Why We Worry

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This site (http://www.whyweworry.com/content) will remain available as an archive.

Short version: Congress has given Attorney General Alberto Gonzales the power to spy on Americans and foreigners with little to no oversight.

Long version: I’ve written a bit about the destruction of the 4th Amendment that is the NSA wiretapping scandal. I’ve wanted to write about this particular story since Friday night. It’s just so maddening and it’s not exactly a simple situation to explain, but here goes. In response to the Nixon administration’s abuse of wiretaps (he was spying on political opponents), Congress created the secret FISA court which was tasked with approving wiretaps. Since it’s inception in 1978 it has denied less than 10 warrants while approving more than 18,000.

While not a robust check on executive power, it was a check. Shortly after 9/11 the President created an NSA program that was authorized to spy on Americans and foreigners to search for evidence of terrorist activity. This program did not go to the FISA court for approval for the eavesdropping despite the court’s clear jurisdiction. So, because the government is conducting this spying in secret, we have no idea who they are spying on. This is precisely the situation that the FISA court was designed to prevent.

After this program’s existence was uncovered by the NY Times, Bush admitted its existence and very clearly stated that he would continue the program in violation of existing law (definitely grounds for impeachment). The Bush administration also made it quite clear that it sought no changes to the FISA court until, of course, the 2006 election season rolled around. Then it became a top priority, but Congress resisted.

Fast-forward to last week. The President and Republicans in Congress are suddenly is predicting doomsday is at hand and that the FISA law must be amended. The amendment is quickly written, hardly debated, and passed this weekend by the Democractic Congress.

Of course the law is terrible. It totally guts the power of the FISA court. To be wiretapped you no longer have to suspected of being a terrorist or foreign spy, you only have to be suspected of being foreign or talking to someone who is suspected of being foreign. And guess who makes that distinction. Yes, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Just the man who we should be giving more and more power to. The FISA court’s role has been reduced to that of a rubber stamp. They don’t approve or disapprove of wiretaps on an individual basis, they can only approve or disapprove of the process used to determine who is being wiretapped. Genius!

Check this link to see which Democrats voted for the gutting of the 4th Amendment and the FISA court. Vote them out.

I write about it all the time. Most Americans are feeling the squeeze. We’re dealing with rising costs for fuel, education, health care and food, while our wages are falling. Yet our country is still considered the richest most powerful on the planet. It’s not hard to see where those riches are, but why are they so concentrated at the top? In a nation built on the promise of freedom and equality, why aren’t we as economically egalitarian as our friends in Europe?

While reading Digby’s excellent blog, I was introduced to this paper by Sociologist Nathan Glazer of Harvard. In simple terms, Glazer thinks that because our poor have generally been racially minorities, and no one wanted to support government programs that gave money primarily to them.

“Racial fragmentation and the disproportionate representation of ethnic minorities among the poor played a major role in limiting redistribution…. Our bottom line is that Americans redistribute less than Europeans for three reasons: because the majority of Americans believe that redistribution favors racial minorities, because Americans believe that they live in an open and fair society, and that if someone is poor it is his or her own fault, and because the political system is geared toward preventing redistribution. In fact the political system is likely to be endogenous to these basic American beliefs.”(p. 61) “Endogenous” is economics-ese for saying we have the political system we do because we prefer the results it gives, such as limiting redistribution to the blacks.

Thus the racial factor as well as a wider net of social beliefs play a key role in why Americans don’t care about income inequality, and why, not caring, they have no great interest in expanding the welfare state.

In honor of my now complete and impromptu weeklong break from posting here on Why We Worry (sorry!), I’m posting about another ill-timed vacation. The Iraqi Parliament has decided that there are no pressing issues facing the country, so they might as well take a month off:

“Parliament has decided to break until early September,” Hussein Falluji of the mainly Sunni Accordance Front bloc in parliament told Reuters.

“We have already cut the holiday by one month. It is our constitutional right to take it.”

Awwww, poor thing. Although, I really can’t blame them too much. I wouldn’t want to be in Iraq either.

I was in the middle of my daily perusing of blogs, when a tidbit on Glenn Greenwald’s site caught my attention. John Yoo, one of Bush’s key legal advisors, argued that the President has the legal right to torture children by crushing their testicles.

From a 2005 debate with professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel:

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

Keep Professor Yoo in mind when you think about Abu Ghraib, NSA wiretaps, rendition and Gitmo. He told our President that his power as Commander-in-Chief had no limits in the prosecution of war. It should then be no surprise that the Bush’s administration has not obeyed the limits of our established laws and treaties.

Abu Ghraib, NSA wiretaps, rendition and Gitmo are not excesses or aberrations in pursuit of our security, they are pieces of a larger policy that make Bush and any other president an autocrat during war. And how lucky we are to be in the middle of a “war on terror” that, by definition, will never end.

Since our illustrious Congress seems content with only annoying the White House and not truly reasserting the power of the legislative branch, we can only hope that our next president will not follow the precedent established by Bush.

And that’s what we’re dealing with, at least until January 20th, 2009.

Michael Moore’s recent film “Sicko” has once again put the spotlight on universal healthcare. An issue that otherwise gets far too little coverage despite the wishes of over 60% of the country.

Along with healthcare we’re told that programs like welfare and social security are just too expensive.

Then we’re told by neocons that Bush is great and the economy is booming!

So which is it, are we drowning in cash or are we strapped for it?

Heather Boushey and Joshua Holland make the case that America as a whole is increasingly rich, but that 99.9% of Americans are feeling the squeeze:

…the top .01 percent — that has grabbed most of the gains–seeing an impressive 250 percent increase in income between 1973 and 2005 — from an economy that’s grown by 160 percent.

