George Bush, the Connecticut cowboy, the good old boy from Yale is a man of mediocre intelligence, little imagination, and great stubbornness and vindictiveness. He may be the Decider but his handlers have long known how to manipulate him. The key is to hook him with short, simple sells. Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice knew that once he has consulted his gut and perhaps his higher father his decision is forever. So whoever gets to him first is likely to carry the day because he doesn’t like to be challenged and is, quite simply, too lazy to change his mind. The Bubble is a natural consequence of this decision making process where logic, reason, and facts have little or no role.

Bush’s Presidency began in the shadow of a contested and likely stolen election and promised to be unsuccessful in a largely forgettable and unremarkable way. 911 changed all that and transformed a plodding, and essentially AWOL one termer into an accidental hero. Enormous power flowed to his office but Bush had no idea how to use it. He liked to campaign, not govern. In those around him, he prized loyalty over competence and honesty. A believer in the notion of "to the victor go the spoils," he was the perfect mark for every conniver, bumbler, bungler, hack, hanger on, and would be crony that Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and their friends could find. In the normal course of things, this would have spelled failure. Post-911, it was catastrophic.

At this critical juncture in our history we needed an adult but got an adolescent. Instead of responsibility, we got a truant. In place of flexibility we got obduracy. In the face of great and complex challenges, we got strawmen, a black and white universe, my way or the highway, regurgitated stump speeches, and a steadfast refusal to compromise not just with opponents but with reality.

What all this comes down to is that George Bush should never have become our President. He is not just a bad President but the worst one we could have had, the worst our country has ever seen. This is a judgment that many Americans have come to but which our political establishment and media, even after 7 years, have yet to acknowledge, accept, and act on. This is the tragedy and crime of our times.

Walter Reed outpatient treatment, poor living conditions, undelivered mail, lack of caseworkers to oversee and facilitate patient care for amputees, brain injured, and psychologically disabled veterans; Walter Reed is not the only military hospital about which questions have been raised; also out there the underfunding of the VA.

The problems at Walter Reed came to the public’s attention through a series of articles by Dana Priest beginning February 18, 2007. Following them, Gen. George Weightman who ran Walter Reed for 6 months resigned March 1, followed by the forced resignation of Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey the next day. Weightman’s boss Army Surgeon General Gen. Kevin "I don’t do barracks inspections at Walter Reed" Kiley who lived across from the notorious Building 18 and who had run the hospital from 2002-2004 lasted one day as the new head of Walter Reed before he was removed. He resigned from the Army on March 12.

One source of the difficulties at Walter Reed was the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) decision on August 25, 2005 to close Walter Reed. Planned renovations were canceled. Another was the privatizing of support services at the hospital. The workforce dropped from 350 experienced professionals to 50 who were not and the contract was given to IAP. IAP began work at Walter Reed in 2003. In 2004, IAP lobbied successfully against an Army recommendation not to privatize the workforce. The OMB reversed the Army finding and the services contract was given to IAP in January 2006 although its implementation was delayed a year. IAP is run by two former KBR executives and had a well connected board of directors as well as being owned by a powerful holding company the Cerberus hedge fund.

However, the generally low priority given to ongoing patient care for wounded soldiers was probably the single greatest reason for the woes at Walter Reed. It bears remembering that there were problems noted as early as 2004 and certainly by 2005 and that Walter Reed is located in the nation’s capital minutes from the White House, the Congress, and the offices of major media outlets. Washington didn’t know about Walter Reed because it didn’t want to know.

The mindset which gives a higher priority to PR than care of the nation’s wounded continues. An August 2008 USAToday story reported that barracks in Fort Sill, Oklahoma meant to relieve conditions experienced by veterans at Walter Reed had mold problems in their ventilation system. The situation had been known for months, but soldiers were ordered not to talk to the press about it. Chuck Roeder, the social services coordinator, who blew the whistle on conditions at the base was rewarded for his diligence by being forced out of his job.

Firing of US attorneys. Most of the country’s 93 US attorneys are usually replaced within the first 2 years of a new administration and this is what happened when Bush came into office in 2001. US attorneys are political appointees and are chosen to reflect the policy priorities of a President. Still their primary job is to uphold the law, and the law is not supposed to be partisan. Karl Rove, of course, had other ideas. He believes that government should be politicized and populated with compliant partisan hacks loyal to him and his.

The plan was to create a list of political hires and fires of US attorneys under the direction of the White House (i.e. Rove and Harriet Miers) which Gonzales (and Bush) would then dutifully sign off on. There were two components. First, on February 7, 2006, regulations were published giving Attorney General Alberto Gonzales the power to hire and fire all non-civil service employees of the Justice Department (DOJ). On March 1, 2006, Gonzales signed an order delegating this power (subject to his nominal final approval) to two fairly junior and inexperienced staffers: Monica "Loyalty oaths" Goodling his senior counselor and liaison with the White House and his Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson. Second, sometime late in 2005 (shortly before the conference report for the Patriot Act Extension was filed on December 8, 2005), language originating at the DOJ was surreptitiously inserted into the act by Brett Tolman (see 97) which allowed Gonzales to make indefinite interim US attorney appointments without Senate approval. The conference report was passed and became law on March 9, 2006. So again, the two parts were first to set up a system where Rove could control the hiring and firing of US attorneys and second to bypass the Senate confirmation process which might interfere with the first part.

On December 7, 2006, eight US attorneys were notified that they would be fired. Most came from swing states. Most were considered not to have aggressively enough prosecuted Democrats or voter fraud cases in the run up to November 2006 elections, the idea being that such prosecutions would have helped Republicans in close elections. Worse some were investigating and had even prosecuted prominent Republicans. And then there were those partisan hacks waiting in the wings to replace them.

1. Carol Lam, Southern California, convicted Rep. Duke Cunningham and indicted the former No. 3 at the CIA Dusty Foggo.
2. H. E. Cummins III, Eastern Arkansas, had been asked to investigate the Republican Governor in the neighboring state of Missouri. He announced the investigation finished in October 2006 a month before the election but was fired anyway to make way for Timothy Griffin, an aide to Karl Rove who had been the principal opposition researcher in the Bush 2004 campaign.
3. David Iglesias, New Mexico, angered Republican Senator Pete Domenici and Representative Heather Wilson when he refused to push for indictments of Democratic officials before the election after they inappropriately contacted him.
4. Daniel Bogden, Nevada, similarly was replaced by Brett Tolman who was crucial to bypassing Senate scrutiny of these appointments.
5. Paul K. Charlton, Arizona, was investigating Republican Representative Rick Renzi for corruption.
6. John McKay, Western Washington, angered state Republicans for not creating voter fraud cases in the 2004 Governor’s race which Democrat Christine Gregoire won by 129 votes.
7. Margaret Chiara, Western Michigan. It is not clear why she was fired. She was on the Native American Issues Subcommittee (NAIS) of US attorneys. It may have been to make way for Russell Stoddard who had been languishing out in Guam as First Assistant Attorney after Frederick Black got demoted for investigating Abramoff’s activities in the North Marianas. In July 2008, it came out that Monica "It’s against my religion" Goodling may have sought to remove Chiara because of unsubstantiated rumors that she was in a lesbian relationship with an Assistant US Attorney Leslie Hagen (see item 336).
8. Kevin V. Ryan, Northern California, is the only one of the 8 who deserved to be on the list because he did run his office poorly. DOJ actually wanted to keep him on but a federal judge forced the issue and his name was added to the list.

A 9th US Attorney Todd Graves (Western District of Missouri) was asked to resign before the others on January 24, 2006. This resignation took place under pressure from Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) as payback for frictions his office was having with Sam Graves, a Republican Representative also from Missouri and Todd Graves’ brother.

As they say, it is not the crime but the coverup. Gonzales has given so many different and contradictory stories about the firings that it is hard to keep up and then there is his memory. In his Senate testimony of April 19, 2007, he answered he couldn’t remember by some counts 71 times. He didn’t know who had called for such a list. He couldn’t remember having been very involved in the process. He even forgot to mention the March 1, 2006 order in his testimony. In fact, he knew very little about what were major decisions at the department he supposedly ran but, despite this, he did know there was nothing improper in any of it. Testifying in the House on May 10, 2007, his memory and his believability were little improved. Kyle Sampson too had memory problems but did contradict Gonzales’ claim that he had not been involved. For his part, Sampson described himself as just the guy that others dropped their files off to and his contribution to the process was to keep them in his desk drawer. Initially, Monica Goodling took an indefinite leave of absence, then resigned, then said she would take the 5th in any Congressional testimony. On May 23, 2007, after a grant of immunity she testified that Paul McNulty the Deputy Attorney General was more aware of events surrounding the firings (although this is far from clear), that she had crossed the line (i.e. broken the law) in asking career DOJ hires about their political affiliations, that Gonzales’ statements were inaccurate (i.e. he lied), and that Gonzales had sought to harmonize their stories (i.e. obstruct justice). Goodling, like Sampson, tried to portray herself as a bit player despite Gonzales’ extraordinary grant of authority to them both. On June 21, 2007, Paul McNulty testified before the Congress and basically stonewalled, saying that he was out of the loop, that he didn’t know who created the firing list, that there was no problem at the DOJ, and that there was no contradiction between his testimony and that of anyone else, including Monica Goodling. On July 11, 2007, Sara Taylor who left her post of White House political director in May randomly invoked Executive privilege and otherwise and like so many others had a bad memory. She did state that she had had no dealings with Bush concerning the firings. Along with her selective use of Executive privilege, this contention further undermined the claim that an Executive privilege was involved and left the possibility of a contempt citation. An unintentionally revealing insight into the mindset of those who work for this Administration came in Taylor’s testimony when she stated, “I took an oath to the president, and I take that oath very seriously.” Her oath was, of course, not to the President but to defend the Constitution. On July 12, 2007, former White House counsel Harriet Miers refused to appear pursuant to a House Judiciary Committee subpoena, leaving her open to contempt proceedings as well.

From this use of Executive privilege, it is clear that the White House, and more specifically Karl Rove, was involved in the firings and was, in fact, calling the shots in this affair, and that those at Justice, including the Attorney General, were just the eager, if dim, facilitators of it.

In addition to the Sampson and Goodling resignations, Michael Battle Director of the Executive Office for US Attorneys (EOUSA) who informed the US attorneys of their firing left the DOJ on March 16, 2007. Paul McNulty the No. 2 at the DOJ and Deputy Attorney General announced his resignation on May 14, 2007 to become effective later in the summer. Although left out of the loop on the details of the firings and giving false Congressional testimony as a result for which he apologized, McNulty did approve the firings and through his Chief of Staff Michael Elston warned several of those fired to stay quiet about them. Elston announced his resignation on June 15, 2007. On June 22, 2007, Bill Mercer who was Acting Associate Attorney General (the No. 3 spot at the DOJ) withdrew his nomination for the permanent position. On August 27, 2007, Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation as Attorney General effective September 17, 2007.

The DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) informed the Senate in June 2007 that it was investigating Goodling’s claim that Gonzales had tried to tamper with her testimony.

Congress intervened and changed the relevant provision of the Patriot Act to re-instate the Senate’s role in confirming US attorneys (May 22, 2007). This was signed into law June 14, 2007. Provocatively, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales continued to make interim appointments right up to the Presidential signing.

In September 2008, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility issued a joint report on the US Attorney firings. Their investigation was hampered by an unprecedented lack of cooperation from within the Executive Branch itself. Not only did major players like Harriet Miers and Karl Rove decline to be interviewed but the White House refused to provide relevant materials or redacted them to the point of rendering them useless. Even more extraordinary Justice’s own Office of Legal Counsel (which now acts as more of an adjunct of the White House in the Justice Department) also refused to share materials. Monica Goodling, of course, declined to cooperate as did Senators Kit Bond (R-MO) and Pete Domenici (R-NM).

As happens in most IG reports, this one pulled its punches. It sought to ascertain if there was a credible rationale for each of the firings, an approach fundamentally at odds with the political nature of the firing process itself. Chiara might have been fired for performance reasons and not sexual orientation. With Lam, it might have been about guns and immigration. McKay, a disagreement about a file sharing system. Charlton, a death penalty case. But all these miss the point. Credible rationales were not the object of the exercise.

As the report concludes:

. . . the process the Department used to select the U.S. Attorneys for removal was fundamentally flawed, and the oversight and implementation of the removal process by the Department’s most senior leaders was seriously lacking. In particular, we found that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty failed to adequately supervise the U.S. Attorney selection and removal process, and they were remarkably unengaged in the process. Instead, Chief of Staff to the Attorney General Kyle Sampson, with very little input from other Department officials, designed, selected, and implemented the removal process, with little supervision or oversight.

This is certainly damning, but it still invites us to accept an incredible scenario, that the senior management of the Justice Department, faced with significant high level personnel changes in which they either had a direct say or substantial interest, simply took a walk, asked no questions, and left it all in the hands of a virtual nobody. While this DOJ OIG-OPR report fills in details, the real story behind the US Attorney firings remains to be told.

Plamegate. Scooter Libby Chief of Staff to the Vice President was convicted on March 6, 2007 on two counts of perjury before the Grand Jury and one count each of obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI. Placing political payback (against an individual and an agency) above national security, the Vice President’s office orchestrated the outing of a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame, her cover company Brewster Jennings, other agents which had used this same cover, and her contacts. All this was done in retaliation for an op-ed in the New York Times on July 6, 2003 written by her husband ambassador Joe Wilson. In it, he publicly debunked the "16 words" in Bush’s January 28, 2003 State of the Union which claimed that Saddam Hussein had sought to obtain uranium from Africa (Niger). This undercut the argument that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat and showed that the Bush Administration had known this was so in advance of the war. Wilson had been sent to Niger to investigate this charge in February 2002 at the request of the CIA and had reported nearly a year before its use in the SOTU that it was false. After several attempts by among others Karl Rove to pitch Plame’s identity to the media, on July 14, 2003, Valerie Plame was outed in a column by Robert Novak In his closing argument at the Libby trial, Patrick Fitzgerald detailed Cheney’s guiding hand in the conspiracy behind the outing and spoke of a "cloud" over the Vice President. That cloud remains.

On June 5, 2007, Scooter Libby received a preliminary sentence of 30 months in federal prison, with a 2-year term of supervised release following the completion of that sentence, a $250,000 fine, and a requirement of 400 hours of community service. This was confirmed June 14 and bail during appeal was denied. Scooter’s defense solicited letters on his behalf from Washington’s conservative elite. These praised his legal expertise and national security credentials and were likely counterproductive since they made clear he was well aware of the legal ramifications of lying to a grand jury and the security implications of outing a CIA agent. A group of conservative attorneys led by Robert Bork also filed an unsuccessful, last minute amicus brief questioning the legitimacy of Patrick Fitzgerald’s appointment as prosecutor. It called the appointment a "close" question although its rationale depended upon a lone Supreme Court dissent in a case that was not closely decided and its effect would be to prevent independent investigations of high US officials. On July 2, 2007, a three judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit unanimously denied Libby’s appeal. Hours later George Bush commuted Libby’s sentence eliminating any jail time. This is an Administration that believes it is outside the law and acts accordingly. It is not so much that they have contempt for the law. Rather they have contempt for us. The cloud that was over Cheney now covers Bush as well.

A civil suit filed by Valerie Plame was dismissed on July 19, 2007 by judge John D. Bates who ruled that, while Plame’s complaint had merit, the court did not have jurisdiction.  It was dismissed again on appeal on August 12, 2008 on procedural grounds.

On December 10, 2007, Libby’s lawyers announced that they were dropping his appeal. This is all part of a legal strategy to stonewall and run out the clock. Since Libby had his sentence commuted rather than receiving a pardon, he could continue to assert a 5th Amendment privilege if he were summoned to give testimony before Congress. Beginning an appeal gave a patina of credence to such a contention. However, to go forward with the appeal once this point had been made would have been expensive and unnecessary. The last thing Scooter wanted was a successful appeal since this could have resulted in a retrial and another conviction, very likely after Bush had left office. At that point Scooter would have no one to commute his sentence or pardon him and he could have faced real jail time. This was not the object of the exercise.

Iraq: axis of evil, lack of preparation for occupation, looting, including the National Museum, too few troops, lack of training, lack of equipment, lack of securing loose Iraqi munitions, disbanding the Iraqi army, banning the Baathists, the CPA, cronyism, Paul Bremer, losing tons of money literally, lack of international inclusion in reconstruction and security, weak Constitution, formation of sectarian parties, weak government, denial of actual conditions in Iraq, for example, its civil war, ignoring 4 years of failed policies and the basic proposal of the Iraq Study Group to withdraw, escalating instead, continuing lack of any discernible mission. A brief analysis of casualty figures can be found here:

Afghanistan, transferring resources to Iraq before the job was finished, the results: a resurgent Taliban, continuing warlordism, and exploding opium production. On January 30, 2008, three independent non-partisan reports on Afghanistan by the Center for the Study of the Presidency (Jones-Pickering), the Atlantic Council, and the National Defense University concluded that Afghanistan has been neglected and is in danger of becoming a failed state and that a new comprehensive policy for it is needed. You would think that after 6 years we would have one by now but this is the Bush Administration we are talking about.

Iran and saber rattling, axis of evil, lack of engagement, refusal to talk to, addressing the nuclear issue through threats, clumsy attempts to blame Iran for the debacle in Iraq and a failure to recognize their very real interests there.

North Korea, axis of evil, ditching the 1994 agreement and freezing of bank accounts because of dubious uranium program, the plutonium program which led to a fizzled first nuclear test, and something like a return to the 1994 agreement. On June 26, 2008, Bush declared that he would ask Congress to rescind its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. While this move was primarily to establish some sort of a positive legacy for him, it underlines how off track his North Korea policy was during most of his Presidency and how although tenuous this one foreign policy success was due to that most abhorred of all concepts in the Bush Administration: diplomacy.

Osama bin Laden, where are you? The blown opportunity at Tora Bora. Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the roles of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in terrorism. Pakistan’s intelligence service the ISI created the Taliban. Despite $11 billion in US aid from 2001 through 2007, the government of Pervez Musharraf continues to give it safe haven in Pakistan. As for al Qaeda, those efforts which do occur are limited and often timed to the visits of American dignitaries. In addition, Bush’s oft stated policy of spreading democracy was dealt a blow when Musharraf fearing a Supreme Court decision preventing him from holding the Presidency and remaining Chief of Staff of the armed forces declared a state of emergency and instituted martial law on November 3, 2007.

The Saudis for their part fund radical madrassas throughout the Moslem world and have a domestic educational system run by the most extreme of their homegrown extremists. Saudi and Gulf oil dollars find their way to many terrorist groups as well as the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

Civilian contractors; also no bid contracts; in Iraq Halliburton tainted food and water, overpriced gas; Blackwater use of private security contractors, what used to be called mercenaries, with little or no accountability

The Military Commissions Act: torture, indefinite detention, the end of habeas corpus, and kangaroo courts. One of the last acts of the Congress before the November 2006 elections, it passed the Senate on September 28 and the House the next day and was signed into law by Bush on October 17. The short story on this is that, pre-election, the Republicans pushed it and the Democrats caved on it. As bad as the military commissions envisioned in the act are, the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) which designate who is to be tried are even worse. They were complete shams. Decisions were made on the flimsiest and most general information without challenge or taking into account the methods (torture) used to obtain it. Detainees lacked effective legal representation, and the CSRTs did not come close to meeting minimal standards of judicial process, even a preliminary one. To top it off, as later military judges have found, the CSRTs designated detainees "enemy combatants" which does not meet the Military Commissions Act standard of "unlawful enemy combatants" vitiating their findings to date. Even when they make up the rules they can’t get it right.

The case of Murat Kurnaz shows how flawed the CSRTs are. He was a Turkish citizen who had lived his entire life in Germany. On October 3, 2001, at the point of getting his German citizenship, he traveled to Pakistan to visit religious sites. In December 2001, he was removed from the group he was traveling with, arrested by Pakistani police, and flown to Guantanamo 4 weeks later. In September 2002, he was interrogated by American and German intelligence officers who concluded that he had no links to terrorism and should be freed. This view was repeated in a memo dated May 19, 2003 from the commanding general of the Criminal Investigation Task Force, the Pentagon unit responsible for interrogating detainees. Against this was a memo dated June 25, 2004 by Brigadier General David Lacquement, then head of the US Southern Command’s intelligence unit, who said Kurnaz was a danger because he had among other things prayed during the national anthem, asked how high the basketball rim was in the prison yard (which in Lacquement-speak indicated a desire to escape), and enquired about guard schedules and detainee transfers. There was also the accusation that Kurnaz knew someone who knew a suicide bomber (except this was later shown to be untrue) and had stayed at a hostel in Pakistan run by a religious group linked to terrorism (the group’s link was also untrue). Kurnaz’s CSRT was held on October 4, 2004 where he was determined to be an enemy combatant. His lawyers challenged this in a DC District Court. (This was before the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.) In a January 2005 opinion, Judge Joyce Green found that the CSRT process had been biased and was contrary to US and international law. This opinion became public on March 25, 2005 when it was inadvertently released by court officials. Nevertheless, Kurnaz continued to be held. In January 2006, a yearly Review Board hearing reconfirmed.that Kurnaz was an enemy combatant. Meanwhile Kurnaz’s detention and German participation in his interrogation was giving the story legs in Germany. Also in January 2006, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel brought up the case with Bush. On May 31, 2006, the FBI weighed in indicating that it had no interest in Kurnaz. In July 2006, a special Review Board met and determined that he was no longer an enemy combatant. The reasons for this change of status remain classified. Kurnaz was flown back to Germany goggled and shackled where he was released on August 24, 2006. Despite repeated findings by the intelligence community that Kurnaz was innocent of any links to terrorism, flimsy, false, and easily refutable evidence allowed by the CSRTs resulted in his detention without any formal charge for more than 4 1/2 years, a detention that would have continued if it had not been for the accidental leak of details of his case by a DC court and the personal intervention of the head of the German government.

On July 20, 2007, a three judge panel of the DC Circuit in Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. US rejected parts of the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) of 2005 asserting that it will expect to examine all information bearing on a detainee’s case and not just what the government used in deciding to hold a detainee. SCOTUS on June 29, 2007 changed its mind and decided to take a look at these cases in the fall, especially in light of what the Circuit Court might decide. On June 10, 2008, SCOTUS in a 5-4 decision with Kennedy writing the majority opinion and Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas dissenting ruled that that review procedures in the the DTA did not provide an adequate substitute for the writ of habeas corpus, that the CSRTs were deficient, that the Constitutional requirements for its suspension (rebellion or invasion) had not been met, that the Military Commissions Act (MCA) could not strip habeas out, that practical not formal considerations applied to its extension to non-citizens overseas, and that because the US exercised effective if not de jure sovereignty over Guantanamo, accordingly the writ of habeas corpus ran there. This is another indication that the “judicial” structure that the Administration sought to construct at Guantanamo continues to collapse under its own un-Constitutional weight. It also underlines the divide in the Court among those justices who subscribe to the Bush doctrine of the unilateral Executive and those who believe in the traditional doctrine of judicial review embodied in Marbury v. Madison early in the country’s history.

On September 24, 2007 in the Khadr case, a military appeals court found that on hearing more evidence a military judge had the power to determine that an alien enemy combatant was also an "unlawful" one. If upheld, this could clear the way for trials under the MCA. On November 8, 2007, the government informed Khadr’s defense that it had an exculpatory eyewitness which it had known about from the beginning but only chose to tell the defense about several years into Khadr’s detention. On May 29, 2008, the Pentagon announced that the judge in Khadr’s case Army Colonel Peter Brownback had been removed. No reason was given but there was a push on to start trials before the November 2008 elections and Brownback had threatened to suspend proceedings because the prosecution had been stalling about sharing records with the defense concerning Khadr’s detention. On June 8, 2008, it came out that Khadr’s attorney Lieutenant Commander Bill Kuebler had come across a military directive which ordered interrogators to destroy their handwritten notes of interrogations, i.e. destroy evidence, obstruct justice. The notes are important because they give a blow by blow account of interrogations and are far more complete than the sanitized summaries put together later based on them. They could, as the defense contends, show that Khadr’s various confessions were the product of torture. And their destruction effectively poisons the well in any prosecution of Khadr. On June 9, 2008, Kuebler was to submit an affidavit on this to SCOTUS in the Boumediene case. (see also item 85)

On October 5, 2007, the chief Guantanamo prosecutor career Air Force Colonel Morris Davis resigned in a dispute with reserve Air Force Brigadier General Thomas Hartmann (until recently a corporate lawyer now legal adviser to the convening authority for the Military Commissions Susan Crawford). The function of the convening authority is to approve or reduce charges against the accused or make plea agreements with them. It is supposed to be an arbiter, but in a clear conflict of interest, Crawford and Hartmann pressed the prosecutor’s office to file the most serious charges possible in an attempt to drum up publicity and support for the military commissions process. Davis has since said another reason for his departure was the placement of his office under that of the Department of Defense’s General Counsel. The DOD GC is William Haynes (See item 194) who signed off on the torture memos prepared by John Yoo for the Department of Defense. No matter how rank and foul this travesty of American justice is, it seems to have a never-ending capacity to get worse.

In Congressional testimony on December 11, 2007, Hartmann refused to say whether waterboarding was torture or whether waterboarding of an American soldier by a foreign government would be considered torture. He did suggest that he had no problem with evidence gained by torture being admitted into court proceedings.

On March 8, 2008, Bush vetoed the Intelligence Authorization bill because it outlawed waterboarding and required intelligence agencies to adhere to interrogation methods authorized by the Army Field Manual. Bush reiterated his standard lies on the subject:

While details of the current CIA program are classified, the Attorney General has reviewed it and determined that it is lawful under existing domestic and international law, including Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. I remain committed to an intelligence-gathering program that complies with our legal obligations and our basic values as a people. The United States opposes torture, and I remain committed to following international and domestic law regarding the humane treatment of people in its custody, including the “Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 [On this last, he appended a signing statement saying that he would follow the DTA only if and when he felt like it].

On March 11, 2008, the House failed to override 225-188.

