Grave Error

It’s like a drug. I keep promising to quit, and then I go ahead and write almost exclusively about politics. But if you have noticed, I have been fairly silent over the past few weeks, and one of the main reasons is that I am simply exhausted by the total lack of seriousness and intellectual rigor in our political dialogue.

From bogus and doctored outrage on things like racism, the environment, socialism, and the urgency of immigration reform (no one has yet to articulate that there actually is an immigration problem), I have grown less interested in weighing in. We elect a change president who turns around and does everything possible to maintain the corporate and political status quos: with each celebrated/hated (watered down) reform pushed by the White House, the regulated industry in question has seen its share prices skyrocket; and with each opportunity for transparency and the rule of law and with the Nobel Peace Prize in his belt, the President repeatedly argues in court for and puts into practice more expansive and less transparent executive powers and has bloated the military budget to historic records. Not to mention the ever increasing dependency on non-uniformed military contractors and the arguably illegal use of the CIA as a paramilitary force in Afghanistan and Pakistan (if not also elsewhere) to take care of business.

And then you turn on any serious news outlet and listen to the serious commentators (like the serious and moderate sounding David Brooks) with their delusional punditry and we are told that “the people are very suspicious of the increase in spending and the increase in the role of government”. Not because we have spent the last nine years building a radically clandestine, billion dollar/year shadow government, but because of Obama’s weak health care and tepid banking reforms? It is always the deficit that keeps us from spending on the people, but there is no shortage of resources to fight interminable and unwinnable wars. Next stop Iran. It all borders on the psychotic. I used to enjoy watching This Week and listening to Left, Right and Center, but now I dread the mere anticipation of how they are going to fabricate the irrelevant and skim past the real issues. For example, is it any shock none of them even alluded to last week’s story on “Top Secret America“? Of course not.

It is almost as if the more important the story, the less likely it will be discussed with any scrutiny. As NYU professor Jay Rosen writes in relation to the Post exposé and the Wikileaks Afghanistan leak,

I’ve been trying to write about this observation for a while, but haven’t found the means to express it. So I am just going to state it, in what I admit is speculative form. Here’s what I said on Twitter Sunday: “We tend to think: big revelations mean big reactions. But if the story is too big and crashes too many illusions, the exact opposite occurs.” My fear is that this will happen with the Afghanistan logs. Reaction will be unbearably lighter than we have a right to expect— not because the story isn’t sensational or troubling enough, but because it’s too troubling, a mess we cannot fix and therefore prefer to forget.

Last week, it was the Washington Post’s big series, Top Secret America, two years in the making. It reported on the massive security shadowland that has arisen since 09/11. The Post basically showed that there is no accountability, no knowledge at the center of what the system as a whole is doing, and too much “product” to make intelligent use of. We’re wasting billions upon billions of dollars on an intelligence system that does not work. It’s an explosive finding but the explosive reactions haven’t followed, not because the series didn’t do its job, but rather: the job of fixing what is broken would break the system responsible for such fixes.

The mental model on which most investigative journalism is based states that explosive revelations lead to public outcry; elites get the message and reform the system. But what if elites believe that reform is impossible because the problems are too big, the sacrifices too great, the public too distractible? What if cognitive dissonance has been insufficiently accounted for in our theories of how great journalism works… and often fails to work?

So let’s leave politics there. At least for a while. Yes, I may still write about a few topics that may be arguably “political”, but I am going to give the pundits and presidents and war-mongers a rest. Let’s call it a summer vacation. On the wagon.

I have pretty much had it with out political discourse. After eight years of policies where we did just about everything wrong, leaving the country in ridiculous shambles, two futile wars, and bending over the corporate and military complex, it is embarrassing to witness how the 2008 movement for change has dissipated completely and been replaced by a compromising president who allows 2008’s losers set the tone. How can a Republican who supported the Bush tax cuts or the wars or deregulation be given airtime to preach about reducing the size of government? How can President Obama be criticized for being anti-business when each time he passes his faux regulations, the regulated industry in questions gets a huge bump in the stock market?

