Will Anyone Give Bush a Job?

Being ex-president is usually easy and lucrative. It won't be for George W. Bush.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Saturday, Jan. 17, 2009, at 7:03 AM ET

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For many of President Bush's critics, the fact that he is now seeking work in the worst job market in a generation is poetic justice. As Bush noted in his farewell press conference, he is too much of a Type A for "the big straw hat and Hawaiian shirt, sitting on some beach." (He might want to reconsider: Thanks to the recession, tropical resorts are running great promotions.)

Given recent history, Bush probably expects to profit from ex-presidency. Bill Clinton reported income of more than $90 million from 2000-07. But Bush is very unlikely to earn Clintonian numbers. Ex-presidents peddle image, presence, and experience. In Bush's case, each is tarnished. To aggravate matters, many of the industries in which ex-presidents make easy money are a) doing poorly, and b) based in the Washington-Boston corridor where Bush hostility runs deep.

Slight Changes in Climate May Trigger Abrupt Ecosystem Responses

Slight changes in climate may trigger major abrupt ecosystem responses that are not easily reversible. Some of these responses, including insect outbreaks, wildfire, and forest dieback, may adversely affect people as well as ecosystems and their plants and animals.

Report calls aerosol research key to improving climate predictions

Scientists need a more detailed understanding of how human-produced atmospheric particles, called aerosols, affect climate in order to produce better predictions of Earth's future climate, according to a NASA-led report issued by the US Climate Change Science Program on Friday.

Redefining "Moral Clarity"

By Sara Robinson

Created 01/16/2009 - 6:00pm

They keep using those words. It turns out that they don't mean what we think they mean.

On Thursday night, for the first time since 9/11, I actually sat down and watched George Bush speak. (At this late date, I figured there was absolutely nothing the man could say that could quench the deep satisfaction of knowing that this was the last time we'd ever have to endure The Smirk.) There was one passage, in particular, that rang in my ears long after his final goodbye. It probably went over most Americans' heads -- but it went right to the heart of Our Problem With George:

As we address these challenges - and others we cannot foresee tonight - America must maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil. This has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense and to advance the cause of peace.

That phrase "moral clarity" -- conservatives use it a lot. And it always sounds absurd to progressive ears, coming as it does from members of an administration that shredded the Constitution, deprived people of due process, committed horrific acts of torture, and lied the country into the worst military debacle in its history. It's always bewildering to listen to such people lecture the rest of us on "moral clarity." What in the hell are they talking about?

What Bush Left Out of His Flat Farewell

By David Corn | January 16, 2009 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

George W. Bush gave his final speech to the nation on Thursday night. I skipped it to see my daughter, who has known no other president, perform with her school chorus. But when I later sat before my television to see how the speech was being punditized on the cable news shows, I was surprised. The water-landing of a US Airways flight in New York City dominated the coverage. There was little chatter--almost nothing--about Bush's farewell.

After watching the speech on the White House website, I understood why. It was flat and short. Bush said little of interest. He dwelled mostly on 9/11 and the so-called war on terror, once again (and for the last official time) characterizing the invasion of Iraq as part of his effort to take "the fight to the terrorists." He suggested that although the Iraq war was the subject of "legitimate debate," there "can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil."

Rescue of Banks Hints at Nationalization

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON — Last fall, as Federal Reserve and Treasury Department officials rode to the rescue of one financial institution after another, they took great pains to avoid doing anything that smacked of nationalizing banks.

They may no longer have that luxury. With two of the nation’s largest banks buckling under yet another round of huge losses, the incoming administration of Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve are suddenly dealing with banks that are “too big to fail” and yet unable to function as the sinking economy erodes their capital.

Particularly in the case of Citigroup, the losses have become so large that they make it almost mathematically impossible for the government to inject enough capital without taking a majority stake or at least squeezing out existing shareholders.

No friend to America's workers

George Bush broke America's economic and social bonds. We'll be paying for these mistakes long after he's gone

Sasha Abramsky
guardian.co.uk,
Friday 16 January 2009 15.00 GMT

It's hard to know how to say farewell to an administration as awful as George Bush's. Do you boo its members as they leave Washington? Do you cheer their exit and do a little dance of glee that they won't be around to spin gold into excrement anymore? Or do you sit down and quietly try to work out the scale of the damage they left in their wake?

