The Commentariat -- September 3

I've posted an Open Thread on Off Times Square.

President Obama's Weekly Address:

     ... Here's the transcript. It's about jobs. Funny, no mention of how killing the new ozone standards will create lots of jobs for the healthcare industry. ...

... Obama the Ozone Liar. Brad Plumer of the Washington Post on the big double-cross behind Obama's directive to halt ozone standards. To make a long story shortish, the Administration played environmentalists the way the Boner plays Obama. The current standards in place are from 1997, & scientists agree that these standards are so low that people are dying from the resulting pollutants. The Bush Administration proposed stronger standards in 2008, but not strong enough for environmentalists who sued to force higher standards. Now for the Obama double-cross: the Obama EPA told the plaintiffs they agreed with them & would be issuing stronger standards by August 2010, so please hold back on the suit. Ha ha. The EPA slipped its deadline again and again, and now it's slipping it all the way to 2013 (when there might be a Perry Administration). The worst part -- had the Obama EPA not got environmentalists to drop their suit, the Bush standards, which were more rigid than the 1997 Clinton standards, would have been put in place, or -- if the plaintiffs had prevailed in their suit -- exceeded. So hack cough, piss me off. ...

... New York Times Editors: "President Obama’s decision not to proceed with stronger air-quality standards governing ozone is a setback for public health and the environment and a victory for industry and its Republican friends in Congress.... There is still no excuse for compromising on public health and allowing politics to trump science." ...

... Karen Garcia: "You're in the O-Zone.... Just hold on, try to breathe the ozone until 2013, and he'll look at reducing pollution levels then. After the campaign, after those same businesses [that lobbied against the new regs] have donated about a billion into his war chest. I guess Malia and Sasha don't have asthma." ...

... Keith Olbermann & Brian Beutler of TPM on President O-Zone:

     ... Here's Beutler's post on Obama's directive: "The development most likely means smog standards in many states will remain lower than they would have been if President George W. Bush's lax policy had been fully pursued." ...

... NEW. Paul Krugman: "... tighter ozone regulation would actually have created jobs: it would have forced firms to spend on upgrading or replacing equipment, helping to boost demand. Yes, it would have cost money — but that’s the point! And with corporations sitting on lots of idle cash, the money spent would not, to any significant extent, come at the expense of other investment.... So, a lousy decision all around. Are you surprised?"

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "... it took the Republican National Committee exactly 94 minutes to coin a new, demeaning title for Barack Obama: President Zero. In an e-mail to reporters, the committee took note of the worst jobs report in nearly a year, saying that there has been 'two and a half years of Obamanomics and nothing to show for it.'” ...

... Yeah, But: "The Conservative Recovery" Fizzles. Matt Yglesias: "... we had 17,000 thousand new private sector jobs in August, which were 100 percent offset by 17,000 lost jobs in the public sector.... This has been the trend all year. The public sector has been steadily shrinking. According to the conservative theory of the economy, when the public sector shrinks that should super-charge the private sector.... Conservatives complain about the results because the President is a Democrat.... But the policy result is what conservatives say they want." CW: as Paul Krugman & many other economists have written repeatedly, cutting government spending does not create jobs. Period. ...

** Ari Berman of Rolling Stone: "Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots.... In a systematic campaign orchestrated by the American Legislative Exchange Council – and funded in part by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who bankrolled the Tea Party – 38 states introduced legislation this year designed to impede voters at every step of the electoral process."

William Cohan, whom you may remember from the New York Times op-ed and business pages, is now at Bloomberg News. He writes that it's time to get rid of the corrupt SEC and start all over with a new regulatory agency free of conflict-of-interest. He presents some compelling evidence. ...

... Compelling evidence that Cohan got from this long piece by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, who has a singular ability to make financial stories interesting reading (not that his ethically-challenged subjects don't help): "For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG."

Brady Dennis, et al., of the Washington Post: "Federal regulators launched a broad legal assault on big banks Friday, claiming they sold nearly $200 billion in fraudulent mortgage investments to housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that led to massive losses during the financial crisis. The suits, brought by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, name 17 domestic and foreign banks as defendants." The article reports some of the implications of the suits.

We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen. -- Navy SEAL ...

... Dana Priest & William Arkin of the Washington Post: "... the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC..., has grown from a rarely used hostage rescue team into America’s secret army. When members of this elite force killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in May, JSOC leaders celebrated not just the success of the mission but also how few people knew their command, based in Fayetteville, N.C., even existed. This article, adapted from a chapter of the newly released 'Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State,' by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, chronicles JSOC’s spectacular rise, much of which has not been publicly disclosed before. Two presidents and three secretaries of defense routinely have asked JSOC to mount intelligence-gathering missions and lethal raids, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in countries with which the United States was not at war, including Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, the Philippines, Nigeria and Syria."

Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "... more than 12,000 Iraqis have been killed in at least 1,000 suicide attacks since the American-led invasion," their usage largely a tactic of sectarian warfare.

Right Wing World

The level of ignorance among some of the Republican presidential candidates about monetary policy is stunning. Mr. Perry has been taken to task for his choice of language, but not for the substance of his remarks, which is outrageous. -- Economics Prof. Mark Gertler ...

It must be exciting to accuse him of things he hasn’t done. -- Conservative Econ. Prof. Robert Hall

... James Stewart of the New York Times: "... our political leaders and those who aspire to replace them should be debating the fiscal policies that will put Americans to work in the short term and reduce the deficit in the long term — not bashing the Fed.... Many voters seem determined to find a scapegoat for the financial crisis and its aftermath, and some candidates are only too willing to pander by serving up [Fed Chair Ben] Bernanke." CW Reminder: Bernanke is a Republican.

The Perry Oeuvre. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "... blunt assertions ... in two books [Texas Gov. Rick] Perry wrote ... have drawn new scrutiny now that Mr. Perry, a Republican, is running for president." CW: this article is kind of a fun read because it lists some of Perry's greatest hits and demonstrates anew what a dangerous whacko he is.

News Ledes

New York Times: "In a strong rebuke to the Irish government, the Vatican said Saturday that it had never discouraged Irish bishops from reporting the sexual abuse of minors to the police and dismissed claims that it had undermined efforts to investigate abuse as 'unfounded.' The statement was the latest salvo in a tense diplomatic standoff since the Irish government released a report in July accusing the Vatican of encouraging bishops to ignore guidelines requiring them to report abuse cases to civil authorities." Irish Times story here. The text of the Vatican statement is here (pdf).

The Hill: "Public health advocates slammed the White House on Friday for abandoning tougher ozone regulations, and vowed to fight the Obama administration in court. The American Lung Association called the decision 'outrageous' and said it would 'severely jeopardize public health.' The association said it would restart litigation that had been put on hold following the administration's promises to strengthen standards set under then-President George W. Bush.... The EPA has estimated that the new standards could have prevented 12,000 premature deaths and 58,000 asthma attacks a year." (Emphasis added.)

Times-Picayune: "Tropical Storm Lee continues its slow, 2 mph drift onto the southeastern Louisiana coastline Saturday morning, with its ill-defined center expected to cross the coast near Morgan City sometime this afternoon, bringing maximum sustained winds of 65 mph. More than 5 inches of rain had fallen in some parts of the New Orleans area overnight, and forecasters said Lee remained a major flooding threat, predicting a minimum 15 inches of rain will fall over much of the New Orleans area before the storm makes its exit on Tuesday. It's likely some locations could receive 20 inches of rain or more." The Weather Channel report here, with links to related content.

New York Times: "Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service — most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country’s reputation for torture."