And in the midst of the panic that Obama is radically expanding the size of government, the Washington Post has just published an extensive investigative report on how over the last nine years, the U.S. has created an immense, secretive shadow government that lacks any transparency or accountability whatsoever, costs billions of dollars and employs some 800,000 people.

And guess what the role of this shadow government is? To spy at home and abroad. A couple of loonies in a cave, and we throw the house out the window.

As is always the case, the Republicans are only concerned about the government when it affects corporations and not unarmed citizens.

If this does not create bipartisan uproar, what ever will?

Here is Glenn Greenwald on the Obama Administration’s extrajudicial targeting of U.S. citizens for assassination and the Democrats’ hypocritical support thereof.

This is a nice job by Jon Stewart highlighting the lamentable state of mainstream political journalism in the U.S. Particularly revealing is the comment by Celeste Headlee where she says to the Rolling Stones journalist who revealed the McChrystal story, “you were obviously not worried about access in the future; I can’t imagine you are going to get it”. In other words, in the mainstream press, you don’t report on unfavorable news, lest you not be given access to the politicians in the future. Welcome to the White House. Easy questions, easy answers, easy access; become one with the propaganda machine.

It is hard to think of something more cynical than the Republican reaction to President Obama’s deal with BP. Then again, it should have come as no surprise that Republicans have reiterated their official decree on the supremacy of corporations over individuals. Without getting into the merits of Obama’s $20 billion shakedown of BP(to be honest, I haven’t been paying much attention), the Republicans’ outbursts against the Executive Branch strong-arming a corporation completely ignores the reality of the entire American prosecutorial system and how it treats individuals.

As Joe Barton first said (though he later apologized),

I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday . . . I think it is a tragedy in the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown — in this case a $20 billion shakedown — with the attorney general of the United States, who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the American people, participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that’s unprecedented in our nation’s history, which has no legal standing, which I think sets a terrible precedent for our nation’s future.

Would Mr. Barton feel the same way about prosecutors who every day use the threat of the death penalty, lifetime sentences, three-strikes-you’re-out, and other means of arm-twisting at their disposal to persuade criminal suspects to reach a plea bargain? Prosecutors particularly love the death penalty because it is the most effective negotiating tool they’ve got. So where does Mr. Barton stand on terrible precedents: you plea or I’ll do everything in my power to send you to your death or “show me the money”?

This may sound exaggerated, but this is in fact what people – not corporations – are up against every time they right or wrongly face a prosecutor. Have Republicans ever seen an episode of Law & Order? Remember that prosecutors are agents of the Executive Branch, and as such their decision to prosecute a case is always a political decision; there really isn’t much of difference between Obama’s political tactic and that of your average district attorney. Apparently for Republicans, though, it is only scandalous when the poor, helpless corporation faces the prosecution.

Even though the Republicans feigned disgust at Mr. Barton’s original statement above, they quickly sent their pundits out to regurgitate their talking points about how Obama was ignoring the rule of law, denying BP due process, and of course, setting a dangerous precedent. Ignoring the obvious error in the due process claim (BP very much has the right to contest the “strong arming” in court), the Right’s sudden passion for due process is remarkably cynical.

Tony Blanky on Left, Right and Center was seriously concerned about “protecting the process of law” (even citing Thomas More), and out of the blue, David Brooks on the NewsHour felt that Obama “very brutally strong armed BP” and was worried about “the erosion of the rule of law”. He was so noble to claim that the law was there to protect “even people who do bad things.” Then George Will on This Week compared Obama to Hugo Chavez, calling his actions the “use of raw political power without recourse to courts that exist for this sort of thing without due process . . .”

Must I state the obvious? Misters Blanky, Brooks, and Will are arguing the exact opposite of what they have been fighting for for the past eight years: the president’s unfettered, unchecked power to indefinitely detain terror suspects without due process. If corporations, according to Citizens United, have the same First Amendment rights as individuals, shouldn’t individuals (even the ones “who do bad things”) have, at a minimum, the same basic rights corporations do when it comes to due process in a court that, as Mr. Will says, “exist[s] for this sort of thing”?

For example, would these gentlemen disagree with President Obama’s continued, indefinite detention in cages of Guantanamo detainees without any recourse whatsoever, even when they have been determined – as in the case of Mohamed Hassan Odaini — by the military and the courts to be completely innocent? Or would they continue to aspire to a world where corporations are free from government interference while individuals are subject to the full force of government’s brutal wrath?