An analysis by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez gives us the best perspective of what’s going on for everyone else. They found that despite several periods of healthy growth between 1973 and 2005, the average income of all but the top ten percent of the income ladder — nine out of ten American families - fell by 11 percent when adjusted for inflation.

Meanwhile, even as the top earners’ incomes have gone through the roof, their tax burden has shriveled. At the same time, the share of federal revenues contributed by corporations has declined — by two-thirds since 1962.

Read the whole article.

The Republicans have been threatening to filibuster a lot of Democratic legislation these days. The threat (not an actual filibuster) has kept the following legislation off the table: (Courtesy of Open Left)

1. January 17, Reid Amendment to Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007: a bill to provide greater transparency in the legislative process.
2. January 24, Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007: a bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide for an increase in the Federal minimum wage.
3. February 5, A bill to express the sense of Congress on Iraq: disapproving of the troop escalation in Iraq.
4. February 17, A bill to express the sense of Congress on Iraq: disapproving of the troop escalation in Iraq (again).
5. April 17, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007: an original bill to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2007 for the intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States Government, the Intelligence Community Management Account, and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes.
6. April 18, Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act of 2007: a bill to amend part D of title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide for fair prescription drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries.
7. June 11, No confidence vote on Alberto Gonzales: a joint resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales no longer holds the confidence of the Senate and of the American people.
8. June 21, Baucus Amendment to CLEAN Energy Act of 2007: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide for energy advancement and investment, and for other purposes.
9. June 26, Employee Free Choice Act of 2007: A bill to amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes.
10. July 11, Webb Amendment to the national defense authorization act for fiscal year 2008: to specify minimum periods between deployment of units and members of the Armed Forces for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

But there is good news. Senator Harry Reid is says he is going to finally force the Republicans to actually filibuster a bill that would require a reduction in forces in Iraq. Let’s see if the Democrats have the spine to go through with it.

Speaking of spine; some Democratic lawmakers are still not ready to restore Habeas Corpus. You know… the thing that keeps us from being locked in jail just because the government says so. Bob Geiger has the list of those yet to find their spines.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani rise was meteoric after 9/11. The media proclaimed him America’s Mayor, thanks to his inspired leadership in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

Or was it inspired? Groups like the International Association of Firefighters are coming out against Giuliani:

Yesterday, Harold Schaitberger of the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) — the nation’s largest firefighters organization, consisting of 280,000 members — assailed Giuliani, detailing how the mayor ditched body-recovery efforts only 24 hours after recovering the $230 million in gold. “He found the gold on October 31, and on November 1 is when he issued the order to remove the firefighters from their recovery mode.”

That’s a damning charge if true, especially about the rush to clear the rubble. Almost six years later we still don’t have anything to replace the towers, so what exactly was the rush?

Combine these accusations with Rudy’s penchant for playing the fear card in place of reasoned debate, and you have a recipe for what could be a disaster if he became the president.

From Bloomberg.com:

Four thousand U.S. service members have died in U.S. President George W. Bush’s “war on terror'’ in Iraq and Afghanistan 5 1/2 years after American forces ousted the Taliban in December 2001.

A total of 3,596 have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion that removed Saddam Hussein from power. Some 2,957 of that number were killed in action, according to the latest Department of Defense figures. More than 26,500 personnel have been wounded in that conflict, 11,959 of them so seriously they couldn’t return to duty.

In Afghanistan, 404 American personnel have died, of which 224 were killed in action. Those deaths include 61 personnel who died in Pakistan and Uzbekistan in support of the operation. Some 1,361 have been injured; 813 of them couldn’t return to duty.

Four thousand is a pretty hefty number considering that from most accounts we’ve moved backwards on the issue of terrorism and non-proliferation.

The AP is also reporting that the combined cost of the wars are quickly approaching the amount we spent on Vietnam.

The $12 billion a month “burn rate” includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That’s higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion.

Staggering numbers. That’s why it’s imperative that we keep asking whether or not the wars are worth it.

Glenn Greenwald:

In Federalist No. 70, Alexander Hamilton described the defining power of the King which made the British monarchy intolerably corrupt: “In England, the king is a perpetual magistrate; and it is a maxim which has obtained for the sake of the public peace, that he is unaccountable for his administration, and his person sacred.” Thomas Paine proclaimed in Common Sense “that so far as we approve of monarch, that in America THE LAW IS KING.” But little effort is required to see how far removed we now are from those basic principles.

—

Keith Olbermann:

Resign.

And give us someone — anyone — about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

Read the transcript at AlterNet.

Jimmy Weber, 45, of Sioux City, Iowa was getting ready for some lonely nights. The Des Moines Register says he used the money to buy this:

A home theater surround-sound system; a laptop computer for personal use; accessories for an iPod personal stereo; the books “Pleasure Beach” and “The Kama Sutra;” the CD “Sex Machine” by James Brown; and the DVDs “Ultimate Sexual Massage,” “Forbidden Games,” “Girls Gone Wild,” “Latin Girls Gone Buck Wild” and “Emmanuel’s Intimate Encounters.”

Subscriptions to adult-oriented Web sites; online camera services linked to a Web site with adult content; various pay-per-view movies; the comedy DVD “Git-R-Done” starring Larry the Cable Guy; and a subscription to Creative Knitting magazine.

Creative Knitting magazine?

Who would you trust more?

This guy?

…or this guy?

A new Pew Research poll shows that U.S. allies (and yes, even Britain!) put more trust in Russian President Vladimir Putin than they do in George W. Bush.

Sure, Putin is suspected of poisoning politcal opponents, jailing others and killing journalists (and then there was the really weird time he kissed that random boy’s belly), but at least Putin comes across as mildly intelligent.

So yes, we don’t need allies, we got this: