…

Hey, they can account for a whopping 4% of revenue. But you have to concede, that’s a lot better than the percentage of WMD they found to justifying the whole enterprise to begin with.

Though there is no apparent evidence of fraud…

As the 0% of WMD ever found clearly shows…well, it certainly shows something.

Robert Randolph and The Family Band – Billie Jean at Rockpalast 1/12/04.

What’s on your mind?

Nuclear weapons suck. And so with that in mind, there’s a big push towards nuclear disarmament featuring major bands and a new film.

The BoDeans new video, “Headed for the End of the World,” just hit and it sends a strong message for nuclear disarmament. The video is part of a campaign supporting the release of the documentary Countdown to Zero, which opens this week.

Other bands supporting the film’s release via social media like Twitter and online PSAs include Dave Matthews, REM, Macy Gray, and Pearl Jam. You can learn more about the campaign here and join in.

Countdown to Zero traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present state of global affairs: nine nations possessing nuclear weapons capabilities with others racing to join them, with the world held in a delicate balance that could be shattered by an act of terrorism, failed diplomacy, or a simple accident.

The goal behind the film and the campaign is to ratify a new START Treaty and eliminate nuclear weapons. Countdown to Zero features some bold-faced names on the international diplomacy scene, including President Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pervez Musharraf and Tony Blair discussing the global nuclear disarmament. Writer/director Lucy Walker makes a compelling case for eliminating all nuclear weapons worldwide, an issue more topical than ever, as shown by the world leaders working to achieve this goal today.

The Global Zero campaign is comprised of more than 250 political, military, faith and civic leaders, dozens of organizations and over 380,000 activists working for the worldwide elimination of all nuclear weapons.

Social media makes it possible to join campaigns like this and lend your voice. And going to the movie helps.