On May 9, 2008, the judge Captain Keith Allred presiding over the first Guantanamo trial, that of Salim Hamdan, ordered Hartmann to have no further contact with the proceedings because he was too closely associated with the prosecution.

On August 6, 2008, Hamdan was convicted of giving material aid to terrorists but acquitted of the more serious charge of conspiracy in the African embassy bombings and to kill Americans in Afghanistan. The prosecution argued that Hamdan was more than Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur but also a bodyguard. It could not explain, however, why Abdallah Tabarak in that case who was bin Laden’s chief of security was released from Guantanamo in 2004 after 3 years detention there. It also pointed to the precedents of Nuremberg but again could not explain why Erich Kempka, Hitler’s driver, was never charged with anything. The defense pointed to testimony of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed that described Hamdan who has only a 4th grade education as a primitive Bedouin fit only to wash cars and change tires. When Hamdan was detained, two shoulder fired missiles were found in his car, and this appears to be the basis for his conviction on the one count. In this sense, the commission acted correctly and in adherence with its rules, but this trial in no way validates those rules.

Hamdan was determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by the thoroughly discredited, sham process of the CSRTs. He was held for years without trial and subjected to coercive interrogations and denied the benefit of legal counsel during these. He was sent before a military commission where his lawyers were severely limited in the defense they could present. They had little access to evidence or ability to challenge it or present exculpatory evidence of their own. Evidence derived from coercive interrogations was allowed. The surprise is that under these conditions and before a handpicked military jury who did not even need unanimity to convict the prosecution still could not make the main part of its case. Yet even if Hamdan had been acquitted on all charges, his indefinite detention would not have ended.

Nuremberg was about holding leaders responsible but Hamdan is the very opposite of a leader. He is very much a pawn, perhaps not quite an innocent, certainly not a fighter. He is a small man caught up and by larger events. And this is what the Bush Administration’s War on Terror has produced after 7 years and the commitment of untold resources: the conviction of Osama bin Laden’s driver on a lesser count. Could anything be more ridiculous and pathetic?

The following day on August 7, 2008, Hamdan was sentenced to 66 months. The judge indicated he would credit current time served which amounts to 61 months making the effective sentence 5 months. The prosecution was asking for 30 years. What happens when Hamdan’s sentence is up remains unclear, but it will occur shortly before the inauguration of the next President.

On November 25, 2008, Hamdan was sent to Yemen where he will be held until December 27 and then released.

On August 14, 2008, Hartmann who is supposed to act as a neutral supervisor was barred from further involvement in a second trial that of Mohammed Jawad due to bias in favor of the prosecution by trial judge Colonel Stephen Henley. Also on August 14, 2008, Lieutenant Colonel Diane Zierhoffer, a military psychologist supervising Jawad’s interrogation, invoked her article 31 rights. Article 31 is the military version of the 5th Amendment prohibition against self-incrimination. Despite Jawad being a juvenile, known not to have any intelligence value, and rapidly deteriorating mentally, Zierhoffer recommended that techniques, such as prolonged periods of extreme isolation and sleep deprivation, be continued with him, resulting in Jawad attempting suicide. This isn’t us, or at least it shouldn’t be.

On September 24, 2008, citing a lack of due process and the supression of exculpatory evidence in the case of Mohammed Jawad, the prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld quit. Jawad, a juvenile at the time of his capture, was accused of throwing a grenade at Americans. In a sealed affidavit, Vandeveld stated that prosecutors knew that Jawad may have been drugged prior to the attack and that two other men had, in fact, confessed to it. It says a lot about how rotten the military commissions process is that even military prosecutors can’t stomach it.

A November 1, 2008 story in the Miami Herald reports that Thomas Hartmann has decided to retire from the military effective February 17, 2009. With vacation time, he would be gone before the inauguration. This may be a classic case of getting out of Dodge. He is currently facing two different investigations by the DOD for his Guantanamo activities.

On November 18, 2008, the chief military judge at Guantanamo Marine Colonel Ralph Kohlmann announced his immediate retirement. He was previously scheduled to retire in April 2009. His departure confuses further an already thoroughly dysfunctional and discredited process.

On November 20, 2008, a conservative federal district court judge in Washington, DC Richard Leon in the first habeas review of Guantanamo detainees ordered the release of 5 Algerians. These were Lakhdar Boumediene, Saber Lahmar, Mohamed Nechle, Mustafa Ait Idir and Hadj Boudella. Leon ruled that a sixth Algerian Bensayah Belkacem who was considered the leading al Qaeda operative in Bosnia had been lawfully detained. The six had been seized by US forces in Bosnia citing a plan to blow up the US embassy there. They were taken to Guantanamo in 2002 and have been held there ever since this despite a Bosnian court having decided that there was insufficient evidence against them. In October 2008, the government had withdrawn the bombing plot charge but claimed the men had been on their way to fight in Afghanistan. Leon noted that the government’s case rested on a classified document from a single unnamed source and termed it a “thin reed”. On December 16, 2008, the government returned 3 of the 5 (excluding Boumediene and Lahmar) to Bosnia.

A January 14, 2009 story in the Washington Post reports that Convening Authority Susan Crawford did not refer Mohammed al Qahtani, the man who was supposed to be the 20th 9/11 hijacker, for prosecution because he had been tortured. While saying that the interrogation techniques used against Qahtani had been authorized, Crawford indicated they had been abused in his case.

Also on January 14, 2009, federal district judge Richard Leon ordered the release of another Guantanamo detainee Mohammed el Gharani, a citizen of Chad. Gharani was arrested in Pakistan where he was learning English in 2002 when he was 14. He was accused among other things of belonging to an al Qaeda cell in London in 1998 although he was 11 and living with his parents, poor immigrants working in Saudi Arabia at the time. Even among the many egregious cases of dimwittery in the War on Terror, this one stands out in its stark injustice.

A January 25, 2009 story shed further light into just how much of a fraud the commissions process at Guantanamo has been. A declaration by Darrel Vandeveld, a former Guantanamo prosecutor (see September 24 above), reported that, despite having 6 years to prepare them, the Pentagon had no real case files on any of the detainees. There was no central repository for files and evidence, no chain of custody for physical evidence, not even a cataloguing system so that material held in various locations and databases could be assembled into such a file. It is difficult to express what a serious professional breach this is. Case files are the basis of any serious prosecution. It says so much about what a kangaroo process Guantanamo was that neither the Convening Authority nor prosecutors bothered to create such files and guard their integrity.

Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, the destruction of New Orleans, FEMA and "Heck of a job, Brownie," lack of preparation, lack of emergency aid, slowness of reconstruction, Bush ignores for days then gives address from Jackson Square in New Orleans promising aid which never comes or much of which goes to politically connected outstate no bid contractors, disparity between response to Louisiana and Republican Trent Lott’s Mississippi; Bush refuses to waive 10% state match for federal funds (waived in many previous disasters) increasing the bureaucratic paperwork, reducing aid to affected areas, and further slowing and complicating rebuilding.

Bush authorized warrantless NSA wiretapping in October 2001. However, Joseph Nacchio former CEO of Qwest convicted April 19, 2007 of insider trading reported that the NSA in a meeting on February 27, 2001 (1 month after Bush became President and 6 1/2 months before 9/11) tried to sign Qwest up to a warrantless surveillance program and that when Nacchio refused the NSA pulled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts from the company.

Under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) a warrant would be needed from the FISA court (federal judges entrusted with these decisions in addition to their regular jobs) for domestic to international telephone or internet communication. The bar for such a warrant is extraordinarily low, has almost never been denied, and can be granted up to 3 days after the surveillance as begun (in order to give maximum flexibility in emergency situations). This is in contrast to international to international communications which have always been considered legitimate targets for US intelligence organizations and require no warrant.

The post-9/11 Bush program acquired its legal basis from a John Yoo memo originating in the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It went much further than cutting FISA out of the loop and probably included surveillance of both international and domestic communications of targets generated from datamining NSA databases as well as their contacts and the contacts of those contacts in ever expanding and less relevant circles. While incredibly intrusive and in violation of Fourth Amendment protections, this operation was to all intents and purposes worthless. FBI agents sent to check out the information they received from this program were invariably sent on wild goose chases. They wasted a lot of time and resources on them, all of which could have been better spent elsewhere. Because this was often where their information led them, they took to calling these Pizza Hut leads. It has been suggested that what the NSA was using in its surveillance was a program called Main Core, a searchable database of databases. It is rumored to contain data on 8 million Americans deemed suspicious (yes, I don’t know what that means either) who in case of national emergency would be subject to anything from arrest to heightened surveillance. It may have been this massive warrantless surveillance, real or potential, of huge numbers of Americans that troubled some, like James Comey and Jack Goldsmith, at the DOJ. It screamed lack of probable cause and smacked too closely of being an enemies list, only a lot bigger.

In addition to this, the Administration appeared intent on exploiting the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to expand the scope of its surveillance. This act requires telecoms to configure their equipment to facilitate governmental wiretapping. While the act was not envisioned as a means of large scale warrantless wiretapping, it could with the help of service providers like the telecoms be turned into one. Supporting this view is that on March 10, 2004, the DOJ, FBI, and DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) petitioned the FCC to extend CALEA to the internet (see item 252). This action coming as it did on the same day as the Ashcroft hospital visit (described below) may have been an effort to expand or acquire additional cover for a data mining program like Main Core that was already in operation.

In any case in March 2004, the OLC under its new head Jack Goldsmith a defense oriented conservative rejected Yoo’s reasoning and reversed its position on the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Deputy Attorney General James Comey both conservatives and Bush appointees accepted this finding. Then Ashcroft came down with acute gallstone pancreatitis and transferred his powers to his deputy Comey who became Acting Attorney General. In a scheme apparently orchestrated by Vice President Cheney, Bush called Mrs. Ashcroft and Cheney "on the President’s behalf" ordered then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card to go to the hospital and get the ailing and doped up Ashcroft to sign off on the surveillance program. Mrs. Ashcroft informed her husband’s Chief of Staff David Ayers about the impending visit and he contacted Comey. Comey in turn contacted FBI Director Robert Mueller to order the FBI agents guarding Ashcroft to remain in his room (as witnesses) and raced to the hospital and Ashcroft’s room in the ICU. This set the scene for the now famous March 10, 2004 hospital room confrontation where Gonzales and Card ignoring Comey tried to get Ashcroft’s signature. Ashcroft was, however, lucid enough to refuse to sign and to point out the obvious: that he did not have the power to do so since Comey was the Acting Attorney General. Despite the refusal by the DOJ to vouch for the program’s legality, Bush re-authorized it anyway. A threat by Ashcroft, Comey, and Mueller to resign did, however, result in changes to the program. The OLC came up with a narrower justification under the AUMF for a more limited program which became the TSP (Terrorist Surveillance Program). It should be noted that this program in all of its manifestations and despite its various justifications has been illegal on its face since its inception.

The program became public when the New York Times reported on it in December 2005. In 2006 various unsuccessful attempts were made to accommodate the program. This included the infamous attempted "compromise" by Arlen Specter to legalize its worst excesses and retroactively amnesty any illegalities. Under mounting pressure and with a new Democratic Congress, Alberto Gonzales announced on January 18, 2007, a "deal" with the FISA court which would put the program under its supervision. Gonzales maintained, however, that Bush still had Article II power to go outside the court if he wanted to.

On July 24, 2007, Gonzales testified under oath before Senate Judiciary Committee that before going to the hospital to see Ashcroft he had met with a bipartisan group of Congressional leaders overseeing intelligence matters (the Gang of 8) to discuss Comey’s objections and that they had approved the predecessor to the TSP. Several of the Democratic members of the Gang of 8 denied that such approval was ever given. Additionally, Gonzales asserted that the program discussed was not the TSP but another program. Both General Hayden then head of the NSA and John Negroponte then DNI have indicated that this was precisely the program discussed albeit in its unmodified form. Finally, Gonzales maintained in his testimony that there had been no serious disagreement about the program despite the objections from the DOJ. Along with his constantly changing testimony concerning the US Attorney firings, this discrepancy led four Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 26, 2007 to ask Solicitor General Paul Clement (in his role of Acting Attorney General for matters in which Gonzales has recused himself) to name a special prosecutor to determine whether Gonzales has obstructed justice, perjured himself, and made false statements.

Despite previous abuses, April 10, 2007 intelligence czar DNI John "Mike" McConnell (not to be confused with Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell) proposes allowing NSA to conduct domestic surveillance of foreign nationals completely outside of FISA, extend from 3 days to one week surveillance without seeking FISA permission "in emergency situations," immunize telecoms, and extend FISA warrants from 120 days to one year. McConnell has a large conflict of interest in the immunization of telecoms issue. Like too many others, McConnell has benefited from the revolving door between government and private enterprise. He has been director of defense programs at Booz Allen Hamilton a large defense and intelligence firm with CIA and NSA consulting contracts and chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, the primary business association for NSA and CIA contractors. In short, he has intimate connections to precisely those corporate players most closely involved in promoting the use of telecoms in intelligence gathering and with the greatest vested interest in keeping this arrangement going .

On August 5, 2007, Bush signed into law a 6 month revision of FISA which would allow warrantless wiretapping of non-American individuals "reasonably" thought to be outside the US and incidentally of US citizens as long as these are not the primary targets of surveillance. The Attorney General (at the time of the bill’s signing this was still the eminently untrustworthy Alberto Gonzales) and the DNI (the as we will soon see truth challenged Mike McConnell) alone and without any outside judicial review would see the program was properly carried out. In effect, this was a backdoor way to surveil Americans without a warrant. It also granted telecommunication companies prospective immunity for aiding the government in these activities during this 6 month period but not retroactively for their past actions.

The need for such a bill was raised at the last minute as lawmakers were on their way out of town for the August recess. Although it only became public later, the ostensible reason for modifying FISA at this particular juncture was an unspecified terrorist threat to the Capitol (which DNI McConnell knew at the time was based on an unreliable source). Mike McConnell then negotiated with Democratic Congressional leaders on a Democratic bill to address perceived shortcomings in the FISA law. The White House, however, wanted FISA gutted, and McConnell reneged on his deal with the Democrats. With the Congressional vacation coming on and members eager to leave, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid caved. Through their parliamentary machinations, the Democratic bill was defeated and the Republican version endorsed by the White House passed. The end result was, abetted by a dishonest DNI, another power grab by the Bush Administration and the failure of the Democrats to stand up to it.

On September 10, 2007, DNI McConnell testified before a Senate committee that the newly gutted FISA law the Protect America Act resulted in the arrest of 3 Germans planning to attack Americans in Germany. When German authorities pointed out that the Germans in question had come to their attention through US surveillance initiated under the old FISA statute, McConnell retracted his statement without apologizing for it.

On September 20, 2007, McConnell testified falsely again that surveillance of Iraqi insurgents holding American troops had been held up for 12 hours due to FISA court restrictions. The delay, however, occurred because of the initial weakness of the request submitted by the NSA to the DOJ (which given the low threshold for FISA warrants is telling) and subsequent foul ups in finding a senior official to sign off on it. Since the old FISA law allowed surveillance to begin up to 72 hours before the granting of a warrant, it is unclear why this was even an issue.

Because the Protect America Act (PAA) was set to expire after 180 days, in December 2007, an attempt was made in the Senate to pass a permanent extension. There were two principal versions of this bill, the Intel version from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) chaired by the conservative Democrat Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and another a revision of the Intel version that came out of the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC). The Intel version was Republican friendly and was chosen by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) as the base or favored version. It granted the retroactive immunity the telecoms had been lobbying for (not in the SJC bill), allowed basket warrants for the surveillance, not of individuals, but of classes of persons, had weak minimization (i.e. disposal of information on Americans incidentally obtained) requirements and oversight, and gave only vague assurances that the program would not be used for reverse targeting (using a foreign national as an excuse to surveil an American). An objection by Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) threw this well orchestrated process into disarray, and Reid pulled consideration of the bill on December 17, 2007.

In January 2008, with the PAA due to expire on February 1, Reid made a second attempt to pass the Intel version. This time he was blindsided by Bush and the Republicans. Senate Republicans played politics. They refused to allow any face-saving amendments (all of which were likely to be defeated anyway) to be brought up and were willing to see the PAA expire instead. Bush for his part announced he would veto even a short extension of the PAA to give the Senate time to act. So on the one hand Bush and the Republicans argued that the PAA was absolutely necessary and if it was not passed the terrorists would win and we would all die. On the other, they were perfectly ready to see it expire just so they could stick it to Senate Democrats.

On January 28, 2008, with the SOTU scheduled for later that evening, that is what happened. In a near party line vote, Democrats defeated the Republican move (48-45 with 60 votes needed) for cloture on the Intel version of the PAA with no amendments. The Republicans then defeated a similar motion for a 30 day extension of the PAA on a straight party line vote.

So to recap briefly, Senate Democrats were ready to pass a bad bill, but the Republicans who supported the bad bill wanted to rub the Democrats’ faces in it first. As a result, everything fell apart, and the upshot was everyone could and did blame everyone else. High school was not this bad.

On January 29, 2008, a 15 day extension (to February 15, 2008) was agreed to by voice vote in the House and by Unanimous Consent in the Senate. An agreement was made to consider amendments to the PAA in return for a cloture vote. All of the amendments were rejected by Republicans voting as a bloc and conservative Democrats voting as weasels.

• SA 3915: (Feingold): stoppage of surveillance of an American upon finding of FISA court and minimization of information so acquired. Rejected: 40-56
• SA 3913 (Feingold): No reverse targeting of Americans. Rejected: 38-57
• SA 3910 (Feinstein): Exclusivity (surveillance must be conducted under FISA). Rejected: 57-41 (Needed 60)
• SA 3979 (Feingold): Segregation and audit of communications involving Americans. Rejected: 35-63
• SA 3907 (Dodd): No retroactive immunity for telecoms. Rejected: 31-67
• SA 3912 (Feingold): No bulk surveillance. Rejected: 37-60
• SA 3927 (Specter): Substitution of US for telecoms in civil suits. Rejected: 37-60
• SA 3919 (Feinstein): Transferal of civil suits to FISA court (with an eye to dismiss). Rejected: 41-57 (Needed 60)

The first two were defeated on February 7. The others on February 12, 2008. Cloture was invoked, and the bill passed in the Senate 68-29. Senate Republicans timed their votes close to the February 15 expiration date in an effort to force the House to drop consideration of its own bill and accept the Senate version without revision. Instead the Democratic House leadership played for time and sought a further 21 day extension to the PAA. On February 13, 2008, this action was defeated by House Republicans along with a small group of liberal Democrats 191-229. In effect, the liberal Democrats called the Republicans and Bush Administration’s bluff. The deadline passed, the country did not collapse, as right wing commentators ominously predicted. A few Democrats showed some backbone although the vast majority of them continued to punt or enable. Somewhat lost in all the kabuki was the real object of the exercise: to grant immunity for the telecoms. DNI Mike McConnell touched on this in a February 15, 2008 NPR interview:

The issue is liability protection for the private sector. We can’t do this mission without their help.

But even this admission is heavily spun. The telecoms have substantial protection from liability under existing law and their exposure to large payouts is minimal. The government and telecoms are intimately intertwined, and this relationship will not be changed by a failure to grant immunity to them. Further the telecoms can not duck future cooperation with the government (even if they were so inclined) if that cooperation is accompanied by a court order. No, immunity is not about protecting the telecoms (they don’t need it) but rather squelching civil lawsuits which if allowed to proceed could expose the extent of this government’s spying on its own citizens. This isn’t about national security. It is about CYA.

On June 20, 2008, the House passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (HR 6304) by a vote of 293-129 with 105 Democrats, including the whole of the Democratic leadership, voting for. The bill spearheaded by the Democratic Majority leader Steny Hoyer was another cave on the part of Democrats to a deeply unpopular President at the end of his term. The text of the 114 page bill was made available to lawmakers less than 24 hours before the vote, meaning that almost no Representative actually read the bill before voting on it. No amendments were allowed, and only one hour was given for debate.

The bill granted effective retroactive immunity to telecoms in a particularly cowardly way, not by Congressional action but by shifting responsibility to the federal district court level. All that was required was that the telecoms show they had received an OK from the President. There was no requirement that they demonstrate that they thought that the President’s request was lawful or that they (with their large legal departments) made any effort to assess its legality. This would end current lawsuits against telecoms which seek to learn what kind of spying the government was doing on its own citizens.

On minimization (removal of information on untargeted Americans), the bill allowed for review by the FISA court only as to whether the government followed in general terms its own procedures, but gave the court no scope to judge the legality of the procedures themselves.

If the government disagreed with the FISA court, it could continue wiretapping throughout the appeals process and keep all information so gathered regardless of the outcome of the appeal.

The bill also contained a superfluous “exclusivity” clause making FISA the only bill through which this kind of surveillance could be carried out. I say “superfluous” because FISA already was the exclusive “legal” vehicle for such surveillance.

In short, this is a dreadful piece of legislation and shows that the rot in our body politic is not confined to the Republican Party. House Democrats could have proposed responsible, uncontroversial changes to the FISA law, but they chose instead to endorse the lawless actions of the President and the telecoms and see that the extent of that lawlessness never saw the light of day.

On July 9, 2008, the Senate easily voted down amendments to the House bill and passed it unchanged 69-28. Both Harry Reid the Senate Majority Leader (in how the bill was brought up) and the 2008 presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama (in not only not leading any opposition to the legislation but in fact supporting it) were instrumental in the passage of a bill codifying the power of the government to spy on its citizens without a warrant, sanctioning the illegal activities of telecoms, and hiding from public view the extent of the Bush Administration’s lawlessness in this area.

No Republican voted against the bill. 21 Democrats and Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT) voted for it.

More on the FISA modification legislative history can be found here.

On October 9, 2008, ABCNews came out with a story (first reported on by Amy Goodman on May 13, 2008) in which whistleblowing military communications operators admitted that they had listened routinely in on phone calls of ordinary Americans overseas, that they had recorded and transcribed them, and in some cases passed them around to colleagues to gossip about and make fun of. This directly contradicted statements by George Bush and former NSA head and current CIA Director Michael Hayden that warrantless wiretapping was only directed against foreign terrorists.

SWIFT surveillance of international financial transactions. After 9/11, the US Treasury Department began the Terrorist FinanceTracking Program which served the international secure messaging system known as SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) based in Belgium with broad subpoenas which resulted in the network turning over large parts of its database involving millions of records to US authorities.

Essentially, the US government was allowed to peek in on most of the international wire transfers between banks in the world. As long as all parties are foreign, US law does not have much to say about this, but many transactions involved Americans. This brings up 4th Amendment considerations which expressly forbid “unreasonable searches and seizures” and demand a warrant that is both specific and based on “probable cause”. Hoovering up for data mining purposes millions of bank records of ordinary Americans sending money abroad violates all aspects of this Constitutional protection. The program came to light on June 23, 2006 in articles in major US papers. Subsequently, there were announcements that the program had been modified but it was not clear how. The real question is how many of these post-9/11 “emergency” programs of dubious legality are still out there running years later.

Black prisons and extraordinary rendition to facilitate interrogation by torture.

Khalid El-Masri a German citizen was detained by Macedonian police in late 2003. His name was similar to the alleged mentor of the al Qaeda Hamburg cell (of which two of the 911 pilots Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi as well as Ramzi Binalshibh were members). He was held for 3 weeks and then released. Although the CIA knew that this El-Masri was not the one they were looking for, they kidnapped him and took him to Afghanistan where he was interrogated and beaten for months. Eventually, on May 28, 2004, after two orders from then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and being made to promise never to talk about what happened, El-Masri was dumped at night on a road in Albania. On December 6, 2005, the ACLU filed suit on his behalf in federal court. On May 12, 2006, Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis III dismissed the case accepting the government’s contention that a suit into Masri’s illegal detention would compromise national security. The dismissal was upheld by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals on March 2, 2007. On January 31, 2007, a German prosecutor issued warrants for 13 people suspected of participation in the kidnapping. For his part, since his release, El-Masri has had a troubled history. On May 17, 2007, after an argument with clerks about a defective iPod, he set fire to the store and burned it down. On October 9, 2007, the Supreme Court denied certiorari to a suit by El-Masri and let stand a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion accepting the government’s state secrets argument and dismissing the case.

Meanwhile on February 17, 2003, the CIA kidnapped a cleric Abu Omar in Milan and rendered him to Egypt where he was held and tortured. In December 2005, an Italian court issued arrest warrants for 22 (now up to 26) CIA agents. Abu Omar was released early in 2007.

Several European countries are looking into the rendition programs. These efforts are complicated by US stonewalling and the complicity of their own intelligence services.

Something similar happened to Maher Arar. A Canadian resident with dual Canadian/Syrian citizenship was detained at JFK in New York on September 26, 2002 because he knew someone who knew someone who knew Osama bin Laden. He was held in US custody for 2 weeks without access to a lawyer. Then because the Canadian government falsely declared he was no longer a resident and with the knowledge of their intelligence services, he was rendered to Syria where he was held for a year and tortured. He was released October 5, 2003 and returned to Canada. The Canadian government eventually exonerated Arar and paid a $10.5 million settlement. A suit entered by Arar in US federal court was dismissed on February 16, 2006 on national security grounds. The US government has never admitted any wrongdoing and Arar continues to be on the US No-Fly list. On June 5, 2008, DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner in Congressional testimony said that his office had opened an investigation into whether immigration officials had broken the law in sending Arar to a country that tortures. He also revealed the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) had begun a similar investigation in March 2007 into the activities of DOJ lawyers in the affair.

As for black prisons, these were created to hold high value ghost detainees up to one hundred in number beyond the oversight of the judiciary and Congress, essentially so that they could be tortured. 14 of these, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, were eventually transferred to Guantanamo. In Europe, Poland and Romania were rumored to be sites of the prisons. US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan held others. The remainder were scattered throughout the world in complicit countries and on other US bases. Although there had been previous revelations, the story broke officially in a Dana Priest Washington Post report of November 2, 2005. President Bush acknowledged their existence nearly a year later on September 6, 2006.

