The Raven' s Blog, Web Log of Eric Ferguson: Second Half of June 2006 Archive

June 30
If ever during this year's campaign you hear someone say Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty has made the state government more efficient, mention the Crosstown Commons reconstruction. Mention how the project fell apart because the Pawlenty administration got the financing so screwed up, they actually asked contractors to pay for it. If Pawlenty brags that he gave his lieutenant governor a real job, point out that the job is commissioner of transportation, so Carol Molnau was in charge of this department with probably the biggest muck up in freeway construction history. This failure is an easily understood icon of how the quality of governance has declined under the Republicans and we should repeat it frequently. I can see a commercial where Pawlenty is portrayed as Wimpy from "Popeye", with the catch phrase being "I would gladly pay you Tuesday for an interchange today". The we see how the suburban base reacts. My guess, from a Republican point of view, is not so good.

And if people get tired of the crosstown, remind them of the missing Revenue backup tape, and ask why this information can't be transmitted through the department's network, like every other large organization has been doing for a long time. Who has been in charge of the government all this time? Oh right, Republicans. Running the state formerly known as "the state that works". Asking computer services companies for employees to work free for the state for maybe a year because the state can't pay.

June 24
Something to watch with stories about those rare instances the Bush administration does right, or claims to have done right is the way stories are released for political gain. For example, I'm asserting that if there were anything to the claim of WMDs being found in Iraq announced so triumphantly by Peter Hoekstra and Rick Santorum, then the administration would have announced it officially. To back up that claim, notice how they lost no time announcing the arrest of seven terrorism suspects in Miami. FBI Director Robert Mueller appeared on Larry King Live and said he couldn't comment on some parts of the operation because the operation is ongoing, and they were still conducting arrests and searches. In the operation wasn't done, why was such a big deal made of it to the press? Why is Mueller going on TV and talking about it at all?

First, notice how, just coincidentally, the story coincided with the story about the administration digging around in financial records with only an administrative subpoena. That means the searches involve no judges and no accountability. They had asked the New York Times not to run the story, and I assume they asked the LA Times as well, so they knew this was coming. So they announced the success of an anti-terrorism operation which was still in progress so it could compete with the financial records story and offer a defense, "Look at the success we're having! Let us keep searching without warrants! Look what we found under your bed!" I made up the last bit but I wonder when that happens too. More to the point, notice how the seven suspects had no money at all. They weren't detected by any of the illegal searching Bush has been doing. They'd rather you didn't notice that though.

Second notice how when it makes them look good, the administration announces things right away, and we could even say prematurely. They've never been inclined to hold their peace to avoid screwing up ongoing operations if there's political gain in announcing now. The simple fact they didn't make the WMD announcement shows they knew it amounted to so little, that it was bound to be embarrassing. I imagine Santorum's substantial deficit to his Democratic opponent will widen after this desperation move. I haven't been able to find anything about how Hoekstra's reelection is going, but I wonder.

June 22
This is the best the GOP has? Rep. Peter Hoekstra and Sen. Rick Santorum announced the discovery of WMD in Iraq. Big news, according to the hourly Fox News update on a local talk radio station, though I thought it odd they hedged by saying a defense official said the stuff was pre-1991. It might have degraded down to toxic waste already by the first war. For Fox to make the story sound that even, there couldn't be much to it. There isn't. Turns out the gas cannisters have been collected over the course of the years since the invasion of Iraq, and they go back to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980's. What we have here is odd timing and the selective declassification of intelligence reports. The story looks like the usual right-wing deception about the war even on its own internal logic. What until the truth comes out.

Speaking of timing, though bad timing, Rep. Mark Kennedy, who is the GOP candidate for senate in Minnesota, spent tonight at a fund raiser together with the embarrassment of the hour, Santorum. I wonder if he asked Santorum why Bush didn't announce this big find back when it was found, and why it was left to two congressmen to announce while Rumsfeld dances around questions about it. Nah, he was probably too busy picking up his special interest cash to worry about mundane things like invading foreign countries on false pretenses. But in keeping with the spirit of the day, maybe the cash was pre-1991 too.

