;)
Remainders
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Stuff related to the economy, some of it actually useful, is further down the page.
... Here's Alan Simpson's e-mail to the Older Women's League (OWL), courtesy of Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake. CW: you really should read it if you want to know the mindset of the guy who's about to cut the most important social legislation of the last century. ...
** Richard Just of The New Republic writes a compelling argument that President Obama's absurdly narrow & "disgraceful" stance on gay marriage echoes Woodrow Wilson's deplorable hands-off approach to women's suffrage & racial equality: "... like Wilson, Obama is running out of time to stay ahead of history."
Todd Purdum, writing in Vanity Fair, on a day in the life of the President. "... the modern presidency — Barack Obama’s presidency — has become a job of such gargantuan size, speed, and complexity as to be all but unrecognizable to most of the previous chief executives."
In Esquire, John Richardson writes a devastating profile of Newt Gingrich. He interviews Gingrich & his former wife Marianne.
** Frank Rich, writing for The New York Review of Books, reviews Jonathan Alter's The Promise: President Obama, Year One. Rich's essay, titled "Why Has He Fallen Short?" is a brilliant analysis of the Obama presidency & an object lesson in how to write political commentary. Rich's command of the facts & their implications, & of the language are breathtaking.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not a talented speaker, but his speech in support of a mosque to be built in downtown Manhattan is one for the history books. The text of the speech is here.
The Gentleman from New York. Here's Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner's fabulous outburst against Republicans who opposed a bill to give long-term medical benefits to 9/11 first responders:
WikiLeaks! New York Times reporters: "Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports [which WikiLeaks] made public Sunday. The documents ... suggest that Pakistan ... allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the ...." ...
... Nick Davies & David Leigh of The Guardian: "A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency. The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history."
... Here are some of the documents WikiLeaks released. ...
Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "WikiLeaks.org, the online organization that posted tens of thousands of classified military field reports about the Afghan war on Sunday, says its goal in disclosing secret documents is to reveal 'unethical behavior' by governments and corporations." CW: needless to say, the WikiLeaks.org site is swamped. So is their dedicated site for this document dump.
Michael Tomasky of The Guardian: after House Minority Leader John Boehner complained the Democrats "are snuffing out the America that I grew up in," Tomasky looked at that America: the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans was 90%, union membership was 4 times as high as it is today, under GOP leadership the feds implemented the largest public works project in American history. Read the citation from Ike, & you'll see what's happened to the Republican party.
We don't go to school much in Fort Myers. The Brookings Institution has created interactive maps rating metropolitan areas, cities & states by educational levels of their residents. The Washington, D.C. area has the highest level in the nation, Bakersfield, California the lowest. The Cape Coral-Fort Myers area ranks a dismal 81st of 100. Via the Huffington Post. Check out your area.
Robert Barnes' piece in the Washington Post on Justice Sonia Sotomayor's first year on the Supreme Court includes this terrific graph:
She danced at the White House to a song written in her honor. She arrived in her parents' homeland of Puerto Rico to a heroine's welcome and to find T-shirts and coffee mugs bearing her likeness and the words 'wise Latina.' The Bronx public housing project where she grew up is now the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses. When the New York Yankees visited the White House after winning the World Series, team officials made a detour to lug the trophy to her chambers.
New York Times: Judge Jay Bybee, "a former Bush Justice Department official who approved brutal by the , has told Congress that he never authorized several other rough tactics reportedly inflicted on terrorism suspects — including prolonged shackling to a ceiling and repeated beatings.... But Judge Bybee strongly defended the legal advice he did provide to the C.I.A. in 2002 that , wall slamming and other methods used by C.I.A. were lawful."
Christopher Edley, dean of Berkeley's law school, in a New York Times op-ed, suggests a sort of stimulus on the cheap -- allowing states to borrow from the federal government. Edley explains how the plan would work & why it would stimulate the economy.
New York Times: "The amount of plutonium buried at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State is nearly three times what the federal government previously reported, a new analysis indicates, suggesting that a cleanup to protect future generations will be far more challenging than planners had assumed."
