Ye Olde Class War

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Yesterday I wrote that

American history since the Civil War can be read as a tug-of-war between progressivism and the “free market” fetishists. When people get tired of being ripped off and exploited by the malefactors of great wealth, they turn to government for help. But sooner or later they forget being ripped off and exploited and get taken in by “free market” hype again. Thus the Gilded Age was followed by the Progressive Era, which was followed by the Roaring 20s (also called the Republican Era), which was followed by the Great Depression and New Deal. And when memory of the Great Depression had sufficiently faded, we got Ronald Reagan.

Today’s Paul Krugman column expands on this theme.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide social programs for other people.

Since then, however, we have once again become a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen only 17 percent since 1980, while the income of the richest 0.1 percent of the population has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and the middle class is as wide now as it was in the 1920s, when the political coalition that would eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.

For more on income inequality, see Bonddad at The Agonist.

Professor Krugman continues,

You know that perceptions of rising inequality have become a political issue when even President Bush admits, as he did in January, that “some of our citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working people behind.”

But today’s Republicans can’t respond in any meaningful way to rising inequality, because their activists won’t let them. You could see the dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday, when almost all the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the Club for Growth, a supply-side pressure group dedicated to tax cuts and privatization.

The Republican Party’s adherence to an outdated ideology leaves it with big problems. It can’t offer domestic policies that respond to the public’s real needs. So how can it win elections?

Krugman goes on to explain his “unified theory” of Bush Administration scandals, which he describes as “a combination of distraction and disenfranchisement.” The “distraction” part amounts to stirring up fear and hysteria over Muslim terrorism. Rather than debate Democrats on the issues, the Republican Noise Machine painted Democrats as cartoon characters who are soft on terrorism.

The other part of the program was to keep poor people, especially poor black people, from voting. This appears to be the prime impetus behind the firing of U.S. Attorneys.

Several of the fired U.S. attorneys were under pressure to pursue allegations of voter fraud — a phrase that has become almost synonymous with “voting while black.” Former staff members of the Justice Department’s civil rights division say that they were repeatedly overruled when they objected to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia’s voter ID law to Tom DeLay’s Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise African-American voters.

In other words, in order to keep the “free market” ideologues in power, Republicans undermined republican government itself. Just one more example of why the libertarian battle cry “free markets make free people” is a pile of bleep. “Free,” as in “unregulated,” markets inevitably result in plutocracy, and once you’ve got a plutocracy you’re just a step away from corporatism, which in extreme form becomes fascism.

And on that note, be sure to read “Your modern-day Republican Party” by Glenn Greenwald.

Peaches and Plums for Bushie Bums

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Amy Goldstein and Dan Eggen write in today’s Washington Post:

About one-third of the nearly four dozen U.S. attorney’s jobs that have changed hands since President Bush began his second term have been filled by the White House and the Justice Department with trusted administration insiders.

The people chosen as chief federal prosecutors on a temporary or permanent basis since early 2005 include 10 senior aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, according to an analysis of government records. Several came from the White House or other government agencies. Some lacked experience as prosecutors or had no connection to the districts in which they were sent to work, the records and biographical information show.

Some of the four dozen jobs changed hands because of natural turnover.

No other administration in contemporary times has had such a clear pattern of filling chief prosecutors’ jobs with its own staff members, said experts on U.S. attorney’s offices. Those experts said the emphasis in appointments traditionally has been on local roots and deference to home-state senators, whose support has been crucial to win confirmation of the nominees.

The pattern from Bush’s second term suggests that the dismissals were half of a two-pronged approach: While getting rid of prosecutors who did not adhere closely to administration priorities, such as rigorous pursuit of immigration violations and GOP allegations of voter fraud, White House and Justice officials have seeded federal prosecutors’ offices with people on whom they can depend to carry out the administration’s agenda.

There’s more interesting stuff in the remaining article.

Privatization Gone Wild

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First off, let me assure you I will not be writing an “April Fool” post today. As long as George Bush is in the White House, every day is April Fool’s Day in America.

Raw Story reports (via Gun Toting Liberal) that the Bush Administration’s fixation on privatization is causing long-term damage to our government.

Due to its increasing practice of contracting out to private firms and agencies, the U.S. government is quickly losing its expertise and competence in vital national security and defense programs, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

“Since the 2001 terrorist attacks and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the federal government’s demand for complex technology has soared,” writes by Bernard Wysocki, Jr. for the Journal. “But Washington often doesn’t have the expertise to take on new high-tech projects, or the staff to oversee them.