June 17
Having said yesterday the acting president did something right, might as well say the same thing about part of the corporate media that also did something right. I highly recommend tonight's CNN Presents, Dead Wrong: An Intelligence Meltdown. I'm not much of a fan of CNN in general anymore, but I have to say generally that CNN Presents is not just CNN's best program, it is really very good. I was amazed by tonight's program on the misuse of intelligence to sell Iraq War II. The material wasn't new to me, but I was accustomed to finding it in The National Journal, Commondreams, or The Guardian, but not on TV in a mainstream newschannel. CNN put it together very neatly and comprehensibly. If you don't know the case for claiming the intelligence on Iraq was wrong or misused and don't have the patience to go looking back through press reports of the last four years, watch this if you get the chance, or read the transcript. If you know we were lied to and need to find the quotes from administration officials to prove it, there are a bunch of them collected here, like here's a gem from Rice: "Clearly, there are contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented. There clearly is testimony that some of these contacts have been important contacts and there's a relationship here." It turned out of course there was no relationship and no evidence. What she did is called lying to start a war.

Hey, some good news on the corruption front: the SEC is reportedly cracking down on the backdating of options. This is the practice that William McGuire, the CEO of UnitedHealth who became a billionaire while other people can't afford checkups for their kids (yes, I do think those facts go together), allegedly engaged in to enrich himself. It appears to have been a common practice. What's amazing is these execs did this after the spate of corporate scandals in 2001-2002. They learned not to be honest, but to seek new means of thievery. They must have thought the heat was still on for accounting fraud, where they claim revenues they don't have or hide debts and losses in order to drive up the stock price and gain bonuses. That's what the executives of Enron were convicted for. The other standby has been insider trading, where they buy or sell their company's stock based on information which is not yet public and which will move the stock price, usually selling before announcing bad news. This what happened at ImClone (think Martha Stewart), and why Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is being investigated by the SEC. His family founded Hospital Corporation of America, some of his family still has a hand in running it, they own much of the stock, Frist dumped stock when his family did just two weeks before bad news dropped the stock price, but that's all just a coincidence. Maybe Frist was busy watching the Terri Schiavo video.

More good news: the House Democrats did the right thing with William Jefferson. I give credit to Nancy Pelosi who bucked members of her own caucus who weren't seeing clearly how seriously Jefferson was undermining the "culture of corruption" charge. Maybe he's just one guy, back he gives the GOP a response when the long list of Republicans under indictment or going to jail gets read. I'll risk the conspiracy theory charge a moment and ask why he hasn't been indicted yet when others have been convicted of bribing him, he's on video taking a bribe, and he was caught storing cash in large amounts in his freezer. Could it be someone made a political decision to hold off the indictment so he stays in office and in the news? Probably not, but I sure wonder. Jefferson himself should have seen how badly he was tarring his fellow Democrats and undermining a key campaign theme, or if he saw it he should have shown some loyalty to his party and respect for his constituents, who surely don't get full service from him while he's fighting the allegations.

If there's a silver lining, his problems show the difference between the parties when it comes to corruption. Compare how the Democrats moved to remove him to how the Republicans reacted to Tom DeLay's problems. They removed ethics committee members who voted to reprimand him, they changed the rules so the committee couldn't function, and they tried to change their caucus rules to allow a member to remain in a leadership post after being indicted. At least they had the sense to reverse themselves, but they let the indicted DeLay stay in office until he left in his own good time. Just remember, when your GOP representatives says they personally are not involved in the corruption, that they kept putting the crooks in positions of power despite knowing what they are. There's only so much innocence to be claimed when you vote for the crooks.

June 16
Try not to faint, but I'm going to give the acting president credit for getting a couple things right, even if I still call him "the acting president" based on his failure to legitimately get elected either time. The first thing Bush got right was establishing the marine sanctuary in the remote end of the Hawaiian islands. Now if we could just wake him up to ANWR and global warming.

The other thing is a follow up to yesterday: the US has finally gotten behind the Somali transitional government along with the UN and EU. I don't if it's too little or too late to prevent the war with Al Qaida spreading to Somalia, but it's the only thing that has hope of working.

Getting critical again however, my statement "I saw America's next war on page A23" was more a point about a big story buried inside than a certain prediction that Somalia would be the next war, because it isn't the only candidate. Iran has gotten lots of attention and so has North Korea, but Venezuela belongs on the list too. I say that because it looks like the administration is building up Hugo Chavez as the next Hitler-like villain. Yes I know, that link goes to the Washington Times, where conservative bloggers prefer to link instead of real newspapers. So consider the source as regards factual accuracy, but if they publish it then it does show the administration line. Rumsfeld compared Chavez to Hitler. More details on that here. The Washington Times also brought up allegations Chavez was seeking cooperation with Iran on constructing a nuclear power plant, that he was mining uranium possibly to ship to the Middle East, and that Venezuelan intelligence might be sheltering people with ties to Middle East terrorists. Hmm --- Hitler comparisons, ties to Islamic terrorists, uranium sales and nuclear technology --- sound like any war currently in progress?

There are plenty of good reasons not to go to war with Venezuela, like our overstretched armed forces, which is the reason I think most likely to make Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney, and maybe even Bush see reason. Still, I'm just warning that people with a history of running wars badly and faking the reasons seem to be contemplating another.

An illustration of how corruption becomes a "culture" is a story that combines the national security scandals with corporate corruption. Bush gave Negroponte authority to waive SEC rules on national security grounds. This means the intelligence chief can free corporations from having to make legally required reports to shareholders. Supposedly this is to allow them to conceal secrets that would endanger national security, but only an idiot can't immediately conceive of this waiver being abused. Think it won't be handed out to favored companies? Imagine what Enron could have done with that waiver. I wonder what Halliburton is doing with it. I don't know that Halliburton has one, but I expect the waiver itself would be secret.

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who successfully prosecuted Nazis at Nuremberg for the crime of aggressive war, thereby establishing the precedent that starting a war is, in and of itself, a war crime.

"A refusal to look back inevitably means moving forward in blindness."
Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, on the resistance of the Obama administration to investigating human rights abuses by the Bush administration.

"Why is it that strong women are so often called bullies and ballbreakers, while strong, opinionated men are often called, simply, Justice Scalia."
Salon editor Joan Walsh, on the bigoted attacks on Sonia Sotomayor already on the day of her announcement.

"In Minnesota, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has made military ballot protection a key priority of his Department. The result is that twice as many military ballots are actually cast, and half as many are rejected, as the national average in 2006."
The National Defense Committee, in an article on their web site praising Minnesota's efforts to encourage absentee voting by military personnel stationed overseas.

"We're seeing massive resistance to the cramdown proposal. That's a proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to reschedule a mortgage on a primary residence. They're fighting this thing tooth and nail. Now the fact is, the people fighting it are the last people who should get the ear of anyone. And it goes to show me they haven't really learned any lessons. A lot of these folks--large banks, Wall Street firms--they have the attitude that "Heads I win, tails you lose." No matter what happens, we always get ours."
Rep. Keith Ellison, on how the bailed out banks are fighting against bankruptcy reform.

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,. Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''
The late --- and correct --- Paul Wellstone, expressing opposition to repealing the law that prevented financial corporations from entering other types of financial business, like preventing commercial banks from becoming investment banks. This repeal was a large part of making the (collapsing) conglomerates possible.

"The facts revealed reflect the way the U.S. government has consistently tried to cover up the truth of Binyam Mohamed's torture. He was being told he would never leave Guant�namo Bay unless he promised never to discuss his torture, and never sue either the Americans or the British to force disclosure of his mistreatment."
Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith, speaking about a British court's ruling that the Bush administration tried to get Mohamed to plead guilty to something, anything, and keep quiet about his treatment as a condition of release.

"We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion about who has been receiving this $3 trillion."
Sen. Bernie Sanders. I-VT, on the mostly unreported spending by the Federal Reserve to prop up the big financial corporations.

"The AIG scandal is significant and has resonated so powerfully because it is a microscope that enables the public to see what and who has wreaked the destruction that threatens their security and future and, most important of all, to realize that these practices haven't ended and the perpetrators haven't been punished. The opposite is true: those who caused the crisis continue to exert control over what happens and continue to have huge amounts of public money transferred in order to enrich them."
Glenn Greenwald, explaining why the AIG bonus scandal is both symbolic and important.

"Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
Attorney General John Ashcroft, during a principals meeting about torture methods.

"There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales." Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center, who surveyed scientific research from 1965-1979 and showed that contrary to what climate change deniers keep asserting, there was no consensus on global cooling. That means the point that climate scientists must be wrong now because they were wrong then is itself based on a false assumption.

"We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.

It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts."
statement on the web site of University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, responding to an assertion by global warming denier George Will that they said sea ice area is the same as 1979.

"It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known. But ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
Charles Darwin, whose 200th birthday is coming up on February 12.

"The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events. That's just what creationists say can't happen."
evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, commenting on an experiment that was able to observe a mutation that changed one species into another.

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