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Solving Rhode Island’s Budget Crisis: What Should be Done?

By BrianHull | May 25, 2009

We are at a critical point for Rhode Island’s fiscal health. The newest update from the Revenue Estimating Conference shows Rhode Island’s deficit grew by $200 million to a total deficit of $590 million for FY 2010. Since 2004, the structural deficit has grown each year, despite the repeated claim that tax cuts will generate jobs and grow our economy. The Governor has presented his budget designed to handicap Obama’s stimulus plan, the House and Senate Finance Committees are debating it now, and it is assumed that the vote will happen sometime in mid-June.

Please join us for a discussion about Rhode Island’s current budget deficit and taxation policy. The current fiscal crisis will be reviewed with a focus on how the state’s finances became so troubled. Components of the Governor’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget will be explained and a responsible alternative will be presented to ameliorate the ongoing structural deficit.

Ample time will be provided for a question and answer period. After the presentation, attendees will be encouraged to contact their state Representatives and Senators.

For your convenience, the budget presentation will be given in six different locations around the state. Space is limited, however, so please RSVP by clicking the links below.

The event will be hosted by the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats of America in association with the Campaign for Rhode Island’s Priorities

Topics: Economy, Rhode Island, Taxes | No Comments »

Not a Single Republican Vote

By BrianHull | January 29, 2009

So, there’s a lot of talk about post-partisanship, about putting away partisan differences and working together to build a bipartisan majority to get things done and solve the bipartisan problems facing the U.S.

Let’s review, shall we…

Initially, Obama sought Republican support by “balancing” the stimulus bill with a large tax cut for individuals and businesses, creating a 2/3 spending and 1/3 tax cut bill. Obama’s “Making Work Pay” tax credit allows individuals and couples to receive a tax credit of $500 or $1000 respectively, with the hope that they’ll take this money and spend it. Of course, a similar strategy was tried in early 2008 (remember those rebate checks?) with very little economic benefit. Even the Heritage Foundation, the ardently anti-tax think tank, opposes this component of the economic stimulus package (albeit for their own reasons).

As for the business tax provisions, companies will be able to write-off losses which happened in 2008 and any incurred in 2009 and then reduce their tax bills retroactively for up to 5 years.  The hope is that companies will use the money saved from the write-offs and invest it in expanding their businesses and creating jobs. But as we’ve seen in previous economic recessions, recoveries are never supply driven. Additionally, businesses which hire employees or forgo layoffs will receive a tax credit. Sounds good, but as William Gale says, “much of that money would likely go to companies that would have hired more people anyway … it is impossible to know what firms would have done without such a credit.”

Next, at the behest of Obama, House Democrats stripped a bankruptcy provision from the bill that would have allowed “bankruptcy judges to shrink … mortgages for homeowners who owe more than their home is worth.”  In a show of “bi-partisanship,” Democrats chose to remove the provision in order to gain support among Republicans (and that of the financial industry who recently got $700 billion of taxpayer money) who opposed the measure.

Finally, the provision to support family planning was also removed from the economic stimulus bill so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of Republican lawmakers who don’t want women to make important decisions regarding pregnancy, pre-natal care, or contraception with accurate information.  I’ll admit, it’s hard to persuasively argue for the benefits of family planning in the context of immediate economic stimulus, but the provision was removed with the hope of gaining some GOP support.

After compromising on the legislation, removing items important to Democrats, and meeting with Republican lawmakers to gain bipartisan support, not a single Republican voted in favor. This begs the question, did Republicans actually try and work for a compromise bill, or were they purposefully obstructionist and demanding to dilute the effectiveness of important legislation for purely political reasons? I’m pretty sure I know the answer. More importantly, however, will Obama finally realize that bipartisanship isn’t feasible or even necessary right now? Rather than “work with” Republicans to develop a “bipartisan” bill, just ignore them, create better and more effective legislation, and ram it through Congress over the grandstanding protests of Republican lawmakers who are going to bitch and complain about everything the Democrats want to do anyway. Democrats need to realize that no matter how hard they try to “work with” Republicans, they’re never going to vote for a single piece of legislation sponsored by the Democrats. It would be best if they learned this lesson sooner rather than later, especially if they want to maintain a majority after the 2010 elections, because Republicans are already working to take back the House.

Topics: Democrats, Economy, Elections, Republicans, Taxes | No Comments »

10% Unemployment!

By BrianHull | January 23, 2009

Fresh from Providence Business News:

The state’s unemployment rate reached double digits in December, jumping 0.7 percentage points to 10.0 percent – the first time it has reached that level since 1976, when the government revised the way it measures joblessness. In other words, one out of every 10 people active in the job market does not have a job.

Awesome! All those tax cuts to the wealthy “job creators” are working wonderfully. Look at how well the economy is doing. We should give rich people even more tax cuts, because it always trickles down, right? Oh, tax cuts, how I love you…..