Power changes those in power.

It’s hard to think of a single area of U.S. policy where then candidate Obama promised change and now President Obama has not completely reversed his former position and reverted to the policies of Bush & Co. Some may call Obama a socialist, but he has moved his position on almost every single issue, a shift that he himself seems to justify as finding middle ground; ironically the middle is in right field. I guess the only change we can believe in now is Obama’s change of heart.

In a series of excellent articles over the past few days, Glenn Greenwald has exposed many of the hypocrisies in Obama’s Bushness and Democrats’ acquiescence to that Bushness:

• How the U.S. government demands civilian trials for American who are suspects of terrorism in foreign countries on human rights grounds, but thinks there is nothing wrong with us denying terrorist suspects the same protection under U.S. law or even any sort of trial whatsoever. “Somehow, it was a grave violation of due process for [a foreign government] to try accused foreign Terrorists before military tribunals, but not for [the Obama Administration] to hold them for as long as we want with no charges of any kind.”
• The McCarthyite attack on detainee lawyers, unchallenged by either the Administration or Democrats.
• The Obama War on Whistleblowers, making this administration even less transparency-friendly than the Bush administration.
• How little attention is spent discussing the two indefinite wars during the present campaign season as the Democrats have institutionalized the Bush war machine. Just look at how the country spends its money. We are a warrior state. It is, sorry Mr. Voegeli, the Limitless Welfare Warfare State.
• Obama wins the right to detain people with no habeas review. Even if we may think we’re closing Guantanamo, the Obama Administration has argued and won a decision at the federal court level which allow it to deny any detainee anywhere in the world habeas review (that basic fundamental due process right to have your mere detention challenged) if the detainee is transferred to a detention center in a war zone. In other words, if we want to deny someone due process, all the administration need do is to move them to a war zone (aka, Bagram prison in Afghanistan) where the normal rules of justice vanish in thin air.

Few issues highlight Barack Obama’s extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. As everyone knows, one of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world — far away from any battlefield — and then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court.  Back in the day, this was called “Bush’s legal black hole.”  In 2006, Congress codified that policy by enacting the Military Commissions Act, but in 2008, the Supreme Court, in Boumediene v. Bush, ruled that provision unconstitutional, holding that the Constitution grants habeas corpus rights even to foreign nationals held at Guantanamo.  Since then, detainees have won 35 out of 48 habeas hearings brought pursuant to Boumediene, on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to justify their detention.

. . . This is what Barack Obama has done to the habeas clause of the Constitution:  if you are in Thailand (as one of the petitioners in this case was) and the U.S. abducts you and flies you to Guantanamo, then you have the right to have a federal court determine if there is sufficient evidence to hold you.  If, however, President Obama orders that you be taken to from Thailand to Bagram rather than to Guantanamo, then you will have no rights of any kind, and he can order you detained there indefinitely without any right to a habeas review.  That type of change is so very inspiring — almost an exact replica of his vow to close Guantanamo . . . all in order to move its core attributes (including indefinite detention) a few thousand miles North to Thompson, Illinois.

As IOZ writes,

Considered historically, it will become clear that the job of Republican governments is to invent novel, ad hoc expansions of state power, while the job of Democratic governments is to consolidate and systematize them. Far from repudiating supposed Bush-era “excesses,” the Obama regime has sought–usually successfully–to entrench and to codify them. This is just the latest example.

Now that’s cynicism we can believe in. It makes you wonder whether what is most extraordinary about Obama’s presidency is just how ordinary his politics have become. I don’t mean to be a hater, but we need to demand more from our political class, and that includes the President. (more…)

This excellent ad from the ACLU, reading

What will it be, Mr. President?

Change or more of the same?

Candidate Barack Obama vowed to change the Bush-Cheney policies and restore America’s values of justice and due process. Many of us are shocked and concerned that right now, President Obama is considering reversing his attorney general’s decision to try 9/11 defendants in criminal court. Our criminal justice system has successfully handled over 300 terrorism cases compared to only 3 in the military commissions. Our criminal justice system will resolve these cases more quickly and more credibly than the military commissions.