The purpose of both rendition and black prisons was to gain actionable intelligence, an obsession in the Bush Administration. In its pursuit, they stooped to torture and bartered our image as a champion of human rights for a stack of unreliable information. It is an exchange that is impossible to justify.

On August 12, 2008, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decided on its own (sua sponte) to take another look at the Arar case en banc (with all the appellate judges of the Circuit involved). Oral arguments were scheduled for December 9, 2008.

Homeland Security: white elephant (organization), black hole (money), Tom Ridge and threat levels, Michael Chertoff and general incompetence.

As of May 1, 2007 in a House report on the DHS, under Chertoff’s direction, there were 138 vacancies and another 92 currently being recruited among the department’s top 575 positions. Most of these were in the department’s policy, legal and intelligence sections, immigration agencies, FEMA, and the Coast Guard. Luckily, nothing important.

K Street Lobbyists, Jack Abramoff, North Marianas, removal of investigating US attorney Frederick Black (Guam), Gale Norton and Steven Griles at Interior, go betweens Italia Federici for Norton and Susan Ralston for Rove, tribal casinos; conviction of Rep. Bob "Freedom Fries" Ney (R-OH) for conspiracy and false statements re Abramoff’s Indian casinos scam.

Kyle “Dusty” Foggo was Executive Director under Porter Goss at the CIA from November 4, 2004 to May 12, 2006. In this, the No. 3 post at the agency Foggo ran daily operations. On February 13, 2007, Foggo was indicted along with Brent Wilkes by fired US attorney for Southern California Carol Lam (two days before she left her office) for wire fraud, deprival of honest services, money laundering, and conspiracy for steering business to Brent Wilkes, a figure in the Duke Cunningham scandal. This indictment concentrated mainly on a water contract for CIA personnel overseas and expensive vacations to Hawaii and Scotland paid for by Wilkes. On May 10, 2007, an expanded, superseding indictment was filed. This indictment added Wilkes-Foggo deals involving cover for CIA air operations, selling armored cars to the CIA, and rental of office space, $1.35 million transferred out of government contract accounts to Wilkes’ businesses, and details more of the expensive dinners Foggo was treated to. On February 19, 2008, Foggo’s case was transferred from the Southern District of California to the Eastern District of Virginia, nearer to Langley and CIA headquarters. On May 20, 2008, Foggo was indicted in Virginia. Added on to previous charges were receiving “sexual companionship”, i.e. hookers in exchange for favors and seeking the “enrichment of a mistress” by helping her get a job in the office of the CIA’s general counsel. On September 29, 2008, in a plea bargain Foggo pled guilty to one count of wire fraud in exchange for no more than 3 years in prison.

Duke Cunningham convicted of receiving $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors and conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud, wire fraud, and tax evasion, the MZM connection. Mitchell Wade the founder of the defense contracting firm MZM purchased Cunningham’s Del Mar home for $1,675,000 then put it back on the market a month later for $975,000. Cunningham lived in Washington on a yacht owned by Wade. In exchange for these kinds of bribes and favors, Cunningham steered contracts to MZM. One of the first in July 2002 was for $140,000 for computers and office furniture for Vice President Cheney which turned out in actuality to be for anthrax screening (for which MZM had zero expertise). Another in September 2002 was for a data storage system for CIFA (see item 158 on CIFA’s domestic spying). $5.4 million of the $6.3 million contract was profit. As it turned out the system was incompatible with CIFA’s and was never installed. As often happens in these kinds of arrangements, Lt. Gen. James C. King who helped set up CIFA went to work at MZM and became its President in June 2005 replacing Wade. By the time that Cunningham pled guilty on November 28, 2005, he had managed to steer $150 million in contracts to MZM, a firm which before Cunningham and Wade hooked up received no important government contracts.

Another player in the Cunningham scandals was Brent Wilkes who founded ADCS a data conversion firm. He too won contracts through Cunningham and according to Wade set up a prostitution ring for the benefit of Cunningham and other legislators at the Watergate and Westin Grand hotels. On November 5, 2007, Wilkes was convicted in federal court on all 13 felony counts he was charged with. These included conspiracy, bribery, money laundering and wire fraud. In addition to paying for flings in Hawaii and Las Vegas for Cunningham, Wilkes was accused of giving Cunningham $100,000. Wilkes said it was to buy Cunningham’s boat although the deal never went through and Wilkes never asked for the money back. Wilkes also passed along $525,000 to help cover a mortgage for a house in Santa Fe for Cunningham. In exchange for these bribes, Wilkes’ company received about $80 million dollars in contracts. The government lost $30-60 million and Wilkes made about $46 million as a result of his deals with Cunningham. On February 19, 2008, US District Court judge Larry Burns went against probation and prosecutorial recommendations and sentenced Wilkes to 12 years in prison. He could have gotten 60.

On December 15, 2008, Mitchell Wade who was a smart enough operator to cooperate early and often with the government was sentenced to 30 months and a $250,000 fine, pretty much of a wrist slap for his participation. In addition to his help with Cunningham, Wade also apparently gave information in the investigations of Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Rep. Allan Mollahan (D-WV.), Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), outgoing Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA), and former Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL).

Tom Delay, creator of the K Street Project, squeezing lobbyists to finance Republicans only, indicted for conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws (money laundering) in Texas, also connections to the Abramoff scandal. Major figure in Washington culture of corruption.

Mark Foley, chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, resigned over the House page scandal: sending sexually explicit messages to pages.

Cheney’s Energy Policy, Big Oil’s writing of it, and refusal to divulge that participation

Tax cuts for the wealthiest, corporations and on capital gains; retention of the AMT.

• HR 1836 the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act was signed into law June 7, 2001. It was projected to reduce total surpluses by approximately $1.35 trillion over the 2001-2011 period. Its principal feature was a reduction spaced over the 2001 to 2006 period in the 4 highest tax brackets.
• HR 2 the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act was signed into law May 28, 2003. It increased the exemption amount for the individual alternative minimum tax (AMT), decreased the tax rates for income from dividends and capital gains, modified tax law relating to bonus depreciation and expensing, and allowed certain 2003 corporate estimated tax payments to be shifted into 2004. Its principal effects would occur in its first 5 years from 2003-2008 and would cost $342.9 billion in this period.
• HR 1308 the curiously named Working Families Tax Relief Act was signed into law October 4, 2004. Its main feature involved extensions and changes in the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Its principal costs occurred over the 2005-2009 period and were estimated to be $122 billion.

In 2005, there was an attempt at another tax cut bill which failed. In 2006, the Republicans broke their tax cuts up into a couple of bills .

• HR 4297 was signed into law May 17, 2006. It was to cost about $70 billion, split roughly between cuts on dividends and capital gains on the one hand and cuts in the Alternate Minimum Tax (AMT) on the other.
• HR 6111 was signed into law December 20, 2006. It was a minor catchall bill extending and modifying some expiring tax provisions and was projected to cost $40 billion over the period from 2007 to 2016.

Looking over the various bills, it is likely they became increasing hard to sell over time. They certainly became smaller. Still a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money. It’s just that after Bush got a trillion dollars for the rich in his first bill, everything else seemed small by comparison.

Global warming: denial of manmade origin, followed by minimization of the effects of the manmade contribution, continued reliance on fossil and carbon based fuels, little movement on CAFE standards and conservation, and political interference in scientific reports.

• March 13, 2001, Bush rejects Kyoto Protocols (finished December 1997 but never ratified by the US Senate) and casts doubt on the causes of climate change.
• June 11, 2001, in reference to a report by the National Academy of Sciences, Bush questions both the extent of global warming, its impact, and the manmade contribution to it.
• February 14, 2002, Bush announces his Clear Skies Initiatives which lacks any limits on CO2.
• April 2002, at the urging of ExxonMobil Bush blocks reelection of Robert Watson, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and advocate of reducing greenhouse gases.
• June 3, 2002, an EPA report to the UN admits global warming largely due to human activities.
• June 4, 2002, Bush dismisses the report as "put out by the bureaucracy" and reiterates his opposition to Kyoto.
• August 19, 2002, White House Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) chief of staff Philip Cooney a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a non scientist questions why climate change is mentioned at all. In September 2002, for the first time in six years, the annual EPA report on air pollution "Latest Findings on National Air Quality: 2001 Status and Trends" omits the section on global warming.
• November 2002, Our Changing Planet, an annual report to Congress on the Climate Change Science Program for oversight and budget purposes is heavily edited by Philip Cooney.
• April-May 2003, CEQ Chairman Jim Connaughton edits the draft of what will be the August 2003 "Fabricant" opinion.
• June 23, 2003, the EPA issues "Draft Report on the Environment 2003" in which the section on global warming was pulled after Philip Cooney sought to replace data showing sharp increases in global temperatures with references to a study funded by the API questioning the evidence for global warming.
• July 2003, the Administration releases its Strategic Plan for the Climate Change Science Program. Philip Cooney along with other CEQ officials made at least 181 edits emphasizing the uncertainty of global warming and 113 de-emphasizing the human contribution to it. The CEQ also inserted language about the possible benefits of global warming and removed recommendations to do something about it.
• August 28, 2003, in response to a petition by environmental groups to regulate greenhouse gas
• June 1, 2005, Rick Peltz a scientist at the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (USCCSP) resigns and accuses Phillip Cooney, the then chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) of editing scientific papers so that they would agree with Administration policies on climate change.
• June 10, 2005, Cooney resigns
• June 13, 2005, Cooney is hired by ExxonMobil
• September 21, 2005, following Hurricane Katrina, Max Mayfield, the Director of the National Hurricane Center in testimony before the Commerce Committee denied a connection between Katrina and global warming, ascribing an increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes to natural fluctuations. Mayfield was a popular and respected media figure whose thinking on this was out of the mainstream. His testimony, however, was carefully worked out between committee staff and the Office of Legislative Affairs at NOAA to in the words of one staffer Tom Jones smack "the shit out of this issue."
• December 2005, NASA climatologist James Hansen reported his work was being monitored and his access to the press limited by a 24 year old Bush political appointee in NASA’s PR department George C. Deutsch. Deutsch also tried to qualify references to the Big Bang as this conflicted with his fundamentalist beliefs.
• February 7, 2006, Deutsch resigns after it becomes known that he lied on his resume about having a college degree.
• April-November 2006, the Smithsonian (almost all of whose $1.1 billion budget comes from the government) self censors an exhibit on climate change in the Arctic which it had delayed six months while trying to tone it down.
• July 20, 2006, Dr. Thomas Karl, Director of the National Climatic Data Center at NOAA had his Congressional testimony on global warming modified and weakened by political appointees at the White House Council of Environmental Quality, the OMB, the Commerce Department, and NOAA.
• January 30, 2007, the Union of Concerned Scientists releases a report indicating that 150 climate scientists from 8 federal agencies had personally experienced at least one instance of interference in their work in the previous 5 years (for a total of 435 incidents).
• April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA rejects the Fabricant opinion and requires the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. The commonwealth of Massachusetts argued successfully that it and its citizens had suffered and would suffer ecological damage, including loss of coastal lands, due to global warming.
• May 2007, Bush continues to use the mantra of short term, unsustainable "economic growth" to oppose meaningful international (G-8) approaches, such as carbon trading and emission caps.
• May 31, 2007, in an NPR interview, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin admits that global warming exists but doubts that it is a problem "to be wrestled with".
• September 28, 2007, Bush at a meeting held in competition with a UN conference on global warming called on those countries which emit the most greenhouse gases to set voluntary caps but did not say what those should be, even for the US.
• October 23, 2007, the White House cut written testimony of Julie Geberding director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention from 14 pages to 6 removing references to specific diseases, health problems, and global warming as “a serious public health concern.” As Jason Burnett who resigned June 9, 2008 as associate deputy administrator of the EPA related, this was done at the direction of Vice President Cheney’s office by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to avoid a finding that climate change was a public threat which in turn would have forced action under the Clean Air Act.
• December 3-15, 2007, at the UN’s Bali conference on moving beyond the Kyoto Accords, the Bush Administration continued to refuse binding commitments for reduction in carbon emissions. Instead there will be two more years of negotiations effectively punting any real decisions to the next Administration. Unfortunately, the effects of global warming are unlikely to wait on this further bout of procrastination.
• December 2007, in conformance with the April 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, Jason Burnett (who had been brought on board the EPA in June 2007 by Stephen Johnson specifically to deal with the Court decision) notified the White House via an email that greenhouse gases were pollutants which should be controlled under the provisions of the Clean Air Act. The White House instructed Burnett to say his email had been sent in error. Burnett refused. To avoid it becoming part of the public record the White House refused to open it.
• January 24, 2008, Vice President Cheney’s office again per Jason Burnett seeks to have the phrase “greenhouse gas emissions harm the environment” removed from Senate testimony prepared for EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson. Jason Burnett refuses and the language stays. Again Cheney’s goal was to avoid any admission that greenhouse gas emissions were harmful and so subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.
• April 16, 2008, in yet another attempt to pre-empt an international conference (this one in Paris opening the following day, Bush announced the goal of stopping the growth in greenhouse gases by 2025 long after he is gone and some 10 years after climatologists say this needs to happen to avoid catastrophic changes. Essentially, the Bush program is to let business be business, not raise taxes, and trust to new technologies without significantly funding them. Bush also criticized the Supreme Court decision that required the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Bush and the EPA continue to stall on this.
• May 5, 2008, a draft US proposal to the G-8 would shift responsibility for carbon emissions decisions away from the G-8 and to the Major Emitters group. This group includes countries like China and India which along with the US have little interest in fixed targets for greenhouse gas emissions. The Bush proposal would remove a deadline of 2050 for long term goals and would defer any discussion of mid term goals (2020-2030) to a UN conference in December 2009. It also argued that biofuels were not responsible for increasing world food prices.
• May 27, 2008, the US Climate Change Science Program (USCCP) with the USDA lead agency released a major report on the effects of climate change on agriculture and forestry. It noted that some crops may mature faster but be more subject to extremes that could lead to crop failure. Higher temperatures could result in higher mortality and lower productivity in livestock. The West will continue to experience drought and increased risk of forest fires. In the Arctic, polar bear habitat will continue to diminish. Weeds and exotic species will spread. The growing season has increased by 10 to 14 days in temperate zones over the last 19 years.
• May 29, 2008, the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources of the National Science and Technology Council released its report on climate change in the US. It projected that the health of the young, elderly, poor, disabled, and uninsured would be disproportionally affected by global warming. Extreme weather would become more common and insect infestations and water borne diseases would spread. The report came in response to a court order in August 2007 of Judge Saudra Brown Armstrong of the Northern District of California in a lawsuit brought by environmental groups alleging that the Bush Administration had violated the 1990 Global Change Research Act. The act required that the government publish a report every 4 years assessing the impact of environmental change on the US. The last such study was released in 2000 at the end of the Clinton Adminstration. The Bush Administration argued that some 20 reports it had requested in 2003 fulfilled its obligation under the law. The judge did not think so. While the Administration did eventually have to write the report, it was able nonetheless to delay the process 3 years and avoid complying with the law for almost the whole of the Bush Presidency.

• June 2, 2008, the NASA Inspector General released a report on the Hansen affair (see December 2005 entry above) in which it concluded:

  “Our investigation found that during the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public through those particular media over which the Office of Public Affairs had control (i.e., news releases and media access). We also concluded that the climate change editorial decisions were localized within the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs; we found no credible evidence suggesting that senior NASA or Administration officials directed the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs to minimize information relating to climate change.”

  For all that it seems to be saying, what it is actually laying out is a variation of the “few bad apples” defense: wrongdoing occurred, it was localized, those in charge were not involved. This is unsurprising. Many IG offices pull their punches because they overly identify with the agencies and departments they are tasked with overseeing. The NASA IG, in particular, has a history of doing this (see 149). Indeed it softens its stance yet further, asserting that the apples were probably not so much bad as misguided. The report says that the December 2005 decision to cancel Hansen’s interview with NPR “was unilaterally made by a junior Schedule C political appointee in the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs.,” i.e. the 24 year old George Deutsch, but goes on to add that “The evidence, however, reflects that this appointee acted in accord with the overall management of climate change information at that time within the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs.”

• June 9, 2008, Jason Burnett associate deputy administrator at EPA resigns over obstruction of action to address the April 2007 Supreme Court decision mandating government regulation of greenhouse gases.
• July 9, 2008, as Bush left his last G-8 summit at which he again failed to make any hard commitments on reducing greenhouse gases, he bid other members “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.” Another of his toxic legacies.
• June 16, 2008, an unprecedented internal EPA memo directs members of its enforcement division not to cooperate with investigations of the agency’s Inspector General or Congress’ Government Accounting Office (GAO) but to refer any contacts to the EPA’s political staff “to ensure consistency and coordination”, i.e. to control and spin what information is released and generally stymie any real investigation into political interference in the agency’s work.
• July 11, 2008, the White House declares the Clean Air Act is “ill-suited” to deal with greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

(see also item 42)

Terri Schiavo (family and privacy rights in end of life cases); Senate Majority leader Bill Frist making his famous (and erroneous) video diagnosis; the memo written by Brian Darling, the legal counsel for Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) that the Schiavo case was a great political issue which could be used against the Democratic Senator from Florida Bill Nelson. Republicans who had cast the Schiavo case as a "moral" issue initially declared the memo a Democratic plant and dirty trick before the real source came out.

Big budget deficits and vastly increased national debt; the national debt as of the date of Bush’s 2001 inauguration was $5.7 trillion. By January 2009 it was $10.6 trillion, an increase of 85.6%.

Bush began his Presidency in 2001 with a $128.2 billion surplus left over from the Clinton Administration. By 2004, with his tax cuts and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush achieved a budget deficit of $412.7 billion. At this point, under the aegis of Bush’s “ownership society”, the country entered into a bubble economy and by 2007 the deficit declined to $160.7 billion. However, in August 2007, the housing bubble burst (item 87). The deficit for 2008 increased sharply to $438 billion. The projected budget deficit for 2009 (the government’s 2009 fiscal year began on October 1, 2008) in January 2009 as Bush leaves office was $1.186 trillion, and this does not include supplemental appropriations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan nor approximatively $400 billion for an expected Obama stimulus package.

The stacking of SCOTUS with right wing conservatives Roberts and Alito; the threat to Roe v. Wade; April 18, 2007 in a 5-4 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart SCOTUS upholds a ban on "partial birth" abortions (intact dilation and extraction). The procedure is rare and performed for medical reasons. Such a ban has been a goal of abortion foes who see it both as a step in a direct overturning of Roe and as part of an indirect approach to place so many restrictions on abortions as to effectively eliminate them

The opinion written by Kennedy is remarkable for its inflammatory use of language (partial birth abortion, abortion doctors, killing the fetus, etc.) and example (an account of the procedure by an anti-abortion nurse). Kennedy manages to condescend not only to women but to their physicians as well. He essentially gives them both his considered medical opinion, as a lawyer, and orders them to follow it. The word hubris comes to m

Medicare: a bigger time bomb than Social Security left unaddressed

Medicare Part D: In an effort to spike a Democratic issue and protect the interests of drug and insurance companies, Republicans came up with their version of a Medicare drug prescription bill (Medicare Part D). The fix as they say was very much in. Representative Billy Tauzin (R-LA) Chairman of the Commerce Committee was listed as the principal “author” of the bill which was largely written by industry lobbyists. Shortly after its passage, Tauzin announced his retirement and swung a deal to become a lobbyist at $2.5 million/year with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), Big Pharma’s trade group. Thomas Scully who headed Medicare at the time lied to Congress about the program’s expected costs, understating them by $139 billion ($395 billion vs $534 billion), and then threatened the program’s chief actuary Richard Foster with firing if he told Congress the truth. He too quickly returned to the private sector and a law firm Alston & Bird lobbying for the healthcare industry.

The bill came up for a vote in the House at about 3 AM on November 22, 2003. Votes are usually held open for 15 minutes. After 45 minutes, the bill was failing 215-219. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom Delay spent the next few hours engaged in arm twisting and, in the case of Nick Smith (R-MI), bribery. They were successful. The vote was closed at 5:53 AM after nearly 3 hours, and the bill passed the House 220-215. It passed 54-44 in the Senate 3 days later on November 25, was signed into law December 8, 2003, and, after a signup period, went into effect January 1, 2006.

The bill prohibited Medicare from using its market share to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices and forced enrolling seniors into private insurance plans. It presented them with multiple and confusing plans which might cover some but not other of their prescriptions. On top of this, most plans had various co-pays and deductibles further complicating the situation. And it had its famous donut-hole, which was introduced to meet the Administration’s fake cost estimates. Prescriptions would be covered up to a certain amount and then not covered until a higher threshold had been reached. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) described the program succinctly as “somewhere between a bureaucratic nightmare and elder abuse.”

Healthcare (in general)

Cooked intelligence and the Office of Strategic Plans/ Doug Feith; stovepiping and Cheney’s alternate intel operation; pitching stories to credulous compliant reporters like Judy Miller then citing these stories as independent evidence; Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress feeding fake stories and dubious sources like "Curveball" into the mix; the subsequent coverup and Republican delayed and deep sixed Congressional investigations into the politicization of intelligence; an Inspector General’s report of February 9, 2007 declared Feith’s activities inappropriate but stopped short of calling them illegal. The IG’s rationale seemed more political than legal since Feith was running an intelligence operation which would be illegal.

 2000 Presidential election; voter suppression and cooked felons list, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, Governor Jeb Bush, Bush consigliere Jim Baker oversaw the recount, Theodore Olson argued Bush v. Gore: SCOTUS decided 7-2 to stop recounts because of inconsistent procedures and 5-4 insufficient time to begin new recount, giving Bush the election.

2004 Presidential election; Ohio voter irregularities that consistently favored Bush; Ken Blackwell was the Republican Secretary of State and honorary co chair of the Bush campaign who oversaw the election in Ohio. He opted for touch screen voting machines which left no paper trail and were sold by Diebold whose CEO Walden O’Dell was a Republican fundraiser. Long lines and too few machines in traditionally Democratic and minority areas also occurred.

The Ohio Republican Party was unusually corrupt and was largely voted out in the November 2006 elections. It was epitomized by Tom Noe a Bush Pioneer who made illegal contributions to the Bush campaign at the same time he was looting millions from the state’s workers comp program in a kooky coin investment scheme. He’s currently serving ~20 years on state and federal charges.

Attempts to torpedo the 911 Commission. Although now largely forgotten, the Bush Administration fought the 9/11 Commission every step of the way and it was only pressure from the American public and most especially from the families of the victims of 9/11 that the commission was formed and was able to come up with some kind of a report however flawed and incomplete.

Bush and Cheney resisted calls for such a bipartisan commission for over a year arguing that the matter was best left to Republican controlled intelligence committees in the Congress. It was not until November 27, 2002 that Bush announced the commission’s formation. He did his best to see that it went nowhere. Members were to be chosen by both Congress and the White House raising questions about the commission’s independence. Democratic co-chair George Mitchell on December 11, 2002 and Republican chair Henry Kissinger (whom the White House had insisted on appointing) on December 13, 2007 resigned due to conflicts of interest. Kissinger did not want to make public the financial records (and connections) of his security consulting company Kissinger Associates. Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton were named to replace them. The specter of conflicts of interest remained. Through their careers in government and on corporate boards, essentially all of the commission members had such conflicts. Perhaps the most egregious of these was Philip Zelikow the commission’s executive staff director who had worked closely with Condoleezza Rice on the National Security Council in the first Bush Administration and co-written a book with her.

Bush also tried to limit the commission’s activities by giving it a budget of only $3 million to investigate the biggest terrorist attack in the country’s history. The Challenger investigation cost $50 million by comparison. Later Kean and Hamilton asked for a further $11 million to be included in the $75 billion supplemental slated to fund the invasion of Iraq. The White House initially refused the funds before reversing itself.

The White House also placed many roadblocks in the commission’s path slowing its work. The commission was originally given 18 months or to the end of May 2004 to make its report. When a 60 day extension was requested, this too was initially denied. The commission report was eventually released on July 22, 2004.

The White House sought both to shape and limit testimony. Before former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke testified, then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales contacted two commission members Fred Fielding and James Thompson with information to discredit Clarke which they duly presented.

On Presidential Daily Briefs, after dragging its heels for months, the White House allowed them to be viewed by only 4 of the 10 commissioners who were to report back to the others. However, the White House denied the full commission access to the notes made by the 4 approved commissioners. Moreover, of 360 PDBs requested, only 24 were made available by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. On March 14, 2004, the White House finally responded to the commission by releasing a 17 page summary of PDBs related to al Qaeda from the Bush and Clinton Administrations.

The White House refused requests for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify. The rationale given was that historically National Security Advisers had not testified before Congress. This was completely untrue, and Rice finally testified on April 8, 2004. Rice’s testimony, however, came with the price that no other White House aides were to be called.

Bush initially placed a one hour limit on his testimony before the commission. This was rejected. But his testimony was highly conditioned. On April 29, 2004, he and Dick Cheney together met with the commission in private with no oath or transcript and only one staffer to take notes which were not to be made public.

In an op-ed in the New York Times on January 2, 2008, chairmen Kean and Hamilton accused the CIA and the Bush Administration of obstruction by withholding information about taped interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri (see item 288).

Finally, it should be remembered the 9/11 Commission was bipartisan. This does not mean the same thing as non-partisan. In order to achieve consensus, there was a deliberate decision not to assign personal blame. This was a critical shortcoming. Because as the Bush Administration’s repeated obstruction of the investigation into its complacency and inaction before 9/11 showed, it had much to hide.

Failure to implement the 911 Commission recommendations. The Commission report was released on July 22, 2004 with its recommendations. A Republican President and Republican controlled Congress stalled and delayed them for 3 years. It was not until Democrats regained control of the Congress that anything was done. HR 1 on implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations passed the Congress on July 27, 2007 and was signed into law on August 3, 2007.

Marginalization of the UN. Neocons hate the UN.

1. It doesn’t do what neocons tell it to do.
2. It is multilateral and neocons think only unilateral action by the US is effective.
3. It does not opt for military force as a first resort.

So, of course, on August 1, 2005, Bush named UN hating neocon John Bolton as UN Ambassador in a recess appointment. Bolton famously stated in a 1994 speech that “If the U.N. building in New York lost its top 10 stories it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” The top floors are where highest ranking UN officials have their offices. His thinking has not moderated since.