Seriously though, we need to really revisit the tax structure in Rhode Island.  I know everyone’s a reactionary when it comes to taxes - we’re such a “high-tax” state.  I’ll agree with that but with a certain caveat.  Some of us are taxed too much, while others aren’t taxed enough.  The property tax burden is too high and the income tax burden is too low. The state (and I suppose the cities and towns) needs to restructure those two elements of taxation.  Property taxes need to be reduced and income taxes, especially those for the higher income levels, need to be increased.

The Governor’s “tax-reform” panel is about to release its plan detailing how really, really rich people should pay less while middle-income and working-class folks should pay more.

In general, a taxpayer’s Rhode Island taxable income currently is sorted into five different baskets, with a different tax rate applying to each. Tax rates range from 3.75 percent to 9.9 percent.

Under the plan, the income would be sorted into four baskets, with tax rates ranging from 3.8 percent to 5.5 percent.

Thus, the lowest tax rate would rise a bit, while the top tax rate would fall sharply.

Tell me again how that is fair.  Tell me again how taxing the wealthy drives them from the state.  Tell me again how giving the wealthy tax cuts creates jobs, because it sure has worked wonderfully here in Rhode Island.

Topics: Economy, Taxes | 3 Comments »

Governor Carcieri’s Horrible Plan

By BrianHull | January 10, 2009

“Good evening, my fellow Rhode Islanders…”

With these words, Governor Don Carcieri started his address to the state on Wednesday night. With these words, he spoke to all of us about the profound difficulties our small state is experiencing. With these words, he offered his disastrous solutions:

  1. Changing the retirement age of all municipal and state workers and teachers to 59 regardless of their current contract.
  2. Eliminating Cost of Living Adjustments which account for increases in inflation.
  3. Enacting a “Defined Contribution” retirement plan.
  4. A 6% cut in local city and town aid, essentially ensuring cuts to police, fire, and garbage collection.
  5. Changing the delivery of Medicaid-supported social services (aid to seniors and RIte Care).

We need to make sure that our elected Representatives hear from us. Rhode Island needs a fair budget solution that will include additional revenues gained by rolling back the tax breaks to given RI’s wealthiest individuals and families, and by closing corporate tax loopholes.

The House Finance Committee looks as if it will start holding hearings on Tuesday regarding the supplemental budget for this fiscal year. Let’s tell them what we think. We are organizing a phone bank on Wednesday, January 14 at 5:30pm. We will meet at the SEIU Local 1199 Office at 55 Cedar Street in Providence and will focus our calls on the districts of the House Finance Committee members (Reps. Caprio, Ehrhardt, Giannini, Mattiello, Melo, and Silva).

None of the Governor’s solutions are fair to the hard working men and women, the elderly, or the children of Rhode Island. A very large part of the problem we are facing has to do with the recession, caused in large part to unwise state and federal tax cuts skewed to benefit the wealthy and lax regulations on the financial and banking industries (which then received $700 billion of taxpayer money), but what was most striking about the Governor’s proposal was the absence of even the slightest pretense of shared sacrifice. These budget cuts, again, will be borne almost entirely by the middle class, the poor, and the elderly. There was no discussion about rolling back the tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, no discussion about job creation programs or economic development, no discussion about closing corporate tax loopholes, and no discussion about a more equitable tax system that will realign the tax burden.

We must respond! Anyone able to make phone calls on Wednesday, please contact Brian Hull @ brianhull@ripda.org or 401-580-3321.

Topics: Economy, Rhode Island | 1 Comment »

The Economy in a Mess - It Doesn’t Have to Be

By BrianHull | December 10, 2008

There are several issues that I have wanted to write about for a while now, but never took time to do, until now. There’s a lot of discussion about the economy: the financial crisis, home foreclosures, the auto industry bailout, growing unemployment, a shrinking economy, etc. To be honest with you, it seems like the world is falling apart.

What is generally pissing me off is that almost every response coming from the federal government involves giving enormous sums of taxpayer money to businesses and CEOs that were directly responsible for the mess that we’re in, without any sort of oversight or regulations to temper the speculative behavior of unscrupulous individuals. And we see the results, don’t we? There’s still a financial crisis, exemplified by the Republic Windows and Doors debacle. Home foreclosures are on the rise and more people owe more on their homes than they are worth. The country lost another 533,000 jobs in November. And there is no relief in sight.

I suppose all of this was bound to happen when you give lots of money to a bunch of greedy self-interested bastards who have no concern at all for people who actually have to work for a living. I remember, not too long ago, when the financial crisis started percolating up to the public’s collective consciousness. Editorials were plentiful claiming an end to American capitalism. The free market failed us, profoundly, and continues to fail us on a daily basis. What more people need to understand is that capitalism is a wonderful system if the sole purpose of economic transactions is to generate wealth as quickly as possible (which I suppose it is). All the proponents of free-market capitalism can bloviate incessantly about the glorious benefits of a capitalist system, however, a serious societal problem arises when the vast majority of the wealth is concentrated into the hands of the very few. If you’re rich, everything is great, but if you’re not, you’re screwed. Unregulated capitalism has some serious problems, and is not always socially desirous or beneficial in the long-run, as is all too obvious by the current economic situation that we are finding ourselves in.