Obama's Well. Neil King, Jr., & Keith Johnson of the Wall Street Journal: After the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals "found that the government was unprepared for a major spill at sea," the Obama DOJ urged the Court to reconsider, which it did, allowing "drilling in the Gulf to proceed—including on BP PLC's now-infamous Macondo well.... In his presidential campaign, President Obama criticized the Bush administration for being too soft on the oil industry.... But, once in office, President Obama ended up backing offshore drilling..., even as his administration's own scientists and Democratic lawmakers warned about its risks." Thanks to John N. for the link.
Prof. Andrew Bacevich in a Washington Post op-ed: the military's contempt for civilian leadership is the inevitable result of endless war, a non-volunteer military & politicized military leaders. Gen. David Petraeus, "a highly-skilled political operator," is not going to improve a situation that is already pandemic among the permanent soldier class. NOTE: CORRECTED LINK (Thanks to reader Roy B.).
"BP's Next Disaster." Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone: the Obama Administration continues to approve Big Oil's plans to drill in Arctic waters -- and in the Gulf. Here's a link to Dickinson's related article, "The Spill, The Scandal & the President," which we linked a few weeks ago.
Al Franken Takes on the Roberts Court. Here's video of Franken's speech to the American Constitution Society. Franken begins speaking about 5 min. in. (If the video doesn't work, the audio does.) Franken, in his own way, is as good as David Souter at explaining Constitutional judging, and Franken is a lot funnier than Souter, whom he cites. Franken is not a lawyer.
** Henry Fountain of the New York Times: "Internal documents, including an e-mail message calling the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon a 'nightmare,' show a pattern of risky choices made to save time and money in the weeks before the disastrous April 20 blowout, according to a letter sent to the company by the leaders of a House committee on Monday.... Taken together, the documents offer the strongest case yet that BP bears much of the responsibility for the catastrophic explosion. You can read the House committee's letter & relevant documents here. ...
... ** Tom Hamburger & Kim Geiger of the Chicago Tribune, via the Los Angeles Times: "The Deepwater Horizon oil rig...was built in South Korea. It was operated by a Swiss company under contract to a British oil firm. Primary responsibility for safety and other inspections rested not with the U.S. government but with the Republic of the Marshall Islands — a tiny, impoverished nation in the Pacific Ocean. And the Marshall Islands...outsourced many of its responsibilities to private companies." CW: what could possibly be wrong with that?
In a New York Times blogpost, philosopher J. M. Bernstein describes the Tea Party movement as a product of nihilistic or Hegelian rage, and, well, delusional. Pretty interesting, and I learned a new word: autochthonous: originating where found; indigenous. And here's an audio pronunciation guide.
** Bob Herbert writes the best, most concise essay on why the U.S. should end the war in Afghanistan now to appear in the MSM.
To learn ALL ABOUT the federal government's mismanagement or non-management of oil & gas companies & the Obama Administration's culpability in this (& future) disasters, read Tim Dickinson's lo-o-o-ng & informative piece in Rolling Stone. Change you can believe in? --
Employees describe being in Interior – not just MMS, but the other agencies – as the third Bush term. They're working for the same managers who are implementing the same policies. Why would you expect a different result? -- Jeff Ruch, Director, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
June 6, 2010: Your Tax Dollars at Work. First, Dexter Filkins of the New York Times: wrote this story about U.S. aid making illiterate Afghan warlords rich & powerful....
... Now, he writes this story: "... officials suspect that at least some of these security companies — many of which have ties to top Afghan officials — are using American money to bribe the Taliban. The officials suspect that the security companies may also engage in fake fighting to increase the sense of risk on the roads, and that they may sometimes stage attacks against competitors." ...
... Your Tax Dollars at Work. Dan Eggen of the Washington Post: "New federally subsidized bonds that have proven wildly popular in helping cash-strapped state and local governments fund roads, schools and other construction projects also offer a windfall to a less obvious beneficiary: Wall Street banks." ...