I guess I will be doing a little of all three. And as a journalist, I'll also be slightly rueful. After all, for someone interested in social justice issues, there was never a shortage of topics to write about these past several years.

Why We Have to Look Back

By John Conyers Jr.
Friday, January 16, 2009; A19

This week, I released "Reining in the Imperial Presidency," a 486-page report detailing the abuses and excesses of the Bush administration and recommending steps to address them. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. popularized the term "imperial presidency" in the 1970s to describe an executive who had assumed more power than the Constitution allows and circumvented the checks and balances fundamental to our three-branch system of government. Until recently, the NixonGeorge W. Bush. administration seemed to represent a singular embodiment of the idea. Unfortunately, it is clear that the threat of the imperial presidency lives on and, indeed, reached new heights under George W. Bush.

Digby: Full Court Press

Oh Goody. More bipartisan establishment institutions join with Pete Peterson to give the Republicans and the Blue Dogs excuses to ensure that the government can't do what's necessary to stave off a depression:

To modernize an outdated Congressional budget process in light of the daunting economic challenges facing the nation, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) today announced a landmark partnership to build bipartisan consensus for a core set of reforms. The Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform will convene the nation’s preeminent experts to make recommendations for how best to strengthen the budget process used by federal lawmakers. CRFB will manage and staff the commission under the leadership of its prestigious board of directors.

Follow Jesus Like Nazis Followed Hitler, Rick Warren Tells Stadium Crowd

On April 17, 2005, at the southern California Anaheim Angels sports stadium thirty thousand Saddleback Church members, more than ever gathered in one spot, assembled to celebrate Saddleback's 25th anniversary and listened as Rick Warren announced his vision for the next 25 years of the church: the P.E.A.C.E. Plan. [Digg this story For a new, related story by this author, see Rick Warren Allies Distribute Anti-Jewish Comic To School Kids ]

Towards the close of his nearly one hour speech, Pastor Warren asked his followers to be as committed to Jesus as the young Nazi men and women who spelled out in mass formation with their bodies the words "Hitler, we are yours," in 1939 at the Munich Stadium, were committed to the Führer of the Third Reich, a major instigator of a World War that claimed 55 million lives. Rick Warren has exhorted Christians towards Nazi-like dedication in at least several public speeches and also during a one hour video recording of a talk by Warren, explaining his P.E.A.C.E. Plan, that is currently hosted on the official P.E.A.C.E. Plan website (see 'video page', "The Global P.E.A.C.E. Plan"). A version of the anecdote can also be found on page 357 of Rick Warren's 1995 book The Purpose Driven Church, which sold over one million copies.

Glenn Greenwald: FISA Ruling: A Case Study in 8 Years of Lying and Ignorance

Ever since The New York Times, on December 16, 2005, first reported that President Bush ordered spying on Americans without the warrants required by FISA, the clear illegality that was unveiled -- FISA said that X was a felony and Bush admitted to doing X -- was continuously obscured by a combination of deceit on the part of Bush followers and ignorance, sloth and confusion on the part of the media. Beginning within the first days of the controversy, Bush followers who literally had no idea what they were talking about offered factually false claims and even distorted quotations from the statute to justify what was done. Today is a perfect example illustrating how completely misinformed and/or deliberately deceitful right-wing advocates inject blatant falsehoods into these debates.

Earlier today, The New York Times' Eric Lichtblau (one of the NYT reporters who originally broke the NSA story yet often mindlessly recites false Bush claims even on this issue) wrote a story which reported that the FISA Court of Review had issued a decision "validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a specific court order." From start to finish, Lichtblau's description of the ruling was muddled and contradictory, even nonsensical in some places.

No New Oversight in TARP Round Two

Granting the Obama administration the second $350 billion of Wall Street bailout funding does nothing to ensure that the money is spent wisely, some of the nation’s top economists told Senate lawmakers Thursday. Without stricter conditions on banks and concrete assurance that the money will target foreclosure mitigation, the experts warned, the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) will do little to revive the ailing economy.

“It’s a never-ending sinkhole of taxpayer money into major financial institutions without [attaching] some major strings,” Allen Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics, a private consulting firm, told lawmakers on the Senate Budget Committee Thursday. “[TARP] is the status quo,” he added later. “I wouldn’t support that.”