There needs to be a government response to get the economy back on track, that seems to be undisputed. My view is quite different than the conventional wisdom we have been seeing in Washington. The solution, to me, is pretty obvious. To remedy the financial crisis, the U.S. Government should make low interest loans directly to businesses. It would have been much less expensive than giving $700 billion dollars to the largest banks in the country, essentially rewarding them for their horrible lending practices. And it would have been much more effective since loans would have actually been distributed to borrowers rather than banks using the money to buy up other banks or shore up their books.

To solve the home foreclosure crisis, the U.S. Government should buy homes at their current market value and renegotiate the mortgages directly with the home owners. The overvaluation can be eaten by the banks that got $700 billion of free taxpayer money. The major problem with foreclosures isn’t that home owners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. Instead it’s because the previously low introductory adjustable mortgages rates are now starting to climb and the homeowners are no longer able to refinance (again). Alternatively, freezing interest rates would remedy a large part of the problem because absent a few extreme instances of new unemployment, medical expenses, or divorces, people were able to happily pay their mortgages at a lower interest rate. For instance, if someone bought a house for $250,000 and they were capable of paying their mortgage when the interest rate was at 6%, the U.S. Government can buy the house for the current mortgage value and lower the interest rate back down to 6%. I’m not sure why the government has decided that only those people who purchased a home between January 1 and July 31, 2005 deserve this accommodation.

To rectify growing unemployment, the U.S. Government should create a vast public spending program to put people back to work doing things that need to get done. For starters we can fix the bridges that are constantly falling down. Additionally, since the three largest U.S. auto manufacturers can’t figure out how to make cars that people want to buy, the U.S. Government should either tell them how or let them fail and retrain the workers for the jobs of the future: building wind turbines, tidal energy generators, solar cell panels, solar radiation collectors, etc. so we can move away from importing $700 billion of oil every year into the U.S.  All the vague phrases like “requirements for restructuring and cost-cutting” that are being attached to any aid package for the auto industry is merely code for more layoffs anyway.  Do we want to give the Big 3 billions of dollars to layoff more workers, or would that money be better spent elsewhere?

The government should stop looking for solutions in the private sector in today’s economy because it has failed us so miserably. Rather, it should focus on getting more actively involved in providing goods and services directly to those who desperately need them. The government should stop worrying about trying to save the largest employers on Wall Street or in Detroit and just save the employees instead. If a few top level executives and managers lose their jobs because of their own bad decisions, so be it. Point being, there are options other than the morally hazardous decisions which the government is currently making.  There are options that would be beneficial for workers rather than business.  There are options that would turn the economy around rather than have it sink further into a crisis.

Topics: Alternative Energy, Education | 2 Comments »

Barack Obama’s Victory Speech

By BrianHull | November 5, 2008

Topics: Elections | 1 Comment »

F is for Failure: The Bush Doctrine in Ruins

By BrianHull | October 21, 2008

By Tom Engelhardt

On the brief occasions when the President now appears in the Rose Garden to “comfort” or “reassure” a shock-and-awed nation, you can almost hear those legions of ducks quacking lamely in the background. Once upon a time, George W. Bush, along with his top officials and advisors, hoped to preside over a global Pax Americana and a domestic Pax Republicana — a legacy for the generations. More recently, their highest hope seems to have been to slip out of town in January before the you-know-what hits the fan. No such luck.

Of course, what they feared most was that the you-know-what would hit in Iraq, and so put their efforts into sweeping that disaster out of sight. Once again, however, as in September 2001 and August 2005, they were caught predictably flatfooted by a domestic disaster. In this case, they were ambushed by an insurgent stock market heading into chaos, killer squads of credit default swaps, and a hurricane of financial collapse.

At the moment, only 7% of Americans believe the country is “going in the right direction,” Bush’s job-approval ratings have dropped into the low 20s with no bottom in sight, and North Dakota is “in play” in the presidential election. Think of that as the equivalent of a report card on Bush’s economic policies. In other words, the Yale legacy student with the C average has been branded for life with a resounding domestic “F” for failure. (His singular domestic triumph may prove to be paving the way for the first African American president.)

But there’s another report card that’s not in. Despite a media focus on Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the record of his Global War on Terror (and the Bush Doctrine that once went with it) has yet to be fully assessed. This is surprising, since administration actions in waging that war in what neoconservatives used to call “the arc of instability” — a swath of territory running from North Africa to the Chinese border — add up to a record of failure unprecedented in American history.

On June 1, 2002, George W. Bush gave the commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The Afghan War was then being hailed as a triumph and the invasion of Iraq just beginning to loom on the horizon. That day, after insisting the U.S. had “no empire to extend or utopia to establish,” the President laid out a vision of how the U.S. was to operate globally, facing “a threat with no precedent” — al-Qaeda-style terrorism in a world of weapons of mass destruction.