“As a result,” he continues, “officials are increasingly turning to contractors, in particular the hundreds of companies in Tysons Corner and the surrounding Fairfax County that operate some of the government’s most sensitive and important undertakings.”

The supposed superiority of private enterprise over public bureaucracy is a cornerstone of right-wing ideology. Privatization, along with tax cuts and deregulation, is one of the Right’s favorite knee-jerk answers to all of life’s problems.

Googling around this morning I came across the Reason Foundation’s Annual Privatization Report 2006: Transforming Government Through Privatization. Much of the “report” reads like alternative historical fiction; thanks to privatization, since 1990 government has been getting better and better, it says. Sure.

I particularly like this brilliant bit of satire called “Advancing Limited Government, Freedom, and Markets” by Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina. Here’s just the first two paragraphs —

Any read through history demonstrates how essential limited government is to preserving freedom and individual liberty. What life experience shows us is that limited government is equally important in both making your economy flourish and in enabling citizens to get the most for their investment in government.

Let me be clear up front that in the long run the only way to make government truly efficient is to make it smaller, and this seems to me to be the real clarion call in highlighting the importance of privatization efforts. Efficiency and government are mutually exclusive in our system, and if our Founding Fathers had wanted efficiency I suppose they would have looked more closely at totalitarian systems. They wanted not efficiency, but checks on power in our republic.

I don’t believe “efficiency” was much of an issue in the 18th century, but let’s continue — Gov. Sanford goes on and on about the glories of privatization and “marketbased solutions” for problems in education and health care. He uses the word freedom a lot, although he doesn’t explain how privatization and small government protect civil liberties. (I argue here that the “small government equals freedom” notion made sense before the Industrial Revolution, but not so much after. Righties are a tad slow.)

Let’s go back to Raw Story:

The number of private federal contractors has now risen to 7.5 million, which is four times greater than the federal workforce itself, the report indicates. Such a trend is leading the government to what Wysocki calls the “outsourcing [of] its brain.”

The shift to private firms has not been without its problems, however, with faulty work and government waste becoming rampant.

“Today, the potential pitfalls are legion,” writes Wysocki. “Big contracts are notorious for cost overruns and designs that don’t work, much of which takes place under loose or ineffective government scrutiny.” The outsourcing of these government programs “can be a prescription for enormous fraud, waste and abuse,” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is quoted as saying during a hearing.

Linda Bilmes wrote for Nieman Watchdog last year about the cost of the Iraq War.

Q. Why is this war so expensive?

One reason is the huge reliance on private contractors to do basic military tasks. … Contractors charge many times more than it would cost to have the military do the work. For example Blackwater Security, which provided security to the Coalition Provisional Authority, paid some of its security guards over $10,000 per week.

(For the past 30 years American business has been keen on outsourcing as a cost-saving measure, and in many industries all manner of functions that used to be performed in-house are now contracted out. This may work nicely in some circumstances, but in my experience companies pay — probably more than the CEOs realize — in inefficiency and loss of quality control. Someday they’ll figure this out, and the New New Trend will be insourcing. Just watch.)

There’s a book reviewed today in the NY Times called Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty, an editor at Reason magazine. The reviewer, David Leonhardt, is lukewarm about the book. I just want to quote this bit from the review:

Libertarianism has its roots in the writings of a pair of major 20th-century Austrian economists, Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek. Both opposed economic planning and argued that only the forces of supply and demand could allocate re sources fairly and efficiently. If an item becomes scarce, its price will rise, ensuring that people who place the highest value on it — those who can use it most productively — will be able to get it. To this coolly economic argument, Rand and other writers added a moral one: laissez-faire capitalism equaled freedom.

This was a tough sell in the wake of the Depression and the war, but the ground began to shift in the 1970s. As the Vietnam War sputtered to a close and the economy stagnated, the wise men who built “big government” began to look ineffectual. In 1980, Ronald Reagan would win the presidency by campaigning on laissez-faire rhetoric. The day after his election, he was photo graphed on an airplane reading The Freeman, the flagship libertarian magazine, while Nancy Reagan rested her head on his shoulder.

In the nearly three decades since, libertarian arguments have enjoyed a nice run. Tax rates have been reduced; once-regulated industries have been opened to competition; any two consenting adults, including those of the same sex, can now marry in some places. One of today’s most fashionable political labels, “socially liberal and fiscally conservative,” Doherty shrewdly notes, is “the basic libertarian mix.”

