Who Should Pay for the Iraq Occupation

post from Out Of Iraq Bloggers Caucus on 27 May 2008 09:11:00 PM. © Out Of Iraq Bloggers Caucus

If I made a major decision that I later came to regret because it is costing me much more than I can manage while still living my life of 'luxury,' what options do I have. Should I ask strangers to make up the difference so I can continue my comfortable lifestyle? Or should I take a look at my situation, my rationale for the bad decision, my way of life, my other resources, and then take responsibility and make some adjustments?

Most of us would probably take responsibility and work to figure out our own solution. More than that, most of us would probably not have made such a bad decision in the first place. Most of us would have considered the long term risks and decided not to jeopardized the future of our family.

On the other hand, we have an Administration that hasn't done as we would have done. Instead, they have made multiple bad decisions (invading Iraq, ignoring New Orleans after Katrina, tax cuts for the rich, unregulated subprime loans, etc.) and are asking other countries (China and Japan) and future generations to pay for their mistakes. Not only have they performed poorly as our leaders, they have actually made themselves, and their rich supporters, richer and more powerful (unitary president, over compensated CEOs, unchecked Blackwater Inc., suspension of habeas corpus, etc.) in the process.

The administration, their small group of avid followers and friendly media moguls actually don't mind having China and others pay for their expensive mistakes as long as they are getting richer in the process. These rich and powerful know as long as China is willing to loan the US much of what it needs, they can continue to enjoy their 2006 tax cuts. Isn't it time to take away their tax cuts and make them pay for their mistakes?

If you're not quite convinced, maybe a little historical perspective on income taxes would help. Take a look at US individual federal income taxes in effect during WWII in the tables below. The rich of the time were taxed at up to 94% of their income over $200,000 in 1945. After inflation, these 1945 dollars become $2,090,800 in 2005 dollars.

(Click on image to see income tax rates during WWII)

If The Greatest Generation supported WWII with higher taxes, shouldn't those who support the Iraq occupation pay with higher taxes?

(This posting was originally published on The WAWG Blog.)

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Is McCain a "would-be reformer"

post from Daily Kos on 27 May 2008 09:10:19 PM. © Daily Kos

John McCain is a self-styled "reformer", an image he's been banking on ever since he managed to sell it to the American news media several years ago. It's really all he has to offer this election apart from more war and a health care proposal that "should scare the heck out of...millions of Americans".

But McCain's self-presentation does not make him a "would-be reformer", as the LA Times paints him. The paper's headline just assumes what (desperately) needs to be proven.

The article is full of false equivalencies between the Obama and McCain campaigns. That's the kind of false "balance" you get from reporters who, having bought into McCain's ridiculous narrative about himself, cannot bring themselves simply to describe the political landscape as it is. Instead, every time they begin poking around the truth about McCain's record they feel the need to find some parallel fault in his rival. It's what journalists call "balance" and the rest of us call malarkey.

The premise of the LAT piece is that both Obama and McCain have struggled to break free of the lobbyist culture in politics.

As John McCain and Barack Obama intensify their battle for the White House, they are competing for the mantle of reform, with each claiming that he has done the most to shield his campaign from the taint of lobbyists.

But the strategists behind those efforts are senior aides with a more-than-passing resemblance to -- what else? -- lobbyists.

The premise is quite false. Obama has made a fairly clean break with lobbyists and their money, whereas McCain is up to his ears in lobbyists...including several registered as agents of foreign governments. Lobbyists raise much of his cash, they staff his campaign and serve as advisers. Some of his lobbyist-staffers ostensibly are on leaves of absence from their firms while they work without pay from McCain, while some others may in fact still be drawing lobbyist salaries.

[McCain national finance co-chair Tom] Loeffler's firm started paying $15,000 a month last summer to one of its lobbyists, Susan Nelson, after she left to become McCain's full-time finance director, said a source familiar with the arrangement (who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters). Campaign officials were told the payments were "severance" for Nelson and that they ended by November. But in "February or March," Loeffler rehired Nelson as a consultant to "help him with his clients" while she continued on the McCain payroll, according to a campaign official who asked not to be identified talking about personnel matters. Federal election law prohibits any outside entity from subsidizing the income of campaign workers. McCain's officials say they have been assured that Nelson did actual work for Loeffler's lobbying clients—and that the payments were proper. But after NEWSWEEK posed questions about the matter, they confirmed Loeffler's resignation and the termination of Nelson's consulting contract.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that McCain's ability to survive the Republican primaries is due to lobbyist support. His campaign is entirely a construct of his lobbyist pals.