After indicating that “terror cells” were to be targeted in up to 60 countries, he offered a breathtakingly radical basis for the pursuit of American interests:

“We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties, and then systemically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long… [T]he war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act… Our security will require transforming the military you will lead — a military that must be ready to strike at a moment’s notice in any dark corner of the world.”

This would later be known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s “one percent doctrine” — even a 1% chance of an attack on the U.S., especially involving weapons of mass destruction, must be dealt with militarily as if it were a certainty. It may have been the rashest formula for “preventive” or “aggressive” war offered in the modern era.

The President and his neocon backers were then riding high. Some were even talking up the United States as a “new Rome,” greater even than imperial Britain. For them, global control had a single prerequisite: the possession of overwhelming military force. With American military power unimpeachably #1, global domination followed logically. As Bush put it that day, in a statement unique in the annals of our history: “America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge — thereby making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace.”

In other words, a planet of Great Powers was all over and it was time for the rest of the world to get used to it. Like the wimps they were, other nations could “trade” and pursue “peace.” For its pure folly, not to say its misunderstanding of the nature of power on our planet, it remains a statement that should still take anyone’s breath away.

The Bush Doctrine, of course, no longer exists. Within a year, it had run aground on the shoals of reality on its very first whistle stop in Iraq. More than six years later, looking back on the foreign policy that emerged from Bush’s self-declared Global War on Terror, it’s clear that no President has ever failed on his own terms on such a scale or quite so comprehensively.

Here, then, is a brief report card on Bush’s Global War on Terror:

High-Value Targets

1. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda: The Global War on Terror started here. Osama bin Laden was to be brought in “dead or alive” — until, in December 2001, he escaped from a partial U.S. encirclement in the mountainous Tora Bora region of Afghanistan (and many of the U.S. troops chasing him were soon enough dispatched Iraqwards). Seven years later, bin Laden remains free, as does his second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, probably in the mountainous Pakistani tribal areas near the Afghan border. Al-Qaeda has been reconstituted there and is believed to be stronger than ever. An allied organization that didn’t exist in 2001, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, was later declared by President Bush to be the “central front in the war on terror,” while al-Qaeda branches and wannabe groups have proliferated elsewhere.

Result: Terror promoted.

Grade: F

2. The Taliban and Afghanistan: The Taliban was officially defeated in November 2001 with an “invasion” that combined native troops, U.S. special operations forces, CIA agents, and U.S. air power. The Afghan capital, Kabul, was “liberated” and, not long after, a “democratic” government installed (filled, in part, with a familiar cast of warlords, human rights violators, drug lords, and the like). Seven years later, according to an upcoming National Intelligence Estimate, Afghanistan is on a “downward spiral”; the drug trade flourishes as never before; the government of President Hamid Karzai is notoriously corrupt, deeply despised, and incapable of exercising control much beyond the capital; American and NATO troops, thanks largely to a reliance upon air power and soaring civilian deaths, are increasingly unpopular; the Taliban is resurgent and has established a shadow government across much of the south, while its guerrillas are embedded at the gates of Kabul. American and NATO forces promoted a “surge” strategy in 2007 that failed and are now calling for more of the same. Reconstruction never happened.

Result: Losing war.

Grade: F

3. Pakistan: At the time of the invasion of Afghanistan, the Bush administration threw its support behind General Pervez Musharraf, the military dictator of relatively stable, nuclear-armed Pakistan. In the ensuing years, the U.S. transferred at least $10 billion, mainly to the general’s military associates, to fight the Global War on Terror. (Most of the money went elsewhere). Seven years later, Musharraf has fallen ingloriously, while the country has reportedly turned strongly anti-American — only 19% of Pakistanis in a recent BBC poll had a negative view of al-Qaeda — is on the verge of a financial meltdown, and has been strikingly destabilized, with its tribal regions at least partially in the hands of a Pakistani version of the Taliban as well as al-Qaeda and foreign jihadis. That region is also now a relatively safe haven for the Afghan Taliban. American planes and drones attack in these areas ever more regularly, causing civilian casualties and more anti-Americanism, as the U.S. edges toward its third real war in the region.

Result: Extremism promoted, destabilization in progress.

Grade: F

4. Iraq: In March 2003, with a shock-and-awe air campaign and 130,000 troops, the Bush administration launched its long-desired invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, officially in search of (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction. Baghdad fell to American troops in April and Bush declared “major combat operations…ended” from the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier against a “Mission Accomplished” banner on May 1st. Within four months, according to administration projections, there were to be only 30,000 to 40,000 American troops left in the country, stationed at bases outside Iraq’s cities, in a peaceful (occupied) land with a “democratic,” non-sectarian, pro-American government in formation. In the intervening five-plus years, perhaps one million Iraqis died, up to five million went into internal or external exile, a fierce insurgency blew up, an even fiercer sectarian war took place, more than 4,000 Americans died, hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars were spent on a war that led to chaos and on “reconstruction” that reconstructed nothing. There are still close to 150,000 American troops in the country and American military leaders are cautioning against withdrawing many more of them any time soon. Filled with killing fields and barely hanging together, Iraq is — despite recently lowered levels of violence — still among the more dangerous environments on the planet, while a largely Shiite government in Baghdad has grown ever closer to Shiite Iran. Thanks to the President’s “surge strategy” of 2007, this state of affairs is often described here as a “success.”