Actually, faith in laissez-faire economic policies as the key to salvation goes back to the 19th century; from time to time I rant about how “free market” ideology caused a million Irish to die in the Famine, which began in 1845. American history since the Civil War can be read as a tug-of-war between progressivism and the “free market” fetishists. When people get tired of being ripped off and exploited by the malefactors of great wealth, they turn to government for help. But sooner or later they forget being ripped off and exploited and get taken in by “free market” hype again. Thus the Gilded Age was followed by the Progressive Era, which was followed by the Roaring 20s (also called the Republican Era), which was followed by the Great Depression and New Deal. And when memory of the Great Depression had sufficiently faded, we got Ronald Reagan.

Like I said; every day is April Fool’s Day in America.

Imperium Rovanum

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You’ll appreciate this editorial in the Sunday New York Times:

Turn over a scandal in Washington these days and the chances are you’ll find Karl Rove. His tracks are everywhere: whether it’s helping to purge United States attorneys, coaching bureaucrats on how to spend taxpayers’ money to promote Republican candidates, hijacking the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for partisan politics, or helping to organize a hit on the character of one of the first people to publicly reveal the twisting of intelligence reports on Iraq.

Whatever the immediate objective, Mr. Rove seems focused on one overarching goal: creating a permanent Republican majority, even if that means politicizing every aspect of the White House and subverting the governmental functions of the executive branch.

You’ll want to read the whole thing.

Bush Inner Circle Defection

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This’ll stir things up — Matthew Dowd, a close associate of George Bush, has publicly broken ranks with the President. Jim Rutenberg writes for the New York Times (April 1):

In 1999, Matthew Dowd became a symbol of George W. Bush’s early success at positioning himself as a Republican with Democratic appeal. …

… Looking back, Mr. Dowd now says his faith in Mr. Bush was misplaced.

In a wide-ranging interview here, Mr. Dowd called for a withdrawal from Iraq and expressed his disappointment in Mr. Bush’s leadership.

Rutenberg calls Dowd “the first member of Mr. Bush’s inner circle to break so publicly with him.”

This is interesting:

Mr. Dowd, a crucial part of a team that cast Senator John Kerry as a flip-flopper who could not be trusted with national security during wartime, said he had even written but never submitted an op-ed article titled “Kerry Was Right,” arguing that Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and 2004 presidential candidate, was correct in calling last year for a withdrawal from Iraq….

… In television interviews in 2004, Mr. Dowd said that Mr. Kerry’s campaign was proposing “a weak defense,” and that the voters “trust this president more than they trust Senator Kerry on Iraq.”

But he was starting to have his own doubts by then, he said.

Dowd’s son deployed to Iraq in 2004, which seems to have had an impact.

Mr. Dowd said he had become so disillusioned with the war that he had considered joining street demonstrations against it, but that his continued personal affection for the president had kept him from joining protests whose anti-Bush fervor is so central.

The article hints at issues Dowd might have with Karl Rove, as well.

Religion News

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Today Little Lulu is in a self-righeousness snit — actually a combined self-righteousness and victimization snit — because of a six-foot naked chocolate Jesus on display in a midtown Manhattan gallery. The anatomically correct sculpture portrays Jesus in a crucifixion pose and is made of 200 pounds of milk chocolate.

Little Lulu complains because the evil “MSM” is covering — well, not covering, actually — the naked chocolate Jesus: “No pixelation. No withholding the photos in the name of respect for Christianity. No taboos.”

And she brings up the infamous Danish Mohammad cartoons — the MSM wouldn’t publish racist cartoons out of respect for Islam, but they will publish photographs of a naked chocolate Jesus. No fair.

I don’t know what the sculpture’s intentions were, but seems to me a six-foot naked chocolate Jesus amounts to a powerful statement on the commercialization of Easter. If there had been some chocolate Easter bunnies at Jesus’ feet, so much the better. That a suffering, exposed and vulnerable Jesus should be taboo while Disneyfied pagan fertility symbols are OK is just one more example of What’s Wrong With America, seems to me. But alas, because of whining from people like our good buddy Bill “I hate everybody” Donohue, the sculpture is no longer on display.

The Carpetbagger reports:

And guess who was behind all of this? The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, who called the chocolate display was “one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.” (Really, Bill? Ever? In two millennia, this is among the very worst?)

David Kuo, formerly of Bush’s faith-based office, had a different, and less unhinged, perspective, concluding that the six-foot, milk-chocolate sculpture might be “the perfect piece of art for holy week.”