Of course, the Administration has not hesitated to use the UN when it has suited its purposes. It cited Security Council resolutions from the First Gulf War in its AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Force against Iraq) (see item 128). It would have gone for a Chapter 7 UN resolution authorizing military force for the 2003 invasion of Iraq if it thought it could get one. That wasn’t in the cards. This explains why, despite the incongruity, resolutions from the First Gulf War were used to give a patina of international legitimacy to the Second Gulf War. Later on June 8, 2004 as the CPA was coming to a close, the Administration sought and obtained Security Council Resolution 1546 which sanctioned the presence of American forces in Iraq for a limited time subject to update. This permission was most recently updated in Resolution 1790 on December 18, 2006 which extends the American mandate in Iraq to December 31, 2008.

Preventive war doctrine, aka Cheney’s one percent doctrine and the Bush doctrine. Bush first enunciated it at a speech at West Point on June 1, 2002. Preventive war is different from pre-emptive war. In preventive war, there is no imminent threat and this type of war is considered a war crime. (Think of Hitler attacking Poland.) In pre-emptive war, there is an imminent threat and this type of war is sanctioned by international law. (Think of the Israelis striking the Egyptian army in the Sinai in 1967).

Philip Zelikow a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, friend and colleague of Condoleezza Rice, and later Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission was asked by Rice then National Security Advisor to rewrite a State Department paper on US policy in the post-9/11 world. The result was the National Security Strategy of September 2002. In it, Zelikow stated preventive war as US policy.

Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction, and evidence indicates that they are doing so with determination . . . And, as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.

If a threat is not fully formed (or if indeed it does not exist except as a manifestation of neocon paranoia), there is no imminence, and if there is no imminence, we are talking preventive war, a war crime.

In a curious and very late attempt at revisionist history, on December 11, 2007, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied that Iraq, the preeminent example of the Bush Doctrine, was about pre-emption, i.e. prevention.

QUESTION: After 9/11, the President declared policy of preempting threats to the nation before they fully manifested themselves. Yet we’ve seen some of the intelligence about those threats is often flawed, significantly. Can a preemption policy coexist with imperfect intelligence?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I would argue with you — I don’t think I would argue with you, I would argue that we have — I don’t think we’ve yet employed preemption. I would — we could have a discussion about Iraq, continuing state of war since ‘91, shooting at our airplanes, almost a half dozen or more resolutions on this issue. I mean I think this was a long, long buildup. And I think it was a case in which you implement it or you had pretty much exhausted diplomatic options with Iraq.

Problem, as Ross Perot used to say, solved.

Loss of US reputation internationally after massive post-911 world support. Here are some percentage US approval ratings pre-Bush and near the end of his term.

The 2008 numbers are after the bursting of the housing bubble in August 2007 but before the September 2008 financial meltdown.

No serious attempt to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Bush’s approach to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would charitably be described as hands off and disengaged. On June 24, 2002, Bush did for the first time seem to support the creation of a Palestinian state:

And when the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East.

But as can be seen this declaration was highly conditioned and even then it would result initially in only "provisional" sovereignty for Palestinians. From this, it took almost a year for the Administration to come up with a more detailed plan. On April 30, 2003, it announced its Roadmap:

The following is a performance-based and goal-driven roadmap, with clear phases, timelines, target dates, and benchmarks aiming at progress through reciprocal steps by the two parties in the political, security, economic, humanitarian, and institution-building fields, under the auspices of the Quartet [the United States, European Union, United Nations, and Russia]. The destination is a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by 2005, as presented in President Bush’s speech of 24 June . . .

A settlement, negotiated between the parties, will result in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors.

The plan if not a quid pro quo for British participation in the invasion of Iraq was at least at the very strong suggestion of the British. The message was, however, stepped on by Bush as it came out just one day before his well known Mission Accomplished speech where he effectively and inaccurately declared victory in Iraq. After this, nothing happened except for the occasional vague pronouncement of even vaguer talks. The epitome of this was Condoleezza Rice’s announcement in Luxor on January 15, 2007 of talks on talks to develop a "political horizon" for a return to the "Roadmap" leading to a final Israeli-Palestinian settlement.

As the Bush Administration approached the end of its seventh year and the question of her legacy occupied Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, she arranged with Bush’s general support the Annapolis peace conference. The conference was attended by representatives of more than 40 countries, including the Saudis and Syrians but not the Iranians (who were not invited) and the Iraqis (who were invited but declined). It lasted a grand total of one day (November 27, 2007) and ended not with a commitment to act but as on all previous occasions a commitment to talk. This was not surprising given the political weakness of the three primary participants Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olemrt and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Bush’s detachment was exemplified by his inability to pronounce the names of either of his two guests of honor referring to them as "Ehud Elmo" and "Mahoomed Abbas" and his own rapid departure after his speech.

Shortly before a week long trip (January 8-16, 2008) to the Middle East where he was to visit Israel for the first time, Bush philosophized in a January 6, 2008 interview for al Arabiya about his Administration’s record on Israel-Palestine:

for the couple of years of my administration. It took a while to convince people that the two-state solution was in the security interests of both parties. And plus, there was a couple of difficult — there was a difficult situation, the truth be known. One was the intifada, which made it awfully hard to discuss peace at that time. The other was the Iraq invasion. It just — it created the conditions that made it more difficult to get people’s minds in the right place to begin the process. And so now I think we’ve got the stars lined up, and I think we got a shot, and I’m going for it.

Of course, he really isn’t going for it. After having criticized Clinton’s efforts as belated and incrementalist, Bush thinks he can achieve a deal by coming even later to the problem and solving it while being less involved. This is not serious.

Underfunding of basic research. The federal budget for R&D in 2006 (the last year that Republicans held a majority in the Congress) was $132.3 billion. In constant FY 2005 dollars (used hereafter), this broke down to around $73 billion in defense related R&D and $56 billion in non-defense R&D.

Defense R&D increased 2001-2006 from $50 billion to $73 billion. Most of this increase came from weapons development, not basic science. From 2001-2005, defense spending on science and technology (basic research) rose from slightly more than $10 billion to about $13 billion before being cut back to 2001 levels in 2006.

Non-defense R&D initially increased due to a 5 year initiative 1998-2003 (begun during the Clinton years) to double funding for the NIH from approx. $14 billion to $28 billion. After this point NIH funding (which accounts for half of non-defense R&D) stagnated. Non-defense non-NIH funding has remained essentially unchanged since 1992 (or for about 15 years).

While Bush has greatly increased the size of the federal budget, during his tenure funding for basic research which has been the foundation of our technological preeminence has languished or been cut. Democrats since taking control of the Congress have made some moves to increase funding in the 2008 budget.

Alberto Gonzales: politicization of the department, even down to the intern program, decimation of career lawyers and evisceration of divisions, like civil rights. The US attorney firings and the use of political litmus tests in hiring. The use of corruption, voter suppression, and voter fraud cases to influence elections.

Gonzales was counsel to the President before becoming Attorney General. This should have meant that he moved from being the President’s lawyer to the people’s lawyer but it is clear that he continues to see his main client as the President. Some think that he is dishonest; others say he is incompetent. He is both.

On August 27, 2007, Alberto Gonzales announced his resignation as Attorney General effective September 17, 2007. On December 31, 2008, Alberto Gonzales in an interview in the Wall Street Journal declared in a burst of self-pitying narcissism “for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.” Apparently his support for torture, turning the Justice Department into a political tool of the Bush Administration, and spying on Americans did not win him the respect and adulation he thought it would. How sad.

FDA: drug testing; food safety: underfunding, cutback in inspections and inspection staff (a decrease of 12% between 2003 and 2006), reliance on self-policing, lack of inspection of imported foods, and inability to force recalls.

 EPA: mercury levels for coal plants, delay in release of climate change reports; failure to address CO2 levels in global warming: Massachusetts v. EPA April 2007. On May 14, 2007, Bush asked government agencies to come up with a plan and submit it to him 3 weeks before he leaves office. The stalling continued on May 31, 2007, when Bush called for what was termed an aspirational goal of coming up with voluntary limits to greenhouse gases in the next 18 months (or again just before he leaves office) to go into effect after Kyoto expires in 2012. The number of civil cases brought against polluters decreased 70% between 2002 and 2006 compared to the rate in the 1990s.

December 19, 2007, going against the unanimous recommendation of his legal and technical staff, EPA administrator Stephen Johnson refused to grant California a waiver so that it could enforce stricter than federal emissions guidelines. The state along with 16 others sought to force automakers to cut emissions in all their vehicles by 30% by 2016. On January 2, 2008, California sued the EPA to force a reversal of its decision.

On January 18, 2008, Johnson sent heavily redacted documents to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works investigating his decision. In the accompanying letter, Associate Administrator Christopher Bliley in explaining the redactions cited executive privilege (even though none of the decision making involved Bush), a "chilling effect" upon his staff (even though he ignored them), confusion the public might have in understanding "the Agency’s full and complete thinking on the matter" (even though it’s clear what Johnson was up to), and the lawsuits by the states challenging Johnson’s decision (which would not have been filed if Johnson had not made such an unjustifiable decision).

On February 8, 2008, in New Jersey v. EPA, the DC Court of Appeals threw out the EPA’s plan to use a voluntary cap and trade system to reduce mercury emissions in coal and oil fired power plants. The plan would have allowed plants that failed to meet their emissions goals to purchase credits from those plants that had. The problem with this kind of system is that it would allow some plants to be dirtier than others and so expose some communities more than others.

As to the facts of the case, the court found that in December 2000 the EPA had deemed it appropriate and necessary to regulate mercury emissions from coal and oil fired power plants under the mandatory and stricter rules of Section 112 of the Clean Air Act (USC Title 42 Sec. 4712). In 2005 under the Bush Administration, the EPA removed these power plants from the Section 112 list of polluters. To do so, the EPA needed to show that emissions from all such plants were at “a level which is adequate to protect public health with an ample margin of safety and no adverse environmental effect will result.” (Sec. 112 (c)(9)(B)(ii)) It didn’t do this. It couldn’t do this. A cap and trade system for a major pollutant would never fit such a requirement. As a result, the court ruled that the EPA decision to remove these power plants from Section 112 was unlawful as was consequently the EPA’s cap and trade scheme.

On August 19, 2008, in Sierra Club v. EPA, the DC Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision with Brett Kavanaugh (entry 137) dissenting overturned a 2006 Bush Administration prohibition on states using stricter than federal pollution monitoring standards, if they deemed these to be inadequate, in the issuance of permits for emissions from industrial sources, such as power plants, chemical plants, and refineries. In 1990, amendments to the Clean Air Act had mandated that the government set minimum standards for monitoring but allowed states to enact more restrictive rules as these became outdated or were found to be insufficient. The prohibition by the Bush EPA was seen as a major rollback of the nation’s clean air laws and a gift to polluting industries.

Porter Goss and the gutting of the CIA: Goss a conservative Republican Congressman who chaired the House Intelligence Committee was chosen to replace George Tenet in 2004. He promised to be non-partisan in his new role, a promise he did not keep and which it is difficult to imagine anyone took seriously at the time. He brought with him some of his House staff, the "goslings". Their doctrinaire style produced confusion, demoralization, resignations, and not much else. Having done what damage he could and being largely isolated, he resigned suddenly on May 5, 2006, achieving the distinction of being one of the few people who was too big an embarrassment even for the Bush Administration, well that and that he was outmaneuvered and marginalized by the Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.

Militarization of intelligence: Rumsfeld perhaps out of pique that the Afghanistan operation was largely a CIA affair and conceiving the world as one big turf battle pressed to put all special operations under Pentagon control. The vast majority of intelligence funding is already funneled through the Defense Department. In addition to this, the current intelligence czar the Director of National Intelligence John Michael McConnell is a retired vice admiral. The CIA is currently headed by an active duty general Michael Hayden (USAF). The top man at the NSA (formerly headed by Hayden) is Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander (Army). General James R. Clapper Jr. is Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Lt. Gen. William J. (Jerry) Boykin is Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence, Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Michael Ennis is Deputy Director for Human Intelligence at the CIA. Retiring Army Lt. General Dell Dailey, formerly Director of the Center for Special Operations at the Pentagon which runs black ops, was nominated to head the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism (S/CT) at the State Department. He was confirmed June 22, 2007.

National Counterterrorism Center was headed by another retired vice admiral John Scott Redd from August 1, 2005 to November 10, 2007. He left after making remarks that Iraq had made the country less safe and had helped in the recruitment of terrorists. The current acting head of the NCTC is its principal deputy director Michael Leiter, a civilian.

Rampant cronyism

Signing statements: As of late 2007, there have been 156 signing statements challenging about 1,100 provisions in about 155 federal bills. In the past signing statements were used to establish grounds for a possible future challenge by the Executive branch or to assert that signing a specific bill did not imply a surrender of an underlying Presidential power. Bush has used them to maintain that he will only obey a law or a part of a law when it suits him.

Unilateral (aka Unitary) Executive doctrine: the brainchild of John Yoo and David Addington which seeks to establish a legal framework through misreading the Constitution for a Presidential dictatorship.

On December 7, 2007, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) released parts of Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions that he got declassified concerning Bush’s warrantless wiretapping programs:

1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.
2. The President s, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.
3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

What this says is that the President under his Article II powers as Commander in Chief can do whatever he wants and that he is the sole arbiter of whether what he does is legal. This echoes Richard Nixon famous dictum: ‘Well, when the President does it that means it is not illegal." And we saw how well that turned out.

On April 30, 2008, John P. Elwood, Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) testified before Congress that the President has the right to ignore or change existing executive orders without disclosing that he has done, meaning that he can deceive the Congress and public if he wishes to and create programs that directly violate known EOs with no oversight from anyone.

Overuse and abuse of the National Guard and Reserves. According to a report by an independent commission on the National Guard and Reserves released January 31, 2008, more than 88% of these units were not combat ready or prepared to deal with a catastrophic attack on the country. They had an equipment shortfall in 2007 of $48 billion. In more than half the states, they had less than half the equipment they needed. A lot of equipment is in Iraq intact, worn out, or destroyed there.

One recommendation was to place active duty troops directly under the authority of governors in an emergency, which would almost certainly be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

National Guard and Reserve troops have been used extensively in Iraq. This was not what they were really envisioned to do, or what many of them had signed on to do. They often lacked adequate training and equipment. On the other hand, they were cheaper than active duty Army soldiers and were essential to Bush’s strategy of keeping large numbers of troops deployed in Iraq.

One sign of just how dismissively the National Guard has been treated is the following. In a story reported October 3, 2007, the Pentagon wrote orders for 1,162 members of the Minnesota National Guard (who served 22 months in Iraq, the longest tour of any ground unit there) for 729 days in order to avoid giving them GI Bill education benefits which they would have been entitled to if they had served one single day more.

Increasing unpreparedness of US ground forces (Army and Marines): too many tours, extended tours, too little rest between tours, insufficient training.

US balance of trade deficit. This is a measure both of our general indebtedness and our competitiveness. In 2001 it was $385 billion. In 2006 it was $788 billion, a 105% increase. In 2007, it declined to $731 billion, a 90% increase. The deficit in goods (as opposed to services) accounts for almost all of this.

2005 Grassley Bankruptcy bill heavily favoring lenders

Mexican cross border trucking and safety concerns

Karl Rove did not lose his security clearance after his participation in the Valerie Plame case. Instead it was quietly renewed in late 2006. Henry Waxman would like to know why.

Detention of families for immigration violations; large ICE raids which leave children of detainees unaccounted for; immigrant detentions for long periods in a hodgepodge of facilities without adequate medical care (resulting in deaths), suicide prevention, or legal representation.

On March 6, 2007, the US Immigration and Customs Service arrested 361 undocumented workers in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The raid was widely criticized because there had been little coordination with Social Services to see that children of those detained would be taken care of.

On May 12, 2008, ICE conducted another mass raid in Postville, Iowa against a kosher meat processing plant Agriprocessors with a history of worker safety and environmental violations in which 389 undocumented workers were arrested. In the Postville case, denied access to immigration attorneys (other court appointed attorneys were provided) and threatened with felony convictions with a mandatory two year minimum, 270 (within 2 weeks of their arrest) accepted a plea bargain of 5 months in prison followed by immediate deportation. While ICE was eager to rush prosecutions of the workers, no manager at Agriprocessors has yet been charged with anything.

In California ICE raids over 3 weeks beginning May 5, 2008 targeted against those who had not obeyed deportation orders led to the arrest of 905. 410 of these were incidental arrests for immigration violations during searches for members of the first group. About half of the 905 were quickly deported.

Such raids don’t actually reduce the number of “illegal aliens” in the country in any significant way. They are sensationalist gestures for the benefit of anti-immigration groups to show that something is being done when in fact very little is. They are also meant to terrorize and demoralize undocumented workers not so much to encourage them to leave but to further disempower them.

On October 30, 2008, the CEO of the Postville Agriprocessors plant, the son of the owner, Sholom Rubashkin was arrested. The federal complaint alleges that he had advanced knowledge of the ICE raid and had sought to obtain fraudulent IDs for his workers.

Dubai Ports deal

The Patriot Act that no one had time to read and passed anyway; the Patriot Act extension that people had the time to read and passed anyway.

Attempts to privatize Social Security dating all the way back to a stacked commission report of December 11, 2001; Andrew Biggs who favors privatization made deputy director of Social Security in a recess appointment after the Senate made it clear it would not take up his nomination because of his privatization views.

The War on Science: stem cell research, global warming, evolution, research funding, energy, abstinence programs, AIDS prevention.

Conviction of David Safavian for lying and obstruction June 20, 2006 re his dealings with Jack Abramoff. In the 1990s, Safavian was a business partner of Grover Norquist. In 2002, he was named Senior Advisor and Acting Deputy Chief of Staff at the GSA and in November 2003 was made head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the OMB in the White House. On June 17, 2008, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new trial for Savafian. On December 19, 2008, Safavian was again convicted of obstruction and making false statements.

Presidential adviser Claude Allen stealing from Target

Bush casually admits to lying about decision to fire Rumsfeld

Armstrong Williams and paid propagandists

Decimation of the Labor Department presided over by Elaine Chao, married to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; job safety, job creation, wage increases, unions, and workers’ rights have languished under her stewardship. Edwin Foulke who heads OSHA continues the Administration policy of trusting to self-regulation of industry, by industry, for industry.

Net neutrality and media content and ownership policies

Backing Israel while it destroyed Lebanon July 12, 2006-August 14, 2006

Presidential Daily Brief August 6, 2001: Bin Laden determined to attack in US.

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

And

We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [deleted] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a U.S. aircraft to gain the release of “Blind Shaykh” Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman and other U.S.-held extremists.

Obviously, no one could have predicted, especially since the World Trade Center is mentioned in the first paragraph, both Yousef and al-Rahman were involved in the first bombing of the Twin Towers, and Bin Laden had only publicly stated his intentions of using aircraft 3 years previously. No one could have predicted, which no doubt explains Bush’s response to the CIA briefer who read him the PDB:

All right. You’ve covered your ass, now

EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman declares toxic filled Ground Zero safe for cleanup. On August 9, 2003 the EPA Inspector General finds differently. In Congressional testimony June 25, 2007, Whitman states that it was not her fault and blames the terrorists for the site being toxic. On April 22, 2008, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Whitman should not be held liable for her declaration because her lie did not “shock the conscience” of the appeals panel, a finding that says more about the panel than Whitman.

Sago mining disaster hearings and MHSA’s David Dye who walked out of the hearings; Bush push for reduction in fines for safety violations and non-collection of them since 2001.

Bush nominates Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court on October 3, 2005. She was serving as White House counsel after Alberto Gonzales went to the DOJ. A typical Bush crony appointment, nevertheless it quickly runs into problems. Miers has little knowledge of Constitutional law, but what dooms her nomination is that conservatives don’t think she is conservative enough. Think Roe v. Wade. The nomination is withdrawn October 27, 2005. A few months later Miers’ involvement in the firings of the US attorneys begins.

Bush vetoes a stem cell research bill July 19, 2006 (Bush’s first veto). Bush vetoes a second stem cell research bill June 20, 2007 (Bush’s third veto).

Attack on Plan B contraception, staffing Women’s Health positions with religious conservatives: Dr. Eric Keroack at Health and Human Services who thought birth control demeaning to women and Dr. David Hager at FDA who tried to keep Plan B prescription only. His wife contended in divorce proceedings that he had repeatedly sod*mized her without her consent. On October 15, 2007, Bush appointed Susan Orr as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs (Keroack’s position). Orr who currently heads child welfare programs at HHS is a virulent opponent of birth control considering it part of a "culture of death". This is another example of an upside down appointment: choosing someone whose positions are the very antithesis of their job’s mission.

Clear Skies Act of February 14, 2002 a failed attempt to weaken the Clean Air Act. Bush reacted by changing standards on nitrogen oxide, SO2, and mercury through the EPA. The Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003 based on bad science in how to protect communities from forest fires and on the effects of "thinning" forests, i.e disrupting ecosystems. The real aim was to remove public scrutiny on sweetheart deals with logging companies by claiming such deals were to protect communities even when there were no communities in the vicinity.

On December 5, 2007, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a 2003 US Forest Service rule, part of the Healthy Forests Initiative, which exempted cuts up to 1,000 acres and burns up to 4,500 acres in national forests from environmental review. The rule allowed about 1.2 million acres to be cut or burned each year without studying the environmental impact of these activities.

Missile defense shield that doesn’t work. So far the only tangible result is that Vladimir Putin has used it as an excuse to introduce a new class of MIRVed (multiple warhead) ICBMs and threaten the Europeans. This is payback for the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty announced December 12, 2001 and entered into effect June 13, 2002. On June 14, Russia announced that it was pulling out of START II (negotiated in the 1990s) which covered the de-MIRVing of ICBMs and which Russia had never gotten around to ratifying anyway. Putin knows that Russia is not threatened by such an ineffective system and that Russia has plenty of conventional ICBMs to overwhelm it even if it did work. As for targeting Europe, although it sounds scary, this represents little change from current policy. De-targeted Russian (and US) missiles can be re-targeted in a matter of seconds to minutes. On July 14, 2007, Putin suspended Russia’s participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty. The Bush missile shield is providing an excellent excuse for Russia to detach itself from the security framework put in place at the end of the Cold War.

The missile shield program has also suffered from problems with its target missiles. A September 26, 2008 GAO report noted that target missiles (often old rockets) experienced a failure rate of 7% (3 of 42) in tests from 2002-2005 and 16% (6 of 38) in 2006-2007. During this period, the costs of each target missile varied between $4.5 to $8.5 million. In December 2003, the DOD awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin to build new target rockets. These are expected to cost between $32 and $65 million a piece during the period 2008-2010. They are over cost and behind schedule. In fact, none are now expected for delivery before 2009.

Leandro Aragoncillo naturalized Filipino-American in Cheney’s office (previously Gore’s) accused of spying for the Philippines and possibly France, pled guilty to unlawfully possessing secret US government documents. He was sentenced to 10 years on July 18, 2007.

Defunding overseas AIDS programs that promoted condom use for prevention; ineffective abstinence only programs. With these should be mentioned domestic abstinence only programs directed at teens which have proven to be abysmal failures.

Call for a constitutional amendment declaring marriage to be between one man and one woman.

Opening up Bristol Bay, the last pristine large-scale salmon fishery in the world, to oil drilling. Congress has also sanctioned further drilling in the Gulf of Mexico including off the coast of Florida. Interior has proposed drilling off the coast of Virginia which would need Congressional approval which isn’t likely.

Accusation that Clintons trashed the White House before leaving, including stealing the Ws from keyboards

James Guckert aka Jeff Gannon had a series of websites 1999-2002 where he advertised his services as a male "escort" or prostitute. In November 2002, Guckert began posting and publishing conservative pieces under the name Jeff Gannon. Although he had no journalistic experience, Gannon was soon accredited to the White House press corps where between February 25, 2003 and early 2005 he appeared over 200 times. During this period he represented Talon News and GOPUSA, websites owned by Robert Eberle a Republican operative from Texas. Several of Gannon’s visits did not correspond to press events and has led to speculation about which of his trades he was practicing during them. Gannon was known for lobbing softball questions and writing stories from press releases. On January 26, 2005 this led to his undoing when he asked at a Presidential press conference a question that appeared too friendly even by Washington standards,

Q Thank you. Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock-solid and there’s no crisis there. How are you going to work — you said you’re going to reach out to these people — how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

It is important to point out that Gannon was exposed by the liberal blogs dailykos and Americablog. Although Gannon had been engaged in these antics for two years under the nose of the White House corps, steely-eyed reporters that they were, they never noticed.

Native American trust funds. In 1887 the Dawes Act allotted individual Native Americans plots out of trust lands amounting to about 139 million acres. The federal government was to administer and manage these lands for the benefit of Native peoples. In 1889, however, lands not already allotted were made available to non-Native people. The trust lands rapidly shrank, profits from their sale and use were diverted, and the government’s accounting procedures were so bad it will never be known how much money was lost. In June 1996, a class action lawsuit was filed in DC federal district court with Judge Royce Lamberth presiding: Cobell v. Secretary of the Interior (Babbitt, Norton, Kempthorne) over the Department’s management of the trust known as the Individual Indian Money program or IIM.

The Cobell case spans both the Clinton and Bush Administrations. Both saw Interior Secretaries and others cited for contempt. Both saw government offices destroy relevant evidence. The government has yet to address seriously the two issues of the case, compensation and reform of the trust. Instead it has engaged in a stalling strategy which so enraged Judge Lambert that "intemperate" remarks he made in July 2005 led to his eventual replacement in July 2006. That same month Senator John McCain (R-AZ) proposed an $8 billion settlement. This is a far lower figure than what the government owes the trust but illustrates the reality that the government has no intention of paying fair compensation or even making a real effort to find out what such compensation would be. On March 1, 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales added insult to injury by suggesting an even lower all inclusive settlement number of $7 billion. The case drags on with the government trying to "right" one historic wrong by committing another.