Result: Mission unaccomplished.

Grade: F

5. Iran: In his January 2002 State of the Union address, Bush dubbed Iran part of an “axis of evil” (along with Iraq and North Korea), attaching a shock-and-awe bull’s-eye to that nation ruled by Islamic fundamentalists. (A neocon quip of that time was: “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.”) In later years, Bush warned repeatedly that the U.S. would not allow Iran to move toward the possession of a nuclear weapons program and his administration would indeed take numerous steps, ranging from sanctions to the funding of covert actions, to destabilize the country’s ruling regime. More than six years after his “axis of evil” speech, and endless administration threats and bluster later, Iran is regionally resurgent, the most powerful foreign influence in Shiite Iraq, and continuing on a path toward that nuclear power program which, it claims, is purely peaceful, but could, of course, prove otherwise.

Result: Strengthened Iran.

Grade: F

Unlawful Enemy Combatants

6. Lebanon: Vowing to encourage a “democratic,” pro-western Lebanon and crush the Shiite Hezbollah movement, which it categorized not only as a tool of Iran but as a terrorist organization, the administration green-lighted Israel’s disastrous air assault and invasion in the summer of 2006. From that destructive war, Hezbollah emerged triumphant in its southern domain and strengthened in Lebanese national politics. Today, Lebanon is once again close to a low-level civil war and the influence of Syria, essentially the unmentioned fourth member of the President’s “axis of evil,” is again on the rise.

Result: Hezbollah ascendant.

Grade: F

7. Gaza: As part of the President’s “freedom agenda,” the administration promoted Palestinian elections on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip meant to fend off the rising strength of the Hamas movement, which it considered a terrorist organization, and promote the power of Fatah’s president Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas, however, won the election. The U.S. promptly refused to accept the results and, with Israel, tried to strangle Hamas in its Gaza stronghold. Hamas today remains entrenched in Gaza, while Abbas is a weakened figure.

Result: Hamas ascendant.

Grade: F

8. Somalia: In 2006, using U.S. trained and funded Ethiopian troops, the Bush administration intervened by proxy in a Somali civil war to oust a relatively moderate Islamist militia on the verge of unifying that desperate country for the first time in a long while. Two years later, the situation has only deteriorated further: the capital Mogadishu is in chaos, militant Islamists have retaken much of the south, those Ethiopian troops are preparing to withdraw, and the Bush-backed government to fall. At least, ten thousand Somalis have died and more than a third of the population, a jump of 77%, needs aid just to survive.

Result: Catastrophe.

Grade: F

9. Georgia: Promoting Georgian democracy — and an oil pipeline running through its territory that brought Central Asian energy to Europe while avoiding Russia — the administration armed, trained, and advised the Georgian military, backed the country for NATO membership, and looked the other way as its leader launched an invasion of a breakaway region (where Russian troops were stationed). Support for Georgia was part of a long-term Bush administration campaign to rollback Russian influence in its “near abroad,” especially in Central Asia (where results would, in the end, prove hardly more promising). The Russian military promptly crushed and then demolished the Georgian military, brought the future usefulness of the oil pipeline into question, and sidelined NATO membership for the foreseeable future. In response, the Bush administration could do nothing at all.

Result: Humiliating defeat.

Grade: F

Axis of Evil Extra Credit Target

10. North Korea: Calling North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il variously a “dwarf,” a “pygmy,” and simply “evil,” and his regime “the world’s most dangerous,” Bush targeted it in his “axis of evil” speech. As an invasion of Iraq loomed, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made clear that the U.S. was willing to fight and win wars “on two fronts.” The administration turned its back on modestly successful, Clinton-era two-party negotiations that froze North Korea’s plutonium-processing program, began overt — and possibly covert — campaigns to undermine the regime, and regularly threatened it over its nuclear weapons program. The invasion of Iraq evidently led North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il to the obvious shock-and-aweable conclusion and he promptly upped the pace of that program. In 2006, the country tested its first nuclear weapon and became a nuclear power.

Result: Nuclear proliferation encouraged.

Grade: F

Collateral Damage

11. Global Public Opinion: In the 2003 National Security Strategy of the United States was this infamous line: “Our strength as a nation-state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes and terrorism.” In other words, the U.N., the International Criminal Court, and al-Qaeda were all thrown into the same despised category, along with, implicitly, international public opinion. Who needed any of them? The result? With the help of its torture policies and its prison camp at Guantanamo for public relations, the Bush administration achieved wonders. Never has global opinion of the U.S. been lower (or anti-Americanism more rampant) than in these years — and when the administration needed allies, they were hard to find (or expensive to buy).