    Jesus’ story isn’t nice, it isn’t neat, it isn’t comfortable. It is the opposite of all of those things. In so many ways those of us who say we follow Jesus actually want a sort of “chocolate Jesus” of our own – one that is sweet, one that demands little from us, one that we can mold into our forms – perhaps politically conservative, perhaps liberal, maybe happy with just a few of our dollars given to the poor every now and again, perhaps content with those who simply say they love him and then lead lives little different from anyone else.

    It is easy for some religious leaders to decry a piece of art and say – as some have (apparently with a straight face) – it is “one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.” (I suppose that genocide in Darfur is merely an “affront” to Christian sensibilities?) But instead of getting all amped up over this “art,” Christians should be spending time facing the real and very challenging Jesus found in the Gospels and encouraging others to do the same. I know that is what I need to do.

Bill Donohue, I think he’s talking to you.

The gallery should put a six-foot tall cutesy-poo chocolate Easter bunny where the Jesus was, with a sign saying “How wingnuts view the passion of Christ.”

It seems the nudity bothered the wingnuts more than the chocolate, even though the Bible seems to say Jesus was naked at his crucifixion — “And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots” (Matthew 27:35, King James version).

This can’t be the first time in two millennia that Jesus has been betrayed nude. There’s a nearly naked Jesus on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, for example. The bit of gauze might have been one of the modesty drapes painted over Michelangelo’s masterpiece by Daniele de Volterra at the request of Pope Paul III. (People had complained about all the weenies flapping around on the ceiling.)

In other religion news —

Barack Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ, a mainstream Protestant denomination. The particular church he attends has an African American congregation. Some elements on the Right have spun this into a claim that Obama is part of a black separatist cult. (And these are the same people who claim to be the champions and protectors of religion.) Pastor Dan at Street Prophets writes to Sean Hannity about this little misunderstanding.

Update: Via Clif at American Street — the chocolate Jesus was removed from the gallery because of fears of violent retaliation from Christians:

The hotel and the gallery were overrun Thursday with angry phone calls and e-mails about the exhibit. Semler said the calls included death threats over the work of artist Cosimo Cavallaro, who was described as disappointed by the decision to cancel the display.

“In this situation, the hotel couldn’t continue to be supportive because of a fear for their own safety,” Semler said.

Shades of Idomeneo. Michelle was upset because the Berlin Opera canceled a production of the opera because of a scene showing Mohammad’s severed head. The Berlin Opera was afraid of retaliation from Muslims, and Michelle said,

I have far more of a beef with the Muslim censors leading the Religion of Perpetual Outrage than I do with a goofy German art director messing around with Mozart.

Et tu, Michelle?

Next Steps

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Now that the House and the Senate have passed emergency appropriations bills to fund the war in Iraq, the next step is for members of the House and Senate to come up with a compromise bill. It is hoped a compromise bill can be agreed upon and passed during the week of April 16. Then it goes to President Bush, who has sworn loudly and stridently that he will veto it.

Let’s assume the compromise bill goes to Bush in April, and he vetoes it. There aren’t enough Dems to override the veto. I’ve heard suggestions that Congress should then pass whatever bill Bush wants, which sends a signal that this is Bush’s War. He and the Republicans own it, and whatever happens is entirely their doing. However, this also might send the signal that the Dems are caving in once again, mightn’t it?

Others want to keep sending Bush bills with conditions, perhaps passing monthlong spending bills (Rep. Murtha’s suggestion) in the meantime so Bush can’t say Congress isn’t funding the troops. Well, he’ll say it anyway, but who’s listening to the little creep at this point?

The talking point du jour from the Right seems to be that “pork” in the supplement bill somehow harms the troops. Exactly why the domestic spending items in the bill takes anything away from the troops is not clear, since both House and Senate bills provide every penny Bush asked for to fund his war. The House bill provides more money than Bush asked for, actually. The Republicans appear to claiming that the domestic items are monies taken away from the Pentagon’s request, but that’s not so.

Yes, pork is pork. An op ed in today’s New York Times by Thomas Schatz, “Pork Goes to War,” provides a chart listing the porcine items in the House and Senate supplement bills. He notes that emergency supplement bills are called “Christmas trees” because, as they are exempt from budget rules, they tend to get decorated with “ornaments.”

(Schatz, btw, is the President of Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonprofit that appears to be a corporate front group. CAGW has campaigned on behalf of the tobacco industry and in favor of Microsoft and against open source software, for example.)