One interesting aside is that as part of the Cobell case the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the Office of the Special Trustee, the Office of Historical Trust Accounting, the Office of Hearing Appeals and the Office of the Solicitor all had their access to the internet pulled from 2001 to May 2008 by court order due to their mishandling of information. The current DC district court judge overseeing the case James Robertson of the DC district rescinded the order citing the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) which he said left no role for the courts in online security and information management. The Interior Department of which the BIA is part has received an F on FISMA’s annual report card for the past 2 years. It is amazing that the BIA and other offices over a period of 7 years could not resolve this issue and that it took a ruling that ignored the facts of the matter to reinstate their access.

On August 7, 2008, Judge Robertson awarded the native American plaintiffs $455 million a fraction of what even the government has offered them in the past, an inexplicably low figure given the value of the resources and the lengths of time involved. Robertson’s judgment seems rather a validation of the government’s policies of massive mismanagement, corruption, and failure to fulfill its fiduciary responsibilities. Trust lands were never administered with their native owners in mind but as a cash cow for mining interests, oil companies, developers, and ranchers, everyone in fact but them. Apparently Judge Robertson thinks this was just fine.

Selling creationist materials at the Grand Canyon gift shop claiming it was 6000 years old

In March 2003, the Pentagon announced a ban on photographs of coffins of slain American soldiers as they are returned to this country at Dover AFB. On June 21, 2004, the Republican led Senate defeated an attempt to allow such coverage. On November 11, 2004, the Pentagon announced restrictions that kept reporters at least 50 yards from any funeral. In the past, they have been allowed at the rear of them. This is not about privacy but about hiding the realities of war.

Although an accepted practice of previous Presidents and with Arlington National Cemetery only a few miles from the White House, Bush has not attended a single funeral for any serviceperson killed in his wars. His stated rationale? "Because which funeral do you go to? In my judgment, I think if I go to one I should go to all. How do you honor one person but not another?" Bush’s answer is apparently as Commander in Chief to honor none of them.

False military reporting: Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch. Pat Tillman was an NFL player who post-911 joined the Army and was killed in Afghanistan April 22, 2004. He was immediately mythologized John Wayne-style by the military. On May 28, 2004, it came out that he died in a friendly fire incident. Details of Tillman’s death and the coverup surrounding it continue to dribble out. On July 13, 2007, the Bush White House invoked Executive privilege on its communications with the Pentagon concerning the story pursuant to requests from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It is likely that Bush knew within a week of Tillman’s death that the initial accounts of it were false. Executive privilege has become an indispensable tool in the stonewall this Administration has constructed around itself.

On July 31, 2007, retired Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger who headed Army special forces received a letter of reprimand from Army Secretary Pete Geren for his role in the affair and may lose a star and a tenth of his retirement pay. Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal who heads the Special Operations (black ops) Command approved Tillman’s Silver Star citation on April 28, 2004 in which Tillman is described as being killed by devastating enemy fire. The next day he sent a back channel memo saying he thought Tillman may have been the victim of friendly fire. McChrystal remains on active duty and has never been punished although a Pentagon Inspector General’s report recommended that action be taken against him for misleading and inaccurate statements.

A July 14, 2008 report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sought to look up the chain of command to determine when top officials in the Bush Administration learned that Tillman’s death was from friendly fire and what they did with this knowledge, “But on the key issue of what senior officials knew, the investigation was frustrated by a near universal lack of recall.” The report noted that “On the day following his death, April 23, White House officials sent or received nearly 200 e-mails concerning Corporal Tillman” but that there was incredibly a “complete absence of any communications” from the White House on its learning of his death by friendly fire.

Jessica Lynch was a private in the Army. On March 23, 2003 during the invasion of Iraq, her convoy took a wrong turn in An Nasiriyah and was ambushed by Iraqi forces. Lynch was seriously injured when the vehicle in which she was traveling crashed into another. She was transported to an Iraqi hospital where she was treated for her wounds. She was rescued in a special night operation on April 1, 2003. On April 3, the Washington Post published a story leaked to it by the military that Lynch had been shot multiple times, had shot several Iraqis, and continued fighting until she ran out of ammunition. It was a huge story but completely fictitious as Jessica Lynch was the first to point out when she was able. Unfortunately, the report was unable to establish how this false story was disseminated as those involved suffered from the amnesia that always afflicts officials in this Administration when they are questioned about illegal or embarrassing activities.

AIPAC espionage scandal; former DOD employee Lawrence Franklin pled guilty to passing information on Iran to Israel through two AIPAC employees

Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram; the Marine massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians at Haditha and its coverup. A few cases:

• Rasul: On June 28, 2004 SCOTUS in a 6-3 decision ruled that the US court system had jurisdiction over non US nationals held at Guantanamo. Rasul had been released to the UK before the ruling on March 29, 2004.
• Hamdi: On June 28, 2004 SCOTUS 8-1 ruled that U.S. citizens can not be detained indefinitely as enemy combatants without due process. Hamdi was released to Saudi Arabia on October 9, 2004 on condition that he give up his US citizenship.
• Hamdan: On June 29, 2006, SCOTUS in a 5-3 decision ruled that Bush’s military tribunals were illegal under the UCMJ and the Geneva Conventions and needed Congressional authorization (which was supplied by the Military Commissions Act or MCA of September 2006)
• Khadr/Hamdan: On June 4, 2007, a military court dismissed charges against them because their Combat Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) had designated them enemy combatants. The MCA authorizes trials for "unlawful" enemy combatants only, which they had not been designated. On September 24, 2007 in the Khadr case, a military appeals court found that on hearing more evidence a military judge had the power to determine that an alien enemy combatant was also an "unlawful" one. If upheld, this could clear the way for trials under the MCA.
• al Marri: On June 11, 2007, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that a legal US resident (similar to Hamdi) can not be denied due process and held indefinitely as an enemy combatant outside the purview of the US judicial system. On December 5, 2008, the Supreme Court granted certiorari and would likely hear the case in the spring of 2009 if it doesn’t get mooted first by action by the incoming Administration.

Asserted right to open US mail made on December 20, 2006 in a signing statement to HR 6407 the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act:

The executive branch shall construe subsection 404(c) of title 39, as enacted by subsection 1010(e) of the Act, which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection, in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection.

The housing bubble, its collapse, subprime mortgage crisis. Since about 1998, subprime mortgage loans have accounted for about 1/4 of US home sales. Such mortgages allowed people with low or bad credit ratings to purchase homes. Easy credit resulted in a housing boom/bubble between 2000 and 2005 and was touted as a major plank of Bush’s “ownership society”. The problem was people were sold too much house financed by loans that they could initially, if marginally, afford but which they could not after a few years as the terms on their loans changed and monthly payments greatly increased. The effects of this nonsensical lending and speculation were delayed for awhile as the housing market was on the way up and the value of homes (including those financed by subprime loans) steadily increased, but in late 2006 the bubble became unsustainable and burst. Ameriquest the largest subprime lender went belly up after a $325 million settlement with 30 state Attorney Generals for deceptive lending and marketing practices. (Its former CEO Robert Arnell was appointed Ambassador to the Netherlands by George Bush.) It was not alone. Other subprime lenders like Mortgage Lenders Network USA and Ownit followed suit. Market analysts try to downplay the significance of the subprime disaster but its effects continue to ripple through financial markets. For one thing most of the mortgage loans were not held by the original lenders but sold to investors and hedge funds. As a result two Bear Stearns funds failed and on August 9, 2007 the French bank BNP Paribas froze withdrawals from 3 of its funds due to subprime losses sparking a major sell off in stock markets and a liquidity crisis. In the following 3 business days, the Fed injected $64 billion into markets and the European Central Bank ~$213 billion in an effort to stabilize them. The fallout from this housing bubble collapse will be with us for years and is going to be very, very expensive.

On December 6, 2007, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson presented the Administration’s much awaited plan to help homeowners with subprime mortgages. The program called for a voluntary 5 year freeze on rates due to reset between January 1, 2008 and July 31, 2010. It was available only to those who were not delinquent in their payments and delays but does not do away with interest rate resets at the end of this period. Finally, it would affect at most 20% of such loans and probably far fewer (~12%). All in all, the Paulson plan does little to help homeowners but then it was never meant to. The real reason for the plan was to support housing prices which could fall 20% to 30% due to the subprime bubble and so thereby minimize losses to investors.

On December 11, 2007, the Fed cut short term interest rates down to 4.25%. This is the rate that banks charge each other for overnight loans. It was the third rate cut since September 2007 bringing the total decrease to a full percentage point. While this could fuel inflation, it is unclear that it will have any effect on the underlying fundamentals of the liquidity crisis brought on by the subprime bubble.

On December 18, 2007, European central banks created a $500 billion fund to provide two week loans to commercial banks at 4.21% interest. The problem with most banks is not that they lack money on hand but that they are leery of lending it.

On February 13, 2008, Bush signed HR 5140 a $160 billion stimulus in the form of a tax rebate.

On March 16, 2008, JPMorgan agreed to buy Bear Stearns which had been heavily involved in the subprime crisis and suffered accordingly for $236 million or about $2 a share. Bear Stearns stock had traded as high as $172 in January 2006. The Fed assumed up to $30 billion in risk for the company’s shakier investments. Basically, JPMorgan got Bear Stearns’ assets and the Fed guaranteed its debts. The thing that really scared the financial community and led them to avert the company’s collapse was that it was into the derivatives market to the tune of $13.4 trillion. If it had fallen, it might have taken the whole international financial market with it. Even so Bear Stearns’ exposure to the derivatives market is not unusual for large investment banks. Still investors resisted, and on March 24, 2008, JPMorgan raised its offer to $10 a share.

On July 11, 2008, IndyMac, the largest savings and loan in Los Angeles, collapsed. It had experienced a run on its money after letters by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) expressing concerns about the bank’s viability were released on June 26, 2008. It is the largest bank failure related to the subprime fiasco. The episode is another demonstration of how the impacts from this debacle are still being felt and underlines the pervasive fear, protestations to the contrary aside, that the worst is not over.

The giants in the room are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, publicly owned government sponsored enterprises, who own or back some $5 trillion of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market. As of July 2008, they have lost nearly 80% of their stock value since the subprime meltdown in August 2007. They are quite literally too big to let fail although the Bush Administration is doing the minimum to shore them up. However the companies continued having problems raising money for their mortgage lending operations.

On September 5, 2008, the government informed the heads of Freddie and Fannie that the companies were going to be put into conservatorship. This would allow the government to restructure the companies while keeping them private. Government plans put together by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson included replacing the current heads and boards of the companies, wiping out the holdings of small investors and backing those of large institutional ones: banks, foreign governments, mutual and pension funds. These guarantees will likely cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. It is a classic example of “privatizing gains and socializing losses.” As is so typical with the economic approach of this Administration, those who knew the most and can best sustain the losses will be secured while those who can afford it least and had the least involvement in creating this mess will be left to pay the bills for it.

On September 7, 2008, the government announced details of its takeover. Herbert Allison the former chair of teachers retirement fund TIAA-CREF was named to head Fannie. He was the national finance chairman for McCain’s Presidential campaign in 2000. David Moffett a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group was picked to run Freddie. A Carlyle hedge fund with large investments in Fannie and Freddie failed in March 2008. It is troubling that both come from groups that have the most to gain from a government bailout of the mortgage lending/holding companies. More disturbing still is that both have such glaring conflicts of interest.

Under the Paulson plan, each company would pay an at least 10% dividend on $1 billion of government preferred stock. But in return for this $200 million a year it would receive, the government has guaranteed to back their losses up to $200 billion ($100 billion each). Also at some time in the future if the companies ever became profitable the government could buy up 80% of them for $1 a share. The contrary case is more likely where the government would need to buy them because they continue to be unprofitable. A largely ignored part of the Paulson plan would be to reduce Fannie and Freddie participation in and share of the mortgage market beginning in 2010. This would have the effect of making mortgages less available and more expensive. But, at the risk of repeating myself, the whole government response to the housing bubble is and has always been about protecting large speculators in the name of market stability and at the expense of everyone else.

On September 14, 2008, the financial services company Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America for $50 billion in what will likely turn out to be a bad deal for BoA. On September 15, 2008, the investment bank of Lehman Brothers, a prime player in the subprime market along with Bear Stearn, with its stock now virtually worthless, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Currently teetering are the bank Washington Mutual and the insurance giant AIG which was heavily into credit default swaps (these were essentially insurance policies for subprime loans and amounted to free money for AIG on the upside of the housing bubble but translated into enormous debt exposure when the bubble burst and AIG had to start paying up on them).

On September 16, 2008, the federal government bought a 79.9% stake in AIG in exchange for a two year $85 billion line of credit through the Fed at about an 11% interest rate. AIG has $1.1 trillion in assets and a customer base of 74 million. Its stock had traded as high as $70.13 in the last year but had since lost around 95% of its value. Amazingly, in just 10 days, the US government has become the world’s largest landlord and insurance provider.

Also amazing was that the only Wall Street executive at the meeting to decide AIG’s fate was Lloyd Blankfein Paulson’s successor as CEO of Goldman Sachs. Goldman was AIG’s largest trading partner and stood to lose $20 billion if AIG went under. So no conflicts of interest there, nope, no.

On September 19, 2008 , as the government’s intervention in financial markets continued, the Treasury Department said it would take the entire $50 billion worth of the Depression-era Exchange Stabilization Fund and use it to guarantee the $2 trillion money market financial sector. Money markets are big holder of short term and usually quite safe loans. Problems began, however, on September 16, 2008, when two of the largest Reserve Primary Fund and BNY Mellon Institutional Cash Reserves broke the buck, i.e. when the return on a dollar invested in them fell below one dollar, in response to losses from the Lehman bankruptcy. This began a run on the funds generally. $224 billion was pulled from them in the week ending September 19 with $89.2 billion on September 17 alone. There was also a report that Paulson intervened directly with institutional investors on September 18 to prevent another $500 billion from being withdrawn.

Also on September 19, 2008, the SEC announced a ban on short selling to last until October 2. This principally was to relieve pressure on the investment bank Morgan Stanley whose share price had fallen 40% in a week and caused a sharp rise on Wall Street as speculators were forced to cover their shorts. Most ominously Paulson and Bernanke stated their intentions of bailing out financial companies by buying their toxic mortgage backed securities. This is a horrendously bad decision for four reasons. First, it rewards those whose greed and stupidity are most responsible for this disaster. Second, it doesn’t help homeowners who have been completely forgotten in the rush to “stabilize” financial markets. Third, it leaves taxpayers holding the bag for what will end up costing them trillions. Fourth, it does nothing to change and re-regulate the financial system so this won’t happen again.

On September 20, 2008, the Bush Administration announced its plan to bailout financial institutions holding toxic mortgage backed securities. It would invest Henry Paulson with vast new powers. As CEO and Chairman of the investment bank Goldman Sachs, Paulson championed the deregulation and bad practices that led to the current financial meltdown. For the last two years, as Treasury Secretary, he did nothing to stave off the bursting of the housing bubble and until the last two weeks nothing to address its aftermath. The Administration’s proposal would give him $700 billion and absolute unrestricted discretion to buy toxic mortgage backed securities from whom he wants, at what price he wants, and do what he wants with them, without review by anyone, outside of a pro forma report to Congress.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

This is an impossibly bad idea for the 4 reasons I gave in the last paragraph but in addition puts one of the worst actors in charge of the “cleanup”.

On September 21, 2008, foreign banks decided they too wanted a piece of this $700 billion bonanza and Paulson obligingly modified his plan to include foreign financial institutions which had “significant operations” in the US whatever that means, and it could mean almost anything. The Fed also accepted the application of the last two investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to join the Fed. They would convert themselves into bank holding companies, have to reduce their degree of leveraging to 10 to 1, and accept greater oversight but in exchange they would gain access to the Fed’s short term loan facilities. It was the drying up of credit that posed the greatest threat of failure to them. And in their new forms it is entirely conceivable that Paulson would ask them to help manage the bailout to the meltdown they did so much to create.

What is simply stupefying is that Paulson wants effective control of $700 billion based on a vague 2 page plan that White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the Administration needed months to work out. This raised the question of why Congress and the public were not brought in earlier and their input sought instead of presenting it as a fait accompli with only two weeks for the public to react and the Congress to act before its pre-election adjournment. The vagueness of the plan can not be overstated, unsurprising in such a short document. Indeed the only solid part of it is its $700 billion cost, and it turns out that was made up.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

In this Administration, this is what passes for a serious plan and a considered approach to deal with a potential financial collapse. Such dimwittery got us into this mess. More will not get us out of it.

On September 24, 2008, the Fed announced it would extend the currency swaps (to supply dollars to foreign central banks) it introduced on September 18 for overnight loans to $10 billion each for the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Sveriges Riksbank and $5 billion each by the Danmarks Nationalbank and the Norges Bank. This brings the money committed to these to $277 billion.

On September 25, 2008, Washington Mutual, the nation’s largest savings and loan, with assets of $307 billion was seized by government regulators and, without informing either its board or CEO, sold to JP Morgan Chase for $1.9 billion. If WaMu had failed, it might have cost taxpayers $20-$30 billion. What is disturbing though is that JP Morgan picks up a very large bank for almost nothing and will be able to dump WaMu’s bad loans on to taxpayers as part of the Paulson bailout. In other words, JP Morgan makes out like a bandit. It keeps the good stuff and sells the crap to the rubes taxpayers. This is the problem of bailing out Wall Street instead of reforming it.

Much was made of the fact that Paulson and Bernanke were not going to bailout Lehman Brothers, but that is not the whole story. On September 25, 2008, a commenter to a Yahoo message board noted that Citibank was Lehman’s largest unsecured creditor with claims of $138 billion. On September 15, 2008, the day Lehman filed for bankruptcy, JP Morgan transferred $87 billion to it, and $51 billion the next day for a total transfer of $138 billion. The Federal Reserve of New York made exactly similar transfers to JP Morgan on the same dates. So while Lehman was allowed to fail, the Fed used JP Morgan and Lehman to effect a secret bailout of Citibank. What the Fed got in return for its money is currently unknown. JP Morgan appears to have gotten WaMu. What is clear is that the Fed did a run around the bankruptcy laws in a way which could well be illegal and constitute fraud.

On September 26, 2008, the Fed added another $10 billion to its currency swap with the European Central Bank and $3 billion to the Swiss National Bank. Instead of overnight loans, these two banks and the Bank of England will make them for a week to ease end of the quarter cashflow problems. This brings the value of these swaps to $290 billion.

On September 23, 2008, Paulson and Bernanke pitched their plan to give them what they want or else to the Senate Financial Services Committee chaired by Chris Dodd (D-CT) and the next day before the House committee chaired by Barney Frank (D-MA). In the second hearing, Paulson modified his position slightly saying he was for some oversight and would accept caps on CEO remuneration. Both Dodd and Frank offered plans which were modifications of Paulson’s. On September 25, 2008, Bush was supposed to meet with Congressional leaders of both parties as well as the two Presidential candidates to finish the deal. The object was to give both sides cover for a plan that was strongly disliked by most of the public. John McCain in something of a political stunt “suspended” his campaign and canceled his appearance at the first Presidential debate scheduled for September 26 to hurry back to Washington to take charge. His efforts were appreciated by almost no one. He signed on to a flaky last minute plan put forward by House Republicans which would have involved more deregulation and cutting the capital gains tax. The deal blew up, and McCain decided that sufficient progress (and damage both to a deal and his campaign) had been made that he would, in fact, show up for the debate and restart his campaign which he had never really suspended. It is important to point out that none of these plans address the fundamental problems of refinancing mortgages and defusing derivatives, and so none of them will succeed. They may delay things by a few months at a tremendous price but we are still looking down the barrel of a very large and very ugly economic gun.

On Sunday September 28, 2008, Bush, the Presidential candidates, and Congressional leaders of both parties endorsed a “compromise” bailout plan (HR 3997). The bill was 110 pages long, so much longer than the original 2 page Paulson plan. But it was still the Paulson plan, just a lot of lipstick had been added. Paulson would still be able to buy, hold, and sell what he wanted (not just mortgage backed securities but any securities he wished) from whom he wanted (both American financial companies and any foreign one with “significant” US interests not owned by a foreign government). He would be the one to set up the market mechanisms (reverse auctions) to buy the finance industry’s crap assets. He would be the one to hire employees and contract companies to manage the auctions and assets, and he would be the one to write the conflict of interest rules which would govern these and ensure he could hire anyone he wanted. One of the few additions is an insurance program for bad assets which was unlikely to be widely used but was included to mollify rebellious House Republicans.

Of central importance was the retention of the $700 billion figure. The bill engaged in some kabuki on this to make it seem that there were conditions on the money but there really weren’t. Paulson would initially get $250 billion. When this was exhausted, he could make a determination to Congress and with the President’s OK alone get another $100 billion. The other $350 billion was also effectively at his disposal since it required a joint resolution of both Houses to disapprove it and in the face of a likely Presidential veto the Congressional resolution would require a veto override (a 2/3 vote in both Houses) to prevent its disbursement.

Most notably absent from the bill was any attempt to re-regulate markets now or to extend direct aid to distressed homeowners (except for continuing an income tax exclusion). On the other hand, it contained a veritable blizzard of oversight panels and calls for reports. A Financial Stability Oversight Board, the Comptroller General (GAO), SEC, Fed, OMB, CBO, a program Inspector General, various House and Senate committees, and an online list of the bailout’s business were all supposed to be part of the oversight process. Yet none of these had any enforcement authority. That power remained with Paulson. Among the reports (in addition to all the audits), one was supposed to give recommendations for market regulation to be completed by April 30, 2009, 7 months away and in another Administration. Another also on regulation by the Congressional Oversight Panel was due January 20, 2009, i.e. on Inauguration Day. A third was to examine the role of mark to market accounting (pricing assets according to their current sale value) in bank failures and a fourth was to cover the effects of leveraging and de-leveraging.

There were also interesting bits hidden away in the nooks and crannies of the bill. One particularly artful example involved a simple change of date to a prior bill but what it did in effect was to allow the Fed to pay interest on reserves held by banks and permit banks to carry zero reserves. Another suspended mark to market accounting allowing financial institutions to artificially inflate the value of their assets to improve their balance sheets.

Interestingly Paulson held no press conference on the bill’s contents for the public but he did make a private telephone conference call to 800 bankers and financial officers to discuss it. This call was subsequently leaked to the internet. His take home message was I’ll get the $700 billion, and I will take care of you guys. Paulson said that if Treasury was forced to make direct purchases from companies of their assets, then he would follow the same aggressive method he had used with Fannie, Freddie, and AIG where CEOs lost their jobs. However, if companies opted to participate voluntarily in the bailout program, he was willing to be generous. He would not buy their assets at fire sale prices but at what he called a “reasonable” value. Restrictions on golden parachutes applied prospectively, and only in cases of bankruptcy or firing. He would not seek stock warrants (essentially options to sell stock at some future time) on the first $100 million of assets purchased, and the warrants would be for non-voting stock. Finally, he sought to re-assure them over a provision of the bill that called for the government to recoup any losses to its $700 billion fund after 5 years from the financial industry generally. He said that this was essentially boilerplate that showed up in many Congressional bills, that 5 years was a long time away, and that new legislation would be required at that time for it. In other words, he thought it would be defeated and wouldn’t happen.

On September 29, 2008, in a 15 minute vote that was held open for 38 minutes, conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats defeated the bill 205-228 in the House. 140 Democrats voted for the Bush-backed “compromise”. 133 Republicans opposed it and their President. It is probably too much to hope for but it would be nice if at this point lawmakers discarded the Paulson plan and considered alternatives. The Swedish or Scandinavian response to their banking crisis in the early 1990s might be useful. Banks were forced to acknowledge their losses, and only when the extent of their losses was known were they recapitalized under stricter regulation. Such an approach encourages private participation because assets are set at their true market value.

In addition to this, however, there must be help for homeowners and restriction of the funny money instruments and accounting principles the financial industry used to produce this mess. For this, we don’t need further studies, all conveniently due in the next Administration. What we need is to recognize and clear out the debt in the present system, and this along with reform will create confidence in a new more regulated, transparent one.

In other events on September 29, 2008, the Fed increased its currency swaps pool with foreign central banks from $290 billion to $620 billion in a further move to inject liquidity into markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell 777.68 points or nearly 7%. Another big bank bit the dust. Wachovia was bought out by Citigroup for $2.2 billion. Citigroup agreed to assume the first $42 billion of Wachovia’s mortgage related losses and to pay the FDIC $12 billion in preferred stock and warrants to assume the rest. The Citigroup buyout of Wachovia (which was for its banking operations) ran into problems when on October 2, 2008, Wells Fargo made a counter offer of $15 billion in stock for the whole company and planned on using Wachovia’s losses as tax write offs. Whichever way this goes, it represents a further and major concentration of banking in the United States and likely loss of competition.

Overseas the credit crunch was also taking its toll. On September 29, 2008, the UK seized Bradford & Bingley. The government kept control of its £50 billion mortgage portfolio and spun off its banking operations to Spain’s Santander. Meanwhile the Benelux countries forked out $16.2 billion to bailout and partially nationalize the bank giant Fortis which had problems with financing an earlier merger. On September 30, 2008, the governments of France, Belgium, and Luxembourg bailed out the bank Dexia, a lender to mainly local governments, with a cash injection of $9 billion. What this should tell you is that the shocks from the shaky American financial markets are being felt throughout the world economy.

On October 1, 2008, the Senate in a 74-25 passed its version of the bailout. Its bill ran 451 pages long. It contained the original “compromise” bill with few changes, such as an increase in the limit from $100,000 to $250,000 for FDIC insured accounts. The greater length was principally due to the attachment of an energy bill and a smorgasbord of tax provisions, including ones dealing with wooden arrows (Sec. 503, pp. 295-296) and wool products (Sec. 325, pp. 300-301). Only one Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) who gave a ringing speech condemning the bill was allowed to offer an amendment, one to raise tax rates for 5 years by 10% on those making over $500,000 a year ($1 million for couples) to help pay for the bailout. On a voice vote only Sanders’ voice was heard in favor of it.

