McClelland is being vilified, for what? For telling the truth. Nobody is saying he is lying. They are calling him names. They are using the old "Soviet" tactic of accusing him of being crazy, the old Fascist tactic of calling him "disgruntled" or attacking him as disloyal. But nobody says he is lying. The Congress is trying to get people to testify. I hope he'll show up.
And I hope Congress (Waxman's committee) has the moxy to arrest administration officials who refuse to testify and compel them to honor their subpoenas and not act with so much contempt of the constitution.
Chris
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080529/pl_politico/10681;_ylt=AjtdHimaoQ615Yv\
DqaEHjSyWwvIE
McClellan: Plame leak case was turning point
Ex-White House spokesman says he had hoped Bush would change D.C.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24861380/
By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 10:44 a.m. ET, Thurs., May. 29, 2008
The former Bush administration pitchman making explosive election-year
charges about how the White House handled the Valerie Plame case and
built the case for invading Iraq said Thursday that he went to
Washington to change it and became “disillusioned” when he realized he
was just a pawn in the never-ending political game.
“The larger message has been sort of lost in the mix. ... The White
House would prefer I not speak out openly and honestly about my
experiences, but I believe there is a larger purpose,” Scott
McClellan, the chief spokesman for the White House from 2003 to 2006,
told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira exclusively during his first
interview since excerpts of his new memoir hit the Internet on Tuesday.
“I had all this great hope that we were going to come to Washington
and change it. ... Then we got to Washington, and I think we got
caught up in playing the Washington game the way it is being played
today,” said McClellan, who made only passing references to Bush himself.
McClellan’s candid comments about how administration officials made
the case to invade Iraq in March 2003 reverberated throughout the
Beltway and immediately became fodder for the two remaining Democratic
presidential hopefuls after excerpts from the book began emerging
online Tuesday night.
However, McClellan said that it wasn't until he realized that he may
have been led to deliver false information to the media about two
senior administration officials’ roles in outing Valerie Plame as a
CIA operative that he knew he would someday have to tell his story.
“My hope is that by writing this book and sharing openly and honestly
what I learned is that in some small way it might help us move beyond
the partisan warfare of the past 15 years. There’s a larger purpose to
this book. It’s about looking at the permanent campaign culture in
Washington, D.C., and how we can move beyond it,” he said.
As Bush's press secretary, McClellan defended the war to the media.
But in his book he accused the White House of shading the truth and
conducting a political propaganda campaign in making the case to go to
war in Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein.
“I gave them the benefit of the doubt just like a lot of Americans,”
McClellan said. “Looking back and reflecting on it now, I don’t think
I should have.”
‘Patently false’
As the book vaulted to No. 1 on Amazon.com’s best-seller list
Wednesday, Republican critics dismissed him as a turncoat, a sellout
and a disgruntled former employee. The White House called the book
puzzling and sad.
White House adviser Dan Bartlett, who appeared after McClellan on
TODAY, said he still considers McClellan a friend but believes his
former colleague resorted to the same rhetoric in the book that
McClellan claims to disdain. He said McClellan makes bold claims about
the administration “shading the truth” and deceiving the public in
Iraq, but provides little evidence.
“Fundamentally, I believe what Scott was saying in his book was wrong.
It’s patently false. I would not participate in a process in which
we’re misleading the American people,” Bartlett said.
“We’re all quite a bit shocked, Matt, to say the least, about some of
these revelations and the feelings he now is sharing with the American
people that he never shared with us personally,” Bartlett said in
describing the reaction of McClellan’s former colleagues.
He also said that when the decisions to invade Iraq were being made,
McClellan was the deputy press secretary for domestic affairs. “He was
not in those meetings,” Bartlett told Lauer. “He did not hear the
deliberations when the president was deciding whether to send troops
into Iraq.”
But in a second interview with Vieira, McClellan said that he was, in
fact, in some of those meetings when he filled in for his boss, Ari
Fleischer, who took 10 days off for his honeymoon. Fleischer was
married in November 2002.
Fallout for McCain?
While the 40-year-old McClellan has many good things to say about Bush
in his book, its title �" “Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s
Culture of Deception” �" foreshadows a central theme that gives a
public-relations black eye to the White House and could cause
collateral damage at the polls to Republican presidential candidate
John McCain.
McClellan writes that the Bush White House decided “to turn away from
candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed” during the
period when sentiment was being marshaled to invade Iraq and depose
Saddam Hussein.
McClellan said that the White House never shifted from campaign mode
to governing mode, an approach that “almost guaranteed that the use of
force would become the only feasible option. … In the permanent
campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion
to the president’s advantage.”
The mainstream media also came under fire from McClellan, who charged
that reporters accepted what they were told and didn’t ask the hard
questions that might have exposed the bad intelligence used to justify
the invasion of Iraq.
‘The truth shall set you free’
“What Happened” is scheduled to go on sale Sunday, but Mike Allen of
the political Web site Politico.com bought an early copy in a
Washington bookstore and posted the first review Tuesday night.
Among the interesting chapter titles in the book are: “The Permanent
Campaign,” “Deniability,” “Triumph and Illusion,” “Revelation and
Humiliation” and “Out of Touch.”
McClellan opens the book with a quotation from the Gospel of John
inscribed on the Tower at his alma mater, the University of Texas: “Ye
shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
He explains that the book is “about the slice of history I witnessed
during my years in the White House and about the well-intentioned but
flawed human beings �" myself included �" who shaped that history. I've
written it not to settle scores or enhance my own role, but simply to
record what I know and what I learned in hopes that my account will
deepen our understanding of contemporary history, particularly the
events that followed the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001.”
McClellan is convinced that the invasion of Iraq was a “serious
strategic blunder.”
Excerpts from the book had been published last year in which he
appeared to implicate the president in the cover-up of the leak that
ended the career of CIA operative Plame. Former Bush aide Scooter
Libby was convicted and then pardoned of lying to investigators, and
McClellan is convinced that Bush’s senior adviser, Karl Rove, was
involved.
Caught by surprise
But the depth of McClellan’s criticisms of Bush and his White House
revealed in the early reviews apparently caught Bush loyalists by
surprise. On Wednesday, the day after the first review was published,
the White House fired back, characterizing McClellan as a
“disgruntled” former employee.
“Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White
House,” press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement. “For those of
us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press
secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad �" this is not the Scott we knew.”
Perino said the president was informed of some of the content of the
book and would have no comment.
Ari Fleischer, first of Bush’s four press secretaries and McClellan’s
boss from 2001 to 2003, appeared on MSNBC and said, “I’m heartbroken
because I just don’t understand. Not once did Scott tell me about any
misgivings he had.”
Rove also criticized McClellan, saying to Fox News, “If he had these
moral qualms, he should have spoken up about them. And frankly I don’t
remember him speaking up about these things,” Rove said. “I don’t
remember a single word.”
Even some Democratic bureaucrats expressed surprise at McClellan’s
book, saying that it is highly unusual for a former high-ranking
staffer to turn on a president as McClellan has.
Texas roots
McClellan’s grandfather, W. Page Keeton, was dean of the University of
Texas School of Law. His mother, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, was the
first woman elected mayor of Austin and was elected as the Texas
Comptroller in 1998. She ran for governor of Texas in 2006 but
finished third in a five-way race.
McClellan’s father, Barr McClellan, was an attorney for the National
Labor Relations Board and then for the Federal Power Commission under
Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. Barr McClellan also wrote a book
about power and Washington: “Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed
JFK.” Published in 2003, the book claims that Texas attorney �" and
Barr McClellan’s former boss �" Ed Clark masterminded the assassination
of President John F. Kennedy.
Barr McClellan has written a second book, “Made in the USA: Corporate
Greed, Tax Laws, and the Exportation of America’s Future,” scheduled
for release in July.
Scott McClellan’s brother, Mark, 44, was a member of President Bush’s
council of economic advisers and was commissioner of the Food and Drug
Administration.
According to his White House biography, before joining the White House
staff, McClellan was the traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney
2000 presidential campaign. He began working as deputy communications
director for then-Gov. Bush in early 1999. Prior to joining the
governor's office, he served as chief of staff to a Texas state
senator, worked on grassroots outreach for lawsuit reform in Texas,
and managed three successful statewide campaigns.
When McClellan left the White House, the president said, “I thought he
handled his assignment with class, integrity. It's going to be hard to
replace Scott, but nevertheless he made the decision and I accepted
it. One of these days, he and I are going to be rocking in chairs in
Texas and talking about the good old days.”
McClellan said he still admires the man, even if it appears less
likely that he'll be invited to the Bush ranch in Crawford any time soon.
“I continue to have great affection for George W. Bush today,”
McClellan said. “He absolutely cares very passionately about what he
talks about, which is the freedom agenda and spreading democracy
throughout the Middle East. It’s a very idealistic and ambitious
vision, and that was really the driving motivation that pushed him
forward in Iraq �" this chance to, in his view, to really transform the
Middle East by making Iraq a linchpin for spreading democracy."
Vieira asked McClellan if he thinks the president will ever talk to
him again.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I certainly don’t expect it any time soon. I
know this is a tough book for many people to accept.”
This article shows that "righties" are finally starting to become aware of a problem that has been talked about for nearly 80 years:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9389
"In the past, the federal government has introduced moral hazard in the banking system through deposit insurance. Banks under-priced risk because of the federal guarantee that backed deposits. After banking crises in the 1980s and 1990s, deposit insurance was put on a sound basis and that source of moral hazard was mitigated. In its place, monetary policy has become a source of moral hazard. In acting to counter the economic effects of declining asset prices, the Federal Reserve has come to be viewed as underwriting risky investments. Policy pronouncements by senior Fed officials have reinforced that perception. These actions and pronouncements are mutually reinforcing and destructive to the operation of financial markets. The current financial crisis began in the subprime housing market and then spread throughout credit markets. The new Fed policy fueled the housing boom. Refusing to accept responsibility for the housing bubble, the Fed's recent actions will likely fuel a new asset bubble. The cumulative effects of recent monetary policy undermine the case for free markets."
One principle I believe in is that while people are entitled to their opinions, when debating with other people it is important to look first at the facts. Reporters used to report "facts". Facts are things like "So and so was arrested at the corner of Lamont and Driskoll after a fight broke out. There was a cut on John Does face afterward, and a bruise on So and So's face." Editorial content is when we start evaluating the information. A good reporter tries to limit editorial content. Modern Pseudo-Journalists all think of themselves as Editorialists. Because of that when we read reports, disguised as "objective" one has to deconstruct or analyze the facts and then look carefully at the editorial content. There is no getting away from POV, but sometimes the spin prevents the author of a reality from seeing the implications of his own reporting.
I'm glad that the Cato institute is finally addressing the "moral hazard" of bubbles and the developing mega-bubble that is about to collapse the dollar and ruin the majority of the middle class and lower upper class people who have made the mistake of trusting pundits such as the people working for the Cato Institute. The trouble is the analysis is so demagogued and spun as to have little useful analytical content.
The first problem with the above is that what they are talking about is a "financial bubble." Thinking of it as an "Asset Bubble" is supply side thinking. However, the issue is not the assets themselves it is the false valuation of those assets, which is "finance." We have a short term "supply surplus" of investment seeking assets, with no long term guarantee of a concurrent demand.
Second, the author starts out with a series of mis-statements:
"In the past, the federal government has introduced moral hazard in the banking system through deposit insurance."
This is a "mistatement" (to put it nicely) because moral hazard is why deposit insurance was introduced into the banking system in the first place. Moral hazard is the taking of innocent deposits from common folks by banks that mis-invested their money and predates the creation of the FDIC and involvement of the Federal Government. I would say the author is telling an outright lie but I think he's talking "temporally" and either doesn't know his history or doesn't care about actual the actual history of banking bubbles.
He should read Kevin Phillips. Starting with this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-phillips/the-destructive-rise-of-b_b_94351.html
Moral Hazard has been a regular and abiding feature of financial systems in general and United States Finances in particular during all times when banks have been a feature of the American landscape. Banking bubbles and collapses were a regular effect of moral hazard in investment bubbles and deflationary collapses long before the Federal Government tried to stop this phenomena with deposit insurance.
Banking has regularly been a way that savvy con-men (sometimes known as bankers) could convert money from more or less innocent investors to their own pockets and then get out of town leaving their colleagues to deal with angry depositors who had just lost their entire life savings to banks that had promised them 'stability' and 'trust.' The FDIC didn't introduce moral hazard, it tried to mitigate it.
The issue is not that the Federal Government tries to protect deposits, in the process somehow assuming responsibility for a pre-existing moral hazard, but that they don't force the source of the risk (investors) to bond or insure their risk, but instead pile the costs on consumers (small depositors), with the usual result that we have public costs and privatized benefits from regulatory failure.
The Feds current efforts are mostly reacting to increasingly risky efforts of investors and others to "game the system" -- but within the context of the game. The result is that the Feds approaches and proposed solutions are being driven by these same investors, their lobbyists, their assumptions, and in support of bankers rather than the banking system's victims. Part of the reason for this is that the Federal Reserve has never been a purely democratic institution responsible to the general welfare, but represents two sets of persons. On the top it is responsible to the Federal Government, but in essence it is itself a Banking institution. It serves two masters:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/pf/pdf/pf_1.pdf
The current situation got more risky largely because of de-regulation based on false or arrogant assumptions and because of "system capture" by money men sharing those functions and with perverse incentives. This same sort of "capture" by persons with conflicts of interest and thus perverse incentives has become a feature of almost all the Federal Government Agencies and bureaus right now resulting in massive "legal" corruption. The author does get this right:
"Financial folly has been a feature, however, of both highly regulated and largely unregulated financial systems."
This much is true. And so is this "The question is whether the central bank actively underwrites such folly."
The Federal reserve has the role of watching, preventing, and mitigating the effects of "such folly" as what is folly to a fat researcher is life or death to folks whose retirement, savings, or livelihood, depend on whether or not banks can be expected to store and pay interest or simply convert and steal their deposits. Asset bubbles are almost always tied to speculation and institutional gambling with "other people's money." He can call it "folly" all he wants but it amounts to white collar crime.
"We need not wait for all questions to be answered to put an end to the inflating, deflating, and reflating of asset bubbles."
What questions? Again he should be reading folks like Kevin Phillips instead of his fellows at Cato. There is nothing new about any of this "folly."
"Martin Wolf has reached the correct conclusion when he called for central banks to “pay more attention to asset prices in the future. It may be impossible to identify bubbles with confidence in advance. But central bankers will be expected to exercise their judgment, both before and after the fact.”
Martin Wolf is a false prophet. The Fed has been paying attention to "asset prices" -- what it hasn't been doing is watching carefully to ensure that those responsible for handling "other peoples money" are truly held responsible for the consequences of their decisions and watched carefully to make sure they aren't converting OPM to their own funds.
If this were truly an "Old testament Biblical Country" Mr Wolf and Company would be stoned. It is not that hard to identify a bubble before its collapse. In every case you have whole classes of people who will tell regulators and other critics that they don't know what they are talking about when they warn of what is happening and push for deregulation, which for them always means advocating trusting the "trustees" of other people money at the very moment when they are most able to cause mischief. Which is precisely what Wolf was doing before our author so confidently quoted him offering the same "solutions" to the mess we are about to enter that created the mess in the first place!
The result is that the costs are pushed onto depositors until depositors are better off stuffing their money into mattresses and the public is then expected to pick up the tab -- while meanwhile the people who gamed the system to make false profits and bad investments walk off with their "cut" unpunished except for one or two scape-goats. Such a system, which punishes the victims for the crimes of white collar felons is going to be unstable. Without forcing investment markets to bond, back up with assets, and insure their investments and link pay to investment houses to long term performance, this cycle is only going to continue to repeat.
Further reading:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj21n1/cj21n1-12.pdf
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj24n3/cj24n3-13.pdf
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/01/the_davos_dilem.html
I can understand how his ideology influences his thinking. After all the cure for "financial market misbehavior" is indeed in better markets, not totalitarian control of markets or deregulation of them. There is no invisible hand in financial markets because they almost always represent unstable markets (where instabilities propagate) where Gambling pays off for an ever shrinking few until there is no more free market. Eliminate the opportunities to gamble with OPM and you eliminate much of the instability. Markets become boring and less heroic. I don't know about you but that really sounds good to me.
Instead our author offers a "solution" which is very certain to kill our financial markets completely. He says:
"That change will move the Fed from the myth of monetary policy on autopilot and return the Fed to its old maxim of removing the punch bowl just when the fun begins."
What the author is saying is that the Fed should go back to its old policy of inducing recessions in order to "correct" markets that are getting too enthusiastic; by tightening money and putting the screws to money markets in order to "stop" inflation. This doesn't really stop people from engaging in speculation or gaming markets, it just punishes the general economy. It's not really a solution at all. However, once again he's half right because the next point is true:
"It will end a monetary policy that equates prosperity with a boom-and-bust economy and wreak financial mayhem on the public. It is
a policy that, if continued, will erode the case for free markets generally."
No there are simple things the Fed can do: One the Federal Government can pass laws restricting the use of OPM to speculate in financial markets; require higher capitalization of the futures markets:
1. Once again limit banks from engaging in risky behavior,
2. Hold CEOs and Money Managers more than legally accountable for risk directly and beyond Sarbanes-Oaxley through risk bonding and insurance requirements on their activities and forcing pay to be tied to the integrity of such bonds over the long-term.
3. Give Stock-holders back some of the power they've lost to oversee their own companies.
4. Force Banks, Utilities and similar companies back into being capitalized around "Mission" rather than in Pirate Mode.
5. Force companies to divest from investments that create conflicts of interest in their core missions.
6. Lower the Pirate flags from Multinationals.
7. Require borrowed money investments to be backed with real assets at a higher rate of capitalization.
All these things are solutions that Wolf, Cato and this author haven't got a clue about. Why? Because of their ideological lens.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9389
Full article:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp103.pdf
Speaking of "Naval Birshut Ha-Torah" -- "Scoundrel within the bounds of Torah." Which is similar to the Buddhist Idea of "parasites in the lion's boundary" or "law-eating monks"; a raid by the INS on a Kosher Slaughterhouse; http://www.forward.com/articles/13394/ went on this weekend. And it is hard to figure who the biggest scoundrels are; the Coyotes bringing in the illegal workers, the company that employed them in order to save money on labor costs, or the INS which has catch 22 laws selectively enforced; but certainly not the employees picked up in the dragnet. Oye Vey! I don't eat a lot of meat, but when I do eat meat, it is always Kosher.
What really irked me (no surprise but still irksome) is that they arrested the employees, but;
a: The company, which is "Glatt Kosher" is anything but Kosher in its labor practices. (What do you expect people to be consistent in their practicing religion? -- what an the world would be a paradise -- heaven forbid!)
And b: The INS arrested employees but hasn't fined the companies officers which employed them knowing they were illegal.
and c: the reaction of the community; "Oh my our prices might go up!"
For Jewish activists who advocate tying ethics standards to the requirements of kashrut, the latest incident at AgriProcessors is more fuel for the fire.
“For too long, we’ve ignored that production of kosher food has taken place in a world where we’re concerned about the ritual aspects of food preparation and not the ethical considerations,” said Rabbi Morris Allen, director of the Hechsher Tzedek Commission, which is affiliated with the Conservative movement.
Elections have consequences -- especially fraudulent ones:
Congress is finally starting to dig into the allegations surrounding the politically driven prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, which is a case that shows why Democrats (and progressive people of all stripes) can't afford to be sanguine about the massive corruption of the past 7 years, nor the abuses of civil liberties involved with that corruption.
http://judiciary.house.gov/Printshop.aspx?Section=720
http://kerry.senate.gov/cfm/record.cfm?id=294236
It turns out all the usual suspects were involved: Karl Rove allegedly drove both the prosecution and some of the business involved, Abramoff drove the pecuniary financial motives involving efforts to derail a State Lottery initiative in Alabama in favor of Indian Gambling interests. The current (Riley) Governor's chief of Staff was Michael Scanlon who was later convicted along with Abramoff. The Chief Prosecutor in the case was Leura Canary, who had a financial interest not only in locking up Siegelman, but in derailing rival gambling efforts that would hurt her husbands interests.
Sounds like something out of Dallas. Come to think of it, the Bush Administration makes J.R.Ewing look like a mensch. The Ramban had a term for people like Abramoff, who keep the letter of "the law" but are still scoundrels: "Naval Birshut Ha-Torah" -- "Scoundrel within the bounds of Torah." What a shame.....
http://judiciary.house.gov/Printshop.aspx?Section=720
Riley pleads "Alzheimer's:"
http://judiciary.house.gov/Media/PDFS/RileyAffidavit071023.pdf
The alliance for justice testifies however;
http://judiciary.house.gov/Media/PDFS/All4Jus071023.pdf
"erasing the line between politics and federal law enforcement and eroding public
confidence in a Department tasked to “ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.” Evidence has surfaced that politics infected not only hiring and firing but also federal prosecutions. Even more disturbingly, the allegations of misconduct surrounding selective and politically-motivated prosecutions do not stop at the Department of Justice. The prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman raises a host of disturbing questions about partisanship in the judicial system, particularly concerning the involvement of three sitting federal judges: Mark Fuller, William Pryor and Noel Hillman. The impropriety allegedly occurred in some instances both prior to and after their confirmation to the federal bench, and only a handful of the allegations are described below."
"Judge Mark Fuller was nominated by President George W. Bush to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama in 2002. Judge Fuller had formerly served as district attorney for Alabama’s 12th Judicial Circuit. When then-Governor Siegelman appointed Judge Fuller’s successor, Gary McAliley, Mr. McAliley launched an investigation into Judge Fuller’s accounting practices in the district attorney’s office. This investigation revealed evidence that Judge Fuller had undertaken salary spiking with the purpose of defrauding the retirement system of Alabama."
Naturally that didn't win Siegelman any friends in high places:
"Judge Fuller dismissed these allegations, and the entire investigation, as “politically motivated.” Judge Fuller then worked to defeat Governor Siegelman, a Democrat, in the next election, which Governor Siegelman lost in the closest gubernatorial election in Alabama state history. Shortly after his defeat, Mr. Siegelman was indicted in federal court."
And naturally:
"Judge Fuller was assigned the case, and he refused to recuse himself, despite motions by Mr. Siegelman’s lawyers to remove him from presiding over the case. Serious allegations have arisen that Judge Fuller conducted the trial in a manner favoring the prosecution. Whether or not accusations of actual misconduct by Judge Fuller during the trial are borne out, it is clear that hearing a case against the man Judge Fuller accused of conducting a politically motivated investigation against him undermined the appearance of impartiality required by the federal rules of judicial conduct."
Further reading:
http://www.harpers.org/subjects/AttorneysGeneralScandal2007
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/06/hbc-90000257
I went to an excellent play last night at the "Teatro De la luna". It's name is "Volvió una noche" and it was written by Eduardo Rovner. Anyone who is an adult and has a traditional style mother can probably relate to this play. Even if they don't speak any Spanish. The play runs a translation in English over the play, and it is fun to watch even if one is a gringo like me....
The play is about a son and his mother. The son is a Jewish "Pedicurist" (sort of like a Podiatrist but with training more like that of a Physician Assistant), and plays violin in a Tango Quartet. He's been dutifully visiting his dead mother for ten years, when he accidently lets slip that he's about to get married. This literally wakes the dead and his mother comes to visit and find out whats really going on.
The story also has a subplot about the Repression in Argentina. This subplot is conveyed extremely subtly in order to get around censors and prosecutors who would have removed any direct criticism and arrested the playright. The military is symbolized by a demented Angel who would crush any creativity and punish people for deviating from the norm.
Chris