Holder Steady

The Senate confirmation hearings prove bruising chiefly for Al Gonzales.

By Dahlia Lithwick
Updated Thursday, Jan. 15, 2009, at 8:08 PM ET

It's enough to make you miss the poetry of an Alberto Gonzales and the seal-sleek interpretive dance of a Michael Mukasey.

Remember back when Gonzales was asked in July 2007 about whether water-boarding violated the Geneva Conventions? His response:

There are certain activities that are clearly beyond the pale and that everyone would agree should be prohibited. And so, obviously, the president is very, very supportive of those actions that are identified by its terms in the executive order. There are certain other activities where it is not so clear, Senator. And, again, it's for those reasons that I can't discuss them in the public. ...

ACLU: 'Secret courts' conceal fraud by military contractors

Muriel Kane
Published: Thursday January 15, 2009

A law originally intended to encourage whistleblowers may have been used by the Bush Justice Department to cover up allegations of fraud by contractors such as Halliburton spin-off KBR.

In 2007, David Rose's "The People vs. the Profiteers" described a "scandal of epic proportions" involving the alleged suppression of dozens of lawsuits against KBR for alleged massive fraud in Iraq.

WSJ falsely claimed that FISA court approved "warrantless wiretapping program" exposed in 2005

Summary: A Wall Street Journal editorial claimed that, in a recently released decision, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review affirmed the legality of the Bush administration's "warrantless wiretapping program" that "was exposed in 2005." In fact, the decision applies only to surveillance conducted pursuant to a 2007 congressional statute and does not say anything about the legality of the warrantless wiretapping program exposed in 2005.

A January 16 Wall Street Journal editorial falsely claimed that, in a recently released decision, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review affirmed the legality of the Bush administration's "warrantless wiretapping program" that "was exposed in 2005." The editorial stated: "Ever since the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program was exposed in 2005, critics have denounced it as illegal and unconstitutional. Those allegations rested solely on the fact that the Administration did not first get permission from the special court created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA]. Well, as it happens, the same FISA court would beg to differ." In fact, the decision applies only to surveillance conducted pursuant to a 2007 congressional statute, the Protect America Act (PAA), and does not say anything about the legality of the warrantless wiretapping program exposed in 2005.

Court Affirms Wiretapping Without Warrants

By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON — In a rare public ruling, a secret federal appeals court has said telecommunications companies must cooperate with the government to intercept international phone calls and e-mail of American citizens suspected of being spies or terrorists.

The ruling came in a case involving an unidentified company’s challenge to 2007 legislation that expanded the president’s legal power to conduct wiretapping without warrants for intelligence purposes.

But the ruling, handed down in August 2008 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and made public Thursday, did not directly address whether President Bush was within his constitutional powers in ordering domestic wiretapping without warrants, without first getting Congressional approval, after the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Paul Krugman: Forgive and Forget?

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: January 15, 2009

Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration. “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law,” he responded, but “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.

I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.

Fade out on George W Bush

By Pepe Escobar

WASHINGTON - And now, the end is near; the final curtain drops in a cold, paranoid Fortress DC under maximum red alert. In a contrived Oscar night-style mood, with thanks aplenty, George W Bush delivered his farewell address from the East Room of the White House on January 15.

Bottom lines: he turned Afghanistan into "a young democracy fighting terror"; he turned Iraq into "a young democracy in the heart of the Middle East"; he brags "America is promoting human rights"; and more than anything, America under his watch got seven years without another 9/11. But "the terrorists" will be back.

White House Finds 14 Million 'Missing' E-Mails, DOJ Lawyer Says By Jason Leopold Six days before the Bush administration's term ends, a Justice Depar

By Jason Leopold

Six days before the Bush administration's term ends, a Justice Department attorney told a federal judge Wednesday that the White House found 14 million "missing" e-mails that for nearly two years were the subject of several lawsuits and congressional inquiries and widespread speculation that the documents were destroyed.

Helen Hong, an attorney in the Justice Department's civil division, said the White House spent $10 million to locate the e-mails. She said the e-mails would be transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration, along with 300 million of other documents in accordance with the Presidential Records Act, immediately after President George W. Bush leaves office next Tuesday.