... Your Tax Dollars at Work. CW: you have to wonder how much wingers would continue to love Gitmo if they noticed that $500MM of their tax dollars had gone into building stuff like a Starbucks, a Taco Bell & "artificial-turf football and baseball fields that professional players would envy, surrounded by a cluster of facilities, including a running track, a skate park, an outdoor roller hockey rink and batting cages," as Scott Higham & Peter Finn of the Washington Post report. ...
... CW: are your sharpening that pitchfork yet?
Dana Milbank on the House Republicans Class of '94: "In his downfall, [Mark] Souder appears likely to join classmates Mark Foley (lewd text messages to House pages), Mark Sanford (hiking the proverbial Appalachian Trail with his Argentine mistress) and John Ensign (whose parents paid the family of his ex-mistress $96,000) in the sex-scandal hall of fame. Another of their classmates, Bob Ney, did prison time for his role in the Jack Abramoff scandal.... No fewer than 15 of the 73 elected in the landslide that year have entertained the nation with flaps that include messy divorces and a suspicious car accident."
Your Tax Dollars Wasted on "Anti-Terrorism" Toys. Ken Dilanian of the Chicago Tribune: "A high-tech 'virtual fence' to catch illegal border crossers. Next-generation nuclear detectors at ports. Tamper-proof driver's licenses in every state. These were signature Bush administration initiatives to protect the country against terrorism and secure its borders. All have been proven to be flops, according to government and outside experts, and expensive ones at that."
The New York Times posts "Kagan's Notable Statements & Writings." It's short.
Time: "In accordance with the law, President Obama disclosed three gifts today in his official financial disclosure form for fiscal year 2009": the Nobel medal, the Nobel prize money (which the Obamas have given to charity) & Bo. Here's the pdf of the President's disclosure form.
Dana Milbank: Southern Republicans who prolaim that big federal government "is the problem" are promising their states help from the big ol' federal government. And here's something those hypocrites should remember:
... people in states that voted Republican were by far the biggest beneficiaries of federal spending. In states that voted strongly Republican, people received an average of $1.50 back from the federal government for every dollar they paid in federal taxes. In moderately Republican states, the amount was $1.19. In moderately Democratic states, people received on average of 99 cents in federal funds for each dollar they paid in taxes. In strongly Democratic states, people got back just 86 cents on the tax dollar. ...
Fuck the Constitution. Screw the Supreme Court. Time: Sen. John McCain & Rep. Peter King, Republicans both, warn against Mirandizing Times Square suspect Faisal Shahzad. ...
... CNN: Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio agrees with John & Peter & adds, "It all depends on how they are going to try him." (CW: well, for one thing, you genius, since Shahzad is a U.S. citizen, they going to try him in civilian court.)
... Update: Sorry, John, Peter & Marco, you stupid, grandstanding windbags, the Washington Post reports that Shadzad kept talking AFTER he was Mirandized:
Shahzad was initially questioned under a public safety exception to the Miranda rule and was cooperative, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said at the news conference. He said Shahzad was later read his Miranda rights and 'continued talking.'
Who Fingered Eliot Spitzer? The common wisdom has been that it was one of Spitzer's many political enemies. Now Brendan Lyons of the Albany Times-Union appears to have solved the mystery. It was -- Eliot Spitzer in the Cheque Drawing Room. Pretty fascinating. And a good example of why you should support your hometown newspaper.
Prof. John Tures checks to see if the Confederacy was really about states' rights as the Fake History buffs claim. He reviewed the declarations of secession for the four states he could locate: South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi & Texas:
The word 'slave' appears 82 times in these four state declarations. The states even refer to themselves as 'Slave-Holding States.' ... The words...'states’ rights'... do not appear in any of these four secession declarations. The word 'rights' appears 14 times and 'right' appears 32 times, but many of these references involve 'the right to own slaves.'”
New York Times: Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the CIA’s clandestine service, ordered the destruction of tapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two detainees. CIA Director Porter Goss signed off on the destruction of the tapes after the fact, & White House Counsel Harriet Miers was "livid" that the White House was not notified until after the fact. The DOJ has been investigating the matter for two years.