President Obama can vigorously prosecute terrorists and keep us safe without violating our Constitution.

As president, Barack Obama must decide whether he will keep his solemn promise to restore our Constitution and due process, or ignore his vow and continue the Bush-Cheney policies.

Tell President Obama not to back down on his commitment to our justice system, and to try the 9/11 defendants in criminal court.

Remind the world that America stands for due process, justice, and the rule of law.

I have been very busy lately, preparing a few interesting – though not very lucrative — projects that I will hopefully discuss in the near future, and therefore have been missing in action. Nevertheless, I have still been thinking about many of the issues of the day, such as:

• Obama is not a communist. I repeat, he is not a communist. He is a sell-out, and his health care plan and proposals are nothing more than hand-outs to the status quo. To believe anything else is to have your head in the sand (or in the snow, Mrs. Palin). Nothing that he has done to date has been left of center.
• I don’t care about Tiger Woods. But we treat our athletes, actors and politicians like rock stars. Our culture sexes them up and tells women that these are the desirable men in society. Then the expected happens: these athletes, actors and politicians actually become rock stars, having sex with everything that moves. The press is fully aware of all of this, witness all of the infidelities and sexual escapades, and form a tacit agreement with the celebrities to remain silent (in exchange, the press gets exclusives; the same agreement the White House press corp has with the president). It is only the rare occasion when the celebrity crosses the line – crashing his vehicle or making a public spectacle of himself – when the press then reports on the matter and the celebrity is forced to apologize, teary-eyed. It’s all just too silly for me. Come on! We should just stop pretending anymore. They are all — every one of them — having sex, all the time, and very publicly. Get over it!
• Our enlightened press wants us to believe that White Christians who terrorize are not terrorists. Only Muslims and foreigners can be terrorists.
• Hillary is worried that Iran is becoming a military dictatorship. Look, I am not comfortable with Iran having nuclear weapons either, but Mrs.-We-Can-Obliterate-You’s reasoning doesn’t pass the laugh test: the Iranian military’s increasing relevance in the country’s politics and oil economy. That doesn’t sound at all like the U.S., where our military spending makes up for almost half of the entire U.S. budget, making it the largest military budget in the world, and where generals — not the commander-in-chief — are the ones dictating military policy instead of implementing it. Meanwhile, Iran has the smallest military budget per capita in the entire Middle East (after Dubai). Also, the U.S. would never use its military to promote its economic interests, would it, Haliburton? And of course, Hillary forgot to mention that every ally the U.S. has in the Middle Eastern is a dictatorship. Nice try. She should just admit that Iran is the new Sadam Hussein.
• Talking war when we aren’t winning two other wars is probably not very threatening to anyone. Committing troops to two completely unnecessary wars leaves us exposed before any real potential threats. It is pure national defense negligence.
• Our Justice Department thinks lawyers are scum anyways, so torture memos are kosher.
• Regardless of the facts – the Bush/Cheney White House mirandized and successfully prosecuted and convicted 175 terrorist suspects in civil court and was mostly unsuccessful and ineffective in trying suspects in military tribunals, the press and the Republicans want us to believe that Obama has suddenly changed course. And instead of the rule of law prevailing over how we treat terrorist suspects, it all comes down to what one guy in the Senate – a man named Lindsey – wants.
• Cheney once again on the stay out of jail tour: I disagree with Greenwald that Cheney thinks he is above the law and therefore is flaunting having broken the law. I believe he is scared that he may very well be prosecuted – heck, the British are investigating themselves, someday Americans may also demand a little accountability and transparency from their own government. Thus, Cheney’s only card is to turn breaking his right to break the law without impunity into a political football, not a question of maintaining the rule of law.
• My cousin, Grave Error contrarian par excellence, has started his own blog – Machiavellian. We thoroughly enjoy disagreeing without each other. Now you can join in the fun too. Check out his new blog.
• And more.

If there was any doubt whether the U.S. system of government had become a Military Democracy (as opposed to a representative democracy, constitutional monarchy, corporate theocracy), the president has proposed a freeze on discretionary spending. And guess what is non-discretionary?