So how does the LA Times manage to compare McCain's entanglements with lobbyists to the Obama campaign? By dwelling at some length upon the fact that Obama's top strategist, David Axelrod, is a political consultant with a background in astroturfing. That's really the best dirt on Obama the LAT can find, aside from a few informal advisers who used to be lobbyists. It's one of those articles that has to be read to be believed.

Meanwhile, the Times can't get even the most pertinent of facts straight regarding McCain's staff:

Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, is a former lobbyist...

The LA Times has drunk deep of the fiction that McCain's top staffers are "former" rather than, you know, actual lobbyists. But in fact, as the NY Times reminded us just last week, Rick Davis is on leave of absence from his lobbying firm while he tries to put John McCain in the White House.

What in the world could explain the preposterous false parallelism in this article? I suspect that the reporters at the LAT, like many others, realize that if they were to portray McCain's campaign simply as it is rather than as he would have us believe, then it would implode. To shine too much light on McCain's indebtedness to lobbyists would throw the presidential race out of "balance" because McCain's image as a "reformer" is all he has going for him.

"The core image of John McCain is as a reformer in Washington — and the more dominant the story is about the lobbying teams around him, the more you put that into question," said Terry Nelson, who was Mr. McCain’s campaign manager until he left in a shake-up last fall. "If the Obama campaign can truly change him from being seen as a reformer to just being another Washington politician, it could be very damaging over the course of the campaign."

Even McCain's own Reform Institute is a sham - run by lobbyists such as Rick Davis and functioning "rather obviously as a public-relations arm of his political machine". No part of the McCain-as-reformer narrative stands up to scrutiny. That's why the American news media doesn't want to provide us with too much scrutiny.

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Deep Thought for the Day

post from Talking Points Memo on 27 May 2008 09:10:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

If John Hagee is too big a whacko for John McCain, why is Joe Lieberman headlining Hagee's annual shindig in July?[...]

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End Game

post from MyDD on 27 May 2008 09:06:50 PM. © MyDD

Ever since the Obama campaign decided to walk back its intention to "declare victory" on May 20 having won the majority -- according to the metric of the moment at least -- of pledged delegates, they've been remarkably measured in their tone regarding[...]

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Sinking Ship

post from Talking Points Memo on 27 May 2008 09:02:00 PM. © Talking Points Memo

We had so much fun with Scott McClellan. And to think now he's turned around and written a scathing, tell-all Bush White House memoir. Didn't see that coming. [...]

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VA Secretary To Vets: Suck It Up And Deal

post from Firedoglake on 27 May 2008 09:01:46 PM. © Firedoglake

How long can the Republican Party sustain this level of cognitive dissonance? How long before voters start noticing that all of Dubya and the GOP's support-our-brave-troops rhetoric thinly veils a fuck-the-troops worldview? And how much of an effort[...]

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Print media noted Cindy McCain's limited
financial release, but not how McCains benefit from tax cuts

post from Media Matters for America on 27 May 2008 09:01:12 PM. © Media Matters for America

Following the releaseof part of Cindy McCain's 2006 tax returns on May 23, the Los Angeles Times,The Wall Street Journal,the Associated Press, and The New York Timesnoted that she reportedmore than $6 million in income for that year. Butin contrast with TheNew York Times' analysis in 2004 of the benefit to Teresa Heinz Kerry of the Bush tax cuts, none of those outlets noted thatCindy McCain also benefited significantly from the tax cuts -- which her husband, Sen. John McCain, has pledged to[...]

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Asia Times: Bush to attack Iran by August.

Asia Times is reporting that “a retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community” are alleging that the Bush administration “plans to launch an air strike against Iran within the next two months” :

The source, a retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community, speaking anonymously, said last week that the US plans an air strike against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The air strike would target the headquarters of the IRGC’s elite Quds force. With an estimated strength of up to 90,000 fighters, the Quds’ stated mission is to spread Iran’s revolution of 1979 throughout the region.

Last week, the White House denied a story in the Jerusalem Post that claimed that President Bush “intends to attack Iran before the end of his term.”

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http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/27/iranattackaugust/

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Beam yourself down, Scotty

While his book will create a few mild shockwaves for its revelations about the Bush White House, former Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s memoir strikes me as the standard stuff: I was an insider to a corrupt group but the head of the group and I weren’t corrupt; we were misled. A typical rightwing public confession.Most [...]

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http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2008/05/27/beam-yourself-down-scotty/

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Obama, Clinton finance reports overwhelm FEC
computers

What a terrible problem to have…Politico:Yet it?s had another consequence that has gone all but unnoticed. The campaign finance reports filed by Obama and Clinton have grown so massive that they?ve strained the capacity of the Federal Election Commission, good government groups, the media and even software applications to process and make sense of [...]

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http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/27/obama-clinton-finance-reports-overwhelm-
fec-computers/

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