CW: if you're interested in language, linguist John McWhorter, writing in The New Republic, analyzes Palinspeak. Ben Smith calls McWhorter "a center-right linguist," whatever that is (not-Chomsky?).
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: with Justice John Paul Stevens -- the only Protestant Christian on the Supreme Court -- leaving the bench, scholars & the Justices themselves claim religious affiliation doesn't matter anymore. ...
... Six former clerks of Justice John Paul Stevens share their memories of him. CW: my favorite -- Jeffrey Fisher's....
... Adam Liptak of the New York Times: Justice "may be the last justice from a time when ability and independence, rather than perceived ideology, were viewed as the crucial qualifications for a seat on the court. He was nominated by President in 1975, who said all he wanted was 'the finest legal mind I could find.'” ...
... Michael Doyle of McClatchy: Stevens' retirement marks the end of an American era....
... The Quality of Empathy Is Not Strained. Dahlia Lithwick & Sonja West in Slate on John Paul Stevens' ability to see the world as others see it....
... Adam Liptak of the New York Times interviews Justice John Paul Stevens....
... AND Robert Barnes of the Washington Post profiles Justice Stevens....
... AND here's Jeff Toobin's New Yorker report on Justice Stevens.
Family Values. Old news sometimes bears repeating. Naomi Cahn & June Carbone of the Christian Science Monitor: "In the United States, states that emphasize abstinence-only education, limit public subsidies of contraception, restrict access to abortion – and, yes, oppose gay marriage – have higher teen birth and divorce rates." ...
... CW: Another Myth-Buster that isn't news but I just thought you oughta know. Newsweek: "While immigrants are blamed for dragging down American wages and stealing jobs..., economist Giovanni Peri...finds that foreign workers have boosted the economy, jacking up average income without crowding out American laborers."
AP: "Justice Department lawyers showed ''poor judgment'' but did not commit professional misconduct when they authorized CIA interrogators to use waterboarding and other harsh tactics at the height of the U.S. war on terrorism, an internal review released Friday found." And here's the New York Times report on the Justice Department's letting the torture memo writers Yoo & Bybee off the hook, a story that came out of last night's docudump. Here's the Washington Post's version. The report is here (pdf)....
CW: if you want your wacky legal questions answered, Justice Scalia is up for it. Bad news for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who probably thinks Scalia is the greatest justice ever: Scalia gives a big thumbs-down to secession. Thanks to Ben Smith of Politico for the link....
Here's a stunning DailyKos poll of self-identified Republicans, a significant percentage of whom are totally out of touch with reality.
A Congressional Quarterly study finds that "In his first year in office, President Obama did better even than legendary arm-twister Lyndon Johnson in winning congressional votes on issues where he took a position."
In a New York Times op-ed, attorney Thomas Geoghegan makes the case that the Senate filibuster is unconstitutional. "The founders...were dead set against supermajorities...."
Andy Worthington has the definitive list of Guantanamo prisoners: (Part 1, with links to Parts 2, 3 & 4):
... George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld established a prison in which the overwhelming majority of those held — at least 93 percent of the 779 men and boys imprisoned in total — were either completely innocent people, seized as a result of dubious intelligence or sold for bounty payments, or Taliban foot soldiers, recruited to fight an inter-Muslim civil war that began long before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001....
-- Andy Worthington
"Suffering Is Redemptive." David Dayan of Firedoglake on the U.S. Roman Catholic Bishops' new directive "that would ban any Catholic hospital, nursing home or hospice program from removing feeding tubes or ending palliative procedures of any kind, even when the individual has an advance directive to guide their end-of-life care."
Death by Public Defender. Diane Jennings in the Dallas Morning News: a study by Dr. Scott Phillips found that in Harris County (Houston), Texas, "None of those [defendants] who hired [an attorney] ever got sentenced to death." You can read Prof. Phillips' stunning report here (pdf).
Dick Dementia. The AP adds it up: in his DOJ, FBI interview on the Valerie Plame leak, then Veep Dick Cheney answered "I can't recall" or some variation thereof seventy-two (72) (LXXII) times. CW: see "Remainders" at the bottom of this column for the backstory....