Result: Public diplomacy in the tank.

Grade: F

12. The American Taxpayer: The Bush administration estimated that the war in Iraq might cost the U.S. $50-60 billion, the war in Afghanistan far less. By now, those wars have officially cost more than $800 billion, close to $200 billion in the last year (at an estimated $3.5 billion a week). Their real long-term costs are almost incalculable, though they will certainly reach into the trillions. The full price tag of the Global War on Terror, including the costs of extraordinary renditions, as well as the building and maintaining of offshore prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, and elsewhere, is unknown, but historians looking back will undoubtedly conclude that the squandering of such sums helped push the U.S. toward financial meltdown.

Result: Priceless.

Grade: F

Evaluation

If you want a final taste of pathos — to deal with the disasters it created, the Bush administration has finally turned to the most un-Global-War-on-Terror-like diplomatic maneuvers. It rushed an envoy to North Korea to save a disintegrating nuclear deal (while agreeing to remove that country from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terror), is preparing the way for possible negotiations with parts of both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban (call it “reconciliation”), and is evidently considering setting up a “U.S. Interest Section” in Teheran soon after the election.

In these last years, the Bush administration’s deepest fundamentalist faith — its cultish belief in the efficacy of military force above all else — has proven an empty vessel. With its “military strengths beyond challenge” all-too-effectively challenged, Bush’s second-term officials are finally returning to some of the most boringly traditional methods of diplomacy and negotiation — under far more extreme circumstances and from a far weaker position — while their former neocon supporters scream bloody murder from right-wing think tanks in Washington and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. “Having bent the knee to North Korea,” former U.N. ambassador John Bolton wrote recently in that paper, “Secretary [of State] Rice appears primed to do the same with Iran, despite that regime’s egregious and extensive involvement in terrorism and the acceleration of its nuclear program.”

And they do have a point. This administration does now seem to be on bended knee to the world.

As with Pandora’s Box, however, what the Bush administration unleashed cannot simply be taken back. A new administration will not only inherit an arc of instability that is truly aflame, but the paradigm, still remarkably unexamined, of a Global War on Terror. Now, there is a disaster-in-the-making for you.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the American Age of Denial. The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a collection of some of the best pieces from his site and an alternative history of the mad Bush years, has recently been published. To listen to a podcast in which he discusses this article, click here.

Topics: Iran, Iraq, Republicans | No Comments »

The 10 Dirtiest Election Tricks the Republicans Have Tried So Far

By BrianHull | October 20, 2008

From AlterNet.

As Arianna Huffington warns Democrats, an increasingly desperate John McCain and the GOP are throwing the kitchen sink at Barack Obama. No wonder they called Joe the Plumber. So this week brought racist mailers, a tidal wave of robo-calls, more Bill Ayers, Sarah Palin’s love of the “pro-American areas of this great nation” and McCain’s outlandish claim that ACORN is “destroying the fabric of democracy.”

Reed Hundt from Talking Points Memo writes, “The McCain plan will be to give up on the national popular vote and re-run the Bush campaign of 2000. By voter intimidation and robo-calls and litigation and outrageous allegations, it will aim for victory in the states that can provide an Electoral College victory. In this case, that means McCain will focus his diminished but vigorous efforts on Florida, Ohio, Colorado and Virginia. In each state we need hardly ask what images, stereotypes and fears the McCain campaign will hope to evoke.”

The attacks by McCain and his surrogates are already at fever pitch — and there is clearly a tidal wave on its way:

1. Rush Limbaugh’s Racist Tactics: Bringing this toxic collection together in one despicable no-goodie bag was Rush Limbaugh, who charged that Obama — aided and abetted by Ayers and ACORN — is “smack dab in the middle” of a 30-year plot to teach black children to “hate, hate, hate” America.

2. Racist Attacks on Immigration: Sarah Posner for the American Prospect’s blog writes: “A newly formed political action committee, the National Republican Trust PAC, is buying up e-mail blasts to the readers of conservative outlets like Newsmax and Townhall to raise money for what it calls a ‘shock and awe‘ advertising blitz against Barack Obama in key states in the last weeks of the campaign. One of the e-mails uses the screamer headline, ‘Obama’s Plan: Mohamed Atta Gets His Drivers License,’ while another says Republicans should ‘employ Hillary Clinton’s strategy’ to ‘expose Obama for the dangerous radical he is.’” The PAC was founded by Scott Wheeler, a former correspondent for the Moonie-owned Insight magazine, and Peter Leitner, a former Pentagon adviser and president of the Higgins Counterterrorism Research Center, which trains law enforcement personnel on counterterrorism.

3. Robo-Calls: John McCain and the GOP have launched a massive robo-call effort across the country that the normally soft-spoken Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called “scummy:” “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he’s surprised at ’scummy’ tactics employed by Republican John McCain’s presidential campaign and ‘can’t believe John McCain knows what’s going on.’” And Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins decried the robo-calls last week: “These kind of tactics have no place in Maine politics,” said Collins’ spokesman, Kevin Kelley. “Sen. Collins urges the McCain campaign to stop these calls immediately.”