Brain mechanisms of social conformity

New research reveals the brain activity that underlies our tendency to "follow the crowd." The study, published by Cell Press in the January 15th issue of the journal Neuron, provides intriguing insight into how human behavior can be guided by the perceived behavior of other individuals.

Many studies have demonstrated the profound effect of group opinion on individual judgments, and there is no doubt that we look to the behavior and judgment of others for information about what will be considered expected and acceptable behavior.

Viewpoint: The end of the neo-cons?

Jonathan Clarke, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs looks back at the rise and fall of the neo-cons, who encouraged George Bush to invade Iraq.

With the Bush administration about to recede into history, a widely asked question is whether the neo-conservative philosophy that underpinned its major foreign policy decisions will likewise vanish from the scene.

44 to reverse 43's executive orders

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to move swiftly to reverse executive orders regarding torture of terror suspects, the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and other controversial security policies, sources close to his transition said, in dramatic gestures aimed at reversing President Bush’s accumulation of executive power.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) said he’s been informed that President Obama will support his proposed legislation to make public some opinions from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which issued some of the Bush Administration's most sweeping claims of executive power. Obama also has promised to limit President Bush's practice of using "signing statements" to amend legislation.

Thomas Frank: Obama Should Act Like He Won

As we anxiously await the debut of the Obama administration, we hear more and more about the incoming president's "post-partisan" instincts. He has filled his cabinet with relics of the centrist Clinton years. He has engaged the evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. And according to Politico, he wants 80 Senate votes for his stimulus plan -- a goal that would mean winning a majority among Republicans as well as Democrats.

Maybe these will turn out to be wise moves. Maybe they won't.

Audacity they ain't, though. There is no branch of American political expression more trite, more smug, more hollow than centrism.

Glenn Greenwald: Obama v. the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran

Regarding Barack Obama's statements about Iran yesterday during his ABC News interview, Charles Davis makes an excellent point (h/t Jonathan Schwarz):

President-elect Barack Obama in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos:

Iran is going to be one of our biggest challenges and as I said during the campaign we have a situation in which not only is Iran exporting terrorism through Hamas, through Hezbollah but they are pursuing a nuclear weapon that could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race.

The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran (pdf), the consensus opinion of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies:

We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.

Adding to Recession’s Pain, Thousands to Lose Jobless Benefits

By PATRICK McGEEHAN and MATHEW R. WARREN

Just as the recession is throwing people out of work at an alarming rate, the unemployment insurance system in New York and many other states will start cutting off benefits this week for thousands of people who have been unable to find jobs since early last year.

About 50,000 New Yorkers who had been collecting unemployment checks for 11 months — the longest stretch that benefits have been available since the last recession eight years ago — will stop receiving weekly payments this week, according to the State Labor Department.

From a Visionary English Physicist, Self-Adjusting Lenses for the Poor

By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 10, 2009; A08

OXFORD, England

Joshua Silver remembers the first day he helped a man see.

Henry Adjei-Mensah, a tailor in Ghana, could no longer see well enough to thread the needle of his sewing machine. He was too poor to afford glasses or an optometrist. Then Silver, an atomic physicist who also taught optics at Oxford University, handed him a pair of self-adjusting glasses he had designed, and suddenly the tailor's world came into crystal-clear focus.

Bush's Legacy -- A Flawed Election

By Craig Crawford | January 13, 2009 6:00 AM

The tragic course of George W. Bush's presidency began with what might have well been one of the great accidents in American history -- his flawed election. It is difficult to find a more dramatic example of why voting matters.

The Bush team learned how to cut corners in the 2000 election, avoiding a final recount of Florida's challenged ballots by going to the United States Supreme Court to stop it. In many ways that experience produced an attitude that any obstacle, even the Constitution itself, can be circumvented with the right set of machinations.

10 Big Goals for Obama's First 1,460 Days

By Mark Green, Huffington Post
Posted on January 13, 2009, Printed on January 13, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/119368/

Based on his 2008 campaign and 2009 exigencies, President Obama's mandate includes two huge and imminent priorities -- an unprecedented "stimulus" to revive the economy and a plan that gets us out of Iraq.

And then?