... Clueless. AP: Dick Cheney told FBI & DOJ investigators, including U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, that he had no idea who leaked Valerie Plame's identity. You can view the documents, which CREW obtained as a result of an FOIA suit, on this page of CREW's website.
AP: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who hasn't asked a lawyer a question during oral presentations in nearly 4 years, says other Justices should shut up & quit "badgering attorneys." He says -- get this -- he already knows how he's going to rule before the argument phase since he's read the briefs, so he "refuses to participate" in oral arguments. CW: why show up at all?
DADT, Girl. So the military are not just homophobes; they're misogynists, too. CNN reports that "Women were dismissed from the military for being gay at a [much] greater rate than men last year, according to new statistics obtained by a California research group."
Ceci Connolly of the Washington Post: the U.S. trails other industrialized nations & has been falling further behind over the past decades in preventing "preventable deaths"; the U.S. ranks near the bottom on preventing "premature deaths caused by illnesses such as diabetes, epilepsy, stroke, influenza, ulcers and pneumonia."
Garry Wills in the New York Review of Books: Obama takes up where Bush left off; yet another imperial presidency cloaked in secrecy, crime coverups, "extraordinary renditions," signing statements & all the really bad stuff Americans thought they had voted out.
Reuters: Harvard Med School researchers say that nearly 45,000 people die in the U.S. every year largely because they lack health insurance, more than die because of drunk driving & homicide combined; adults under age 64 without health insurance have a 40% higher risk of death than those with coverage.
Here is the declassified, redacted CIA inspector general report (pdf), courtesy of the Washngton Post. NBC News: the newly declassified CIA report says interrogators threatened to kill the children of 9/11 suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Another interrogator told another suspect his mother would be sexually assaulted in front of him. This New York Times story on Eric Holder's appointment of a special prosecutor relates to stories (a) through (e) below, for starters. Eric Holder's statement on the torture review. Wall Street Journal: the report faults the CIA for failing to establish safeguards against abuse.
Jeff Sharlet writes the cover story for Harpers, the scariest story I have read in a long time, about the Christian fundamentalist crusade to take over the U.S. military, a movement that apparently has the backing of Gen. David Petraeus, National Security Advisor Jack Jones & Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and the tacit approval of President Obama....
White Trash Populism -- an American Tradition. One of Andrew Sullivan's readers explains who the teabaggers are; a very thoughtful, realistic & discouraging essay.
Apocalypse 2003 -- the Prophet Ezekiel Speaks to George Bush. James Haught of the Council for Secular Humanism reports that then-President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that it was necessary to invade Iraq "to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse." Chirac says Bush told him,
Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.
Under the FOIA, the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research institute, obtained 20 FBI interviews of Saddam Hussein, one of which is completely redacted. You can read them here. Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post hits the highlights, including Saddam's claim that he pretended to have WMDs to bolster his position against Iran.
New York Times: the National Archives has released 154 hours of audio tapes and tens of thousands of document pages from the Nixon administration. You can navigate to the tapes at this Nixon Presidential Library site. They also have a small sampling of the documents online. The rest are available at the Library in Yorba Linda, California, or College Park, Maryland (as indicated for each collection).
Glenn Greenwald writes a masterful piece on right-wing tribalism that has broader applications. CW: tribalism & an inability to receive & adapt to new information are the two primary pathologies of the right & two of the main causes for all of the world's ills.
CW: Matt Taibbi speaks for me: "Being Anti-Torture Doesn't Make You Pro-Terrorist." By way of explanation, here's part of correspondence I got from a well-known center-right columnist. I am withholding his name because I think some day he'll be embarrassed about being an apologist for torturers and an all-around asshole:
I hope that if and when that comes, people like you will have a little time to reflect on your odd allocation of outrage as between those who went to extremes to defend the country and those who are trying to murder you.... I will waste no more time reading your drivel.
Susan Thistlethwaithe, in the Washington Post: "The more often you go to church, the more you approve of torture." Thistlethwaithe says some conservative Christians have devised a faulty theological foundation favoring torture.