An October 2, 2008 New York Times story related how after 55 minutes of discussion on April 28, 2004 the SEC, lobbied by the big 5 investment banks, removed limits on their ability to leverage. In exchange the companies agreed to open their books to the SEC but the SEC, especially under the leadership of its head Christopher Cox, made no real effort to keep tabs on what these companies were doing. Only seven people were assigned to an office to monitor them and their (before the fall) assets of $4 trillion, and the office has lacked a director since March 2007. The result was a casino mentality with no limits and no oversight.

There have been perhaps 4 major decisions that allowed the current meltdown to happen. This 2004 SEC decision was one of them. The other 3 are:

1. the 2003 ban by the Office of the Comptroller of Currency on the pursuit of mortgage writers for predatory lending by state attorney generals.
2. the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act which included not only the “Enron loophole” but deregulation of derivatives markets.
3. the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which repealed the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act which placed a wall between regular banks and insurance companies on one side and investment banks on the other.

On October 3, 2008, the House voted on the Senate package which with the tax provisions now came in at over $800 billion and passed it 263-171 with a majority 172-63 of Democrats voting for and a majority of Republicans 91-108 voting against. There is no evidence that the liquidity the bill injects into the financial system will be used to free up credit. This is known as a liquidity trap. There have been several injections of liquidity into the system over the last year and the credit crunch has only worsened. The reason is that banks and financial institutions don’t know who is solvent and who is not. While the bill allows them to dump toxic assets on the government, $700 billion is unlikely to cover all their losses. It is only a down payment on them. So the problem remains the same. The banks and financial institutions don’t know who’s solvent. They are likely to hold the cash or restrict severely to whom they lend. Since the bill doesn’t help distressed homeowners beyond a little lip service to their plight, foreclosures, a housing glut, and downward pressure on housing prices will continue and feed back negatively into the financial system. The lack of re-regulation will not help re-instill confidence in the system either. What makes this all especially tragic is that there were at least 3 viable alternatives to the current crisis: 1) direct government buying up of problem mortgages; 2) direct government investment in banks; 3) direct government valuation of mortgage backed paper. These singly or in combination together with re-regulation would have provided a cheaper and more effective answer to the meltdown and subsequent credit freeze.

On October 6, 2008, the Fed announced that, per the passed Paulson plan, it would begin paying interest on required bank reserves. It also increased immediately to $300 billion the amount it would make available to banks in 1 and 3 month loans using crap paper as collateral. This is just the start. The loan program called the Term Auction Facility (TAF) could have after further auctions, according to the Fed, $900 billion in outstanding loans by the end of 2008, collateralized by, to repeat myself, crap.

World stock markets greeted passage of the bailout (and lack of concerted action in Europe) by falling precipitously. The Dow fell nearly 800 points during the course of the day (9525.32-10322.76) and closed, after a late rally, down 369.88 at 9,955.50, the first below 10,000 closing in 4 years.

Also on October 6, 2008, Henry Paulson named 35 year old Neel Kashkari as interim head to run the bailout. Kashkari was a senior adviser to Paulson at Goldman Sachs and followed him to Treasury in June 2008. Goldman Sachs will likely play an integral part in managing the bailout and profiting from it. In other words, what we are seeing is that those who caused the meltdown are being entrusted to deal with it. It is difficult to see how this could become more incestuous or how the conflicts of interest could be any deeper.

On October 7, 2008, the Fed, in response to the drying up of short term credit from money markets after some broke the buck after the Lehman failure, announced a new program the Commercial Paper Funding Facility which would make 3 month unsecured loans to eligible banks, companies, and local governments (to meet payrolls or pay suppliers, for example). The size of this market is large between $1.6-1.8 trillion and no dollar estimate was put on the Fed’s intervention. The Dow continued to react negatively to the government’s expensive but ineffective moves to shore up the financial system and fell 508.39 points to close at 9,447.11.

On October 8, 2008, while the small country of Iceland teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, the British partially nationalized 8 of its largest banks. In exchange for preferred stock, the British government agreed to provide capital and loan guarantees. This strategy invests their government in the total worth of the company, not just its bad asssets as with the Paulson plan, and gives it leverage to require that banks to free up their credit for normal business and consumer lending, again in contrast to the Paulson plan.

The Fed and several central banks minus Japan cut their lending rates half a percentage point. For the Fed, this meant a reduction in federal funds and discount rates to 1.5%. This will make money cheaper to borrow if you are a bank but it is unclear if it will make banks any more willing to lend to anyone else, like businesses and consumers. The Fed also announced that AIG which had already blown through $61 billion of the $85 billion advanced to it would receive another $37.8 billion injection of cash. In what is symptomatic of the lack of transparency in the financial system the Fed described its action in terms which were, in fact, opposite from what it was doing.

Under this program, the New York Fed will borrow up to $37.8 billion in investment-grade, fixed-income securities from AIG in return for cash collateral.

On October 8, 2008, the Dow dropped 189.01 points (2%). On October 9, 2008, the Dow dropped a further 678.91 points (7.33%) to close below 9,000 at 8,579.19. This is the lowest close since May 21, 2003. Exactly 1 year ago, the Dow closed at its all time high of 14,164.53. In that year, the Dow has declined 5585.34 points or 39.4%. Of particular note is that it has fallen 2251.88 points (20.8%) since October 1, 2008 when the Paulson plan was passed by the Senate and signed into law. This is a clear vote of no-confidence in both Paulson and Bernanke and their efforts to date. As a result, money is hemorrhaging out of stocks seeking safer havens, such as currency.

Also on October 9, 2008, Citigroup gave up on its bid to take over Wachovia. Interestingly, with all of its problems, Wachovia was able to loan $8 million to the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). Although Wachovia is to be repaid at some point, what this amounts to is a very large campaign contribution to Republicans and goes to show that no matter how tottering the financial system is it is never too shaky for a little corruption.

An October 11, 2008 story in Bloomberg reported that Treasury Secretary Paulson had directed Fannie and Freddie in late September (in advance of the passage of the $700 billion bailout) to add to their portfolios of bad mortgage securities to the tune of $20 billion a month each from a $200 billion emergency fund that had been set up to help them deal with the problems that had sent them into conservatorship. This is yet another example of the double-dealing and lack of transparency which has come to characterize Paulson’s approach to the crisis. While he was telling Congress one thing, he was doing something else behind their backs. He used money meant to shore up Fannie and Freddie to increase their liabilities, and he did so in the pursuit of a strategy which the events of the last week have already discredited. To date, Paulson’s instincts on how to deal with the meltdown have been too little too late, and just plain wrong.

On October 12, 2008, the Fed okayed the takeover of Wachovia by Wells Fargo and Treasury said it would protect a proposed $9 billion Mitsubishi purchase of 21% of Morgan Stanley. On October 11-12, G7 finance ministers and central bank governors met and came up with no coordinated plan.

On October 13, 2008, the Mitsubishi-Morgan Stanley deal was finalized on terms so favorable to Mitsubishi that it was pretty much impossible for them to lose any money, and giving the Japanese company a reasonable chance of making a killing on it. This says a lot about the sorry shape the former investment bank giant is in. On this day, the Fed made another capital injection in financial markets when it took off all limits on currency swaps (which it had rapidly increased to $620 billion as recently as September 26, 2008) involving the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the Swiss National Bank.

European countries announced a series of initiatives to shore up their banking systems. In addition to the British move to partially nationalize 3 of its banks, the Germans announced $500 billion in guarantees for inter-bank loans and a further $108 billion to invest in banks. The French came up with $435 billion in guarantees and $52 billion to invest. The Spanish had a $130 billion plan and the Italians a $27 billion one. Meanwhile in the US, Paulson and his Mini-me Kashkari continued to dither. They announced they would be setting up a program to buy into banks. It would be voluntary, on what were described as attractive terms for banks, and would be as per the $700 billion bailout plan be for non-voting stock. Paulson’s policy of missing the point and doing too little too late continues.

In reaction to the European, as opposed to the American, actions, the Dow had a good day. It rose 936.42 points (11.08%) to 9,387.61. It is important to note that as currently structured this is a stopgap and has yet to address the fundamental problems: bank solvency, deregulation, credit default swaps, falling housing prices, and forgotten homeowners.

Later in the day, Treasury got around to announcing some of the details of its new plan. It would commit up to $250 billion of the $700 billion bailout package to buy stock in banks. At the same time the FDIC announced it would guarantee inter-bank loans for 3 years but would charge a premium to do so.

On October 14, 2008, Treasury announced further details of its new bank program. It would invest $125 billion in large banks and financial houses and make $125 billion available for smaller banks. Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Wells Fargo would each receive $25 billion. Paulson’s old firm Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, both recently converted to bank holding companies (although I do not think that either currently owns a bank), would get $10 billion each. Bank of New York Mellon got $3 billion and State Street $2 billion. In exchange the government would get preferred non-voting stock paying a 5% dividend per year for the first 5 years and then 9% thereafter. Banks could, however, buy back this stock after 3 years. The government would also get warrants to buy common stock equal to 15% of the money invested. (These would only be worth something if the bank’s stock went up.) Excessive compensation and golden parachutes would be banned but this amounts to a restatement of the joke standards which occur in the original bailout bill. The FDIC also announced that it would extend protection to roughly the one-third of small business accounts that its new $250,000 limit did not currently cover.

On October 15, 2008, the Dow nosedived again dropping 733.08 points (7.87%) to close at 8,577.91. This volatility is an important indicator that the problems underlying the meltdown remain unaddressed and that the reality that the world economy is in recession is slowly sinking in.

An October 18, 2008 article in the Guardian reports that the 6 firms to receive a $125 billion injection of capital from the US government are slated to pay their employees $70 billion in compensation this year most of it in the form of bonuses. Obscene? Divorced from reality? Of course, that $70 billion is nearly half the size of the$160 billion stimulus package earlier this year for the entire country. But what did you expect? These are Henry Paulson’s people. He is one of them. The rest of the country may be headed toward Depression but those who sent it there must be kept in their Porsches and mistresses.

The industry argument is that bonuses are necessary to keep top talent at a company. There are two replies to this. First, this top talent is made up of those most responsible for the current meltdown. Are these the people they really want to keep, let alone reward? Second, seriously where are they going to go? The financial sector has been hemorrhaging jobs. The truth is that there are many others, at least as qualified, who would love to take their places.

An October 20, 2008 Wall Street Journal article reported that under pressure from Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Mel Martinez (R-FL) insurance giant AIG recipient of a $122 billion bailout has agreed to cancel 160 events which would have cost $80 million. More importantly it has agreed to suspend its lobbying efforts which incredibly included a push to get states to loosen requirements on regulating mortgage lenders.

On October 21, 2008, the Fed announced yet another program the Money Market Investor Funding Facility (MMIFF). Its object was to help money markets in their redemptions (cash demands from their customers) by buying up to $600 billion of their short term (90 day or less) paper with the further goal of loosening up credit at more of a commercial and consumer level. In keeping with the lack of transparency and corporate cronyism that is typical of all these efforts, JP Morgan was chosen by a group of undisclosed money markets to administer the program and buy their securities and those of an also undisclosed list of other money markets. Nice bit of back scratching that.

On November 4, 2008, the Libor (short term interbank loan rates) fell to pre-Lehman levels. The 3 month rate fell to 2.71% and the overnight rate went to a historic low of .38%. This was a major goal of the trillions that Bernanke threw into the financial system. The theory was that getting the Libor lower would free up credit. This really didn’t happen however because the underlying solvency questions remained unresolved and unaddressed. The continuing credit crunch is seen in the spread between the Libor and Fed rates which remains elevated at 2.11%. Prior to September 15, the spread was 0.11%.

On November 6, 2008, the Bank of England cut its benchmark rate 1.5% to 3% and the European Central Bank cut its rate 0.5% to 3.25%. These are futher indications that the world economy is slipping into recession and that lenders continue not to lend.

On November 10, 2008, the Treasury Department announced that as part of a new comprehensive deal with AIG it would pour another $40 billion into the bottomless pit and sometime insurance company. It is getting really tricky even to know how much the government has spent on AIG. The government rather disingenuously argued that by investing $40 billion in AIG it was actually reducing its exposure from $152 billion to $112 billion. However most of the government’s $122.8 billion credit line to AIG or around $112 billion has already been spent. However most of the government’s $122.8 billion credit line to AIG (the $112 billion) has already been spent. Taking into account the $40 billion the government is now committing, it is likely that the $152 billion number is what has been sunk into the company to date.

There is, of course, more to the story. There always is. The government which now virtually owns AIG is setting up two shell companies to offload debt from AIG’s bottomline. The government as AIG will put up $5 billion and the government as itself will put up another $30 billion to set up a company to buy back $70 billion in credit default swaps (CDSs) for 50 cents on the dollar. Losses from this company will not show up on AIG’s balance sheet. Similarly, the government in its role as AIG will lay out $1 billion and as itself $22.5 billion to buy back collateralized debt obligations (CDOs which AIG had insured through its CDSs). So while the government is saying that it is reducing its interest in AIG it has actually increased its involvement from around $112 billion to $210.5 billion (the $40 billion plus the $35 billion and $23.5 billion entities). To add insult to injury, Treasury announced that it was freezing AIG’s bonus pool, not reducing or eliminating it, but just keeping it at current levels. The economy is in recession. It is hemorrhaging jobs. The deficit is exploding, and this is Henry Paulson’s idea of how to treat those most responsible for the debacle: that their bonuses only will not be increased. It would be laughable if it did not make you want to weep.

And one further point. Paulson is taking the $40 billion out of the $700 billion bailout (the TARP). No indication where the $52.5 billion for the two debt buying entities will come from. Taken together with the $250 billion bank bailout, this means that Treasury has already committed $290 billion of the intial $350 billion portion of the bailout and so far not one dime of it has been spent on its ostensible purpose of buying toxic assets. Given the speed with which Paulson is blowing through bailout funds, he is on track to spend most or all of them before President Obama takes office and to very little effect other than helping out his cronies.

A November 10, 2008 Bloomberg article reported that since the failure of Lehman on September 15, the Fed has dwarfed the Paulson bailout making $1.172 trillion in loans to banks and bringing its overall lending to more than $2 trillion.

A November 10, 2008 piece in the Washington Post reported that Paulson’s Treasury Department issued a 5 sentence revision on September 30, 2008 to a 1986 law governing Section 382 of the tax code. Known as the Wells Fargo Ruling, this change allowed banks to merge with other banks and use the losses of one to count against the profits of the other for tax purposes. Two days later on October 2, Wells Fargo used it to finance its takeover of Wachovia. It is estimated that the ruling was worth $25 billion to Wells Fargo in the deal. It has been used since in a rash of bank mergers and could result in a $140 billion windfall for banks over and above the $250 billion they are getting so far from the bailout. And oh yes, it isn’t legal. Neither Paulson nor Treasury had the power to change the law. It isn’t clear what a lameduck Congress will do about it though. This is just further evidence, if any were needed, that Paulson is a loose cannon who either is a bumbling idiot who doesn’t know what he is doing, or someone who will loot the government and break the law as long as he is allowed to do so to enrich his friends and cronies on Wall Street, or both.

The arrogant lawlessness of the current Administration, the greed of Wall Street, and the abject cowardice of the Congress guarantee that nothing will be done before the next Administration comes to office, and maybe not even then. The Great American Steal looks like it is going to be with us for a while.

On November 11, 2008, the Bush Administration announced another cosmetic plan to help homeowners. This one would work through Fannie and Freddie, be available to only a few hundred thousand homeowners not bankrupt, delinquent at least 90 days, and still owe at least 90%. Terms would be a rollback in interest for 5 years for a payment of 38% of monthly income or less, then an increase in rates with a mortgage extension of up to 40 years. The principle on the loan would not be reduced. This seems more like a plan to defer and spread out foreclosures for the benefit of Fannie and Freddie rather than avoiding foreclosures to help homeowners.

On November 12, 2008, in his never ending quest to show that he remains solidly behind the curve, Treasury Secretary Paulson announced that no bailout monies would be used to buy up toxic assets.

During the two weeks that Congress considered the legislation, market conditions worsened considerably. It was clear to me by the time the bill was signed on October 3rd that we needed to act quickly and forcefully, and that purchasing troubled assets – our initial focus – would take time to implement and would not be sufficient given the severity of the problem.

And later

Over these past weeks we have continued to examine the relative benefits of purchasing illiquid mortgage-related assets. Our assessment at this time is that this is not the most effective way to use TARP funds

What you need to keep in mind is that buying up toxic assets was the raison d’être of the Paulson plan, the TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program) referred to above. It was what, he asserted, was needed to keep the financial system from collapsing. Even at the time he was warned by many that it was a supremely bad idea, and after kicking it around for nearly two months, he now agrees but makes it sound like he had questions about it from the beginning. He didn’t. This typifies the Paulson style: absolute confidence coupled with a refusal to address or even acknowledge core problems. He dithers, gets it wrong, and even when he stumbles or is pushed in the right direction he embraces a solution that is totally inadequate. In other words, Paulson is very much part of the problem, not part of the solution.

On November 14, 2008 , head of the FDIC Sheila Bair announced a mortgage assistance plan for distressed homeowners. It would involve modification of loans through a mix of loan extension, interest rate reduction, and forbearance on the principal. Bair estimates that half of some 4.4 million mortgage loans mortgages currently in default or expected to be in default by the end of 2009 and not held by Fannie and Freddie could be modified. Even if a third of these re-default, 1.5 million homeowners would be helped at a projected cost of $24.4 billion. Monthly payments would not exceed 31% of monthly income. For the first 8 years, the FDIC would assume half the loss of a redefault in conjunction with loan servicers. The major obstacle to the plan is that the $24.4 billion would come from the Paulson bailout and neither Paulson nor his younger clone Kashkari want to use even a thin red dime of it to help ordinary Americans.

On November 18-19, 2008, executives of the Big 3 auto companies came to Washington to testify before Congress and ask for $25 billion in loans. Republicans blocked any deal and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told them to come back on December 4-5 with a detailed plan. Now there are several things that need to be said here. The American auto industry has been poorly managed for decades. They resisted successfully making their products cleaner and more fuel efficient and instead promoted the sale of trucks and SUVs on which they could make bigger profits. That said, the fault for the current downturn in the industry has less to do with Detroit than with Wall Street with regard to the credit crunch, the recession, and even the initial spike in oil prices (this item and 365). Unlike financial institutions, the auto industry is part of the real economy and represents millions of jobs which would be put in jeopardy if the Big 3 were allowed to go bankrupt. The loss of even a portion of these would send the economy into a deeper and longer recession. The amounts of money involved are actually rather small compared to the trillions that Paulson and Bernanke have been throwing (with little result) at banks and financial companies. There is also the mismatch between the no plans, no strings attached approach taken toward the financial community and the “detailed” plan demanded of automakers. And there is a continued absence of a concerted plan from the Congress on what it wants to see done by anyone.

Additionally, Republicans, especially Southern Republicans, would like to use the current crisis for ideological reasons to attack unions and effectively destroy the UAW and for purely selfish, extremely shortsighted, and even “unpatriotic” motives to use a bankruptcy of American automakers to favor foreign non-union auto plants in their states. What they don’t seem to understand is that if the economy tanks no one will be buying cars and autoworkers won’t be working whether they are living in Michigan or Alabama or in a union or a non-union shop.

Finally, no bailout of the auto industry or the financial community will work unless it is part of an overall coordinated plan to restart the economy.

On November 23, 2008, the Fed with participation by the Treasury and FDIC announced a rescue plan for what has been the nation’s largest banking concern Citigroup. The company has seen a drop in its share price in the last year from a high of $57.40 to a low of $2.91. Part of this reflects bad decisions it made. However, a lot of its recent fall was the work of short sellers which the SEC has done almost nothing to curb, despite the instability they produce. The Citigroup bailout consists of a government backed guarantee on $306 billion of the bank’s assets. The company will be responsible for the first $29 billion in losses. After that there will be a 90-10 split on losses between the government and Citigroup with the government responsible for the 90% share. Treasury will take the first $5 billion of these through the TARP. The FDIC is then in for the next $10 billion and the Fed is in for the rest to the $306 billion limit. In exchange for this guarantee, Citigroup will give the government $7 billion in stock with an 8% dividend ($4 billion to Treasury; $3 billion to the FDIC). It agrees to pay no more than 4 cents a year per share in dividends on its other stock and to submit a plan to limit executive compensation. In addition, Treasury will make a direct $20 billion investment in Citigroup. All the stock the government gets in the deal will be non-voting, or in other words more of the same: Citigroup gets the money and gets to keep its top management, and the taxpayer gets neither ownership nor control but does assume the risk.

A November 24, 2008 story in Bloomberg reports that the government has already made $7.76 trillion in commitments to the financial community as a result of the financial meltdown. The Fed whose role in this crisis has largely gone unreviewed has made $4.74 trillion or 61% of the pledges on behalf of the government. Financial institutions have already made use of $3.18 trillion or 41% of them. Meanwhile the government and Congress are going through contortions over a $25 billion bailout for the auto industry and the more than a million jobs it represents.

On November 25, 2008, the government upped its commitments to financial markets to $8.56 trillion. Paulson and Bernanke’s efforts to free up credit markets continue to founder due to the unstated insolvency of much of the banking sector. As a result in a further attempt to loosen consumer credit without addressing the fundamental issue of insolvency, the Fed announced yet another loan facility worth $200 billion with a $20 billion guarantee from the Treasury. The Fed would basically exchange money for the banks’ consumer credit paper. In an even bigger move, the Fed will buy up $600 billion of debt from Fannie and Freddie, $100 billion directly and $500 billion funneled through its asset managers.

On November 28, 2008, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the official caller of these things, announced that the US economy had been in recession since December 2007. Because the NBER analysis is retrospective, its announcement comes many months after the event. But it was obvious following the blowup of the housing bubble on August 9, 2007, the economy was in trouble. The $160 billion stimulus had only mild transient effects in the second quarter of 2008. That was about it. The country was distracted by the Presidential race, but the Bush Administration, Treasury’s Paulson, and the Fed’s Bernanke, for whom this wasn’t a concern, spent their time doing as little as possible to address the slowing economy.

On December 3, 2008, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced new rules for Wall Street’s three ratings agencies: Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch. The ratings agencies used old models to rate the new and much riskier financial instruments that led to the housing bubble and later the financial meltdown. They also had an inherent conflict of interest with those seeking their ratings because they were funded by them and made large profits by working with them. The new rules require greater transparency and verification in the ratings process, but, typical of the Bush Administration, leave the biggest conflict of interest, the funding mechanism, in place.

On December 9, 2008, the interest rate on T-bills hit zero on a Fed sale of $30 billion on 4 week notes. On the same day, the rate on 3 month notes actually turned negative. This is indicative of both a flight to safety but also deflation.

On December 10, 2008, the GAO issued a report on the Treasury bailout. It found that the TARP run by Neel Kashkari did not know, and had not put in place the means to know, how banks were spending the $155 billion so far injected into them under the Capital Purchase Program (CPP). As a result, the TARP had no way to tell if the banks were honoring their agreements with the government or if all those billions were having their intended effect. Instead Kashkari favored developing general metrics rather than specific monitoring by regulators to see if banks were doing what they were supposed to be. Likewise, he had no way to know if limits on executive pay, dividends, and stock repurchases were being respected.

Additionally, Kashkari has done nothing to smooth a transition to the next Administration. His office remains understaffed. As of November 21, it had 5 permanent hires and 48 employees assigned from other Treasury sections out of a projected need of 200. There was a lack of oversight of contractors hired by Kaskari’s office and a lack of internal controls to assure that the money Kashkari was spending was well spent. Nor were regulations governing conflict of interest in place. These are especially important because of the dominant role that former Goldman Sachs employees and contractors have had in the program. Of course, if this was done, this most crony capitalist of programs would have to fold up shop.

On December 4, 2008, the GAO issued a similar report on tracking banks’ aid to distressed homeowners.

Also on December 10, 2008, the Congressional Oversight Panel created by the bill that set up the TARP as an afterthought came out with a report that echoed many of the points made in the GAO report, underlined the perilous state of the US economy.

And in a December10, 2008 story in Bloomberg, it was reported that Ben Bernanke in a response to a letter from Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT) announced that the Fed would not participate in any efforts to save American automakers. Now on the one hand, the Fed’s primary mission is to oversee the financial system but on the other given its massive and unprecedented intrusion into the economy and the failure of both the Fed and Treasury to foresee the devastating effects of the Lehman collapse, it seems a curious place to draw a line. But it is consistent with Paulson and Bernanke’s actions to shore up the paper “bubble” economy at literally any cost and their indifference and even hostility to the real economy and the plight of ordinary Americans.

On December 11, 2008, the Senate failed to invoke cloture 52-35 (60 votes needed) on a bill to bailout the auto industry effectively killing it. This made it more likely that the automakers and their supplies would be forced into bankruptcy. 3 million Americans could become unemployed at a time when the economy is already hemorrhaging jobs. The effort to destroy the industry, the union, and all those jobs was led by ideologically driven Southern Republicans, like Bob Corker (R-TN), Richard Shelby (D-AL), Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

A few Republicans favored cloture: Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS), Collins (R-ME), Dole (R-NC), Lugar (R-IN), Snowe (R-ME), Specter (R-PA), Voinovich (R-OH), and Warner (R-VA) but as it was clear the cloture vote would fail their votes were cosmetic and largely meant to placate constituents. Only Dole and Warner’s votes meant anything since both are leaving the Senate. Less explicable were the votes of Democrats who voted against cloture: Baucus (D-MT), Lincoln (D-AR), and Tester (D-MT). Reid (D-NV) also voted against but his was a standard parliamentary maneuver to allow for a later reconsideration. 12 Senators did not vote: Alexander (R-TN), Biden (D-DE), Cornyn (R-TX), Craig (R-ID), Graham (R-SC), Hagel (R-NE), Kennedy (D-MA), Kerry (D-MA), Smith (R-OR), Stevens (R-AK), Sununu (R-NH), and Wyden (D-OR). The reasons for the non-votes were various. I include this information because this was a vote of a critically important and criminally irresponsible nature. It was a vote to send the country into depression.

Also on December 11, 2008, Bernard Madoff, a former chairman of the NASDAQ was arrested for perpetrating a fraud which lost up to $50 billion in investors’ money. It has been called the largest Ponzi scheme committed by a single individual in US history. This appellation is perhaps intentionally misleading because it distracts from the fact that the whole financial system has been run collectively as an over-sized Ponzi operation. Madoff began his investment firm in 1960. He had consistent profits regardless of market conditions which no one else could reproduce. In 1992, a fund associated with Madoff was investigated but he seems to have escaped any real scrutiny. It appears he operated his scheme for decades. By 2000, his company had several hundred million in assets and it seems to have ballooned into the billions in the Bush years. He was able to get away with his fraud for so long because he held his accounts within his own firm instead of with an outside bank. He had status as a Chairman of NASDAQ. He had successfully dodged one investigation. And with SEC Chairmen like William Donaldson (2003-2005) and Christopher Cox (2005-present) who were rabidly anti-regulationist, he was essentially home free. It took the financial meltdown to do him in. His victims include many retirees, charities, foreign banks as well as many celebrities and wealthy. Some of these certainly knew that what Madoff was doing was too good to be true but as long as he was making money for them they were willing not to ask to many questions. As part of an eventual settlement those who made profits with Madoff will have to return some or all of them to make good in so far as that is possible those who lost their shirts. It is still an open question where the money went, how much was actually lost, and who all was involved in Madoff’s crimes. In any case, Madoff is a metaphor for the current financial system and its failures.

On December 16, 2008, the Fed announced it was lowering the federal funds rate (the rate at which banks lend to each other, usually overnight) to zero to .25 percent. It said it would continue to buy large amounts of agency debt (Fannie, Freddie, and Sally (student loans)) and mortgage backed securities (crap assets). Finally, it said it was considering buying longer Treasuries. Since it has taken short term rates to essentially zero, buying longer term T-bills would be a way of affecting and lowering longer term interest rates. To date Bernanke has pumped trillions into a liquidity trap, i.e. the money goes to the banks but doesn’t get lent back out, and has now lost an important tool in regulating monetary supply. Rather than change a failed policy which has done nothing to free up credit, he is continuing to double down, now contemplating a move into longer term interest rates.

On December 17, 2008, with the Bush Administration continuing to dither over extending a $14 billion bridge loan to the American auto industry, Chrysler announced it would close all of its 30 plants for one month beginning December 19, 2008. At the same time, Ford said it would increase its holiday shutdown to three weeks. There really is no other way to put it, as the economy skates on the edge of depression, the Republicans play games.

On December 19, 2008, as part in another of a long series of Friday news dumps, the White House finally announced a temporary bailout for the auto industry. $13.4 billion will be made available in short term loans from TARP funds with an additional $4 billion in February. In exchange the government would get warrants for non-voting stock. This is a deal that could have been worked out a month ago but wasn’t due to the ideological opposition of the Administration to doing anything that would help out the real economy and the ongoing desire of Republicans in both the Congress and the White House to destroy unions in general and the UAW in particular. The agreement contains the standard lines about limits on executive compensation and prohibits dividends during the course of their loans. The automakers are to show by March 31, 2009 that they are financially viable, a requirement which was never made of financial institutions which received the vast majority of TARP money. This is kabuki. The automakers will come up with re-structuring plans and, regardless of their feasibility, the Obama Administration will approve them (because the alternative is depression).

The package also has a set of noxious “targets” which represent a grab bag of conservative demands but being targets they don’t actually have to be met. Rather they are meant to supply conservative critics of the auto bailout future talking points:

• An exchange of equity for debt to reduce their debt by 2/3. This would essentially sell the companies to bondholders.
• Wages and work rules similar to those for foreign automakers by December 31, 2009. When legacy costs are factored in, these would likely make autoworkers for the Big 3 earn less than their non-union counterparts working for foreign brands.
• It would allow the companies to make half their payments into retirement funds in the form of fairly worthless stock
• And finally it would eliminate the jobs bank, something the union has already agreed to.

In addition, Secretary Paulson has asked that Congress free up the remaining $350 billion in TARP funds. Given how poorly Paulson has spent the first half $350 billion, it would be very unwise to let him anywhere near any further funds.

Also on December 19, 2008, the Fed announce that it would allow access to its $200 billion Term Asset-backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) to all investors, including hedge funds, who hold consumer debt instruments. This means that they can dump these instruments on the Fed in exchange for cash. The theory, but unfortunately not the practice, is that these investors will use the money they get to invest in more consumer credit. There is no indication that they will. The inclusion of hedge funds is an especially worrisome sign because there are increasing questions concerning the solvency of these private opaque actors.

On December 29, 2008, Treasury announced it would lend $5 billion for non-voting stock with an 8% annual dividend to the finance company GMAC which is co-owned by GM and the Cerberus hedge fund (which also owns Chrysler). GMAC is in the process of converting itself into a bank holding company. In order for it to do this, bondholders must agree to swap 75% of GMAC’s $38 billion debt for stock. Treasury would also lend up to $1 billion to GM to buy a further stake in GMAC. Cerberus looks to be functionally insolvent and so can not sink any money into the deal but it is unclear, except for the crony capitalist way these deals get structured, why it shouldn’t lose its stakes in Chrysler and GMAC.

A December 31, 2008 story in TPMMuckraker notes another instance of crony capitalism perpetrated by those who are supposed to be seeing us out of this mess. Private managers of a Fed program announced November 25, 2008 (see above) to buy up $500 billion in mortgage backed securities from Fannie and Freddie (who themselves have been directed by Treasury’s Paulson to buy up some $400 billion in these toxic assets; see October 11, 2008 paragraph above) are Goldman Sachs (please try to restrain your surprise), Blackrock, Wellington Management, and PIMCO. PIMCO holds some $500 billion in these securities (61% of its assets) and lobbied for the creation of this program. Under a selection process that was not made public, it now comes out that it is one of those overseeing the buy back (a function it also lobbied for) of exactly the kind of securities it holds. All of this is one big conflict of interest and shows once again that the financial bailout is being run by and for precisely those who created the need for it.

On January 12, 2009, George Bush at President-elect Barack Obama’s request notified Congress to release the remaining $350 billion of the Paulson bailout. Doing it this way will allow Obama to use the money with the same lack of controls as under Bush.

On January 16, 2009, Treasury announced a further bailout of Bank of America. Bank of America expressed “surprise” that the investment bank Merrill Lynch which it took over in September lost $15.3 billion in the last quarter of 2008. In a deal structured similarly to the recent one with Citigroup, BoA will receive another $20 billion in TARP funds (in exchange for $4 billion in BoA stock) and it will receive a “backstop” for some $98.2 billion of its crap assets. BoA will cover the first $10 billion, the FDIC picks up the next $10 billion and the Fed and BoA split any other losses on the remaining $78.2 billion, 90% by the Fed, 10% by BoA. So just to recap, BoA is at most out $4 billion in stock plus $10 billion in initial losses plus 10% of $78.2 billion in subsequent losses or $21.8 billion. But it just received $20 billion from Paulson so for a net pay out of $1.8 billion, it has gotten a government guarantee on $98.2 billion of its crap assets.

This is just obscene. What is happening here is about recapitalization of the banking industry by the backdoor without the government or the taxpayer getting anything but debt in return. It is yet another case among so many of “Privatizing gains and socializing losses”. BoA is under no obligation after this either to help distressed homeowners or resume normal lending to ease the credit crunch. It is also an example of how taxpayers are paying for the consolidation now occurring in the financial industry. BoA takes over Merrill, keeps the good stuff, and dumps the crap on the government, and ultimately the American taxpayer. And it shows once again how the paper economy is favored over the real one. The BoA bailout is not just a sweetheart deal. It is a giveaway. It was agreed late at night with no one watching or asking questions and none of the very public and long drawn out groveling that was required of the auto industry and its executives for a deal that was much smaller and had much harder conditions.

As long as Paulson and his successors in the incoming Obama Administration continue to favor BoA and other institutions like it over the wider economy and the interests of ordinary Americans and as long as they refuse to address the fundamental problems underlying the meltdown, we are not going to get out of the current crisis but we will pay for it anyway. Their priorities and approach remain completely out of whack. BoA comes out of this stronger, but the economy and the country have been made weaker.

And if even after all this BoA still has problems, it can follow the model of Citigroup one step further. Citi is currently in the process of splitting itself in two. In one part will be its profitable operations and in the other will be its remaining crap and unprofitable divisions. One will go on conducting business as usual and the other will be allowed to fail, be bailed out again and again by the government, or be sold if anyone can be found crazy enough to buy it. There is no way that the government should let Citi do this, but there is not a chance that it won’t. But that is the thing, the people who perpetrated the meltdown on us are also the people who are running the response to it, and neither those in government or in the industry have changed how they do business, the business that got us in this mess, at all.

In a February 5, 2009 New York Times story, Elizbeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel on the TARP, reported that, according to the panel’s calculations the Treasury in its bank bailout paid $254 billion for assets worth $176 billion for a loss of some $78 billion or a wastage rate of 30% of the funds it handled.

Bush connections to Enron and Ken Lay. Lay was connected to the elder Bush but helped finance the younger Bush’s gubernatorial campaign. In 2000 he was a Bush Pioneer, and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the Republican convention and the Bush inaugural celebration. Through Enron, he also contributed more than a million dollars in soft money to the Republican party. In exchange, Bush stayed out of the California energy crisis and Lay participated in Cheney’s Energy Task Force which wrote Bush’s business friendly energy policy. When Enron collapsed, Bush could barely remember ever having met the man.

Refusing to intervene in the California electricity crisis in early 2001. On January 29, 2001, in remarks Bush said, “the situation is going to be best remedied in California, by Californians.” He maintained that the crisis occurred because demand outstripped supply but, in fact, the crisis was the result of unscrupulous speculators like Enron producing unnecessary shortages and then capitalizing on them.

Lack of action on Darfur despite Congress declaring it genocide in a resolution (H.Con.Res. 467; Sen.Con.Res. 133) of July 22, 2004 and Bush’s own Secretary of State Colin Powell on September 9, 2004 in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In 1992, Senators Richard Lugar and Sam Nunn passed legislation creating the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program to secure, destroy, or remove poorly secured WMD related materials from the former Soviet Union, especially nuclear ones in Russia. On May 11, 2001, neocon John Bolton was made Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security which oversaw this effort. Under his leadership in the two years after 9/11, less nuclear materials were secured than in the two years before 9/11. Efforts to transfer weapons grade plutonium to this country to keep it out of the hands of terrorists were delayed for over a year because Bolton was squabbling with the Russians about who should pay liability insurance on the shipments. This issue was only resolved after Bolton’s departure to become UN Ambassador in August 2005.

Refusal to grant security clearances to OPR (Office of Public Responsibility) lawyers investigating the role of Gonzales both as WH counsel and later as AG in authorizing warrantless NSA wiretapping thus quashing the investigation.

Political interference in the Justice Department lawsuit against Big Tobacco. 3 then DOJ officials Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum (No.3 at the DOJ), head of the Civil Division Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and his deputy, Dan Meronin intervened in June 2005 at the last minute in the government’s case. They torpedoed a provision which would have removed corporate officers shown to have engaged in fraud. They asked that some witnesses weaken their testimony. They also reduced a government demand for an industry funded smoking cessation program from $130 billion to $10 billion. Later, the presiding federal judge Gladys Kessler ruled that a prior appellate court decision precluded such a program. Of course, this was not the argument which the DOJ officials were making. Their interest was in keeping Big Tobacco from taking a Big Hit.

White House involvement in election day phone jamming of Democrats in New Hampshire November 5, 2002; Charles McGee, former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party pled guilty to conspiracy on July 28, 2004 and was later sentenced to 7 months in prison; James Tobin New England head of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee made two dozen calls to the White House over a three day period during this time. He was convicted for his participation on December 15, 2005. This was reversed on appeal March 21, 2007. His case was sent back to the district court and will be retried in December 2007. A major reason for the slow progress of the Tobin case to trial (3 years) was that the FBI assigned only a single agent part time to it.

On October 14, 2008, Tobin was indicted on two counts of lying to the FBI in relation to its investigation of the phone jamming scandal.

Sweetheart plea deal for Steven Griles former No. 2 at the Interior Department. Griles and his then girlfriend Italia Federici worked with Jack Abramoff and later lied to Congress about it. The proposed deal by the government: no cooperation demand, the minimum 10 months, 5 to be served at the home of his now wife Sue Ellen Wooldridge who had just left Justice where she was an assistant attorney general heading the environment division. She signed a generous consent decree with ConocoPhillips despite being friends with a Conoco vice president and despite the fact that Conoco was being represented by Griles.

On June 26, 2007, US District Judge Ellen Huvelle sentenced Griles. Griles asked for probation and blamed the Senate for his lying. The judge didn’t buy this or the government’s deal and doubled his prison time to the full 10 months. He was also fined $30,000 and given 3 years probation.

The unfired (Bush appointed) US attorneys who targeted 80% of their political corruption cases against Democrats

Insertion into the Patriot Act extension of language allowing US attorneys to be named without Senate approval. This provision originated with Daniel Collins a former Associate Deputy AG back in 2003 but was taken by then Assistant AG for Legislative Affairs (now Principal Associate Deputy AG) William Moschella in 2005 and forwarded to Brett Tolman, a protege of Utah Senator Orrin Hatch on Arlen Specter’s staff who snuck it into the bill. Specter denied knowledge of the insertion and said he had not read the bill. He admitted, however, that his chief of staff Michael O’Neill did know. As a reward, Tolman was nominated US attorney for Utah and confirmed by the Senate July 21, 2006 in the usual way and not the one he slipped into the Patriot Act. Gonzales approved but maintained he didn’t know how it happened.

Showing once again that the Administration takes care of its own, on June 19, 2008, Michael O’Neill was nominated to a federal district court judgeship in Washington, DC. A New York Times story from July 4, 2008 reports that O’Neill plagiarized a passage in a 2004 Supreme Court Economic Review article he wrote. The publication retracted O’Neill’s article in 2007. As often happens in these cases, other instances of unattributed borrowings have emerged.

Massive and illegal abuse by FBI of National Security Letters (administrative warrants) or NSLs. A report by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine of March 2007 estimated that 143,000 NSLs had been issued between 2003 and 2005. An exact number was not possible because recordkeeping was so bad that an unknown number were never properly recorded. In response to the IG’s findings, Alberto Gonzales stated that he was unaware of abuses in the program although he had begun receiving reports about them beginning in 2005. On June 15, 2007, DC federal district court judge John Bates ordered the FBI to begin producing documents related to NSL abuse pursuant to a FOIA request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation by July 5. On July 13, 2007, Attorney General Gonzales and FBI Director Mueller announced that a new office would be formed within DOJ’s National Security Division to oversee the program and prevent abuses. Of course, these were the same people who promised that there would be no abuses in the first place.

On March 13, 2008, a follow up IG report on the FBI’s use of NSLs came out. It found that the abuse of NSLs continued through 2006. According to its data, the FBI issued 39,346 NSLs in 2003; 56,507 in 2004; 47,221 in 2005; and 49,425 in 2006 for a total of 192,499 over 4 years. The fraction of US citizens involved in NSL requests increased from 39% in 2003 to 51% in 2004 to 52% in 2005 to 57% in 2006. Although actual percents were redacted out, sampling figures indicate that for 2006, 64.8% of NSLs requested concerned counterterrorism cases, 33.9% counterintelligence, and 1.3% cyber attacks. The report also found that the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division had issued 11 follow up “blanket” NSLs to cover information previously obtained by the Communications Analysis Unit “in response to exigent letters or other informal requests.” In all, the 11 requests involved billing records for 3,860 which turned out to be for 2,196 unique telephone numbers. Put bluntly these blanket NSLs were patently illegal and senior FBI officials who signed off on them should have known this. The core problem with NSLs remains. Because they have to pass only bureaucratic and not judicial review, the standards that govern them are inherently less rigorous and open to misuse and abuse.

Attempted use of GSA to promote Republican candidates; presentation by Scott Jennings deputy political director to Karl Rove at a video conference of 40 political appointees hosted by GSA head Lurita Doan in violation of the Hatch Act. Later, Doan testifying before Congress had severe memory loss. Doan at GSA has been involved in various contract irregularities. In a letter to Bush on June 8, 2007, the Office of Special Counsel which investigates this kind of thing called for Doan to be punished to the fullest extent for violations of the Hatch Act and obstructing its investigation.

At least 20 other meetings involving senior officials from 15 government agencies and the White House discussing political prospects were held before the 2006 elections also in violation of the Hatch Act. The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) has begun investigations into these.

On April 29, 2008, Doan sent out an email saying she had been asked to resign and had done so. It is amazing it took so long.

Karl Rove and the culture of corruption. What did Karl Rove see in George Bush that he tied his fortunes to Bush’s political star? Rove saw Bush as inhabiting the intersection of often disparate and conflicting elements of the Republican Party. Bush came from a powerful Texas family. His father had been President and that meant not only name recognition but contacts to the Republican Establishment. Bush Senior was also tightly connected to the conservative monied classes in Texas, the Northeast, and the country more generally. Despite this, Bush Junior assiduously cultivated and exploited a "good ole boy" image so at odds with his family’s wealth and power. Although born in Connecticut and schooled in the Northeast, as a Texan and with the Everyman shtik, Bush could also lay claim to being both a Southerner and a Westerner and so tap into two important bastions of the Republican Party. As a recovering alcoholic turned to religion, Bush Junior added in another part of the Republican base the religious Right, evangelical and family values vote. With this and a smattering of Spanish, Rove saw Bush could court the Hispanic vote as well. In other words, from Rove’s point of view Bush was a political goldmine.

Here were two men with little knowledge of or curiosity about the world, motivated by no great philosophy but with a great thirst for power and a willingness to do anything no matter how sleazy or dirty to win it. This was not about consensus building. It was about 50% plus 1 or close enough for a court to decide in their favor. Rove probably would have sought to politicize the federal government in favor of the Republican Party anyway but the disputed nature of the 2000 vote gave him an added incentive and 911 supplied him with a golden opportunity. The result has been the most thoroughgoing politicization, often in contravention of the law, of all aspects of government in our lifetimes.

The goal was to carve out a permanent majority using the 50% plus one philosophy, but there were two problems. First, while Bush personified the many facets of the modern Republican Party, neither he nor Rove ever unified them. The conflicts between social conservatives, libertarians, and the wealthy remained. The wealthy got their tax cuts but the financial situation of Nascar dads became more precarious. Social issues got two Supreme Court justices but no real money, and to date little change in the law. Nativist types clashed with pro-business ones over immigration. Rove’s outreach to the expanding numbers of minorities in the country came crashing down. The result was a peeling off not a building up until Bush and Rove were left with only their hardcore base of 25-30%. Second, placing political loyalty above professionalism and experience in government did not strengthen the Republican Party or the conservative cause. It created instead an environment of corruption, cronyism, incompetence, and failure. Examples of this can be found everywhere in this Administration and form much of the content of this list, but the epitome of this collision between ideology and the real world is Iraq. The practical problem with politicization of government is that it doesn’t work and produces bad results of which Iraq is the most obvious and worse.

On August 13, 2007, Karl Rove Bush’s chief political adviser throughout his entire political career announced his resignation to become effective on August 31, 2007. From his 5 appearances before the grand jury in the Valerie Plame/outing of a CIA agent case, to violations of the Hatch Act and the Presidential Records Act, the US Attorney firings, and lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s influence peddling schemes, investigations have swirled around Rove. Bush has invoked Executive Privilege to protect him. It may not have been enough. In Washington’s culture of corruption, all roads lead to Rove.

Voter suppression, voter ID laws, exaggerating the problem of voter fraud, attempts to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act on its renewal; Hans von Spakovsky, a Republican volunteer in the Florida recount, was Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Civil Rights division where he signed off on Tom Delay’s 2003 Texas redistricting plan and a 2005 Georgia voter ID law overruling staff recommendations that they were discriminatory. Both were struck down in the courts. In the Georgia case, a federal appeals judge compared the ID system to Jim Crow poll taxes. In April 2005, on his own and without consulting voting rights attorneys, Spakovsky incorrectly advised the Arizona Secretary of State that provisional ballots should not be given to voters who lacked proper ID. Spakovsky went on to be a Commissioner at the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) in a January 6, 2006 recess appointment. In October 2007, Spakovsky’s nomination to a regular appointment was bundled with that of other FEC nominees but instead of ensuring his confirmation it caused all the nominations to languish. On December 18, 2007, a federal district judge in Florida Stephan Mickle granted a preliminary injunction against a Spakovsky backed plan that would have rejected voter applications if information on them differed from that on their driver’s license or Social Security records. The judge stated that such requirements made it harder to vote and so undermined the intent of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). On December 31, 2007, Spakovsky announced in an email that day was his last at the FEC. On May 6, 2008, Bush agreed to a separate vote for von Spakovsky (which ensures his defeat) but he also withdrew the nomination of the Republican FEC David Mason. Mason had questioned if the Republican Presidential nominee could opt out of public financing after having used it to get his name on the ballot in some states and as collateral for an “if needed” loan from a bank.

The head of the Civil Rights Division during the period of the Texas and Georgia cases was Bradley Schlozman. Schlozman was highly political. He wanted to know if prospective hires were Republicans and forced out employees who committed the sin of not agreeing with him. Although having no prosecutorial experience, Schlozman was named US attorney for Western Missouri on March 23, 2006. In a blatant attempt at voter suppression and in contravention of DOJ guidelines, he filed voter fraud cases days before the November elections. His was one of the first of the "interim" appointments made under the revised provisions snuck into the Patriot Act and there have been suggestions that his predecessor Todd Graves was forced out to make way for him. He left in April 2007 to work at the Executive Office for US Attorneys (EOUSA). Schlozman testified about his activities before the Senate on June 5, 2007. Like most recent DOJ witnesses, he suffered from extreme memory loss. He testified that Craig Donsanto OK’ed the pre-election Missouri cases although Donsanto is the one who wrote the DOJ guidelines. A May 2007 update to these guidelines weakens or eliminates the prohibition on bringing politically sensitive cases near to an election. Schlozman quietly left the DOJ sometime mid-August 2007.

John Tanner has been head of the Voting Rights Section since 2005. He precleared the Georgia ID program going against the recommendation of 4 out of 5 of the section’s career attorneys. The one dissenting attorney was new and was apparently one of the political hires to a career position made by Schlozman. Tanner also changed guidelines so that staff could not recommend an objection to a state voting law. In June 2005, he wrote a preemptive letter to election officials in Franklin County, Ohio assuring them that the lack of sufficient voting machines in minority areas during the 2004 election did not amount to discrimination. Finally, in October 2007, Tanner was still defending the Georgia ID law asserting that its negative effects fell primarily on the elderly and so by extension on whites because "minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do: They die first."

In addition, although Tanner’s productivity has been minimal his travel at taxpayer’s expense has been maximal. In 2003-2004, he racked up 206 days of travel during 46 trips. From May 2005 (after becoming head of the section) to the end of 2006, he took 36 trips accounting for 97 travel days. This is widely at variance with his predecessors. It also included 3 trips to Hawaii one each year although the section had no lawsuits ongoing or in preparation. One of these was taken with his deputy Susana Lorenzo-Giguere who is herself being investigated for filing motions so that she could charge per diem expenses while on summer vacation with her family in Cape Cod.

On January 11, 2008, Tanner’s replacement Christopher Coates demoted Lorenzo-Giguere and another Tanner deputy Yvette Rivera. Rivera had been accused of discriminating against African American employees.

John Tanner announced his resignation on December 14, 2007 to be effective immediately. He is not, however, gone. He transferred to the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices. From there, it appears that Tanner, despite his racial insensitivity, was detailed by the DOJ to Alabama to help draw voting districts.

Wan J. Kim who headed the Civil Rights Division after Bradley Schlozman’s departure is an Orrin Hatch protege. Kim announced his resignation effective August 31, 2007.

Campaign finance and political corruption. The McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act of March 27, 2002 is a much ballyhooed piece of legislation which did remarkably little to “reform” campaign finance. Principally, it did two things. First, it prevented general or soft money collected by the parties to be used, outside regular campaign limits, for specific races. Second, it placed restrictions on “single issue” groups advertising immediately before an election. What happened is what you would expect. Soft money went elsewhere, specifically into 527s, tax exempt political organizations which could back candidates as long as they did not do so overtly.

Then the Supreme Court on June 25, 2007 in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life intervened and removed the restrictions that had been placed upon 527s by McCain-Feingold (see item 202). Also by allowing 527s to name candidates it greatly weakened the first part of the act as well. This is a recurring theme in our politics. A campaign finance reform bill closes one door but leaves five others open. Meanwhile monied interests carve out new doors and knock gaping holes in the closed door. The result is that money governs our politics and owns our politicians more than ever. Our government continues to become less and less ours and more and more of the money, by the money, for the money.

Nor are the practitioners of campaign finance reform above playing fast and loose with financing rules. John McCain got a $1 million loan in December 2007 two weeks before the New Hampshire primary from Fidelity & Trust Bank of Bethesda, Maryland. The deal was that if he did well he would stay outside public financing and pay the money back from the expected increased contributions which primary victories bring. On the other hand, if things went badly, he promised to stay in the race long enough to qualify for public funds and pay the bank loan back from these. If this seems to be ethically and legally dubious, that’s because it is.

Swift boating of John Kerry (2004); push polling and McCain’s black baby in the South Carolina primary (2000); on April 4, 2007, Sam Fox made Ambassador to Belgium in a recess appointment. Fox’s nomination was withdrawn in the Senate where it faced certain defeat. Fox was controversial because he had given $50,000 to the anti-Kerry smear campaign of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth

No Child Left Behind, based on flawed and false data, chronically underfunded, capricious in its evaluations, places test scores above knowledge; allegations have arisen that people at the Department of Education pushed reading programs as part of NCLB that they had financial interests in.

Susan E. Dudley made administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget. Dudley who doesn’t believe in regulation except in extreme cases when the "market fails" was named to this powerful regulatory post in a recess appointment on April 4, 2007.