Eighteen months ago, John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and I agreed to collaborate on a volume that gathered together the best progressive scholars, advocates, and experts to specifically describe agency-by-agency what a progressive 44th president could do on Day One, Year One, Term One. Then, of course, John had to recuse himself in August after he was tapped to run Obama's official transition -- and this month CAPAF and my New Democracy published the results -- progressive leaders pooling their best ideas and practices into a program we call:

"Progressive Patriotism."

The Nouveau Poor Have Reached Numbers Too Large to Ignore

By Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com
Posted on January 13, 2009, Printed on January 13, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/119360/

Ever on the lookout for the bright side of hard times, I am tempted to delete “class inequality” from my worry list. Less than a year ago, it was the one of the biggest economic threats on the horizon, with even hard line conservative pundits grousing that wealth was flowing uphill at an alarming rate, leaving the middle class stuck with stagnating incomes while the new super-rich ascended to the heavens in their personal jets. Then the whole top-heavy structure of American capitalism began to totter, and –poof!—inequality all but vanished from the public discourse. A financial columnist in the Chicago Sun Times has just announced that the recession is a “great leveler,” serving to “democratize[d] the agony,” as we all tumble into “the Nouveau Poor…”

Bernanke: Obama stimulus helps, more action needed

By JEANNINE AVERSA and JANE WARDELL, AP Business Writers
Tue Jan 13, 3:33 pm ET

LONDON – A mammoth stimulus package being crafted by President-elect Barack Obama could give the economy a much-needed lift, but other steps must be taken to bolster the wobbly financial system and for any recovery to stick, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday.

Specifically, Bernanke suggested the government inject more money into banks. He also offered options to deal with rotten mortgages and other bad assets held by financial institutions, a problem that has contributed to a lockup in lending. Bernanke also again called for the government to do more to curb home foreclosures.

The Fed chief's extensive remarks, in a speech at the London School of Economics, come at a critical time as the U.S. gets ready to change its political and economic guard from President George W. Bush to Obama next week.

Bad Economy May Fuel Hate Groups, Experts Warn

Experts Warn That Downturn Could Drive Discontent, Help Extremists Recruit

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 11, 2009; A04

For 20 years, Bart McIntyre has tracked white supremacist movements, even spending two years undercover in Alabama to penetrate a violent young band of criminals who called themselves the Confederate Hammerskins.

Away from his wife and young daughter, McIntyre took the alias "Mark," attended Ku Klux Klan rallies and educated himself in racist propaganda. He and a law enforcement partner ultimately helped build criminal cases that sent more than 10 men to prison for their involvement in the murder and vicious beatings of black men in the Birmingham area in the early 1990s.

Glenn Greenwald: Obama's allegedly "new" centrism and his ABC interview today

The central tenets of the Beltway religion -- particularly when a Democrat is in the White House -- have long been "centrism" and "bipartisanship." The only good Democrats are the ones who scorn their "left-wing" base while embracing Republicans. In Beltway lingo, that's what "pragmatism" and good "post-partisanship" mean: a Democrat whose primary goal is to prove he's not one of those leftists. The Washington Post's David Ignatius today lavishes praise on Barack Obama for his allegiance to these Beltway pieties -- and actually seems to believe that there is something new and innovative about this approach:

The impatient freshman senator is about to become president, but he hasn't lost his distaste for Washington politics as usual. And as the inauguration approaches, Obama is doing something quite remarkable: Rather than settling into the normal partisan governing stance, he is breaking with it -- moving toward the center in a way that upsets some of his liberal allies but offers the promise of broad national support.

The Costs of Ideological Correctness

In the United States, slavish adherence to “moderate” positions is often construed as exhibited “pragmatism” that’s in distinction to the more “ideological” views of people with less centrist views. In fact, moderation can reflect ideology ever bit as much as extremism can. I’ve had occasion to observe in the past that they best model for recapitalizing distressed financial institutions is provided by Sweden’s response to the early-1990s Nordic banking crisis. And nobody seems to seriously dispute that the Swedish model worked very well. But it’s too left-wing for the United States for basically reasons of ideological correctness.

Economy Made Few Gains in Bush Years

Eight-Year Period Is Weakest in Decades

By Neil Irwin and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 12, 2009; A01

President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists across the ideological spectrum increasingly view his two terms as a time of little progress on the nation's thorniest fiscal challenges.