The New York Times has a fabulous slideshow of photos by Damon Winter who just won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his work capturing the Obama campaign.
McClatchy News: the CIA's inspector general reported in 2004 that there was no conclusive proof harsh interrogation techniques helped stop any "specific imminent attacks," which undercuts claims to the contrary from Dick Cheney & other Bush Administration officials.
Washington Post: the military agency that provides advice on interrogation techniques told top Pentagon lawyer William Haynes in 2002 that imposing extreme duress on subjects constituted torture & that it produced "unreliable information."
Philip Zelikow, counsellor to the Bush State Department, director of the 9/11 commission & now a history professor, teaches a lesson on why "enhanced" interrogation methods are not in our national interest. With his unique insider perspective, Zelikow provides a powerful rebuttal to the Cheney-Rumsfeld torture advocacy.
Ali Soufan in the New York Times. Read this. A former FBI agent on how we got into the torture business.
Philip Zelikow, in Foreign Policy. Zelikow, an attorney inside the Bush State Department, pushed back against the torture memos with one of his own that found fault with the legal "reasoning." Zelikow of course did not prevail, and, "The White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo."
"A Perfect Storm of Ignorance & Enthusiasm": New York Times: top officials opt for torture without knowing anything about it.
New York Times: A newly declassified Senate report provides the most detailed evidence yet that the military’s use of torture harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects "was approved at high levels of the Bush administration." Links to report pdf. Wall Street Journal story here. the Journal story includes a John Yoo sidebar in which he argues that the presidency was created to authorize torture.
Washington Post story here: the CIA was preparing to torture harshly interrogate enemies even before they had captured their first high-level suspect & long before they had legal approval.
McClatchy: the Senate report reveals that Bush administration officials put "relentless pressure" on interrogators to use harsh interrogation methods in part to elicit evidence of an Al Qaida-Iraq connection.
Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books on "the Red Cross Torture Report -- What It Means." "When it comes to torture, it is not what we did but what we are doing." Here's the report, which is awful reading (pdf).
Washington Times: Crown Publishers will abridge President Obama's Dreams from My Father for middle-school-aged children. (Don't mind the stupid, breathless tone of the article, whose author tries -- and fails -- to find an ethical lapse here.)
Update: odds are, Crown will edit out this:
In case you're wondering, that is Barack Obama on the audio. Get the backstory here in an article titled, "Barack Obama is tired of your motherfucking shit."
Fabulous First Ladies (&/or their Fotographers) Think Alike:
This was Mrs. Kennedy's first official White House photo.
Economic Stuff:
AP: "A report released July 18 by [Neil Barofsky,] the special inspector general for the government's bailout program," found that "the Treasury Department failed to consider the economic fallout when it told General Motors and Chrysler to quickly shutter many dealerships as part of government-led bankruptcies." NEW: Here's a pdf of the SIGTARP audit.
** New York Times: "regulators ignored recommendations from their own advisers to force the banks to accept losses on their A.I.G. deals and instead paid the banks in full for the contracts. That decision, say critics of the A.I.G. bailout, has cost taxpayers billions of extra dollars in payments to the banks. It also contrasts with the hard line the White House took in 2008 when it forced ’s lenders to take losses when the government bailed out the auto giant." CW: now will you fire Geithner, Mr. O?
Washington Post: "A year-long Senate probe...concluded that the OTS [Office of Thrift Management] had identified a pattern of errors, poor risk management and even fraud at Washington Mutual. Yet it took no action to stop the bank from dumping toxic mortgages into the financial system.... The OTS was a 'watchdog with no bite' that failed to keep an arm's-length relationship with the bank it regulated, said Carl M. Levin."
The President & First Lady & the Vice President & Dr. Biden have released their 2009 tax returns. You can link to PDFs of their returns here. The New York Times has a list of the First Family's charitable donations.
AP: NEARLY HALF OF U.S. HOUSEHOLDS WILL PAY NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX FOR 2009.