The robo-calls, sent Thursday in several states, said Obama “worked closely with domestic terrorist” Ayers. Obama, a child when Ayers was active in the Weather Underground in the late 1960s and early 1970s, has denounced Ayers’ radical views and activities.

The robo-call message was repeated in a campaign flier mailed this week by the Nevada Republican Party. The four-page mailer calls Ayers a “terrorist, radical friend of Obama” and contains several images of both men.

On “Fox News Sunday,” on Oct. 19, McCain defended himself to Fox Host Chris Wallace:

Wallace: But Senator, back, if I may, back in 2000 when you were the target of robo-calls, you called these hate calls and you said –

McCain: They were.

Wallace: And you said the following: “I promise you I have never and will never have anything to do with that kind of political tactic.” Now you’ve hired the same guy who did the robo-calls against you to, reportedly, to do the robo-calls against Obama, and the Republican senator Susan Collins, the co-chair of your campaign in Maine, has asked you to stop the robo-calls. Will you do that?

McCain: Of course not. These are legitimate and truthful, and they are far different than the phone calls that were made about my family and about certain aspects that — things that this is — this is dramatically different and either you haven’t — didn’t see those things in 2000.

Wallace: No, I saw them.

McCain: Or you don’t know the difference between that and what is a legitimate issue, and that is Senator Obama being truthful with the American people.

4. Widespread Voter Intimidation: AlterNet’s Steve Rosenfeld reported on the widespread efforts by Republicans at various state offices to intimidate voters: “As the presidential election comes to a close, the Republican Party — and its allies in law enforcement at the FBI and at county levels in Ohio — are announcing voting-related prosecutions that civil rights advocates say are intended to intimidate voters, despite prosecutorial rules that bar these disclosures before an election.” Recently in Wisconsin, Democrats accused the state GOP of trying to “intimidate voters by seeking people with military and law enforcement experience to watch Milwaukee polls on Election Day.” In a recent e-mail, the state GOP director of Election Day operations, Jon Waclawski, said he was looking specifically for names of “Milwaukee area veterans, policemen, security personnel, firefighters, etc.” Rosenfeld reports that a potentially much larger intimidation effort is on its way:

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court told Ohio’s Republican Party it was not entitled to a list of 200,000-plus Ohioans whose voter registration information did not match Social Security and state driver’s license databases. What did the Ohio party do? It went judge shopping, filing a closely related suit before Ohio’s Supreme Court. Pennsylvania’s GOP filed a similar suit on Friday. In Wisconsin, litigation on this issue is ongoing. Why are Republicans so intent on obtaining this information? …

In recent weeks, the McCain-Palin campaign and Republican Party have embarked on a major media and litigation strategy to cast as much doubt as possible on the veracity of the 2008 vote. A look at the campaign’s recent messaging and GOP tactics from Ohio’s 2004 election suggest another use for the non-match lists: to target voters for mass phone calls, mailings or other messaging to deter them from voting on Nov. 4.

5. RNC Sends out Preposterous Mailer Suggesting Obama Hates Newborn Children:

Sam Stein at the Huffinton Post reports: The Republican National Committee is blasting out a new mailer charging that Barack Obama opposed a bill protecting newborns that survived botched abortions from being “left alone to die” in the operating room.

Two readers in North Carolina passed along the literature, which they received on Saturday.

The charge, which has been made many times before (including in a series of robo-calls earlier this week), is based on Obama’s opposition to the Born-Alive Infant Protection bill. A review by PolitiFact found the accusation “false.” Obama opposed the measure not based on a callous position on abortion rights, but because he wanted to ensure that there were measures to protect doctors from criminal lawsuits, among other factors. Illinois law already required doctors to provide immediate life-saving care to such infants.

The sole source of the mailer is an article from The Weekly Standard, and it paints Obama as far more extreme than other senior Democrats, including John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

6. Smears on ACORN:

In the past few weeks the McCain campaign and its Republican allies have launched a series of vicious attacks against ACORN, accusing the social-justice organization of everything from causing the financial crisis to perpetuating voter fraud. Republicans are also playing up the basically nonexistent link between Obama and ACORN in an attempt to paint the Democratic candidate as untrustworthy.

In the third presidential debate, McCain preposterously accused ACORN of “perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history … maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” On Friday, Palin made the vague yet sinister-sounding claim that “this group needs to learn that you here in Ohio won’t let them turn the Buckeye State into the Acorn State.” An ad released by the McCain campaign on Friday ominously asked, “Who is Barack Obama? … He was asked to train the ACORN staff. What did ACORN in Chicago engage in? Bullying banks. … ACORN forced banks to issue risky home loans, the same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we’re in today.”