The number of jobs in the nation increased by about 2 percent during Bush's tenure, the most tepid growth over any eight-year span since data collection began seven decades ago. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, grew at the slowest pace for a period of that length since the Truman administration. And Americans' incomes grew more slowly than in any presidency since the 1960s, other than that of Bush's father.

Republicans’ Latest Talking Point: The New Deal Failed

By ADAM COHEN

On Christmas Eve, the conservative pundit Monica Crowley argued on Fox News that instead of rescuing America from the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s spending on public works made it worse. She insisted that this bizarre claim was confirmed by “all kinds of studies and academic work.”

The show’s host backed her up. “Yes,” said Gregg Jarrett, “I think historians pretty much agree on that.” In the same vein, a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece said F.D.R. helped turn “a panic into the worst depression of modern times.” Now, as Congress begins to debate President-elect Barack Obama’s ambitious economic stimulus plan, this anti-New Deal talking point is popping up all over.

Why You Should Be Screaming for Higher Taxes

By Larry Beinhart, AlterNet
Posted on January 12, 2009, Printed on January 12, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/119048/

US economic growth has been strongest when our taxes have been high. During World War II, then under Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, our upper marginal tax rates were between 88-92%. Read those numbers again. They are astonishingly high. Those were our strongest growth years.

I never expected to say this. Pelosi's right, Obama's wrong.

Do keep in mind that we are talking about higher taxes on the richest members of society, the very richest. So, unless you're among that elite group, don't panic for personal reasons.

Paul Krugman: Ideas for Obama

Last week President-elect Barack Obama was asked to respond to critics who say that his stimulus plan won’t do enough to help the economy. Mr. Obama answered that he wants to hear ideas about “how to spend money efficiently and effectively to jump-start the economy.”

O.K., I’ll bite — although as I’ll explain shortly, the “jump-start” metaphor is part of the problem.

First, Mr. Obama should scrap his proposal for $150 billion in business tax cuts, which would do little to help the economy. Ideally he’d scrap the proposed $150 billion payroll tax cut as well, though I’m aware that it was a campaign promise.

The Afghan Scam: Why the U.S. Is Certain to Fail in Yet Another War

By Ann Jones, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on January 12, 2009, Printed on January 12, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/119052/

The first of 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops are scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan next month to re-win the war George W. Bush neglected to finish in his eagerness to start another one. However, "winning" the military campaign against the Taliban is the lesser half of the story.

Going into Afghanistan, the Bush administration called for a political campaign to reconstruct the country and thereby establish the authority of a stable, democratic Afghan central government. It was understood that the two campaigns -- military and political/economic -- had to go forward together; the success of each depended on the other. But the vision of a reconstructed, peaceful, stable, democratically governed Afghanistan faded fast. Most Afghans now believe that it was nothing but a cover story for the Bush administration's real goal -- to set up permanent bases in Afghanistan and occupy the country forever.

Digby: Fiscal Madness

I can't believe what I saw yesterday: CNN showed the Shock Doctrine documentary I.O.U.S.A. It is an amazing piece of propaganda, which, if it isn't designed to destroy any chance of enacting a necessary stimulus, will persuade more than a few Americans that the biggest problem we face at this moment is long term debt caused by entitlements --- and nothing short of massive spending cuts can save us. Here's the press release:

Wake up, America! We're on the brink of a financial meltdown. I.O.U.S.A. boldly examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens. Burdened with an ever-expanding government and military, increased international competition, overextended entitlement programs, and debts to foreign countries that are becoming impossible to honor, America must mend its spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions.

New Mexico Probe Just the Tip Of the Iceberg On Municipal Bond Scams?

By Zachary Roth - January 9, 2009, 11:45AM

Ever since New Mexico governor Bill Richardson withdrew his nomination for Commerce Secretary citing an investigation into the company that obtained a contract to advise the state on bond deals, news reports have been making reference to a broader nationwide probe of alleged price-fixing and corruption in the municipal bond industry, which the New Mexico investigation grew out of.

Here at Muckraker, we've started looking into that larger ongoing story, and today the New York Times delivers a helpful takeout on the subject -- though many of the details still remain murky.

Frank Rich: Eight Years of Madoffs

THREE days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and abroad.

The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a “new” Iraq.