Robert Frank of the Wall Street Journal (March 2010): the economic recovery is well under way -- for the wealthy. Number of millionaires soars.
ABC News: "The Obama administration's $787 billion stimulus bill created up to 2.1 million jobs during the final three months of last year, according to a new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office."
AP: the SEC released its full inspector general's report on how the agency botched investigations of Bernard Madoff for nearlly two decades. CW: here's the full report (pdf) from the SEC site.
Washington Post: a scathing report issued by SEC Inspector General David Kotz indicates the agency repeatedly failed to heed warnings that Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme. New York Times story here. The Times has the text of the summary report (pdf); the full report will be released within the week.
Reporter David Leonhardt of the New York Times writes a largely positive article about the impact of the Recovery Act a/k/a the stimulus bill. And so does Vice President Joe Biden (pdf). Update: Alec MacGillis of the Washington Post reports. Louise Radnofsky of the Wall Street Journal: the bulk of the stimulus hasn't been spent yet.
New York Times: "President Obama’s proposed budget would bring this year’s deficit to nearly $1.6 trillion, but help lower annual deficits over the next decade, according to analysts. More on the budget from the Washington Post. You can read the full budget here (pdf's).
Bloomberg: e-mails show that the New York Fed, then led by Tim Geithner, told AIG to withhold details from the public about its payments to banks. Geithner or his staff crossed out language proposed by AIG which revealed they were paying banks like Goldman Sachs 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm.
Thank You, George W. Bush. Washington Post: "The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation's growth."
Thank You, Congress (& Your Banker Buddies, too). Robin Sidel of the Wall Street Journal: "The nation's banks will be bombarding customers with new fees and products in 2010 as they try to replace more than $50 billion in revenue wiped out by new rules that clamp down on certain business practices."
Christmas Eve News Dump. Washington Post: the Obama Administration pledged yesterday to provide unlimited financial assistance to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at the same time Fannie & Freddie "disclosed they had received approval from their federal regulator to pay $42 million in Wall Street-style compensation packages to 12 top executives for 2009."
Merry Christmas, Fat Cats. Washington Post: the government (whoever that is) announced yesterday that the two top executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, company which have already received $121 billion in bailouts, "could be paid up to $6 million each for their services this year. In total, the top 12 executives at the two firms are in line to receive up to $42 million in 2009 alone."
University of Michigan study: "...banks with connections to members of congressional finance committees and banks whose executives served on Federal Reserve boards were more likely to receive funds" from the TARP" & "that TARP investment amounts were positively related to banks' political contributions and lobbying expenditures, and that, overall, the effect of political influence was strongest for poorly performing banks."
Brady Dennis of the Washington Post: a report to Congress issued by TARP inspector general Neil Barofsky says that while president of the New York Fed, Tim Geithner gave 100 cents on the dollar to AIG's creditors, some of the world's largest financial firms (CW: & Tim's best buddies) while letting taxpayer-funded bailouts swallow the company's losses. See also David Goldman's CNN Money report. CW note: the banks were paying Geithner's salary at the time he "negotiated" with them. Here's the report itself (pdf), courtesy of the New York Times....
Silla Brush of The Hill on TARP watchdog Neil Barofsky's report, which has more harsh criticism for the Treasury Department's handling of TARP funds. And more from USA Today. Here's the link to the report (pdf).
I Always Rely on the Wisdom of Strangers. At a Midtown bar, Calvin Trillin meets a man who explains why the financial system collapsed; CW: Trillin can't find any flaws in the theory, & neither can I.
"A Failure of Management." Daniel Wagner of the AP: Neil Barofsky, the TARP watchdog, told the House Oversight Committee...that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is "ultimately responsible" for regulators' failure to rein in massive bonus payments at AIG, noting that Geithner's subordinates at the New York Fed were aware of the $1.75 billion in AIG bonus in November 2008, AFTER the September 2008 bailout, & Geithner did nothing to stop them.
The Congressional Budget Office reports that the gap between the nation's rich & poor is the highest since they've been keeping records, & part of the cause is Bush Administration tax policy (surprise!).