On the other hand, some senators yesterday tried to make the point that a congressional emergency supplement bill can rightfully contain funds for anything that Congress thinks is an emergency. One cannot tell from Mr. Schatz’s chart if the items are true emergencies or not. Yes, $20 million in the Senate bill for “Mormon cricket eradication” does sound suspicious, but Nevada may be suffering a deadly plague of Mormon crickets, for all I know.

Schatz’s chart does clear up the Great Spinach Mystery. Yesterday a Republican senator insisted on taking the time for a roll call vote on stripping all mention of spinach out of the Senate Bill. Sen. Patty Murray explained, somewhat tensely, that there was no spinach in the bill, so such a vote wouldn’t change anything. Sen. Harry Reid asked if they could skip the roll call if the Dems all promised to vote for the amendment. The Republican wouldn’t budge, and a roll call was taken to make the world safe from spinach. I see now that the House bill contains $25 million for spinach growers in California. (I suspect that has something to do with the e coli bacteria found in some packaged spinach last September. )

Back to what to do about the veto — I’d consider sending Bush the bill he wants with a great big warning that Congress will accept no more emergency appropriations requests for Iraq. If you want money for Iraq, Mr. President, from now on you have to go through regular appropriations procedures. After four years the dadblamed war ain’t an “emergency.”

Linda Bilmes explained in Nieman Watchdog last September:

The money already spent, in cash terms, is more than $400 billion. This has been approved through a series of “emergency supplemental” requests by the Administration. This is a technical but really important point: Normally, the Defense Department requests money through the traditional channels, which means that it gets vetted and analyzed by the Office of Management and Budget and the congressional committees. But for Iraq, there has been what I call an “accounting conspiracy” — all the money has been requested through 13 emergency supplemental requests which receive minimal scrutiny. This has resulted in a lot of fraud, corruption, overpayments to contractors like Halliburton, etc.

The legal purpose of the emergency supplemental is supposed to be an actual unexpected emergency, like Hurricane Katrina. By contrast, the administration has known for the past 3 years about its approximate financial needs for Iraq. It just chooses to fund the war this way so it does not need to request – nor does Congress need to vote – on the huge sums involved. Instead, Congress can vote on bite-sized chunks that don’t attract much attention.

I think it’s way past time for Congress to make a big bleeping deal out of the “emergency” appropriation funding. Bush wants to talk pork? Let’s talk about Bush’s piss-poor money management. He fancies himself the “CEO President”; a real CEO who played budget games like that would face some pretty wrathful shareholders, not to mention the SEC if Bush were using accounting tricks to cover it up.

Rudy News

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The hot news item this morning is that Rudy Giuliani was told back in 2000 that Bernie Kerik was suspected of having ties to organized crime. Giuliani made Kerik New York Police Commissioner anyway.

Last year Giuliani testified under oath to a grand jury that he remembered receiving no such information.

(Republicans never remember anything unless they think Bill Clinton did it. Then they can dredge up details of 15-year-old rumors and accusations with remarkable clarity.)

You might remember that recently Kerik rejected a federal plea deal that would have required prison time. Bernie is suspected of mortgage fraud, tax fraud, conspiracy to eavesdrop and making false statements on his application to become U.S. Homeland Security Secretary.

In other Rudy news, NYC firefighters are renewing their attacks on Giuliani for his performance before and after the September 11 attacks. Much of what’s in this article I’ve written about before, here and here. But if you haven’t heard about the firefighter’s grievances, read the article linked.

He also told Barbara Walters that if he were president his wife might sit in on cabinet meetings. I remember when Rosalynn Carter and Hillary Clinton took visible policy roles in the White House the Right pitched a fit.

Gonzo?

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The big news coming out of the Senate Judiciary grilling of Kyle Sampson — which began this morning and is still going on at 4:40 EST — is that Sampson’s testimony, um, differs from earlier statements of Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales claimed not to have been involved in meetings about the attorney general firing. Editor & Publisher has details.

I haven’t been home to watch the entire hearing. From what I did see and hear, I am struck by the apparent casualness with which Sampson and other staffers considered the firing of U.S. attorneys. Sampson’s testimony makes it seem that the original idea to fire U.S. attorneys was made, in 2005, for no particular reason except that they could. Sampson, who was more or less in charge of the Purge Project, didn’t bother to keep a file (so he says) to document who made decisions and why. It seems most of the written record of this episode was in emails drizzled about on White House and RNC servers. No files, no system, says Sen. Schumer; It seems ad hoc, it seems records weren’t kept.

I bet this poor kid keeps records in the future, assuming he ever gets a job again.

Paul Kiel has a blow-by-blow live blog of the hearing, here.