These attacks have no bearing on reality. While ACORN has come under fire for submitting fraudulent registration forms — an inevitable outcome of any voter registration effort — elections experts agree that the group’s activities will not lead to voter fraud on Election Day. As Rick Hasen notes, “Even if Mickey Mouse is registering, he is not showing up on Election Day to cast ballots, and so far as I am aware, there have been no cases of phony voter registrations leading to the casting of votes in any election that have been on any large scale — much less affected the outcome of elections.” The claim that ACORN somehow helped trigger the financial crisis is equally absurd: For years, ACORN has helped working-class families buy homes while fighting to protect them from predatory lenders.

7. Outrage and Barbarism at McCain-Palin Rallies:

David Neiwert writes, “It was kind of strange, dintcha think, that John McCain came to the defense of his supporters last night after Barack Obama pointed out that people at McCain/Palin rallies were shouting out ‘terrorist’ and ‘kill him!’ in reference to Obama.” An Al Jazeera camera crew caught the honest sentiments of McCain/Palin supporters at an Ohio rally:

I’m afraid if he wins, the blacks will take over. He’s not a Christian! This is a Christian nation! What is our country gonna end up like?

When you got a Negra running for president, you need a first-stringer. He’s definitely a second-stringer.

He seems like a sheep — or a wolf in sheep’s clothing, to be honest with you. And I believe Palin — she’s filled with the Holy Spirit, and I believe she’s gonna bring honesty and integrity to the White House.

8. McCain Hires Slimeball GOP Operative Who Sank His Own Chances in 2000 in South Carolina:

Jake Tapper of ABC writes:

ABC News has learned that Warren Tompkins, one of the strategists of then-Gov. George W. Bush’s South Carolina campaign in 2000 — which Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., blamed for his family being slimed — is now a part of the McCain-Palin campaign team, albeit in an “unofficial” role.

Tompkins, a protégé of Lee Atwater, has been dispatched to North Carolina to assess the state for the McCain-Palin campaign, Southern GOP strategists tell ABC News.

… The news of Tompkins being brought on board the McCain campaign brings to a total of three the number of GOP operatives McCain now is using despite the fact that he once held them responsible for the ugly campaign that contributed to his South Carolina primary defeat, a campaign in which McCain’s wife Cindy was attacked for her past addiction to painkillers, and the McCains’ adopted Bangladeshi daughter, Bridget, was targeted as his illegitimate black baby.

9. Insider Whispering Campaign That Obama Is Really a Muslim:

In his interview on Meet the Press, Colin Powell made three separate references to Republican Party operatives spreading rumors and lies around:

10. Insinuating that Obama’s Gigantic Small Donor Fundraising Operation Is “Dangerous:”

Perhaps overwhelmed and frightened by Obama’s $150 million haul from September, McCain argued that Obama’s fundraising totals — $605 million — showed the “dam has broken” for future White House races. McCain also complained that the identities of people who contributed more than $200 million of Obama’s total take have not been reported, although that is allowable under federal law because the individual donations fall under the $200 reporting limit. “I’m saying it’s laying a predicate for the future that can be very dangerous,” McCain said. “History shows us where unlimited amounts of money are in political campaigns, it leads to scandal.”

What Angry Obama Supporters Are Doing to Stop These Attacks:

Fighting the mainstream media’s attempt to have a close race, and a potential come-from-behind narrative, the media will in some cases intensify the ugly allegations made against the Obama campaign and its allies and supporters and treat it as news, or just outright ignore the stories too hot for the media to touch. Reed Hundt of Talking Points Memo argues that “Democrats need to knock on every door in those key states; respond to every charge, no matter how crazy, in every media forum that can be found; stay on the air; stay on the offense. And remember the essential voters in those key states won’t finally decide until the weekend before that Tuesday.”

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

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Presidential and VP Debates

By BrianHull | October 15, 2008

Full video of the third 2008 Presidential Debate with Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

Full video of the second 2008 Presidential Debate with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).

Full video of the only Vice Presidential Debate with Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden.

Full video of the first 2008 Presidential Debate with Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

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Presidential Debate Watch

By BrianHull | September 23, 2008

DebateWatch 2008
Friday, September 26, 7-11pm
Rhode Island College
Donovan Dining Center
600 Mount Pleasant Ave.
Providence, RI

Rhode Island College is again partnering with the National Commission on Presidential Debates to serve as host for DebateWatch, a program in which participants are given a direct voice in the political campaign process. Political reporter Jim Hummel will moderate. The only statewide forum of its kind, DebateWatch will bring citizens from across Rhode Island and neighboring states to campus to view the first televised presidential debate. Members of the news media will hold a political roundtable dialogue with invited past and present politicians and political analysts, and the audience at large, to discuss a variety of issues tied to this year’s election. Following the town forum, attendees will watch the debate together then share their reactions through focus group participation. The results will be reported to the commission and included in press releases that synthesize the national results.

7 pm – Town Hall Meeting
9 pm – Viewing of Televised Presidential Debate
10 pm – Focus group analysis and discussion

Topics: Elections | 1 Comment »

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