Paul Wolfowitz, after his disastrous hyping of the Iraq war, did a McNamara and went to the World Bank to do good. He brought his neocon values, a doctrinaire, secretive management style, and a real gift for poor leadership to rail against corruption in 3rd world countries while practicing some of it himself closer to home. Prohibited from supervising his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, a senior communications officer at the bank, he detailed her to the Department of State, gave her a raise of $47,340 twice what was permitted, and then a further raise of $13,000 bringing her salary to $193,000 tax free and making her the highest paid official in the State Department and that includes Condoleezza Rice. Wolfowitz’s eventual defense of the raise was that Riza was very angry at leaving the Bank and might have sued although as the Bank later pointed out she did not have grounds to do so. Her initial boss at state was none other than Liz Cheney. Her job through State was to set up the Foundation for the Future to promote civil society in the Middle East. After 1 1/2 years there, it still has no permanent office, executive officers, or staff and has yet to disperse a grant. There is also the matter of a security clearance that Riza, a non-citizen unaffiliated with an allied government, would need to work at Defense (through an earlier contract with the defense contractor SAIC arranged by Wolfowitz through Doug Feith) or more recently at State and which would be extremely unusual to give to someone in her situation.

Wolfowitz dragged out his departure from the Bank for nearly a month doing serious damage to the institution. He was eventually forced to announce his resignation on May 17, 2007 effective June 30, 2007. In keeping with his double standard on corruption and despite his disastrous stewardship at the Bank, he will not go cheaply into the night. His severance package will be in the neighborhood of half a million dollars. The poor should get such deals. On June 25, 2007, pro-business, free trader (and like Wolfowitz) neocon Robert Zoellick was approved as the World Bank’s new president.

In December 2007, Wolfowitz doing a stint at that den of current and washed up neoconservatives the American Enterprise Institute accepted an offer from Condoleezza Rice to take on the part time position of chairman of the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board. The post was last held by the somnolent and Presidential candidate Fred Thompson. The Board’s current 18 members are members in good standing of the nation’s military industrial complex with ties to Lawrence Livermore, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Bechtel and with a heavy concentration on nuclear weaponry.

Kenneth Tomlinson chairman of the CPB politicized public broadcasting, commissioned a biased study to monitor liberalism on Bill Moyer’s show NOW, resigned after an IG report alleged political tests and inappropriate dealings in the creating of a new show; later he was put on the board of governors for the Voice of America where there were further allegations of hiring a friend, misuse of staff, improper billing, and use of his office to run a horse racing operation.

Matteo Fontana, a general manager in the Office of Federal Student Aid in the Education Department held and sold shares worth at least $100,000 in Student Loan Xpress whose activities he was ostensibly overseeing. He was placed on paid leave. Fontana’s boss who oversees the student loan program Theresa Shaw resigned on May 8, 2007 a few days before Education Secretary Margaret Spellings was to testify before Congress. The official reason given for Shaw’s leaving was that she had "plans to take some time off." This is part of the larger scandal of sweetheart deals between universities and companies making loans to students to the detriment of students. On June 1, 2007, the Department of Education came out with new rules to regulate the $85 billion student lending business.

A 9th US prosecutor Tom Heffelfinger in Minnesota was replaced by Rachel Paulose. Paulose at age 33 joined the DOJ and after less than 2 months as a senior counsel to deputy attorney general Paul McNulty she was named to the USA position in Minnesota. She was also reputed to be good friends with Monica "Loyalty oaths" Goodling and had a reputation for quoting the bible and dressing down staff. As a result on April 5, 2007, three of her top assistants, career prosecutors, resigned their administrative positions and voluntarily demoted themselves rather than work with her in a sign of their complete lack of faith in her abilities.

The push to oust Heffelfinger appears to have resulted from an attempt to suppress the Native American vote in 2004. In Minnesota, many Native Americans vote Democratic, live off reservation, and have tribal IDs as their principal source of identification. The Republican Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer refused to accept these for voting purposes. An assistant US attorney in Heffelfinger’s office Rob Lewis contacted Joseph Rich a career prosecutor and the head of the voting section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. Rich recommended an investigation which was vetoed by Bradley Schlozman. Attempts to gather further information were effectively derailed by Hans von Spakovsky. Shortly before the November election, federal District Judge James Rosenbaum ruled that tribal IDs could be used. Heffelfinger who was cited in testimony by Monica Goodling as spending too much time on Native American issues (He headed the US attorneys subcommittee on Native American issues) resigned effective February 28, 2006. As one of her first acts, interim USA Paulose got rid of Rob Lewis.

On November 19, 2007, Paulose’s resignation as USA was confirmed. It had been reported in September 2007 that she was the subject of an Office of Special Counsel investigation enquiring into her conduct as USA in Minnesota. She will return to main DOJ where she will serve as the counsel to the Rachel Brand Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy.

On December 3, 2008, the OSC announced a settlement with John Marti an attorney in the Minnesota office. It concluded that “Based on considerable evidence of intent, animus, and motive, OSC concluded that Ms. Paulose constructively demoted Mr. Marti.” It also found that Paulose had acted in violation of the Whistleblower Act. The retaliation occurred after Marti, informed by a coworker that Paulose routinely left classified terrorist-related homeland security reports unsecured on her desk and on an open bookshelf, filed a report with the DOJ.

The lost White House emails: not an accident but a policy.

The official White House email system:

• February 26, 2001 White House counsel Alberto Gonzales informs White House staff they must preserve their email in conformance with the Presidential Records Act.
• June 4, 2001 Bush announces plan to name a special assistant to the President to act as Chief Information Officer for the White House and "improve" electronic records keeping.
• Late 2001 or early 2002 the White House deactivates the Automated Records Management System (ARMS) for archiving emails. Instead the White House begins transferring emails from its EOP server to a file server. The system is not secure or complete and emails can be deleted from it. On top of this, back up tapes which might capture and preserve some of these deletions are regularly wiped and recycled. Chief Information Officer Theresa Payton says this was in keeping with "industry best practices". The problem is that these "practices" violate federal law, i.e. the Presidential Records Act and the duties and responsibilities of her position.
• March 2003-October 2003 marks the period in which backup tapes were not retained. It encompasses the start of the Iraq war, the Valerie Plame coverup, and discussions concerning the destruction of the torture tapes.
• October 2003-October 2005 emails continue to be lost. Despite daily audits, no one notices for 2 years.
• In October 2005, someone does finally *gasp* notice. The Office of Administration does a study which finds hundreds of days (473) between March 2003 and October 2005 where various components of the White House system contained few if any emails. The OA estimates 5 million emails were lost during this time.

The unofficial system:

• Beginning in 2001, Karl Rove and about 35 other White House officials used Republican National Committee (RNC) GWB43.com and other email accounts for government business circumventing and violating the Presidential Records Act. Per a letter of Henry Waxman to Alberto Gonzales, it has been reported that Karl Rove used RNC accounts for 95% of his communications.
• 2001-August 2004, the RNC purged its email accounts every 30 days. After this time, it suspended purges on White House accounts. However, it continued to allow White House officials to delete their emails.
• Beginning in 2005, the RNC singled out Karl Rove. His emails were automatically archived and he was no longer allowed to delete them. That he had been doing this is obvious since although he used his RNC email account heavily, he has no emails from the time the RNC suspended its email purges in August 2004 to the beginning of 2005 when it began archiving his emails.
• Up to the time of Waxman’s letter in April 2007, White House officials other than Karl Rove retained the use of their RNC accounts and the ability to delete email from them.

To recap, the White House had two email systems, not one. It lost or destroyed many emails from both in deliberate and knowing violation of the Presidential Records Act. As a result, the Congress and the people’s right to know what their government is doing and to hold it to account has been irretrievably damaged.

Georgia Thompson a purchasing agent in Wisconsin was convicted of steering a contract to a company in which 2 executives had contributed the maximum to Democratic Governor Jim Doyle’s re-election campaign. Thompson had been a hire of the previous Republican governor and no evidence was produced at trial that she knew of the contributions. Remanded by the Republican judge who heard the case, she served 4 months of an 18 month sentence before an appeals court overturned her conviction after oral arguments where one judge typified the government’s case as "beyond thin" and ordered her freed the same day. The case was brought by Bush appointed US attorney Steven Biskupic during the campaign and was used in Republican campaign ads to accuse Doyle of corruption.

US attorney for New Jersey and former Bush "Pioneer" Chris Christie issued subpoenas in a corruption probe of Democratic Senator Bob Menendez two months before the Nov. 2006 elections. Menendez was in a tight race with Tom Keane. After Menendez won, the investigation went away.

Kay Coles James, dean of Pat Robertson’s Regent’s government school, made director of the Office of Personnel Management in 2001. In 2002, John Ashcroft eases qualifications for DOJ hiring. The influx into the DOJ of young, poorly qualified lawyers on a conservative religious mission begins.

In a rushed process, Bernard B. Kerik, a Rudy Giuliani protege and former New York City Police Commissioner, was nominated to be Secretary of Homeland Security December 3, 2004. He withdrew his name a week later ostensibly because of his employment of an undocumented immigrant as a nanny. However, it quickly came out that Kerik was also involved in a dubious stock sale of stun gun manufacturer Taser International shortly before a critical report by Amnesty International, a sexual harassment suit, connections to a construction company Interstate Industrial Corporation tied to the Gambino organized crime family, use of an apartment donated for 911 relief as a love nest where he could meet his girlfriends, including Judith Regan, and accepting gifts in contravention of ethics rules (for which he paid a $221,000 fine). Kerik was also the inept Interim Minister of the Interior in Iraq under Paul Bremer’s CPA in 2003. On November 9, 2007, Kerik was indicted on 14 federal counts including certifying that Interstate Industrial Corporation was mob-free in exchange for $255,000 in renovations for his apartment, accepting $200,000 in rent off the books, bribery, tax fraud, theft of honest services, and making false statements to government officials.

The Bush back story: The time in the TANG, the transfer to the Alabama National Guard, the lost years, the 1976 DUI in Maine, the business bailouts, the governorship, hardline on drug crimes despite his own past history and a fast and loose approach to the death penalty.

In the run up to the Presidential elections, Dan Rather presented a piece on Bush’s time in the Texas Air National Guard on CBS‚ 60 Minutes II on September 8, 2004. The segment noted that Bush had received preferential treatment in being admitted to what was called the Champagne Unit comprised of the scions of well to do Texans wishing to avoid service in Vietnam. He then cited critical memos purportedly written by Bush’s squadron leader Colonel Jerry Killian. The authenticity of these was rapidly brought into question by conservative bloggers and their doubts were quickly echoed in the mainstream media. While controversy continues to this day about whether the memos were real or fakes, their content that Bush performed his duties poorly or not at all remains largely uncontested. On September 20, CBS President for News Andrew Heyward issued an apology and Rather a kind of one. An internal commission was organized headed by two men, one at least with a very definite connection to the Bush family: Richard Thornburgh, Bush I’s Attorney General and Louis Boccardi, former head of the AP. That the fix was in was hardly surprising since Sumner Redstone who headed Viacom CBS‚ parent company had declared himself (and Viacom) for Bush Junior. On September 19, 2007, Dan Rather now retired filed a $70 million civil suit against his former employers for scapegoating him. Now what is curious about all this and qualifies it as a scandal is that no major outlet of the mainstream press rushed in before the election or after to investigate the Bush TANG story and verify or debunk its content. The attack on Rather (and his producer Mary Mapes) effectively inoculated Bush against any further charge or investigation on this subject. Quite simply the media didn’t care whether it was true or not. Just as they didn’t care if the swiftboating of John Kerry’s war record was factual or not. This disparate treatment coupled with a studied lack of interest is emblematic of the media’s coverage of the Bush years.

As of September 2007, the terrorist watchlist of the National Counterterrorism Center: the bizarrely named Terrorists Identity Datamart Environment (TIDE) has 500,000 names representing 400,000 people. The Transportation Security Administration’s no-fly list had 44,000 names on it as of October 2006. 75,000 others are on an extra screening list (CBS). The FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) keeps the government’s consolidated master watchlist which it makes available to other government agencies. Its list has grown from 158,374 names in June 2004 to 754,960 names in May 2007, an increase of about 200,000 a year. The size of the lists, that they contain numerous errors, that it is difficult or impossible to remove names or correct errors, the presence of common names, and the ease with which these lists can be subverted by real terrorists raise questions why such large, sloppy lists exist at all.

On August 18, 2008, a federal appeals court of the Ninth Circuit in a 2-1 opinion ruled that passengers could demand a judge and jury decide whether they were rightfully included on the TSA’s no-fly list.

Insta-declassification in contravention of Bush’s own Executive order 13292 and without consultation with the original classifying agency. Also abusive and indiscriminate classification (secrecy for secrecy’s sake) of government documents.

Vice President Cheney shoots 78 year old lawyer Harry Whittington Feb. 11, 2006 during a quail hunt at the Armstrong ranch in Texas. The shooting is not reported until the next day and then by the ranch owner to a Corpus Christi reporter. Under pressure and despite his disdain for the press, Cheney finally breaks his silence Feb. 15 on Fox News. Any real investigation is smothered by the powerful Armstrong family (who by the way are the ones who set Cheney up in his job at Halliburton) and the story remains incomplete.

Homeland Security’s Automated Targeting System (ATS) database which makes a terrorist risk assessment on anyone traveling to or from the US by any means and keeps it for 40 years.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia refuses to recuse himself from Cheney’s appeal of a Sierra Club lawsuit to keep records of his 2001 Energy Task Force secret. Shortly after SCOTUS agreed to take up the case, Scalia flew with Cheney on Jan. 5, 2004 on Air Force Two to Louisiana for a duck hunting trip. Cheney stayed two days and Scalia four. June 24, 2004, SCOTUS decides 7-2 to send the case back to the district court for reconsideration of the government’s separation of powers argument. Scalia and Thomas going further concurred and dissented thinking that the appellate court should have been the one to deny the Sierra Club’s discovery request. May 1, 2005, the DC Court of Appeals dismisses the Sierra Club case holding that Cheney could keep the participation of oil companies in his Energy Task Force secret.

The Election Assistance Commission which was created to do election research after the 2000 election debacle issued a December 2006 report which changed the conclusions of its experts and exaggerated the problem of voter fraud. Previously, the Commission released a report only under Congressional pressure that indicated that voter ID programs suppressed voter turnout among minorities. The EAC also has oversight of voting machines and voting software in which it has failed.

Bush tried unsuccessfully to kill the confirmation of Mohammed ElBaradei to a third term as head of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). ElBaradei and the IAEA had stated in the runup to the Iraq war that the famous aluminum tubes were for rockets not centrifuges, that the Niger documents were fakes, that there was no evidence that Iraq was trying to reconstitute a nuclear program, and that the Iraqis had been cooperative with IAEA inspections. As part of the Bush campaign in 2005 to oust him, the NSA tapped his phones in an unsuccessful attempt to show he was being soft on Iran. John Bolton unsuccessfully lobbied for more aggressive surveillance of him. ElBaradei was reconfirmed and later that same year won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Alice Fisher named to head the Criminal Division at the DOJ in a recess appointment, later confirmed September 19, 2006 (just before the Nov. 2006 elections). A protegee of Michael Chertoff, she worked under him as deputy head of the Criminal Division but has no experience as a criminal prosecutor. She also worked on the Senate investigation into the Clinton era Whitewater scandal and was a lobbyist of HCA the healthcare company controlled by the family of the recent Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist. She has opposed rescinding the more gratuitous aspects of the Patriot Act, favored its extension unchanged, participated in discussions of abusive interrogation methods at Guantanamo, and reportedly has social ties to Tom Delay’s defense team. Under her leadership, the investigation into Abramoff’s many connections (some of which go back to Delay) has gone nowhere. On April 30, 2008, Alice Fisher announced her resignation effective May 23, 2008. In the waning months of the Bush Adminstration, the rats are leaving the ship.

After being admonished 3 times by the House Ethics Committee in 2004, Tom Delay through Dennis Hastert had the Republican head of the committee replaced and staff fired. Ethics rules were also changed making it easier to kill ethics investigations. An initial provision to allow an indicted member of the House leadership to continue to hold his position was rescinded after negative publicity.

Collusion of the media: the NYT, WaPo, Time, Newsweek, cable and network news in the Bush disasters through silence, lack of investigation, and above all accepting uncritically whatever spin came out of the White House on anything. They have dutifully done this for more than 7 years despite this President and his policies being some of the most unpopular in our history.

In a July 25, 2008 interview, former Press Secretary Scott McClellan announced that he had fed White House talking points to various commentators at FoxNews who duly repeated them. In many ways this is unsurprising. Scooter Libby used reporters to disseminate the story about Valerie Plame (entry 3). In the Libby trial, Cathie Martin, who was Cheney’s communications director, noted that Tim Russert’s Meet the Press was their “favorite format” because they could “control message”. This is in keeping with paid for journalists like Armstrong Williams (entry 62) or the military “experts” (entry 344) used by cable and network news. But in addition to the active efforts of the Administration to manipulate the media was the overwhelming willingness of the media to be used and to repeat White House talking points, indeed to speak in them.

Failure of the Democratic Party to act as an opposition party for 6 years in the minority and over a year in the majority.

A supreme lack of oversight by a rubberstamping Republican Congress over the first 6 years of the Bush Administration.

The use of the 2002 AUMF against Iraq to justify the Bush invasion and an ongoing US military presence there. The UN Resolutions it cites, including those sanctioning military force, are from the 1990-1991 Gulf War. The UN never passed a resolution that authorized the use of military force in the Second Gulf War. On June 28, 2004, the US returned sovereignty to the reconstituted state of Iraq and in doing so acknowledged that the Iraq referenced in the AUMF as well as the legal rationale for a US presence in (and occupation of) the country no longer existed.

The AUMF placed Democrats in a political bind. Despite later protestations, they knew it meant war. Knowing this, they were faced with the following calculus. They could vote against the AUMF, but since Bush was going to war anyway they would be portrayed as unpatriotic and not supporting the troops. If the war was quick and successful, regardless of the merits of the case, they would be portrayed as weak and wrong. If they voted for, they might not get credit but they would avoid blame. Still some did vote no.

The AUMF passed in the House October 10, 2002 by a vote of 296-133 with 3 not voting. 81 Democrats voted for the AUMF. 126 voted against it (with 1 not voting). Only 6 Republicans voted against. It passed the Senate the next day with a vote of 77-23. 27 Democrats voted for it. 22 Democrats voted against, including Jeffords (I-VT). Only one Republican Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) voted against. Bush signed the AUMF into law on October 16, 2002.

These are the Senate Democrats who voted for the AUMF:

On December 14, 2004, President Bush awards the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, to General Tommy Franks, George Tenet, and Paul Bremer for their efforts to create the disaster that Iraq has become. Richard Myers the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs 2001-2005 received his for his part in this catastrophe on November 9, 2005 shortly after his retirement.

Real ID Act of 2005 mandates essentially a national identity card by forcing states to have nationally compatible driver’s licenses. The program has multiple goals: facilitate surveillance and data mining and make it harder for illegal aliens to get jobs and for the poor to vote. On January 11, 2008, DHS head Michael Chertoff announced a deadline of May 2008 for states to seek a waiver for more time to comply or driver licenses from those states would not be accepted as evidence of identity for the purposes of air travel. The ACLU (for privacy reasons) and 17 states (for cost) have objected to the program.

Jose Padilla. This is not about a bad and deluded man, but rather that an American citizen held in the United States could be held for 3 1/2 years (May 8, 2002-January 3, 2006) outside the purview of American courts and tortured. He was transferred to the regular US legal system only because his case challenging Bush’s power to declare him an illegal enemy combatant was wending its way to the Supreme Court. The transfer successfully pre-empted this when the Court declined April 3, 2006 to hear the case. The lack of a Supreme Court determination and passage of the Military Commissions Act mean that any American can still be declared an illegal enemy combatant and held indefinitely without charge, and if the MCA is to be believed (and unlike the Padilla case) without any right to habeas corpus.

On May 14, 2007, Padilla who was initially accused of being a terrorist mastermind behind a plot to detonate a dirty bomb inside the US was put on trial for being a minor member of a conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim outside the US. Among the many dubious and disturbing aspects of this case: the length and nature of detention, his mental fitness to stand trial, the change in jurisdiction from military to civilian, and the major reduction in the scope of the charges and Padilla’s role in them, the government claims it "lost" evidence, specifically a DVD of Padilla’s last interrogation as an enemy combatant from March 2, 2004. On August 16, 2007, he and his codefendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi were found guilty on all counts. Despite virtually no concrete evidence against them, on August 16, 2007, he and his codefendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi were found guilty on all counts. On January 22, 2008, Padilla was sentenced to 17 years 4 months, Hassoun to 15 years and 8 months, and Jayyoussi to 12 years 8 months.

National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act of 2005. This sets up a state by state but nationally compatible data base of prescribed controlled substances available to many agencies. The substances include not only painkillers taken for more than a couple days but also tranquillizers and sleeping pills.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide the President of Haiti who was certainly no Boy Scout was flown out of the country on February 29, 2004 in the midst of an insurrection that was not exactly opposed by the Bush Administration "willingly" according to American authorities, "kidnapped" according to Aristide.

Hugo Chavez the controversial President of Venezuela was briefly deposed in a military coup April 11, 2002. The Bush Administration initially recognized the interim government of Pedro Carmona the head of the national business federation and said that Chavez had brought the coup on himself. The coup collapsed and Chavez resumed power two days later on April 13, 2002. Later the Bush Administration condemned the coup.

Bush’s ethanol program will not solve America’s energy problems. It is a boon to corn state farmers and the politicians who represent them but depletes soil that would be better reserved for food production. It also led to an increase in the price of corn, other grains, and food generally, and it set the stage for hedge fund driven speculation in grains which caused a rice panic in early 2008. Ethanol is also a carbon based fuel and contributes to global warming directly through its burning and indirectly through its production.

Post the November 2006 elections, the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly used the filibuster to obstruct Congressional action. This has happened so far on Iraq resolutions (even some co-sponsored by Republicans), an intelligence bill requiring greater accountability, and a bill to allow Medicare to negotiate with drug companies. This is especially egregious in light of the last Congress where then Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist repeatedly threatened Democratic Senators contemplating a filibuster with the "nuclear option" of doing away with it by changing Senate rules.

The stacking of the federal judiciary with unqualified rightwing hacks. A bipartisan group of Senators known as the Gang of 14 (7 Democrats and 7 Republicans) came together to avoid the nuclear option (the elimination of the Senate filibuster) and pushed through hyper-conservative judicial choices: Priscilla Owen to the 5th Circuit on May 25, 2005 (55-43), Janice Rogers Brown to the DC Circuit on June 8, 2005 (56-43), and William Pryor to the 11th Circuit on June 9, 2005 (53-45). No agreement could be made on two others: William Myers and Henry Saad. Their names were eventually withdrawn.

The Gang of 14 was also responsible for the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh (again to the important DC Circuit) on May 26, 2006 by a vote of 57-36. Kavanaugh was the most inexperienced candidate to the circuit in its more than 100 year history. He had no trial experience but had worked for essentially partisan causes: Kenneth Starr’s investigations into Bill Clinton for 5 years, the 2000 Florida recount, and and the nomination and confirmation of unqualified, radically conservative candidates rather like himself as Associate Counsel in the Bush White House.

On June 27, 2007, Senator Patrick Leahy sent a letter to Alberto Gonzales referring Kavanaugh to the DOJ for possible prosecution for a false statement he made during his confirmation hearings (still waiting for a response on that one, surprise). In his responding to a question by Senator Durbin (D-IL), Kavanaugh said he had taken no part in developing the Administration’s policy with regard to enemy combatants. A June 25, 2007 article in the Washington Post and an NPR report the following day indicated that he had taken part in at least one meeting on this subject in 2002.

Ralph "I need to start humping in corporate accounts" Reed led the Christian Coalition in the 1990s and was an associate of both Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist. Abramoff funneled millions in 1999 and 2000 to Reed in exchange for Reed’s mobilizing evangelicals in support of Abramoff’s various schemes. These included: spiking an Alabama law which would have allowed gaming at dog tracks in competition with Choctaw casinos which were Abramoff clients; similar opposition to an Alabama state lottery; opposition to the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act (the rationale, a major stretch, was that it didn’t go far enough) for his client eLottery; opposition to a Tigua casino in Texas to the benefit of his clients the Lousiana Coushatta; and then in 2002 persuading the Tigua that he Abramoff could use his connection to Reed to help them get back their casino. Reed was an indispensable cog in the Abramoff machine.

Aggressive proselytizing by Christian evangelical faculty and cadets at the US Air Force Academy. A report was issued June 2005 but it is not clear if much has changed. The USAF Academy also has a recurrent history of cheating and sexual assault.

The Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives, an idea for those who don’t believe in the separation of church and state or the Establishment Clause in the Constitution (First Amendment). A political and financial sop to rightwing Christians, the program has given no money to non-Christian groups. It is unclear how much money has actually gone through the program. The real problem is that any money should be distributed in this way.

On June 25, 2007, SCOTUS ruled 5-4 in Hein, Director, White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives et al v. Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc. et al that taxpayers do not have standing to contest this spending in violation of the Establishment clause A) because they can not show direct harm and B) because Establishment challenges under Flast v. Cohen are only allowed if a specific Congressional statute is at issue. SCOTUS held that the Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives had been created wholly within the Executive Branch and that no specific monies had been appropriated to it by Congressional statute so no challenge could be made. This is fairly squirrely reasoning (increasingly typical of the Roberts Court) because the money didn’t just appear out of nowhere and what money the Congress does appropriate and how it is spent by the Executive must meet Constitutional requirements such as the Establishment Clause. In any case, the bottom line is that in the view of SCOTUS the Congress and/or another President are the ones to change this. Ordinary Americans need not apply

An October 17, 2008 New York Times story reports that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion in 2007 that the government could use money from programs covered by anti-discrimination laws to fund groups that did, in fact, discriminate in their hiring on religious grounds. The opinion was in reference to a $1.5 million grant for gang prevention to World Vision, a religious group which hires Christians only, but was not limited to this case only.

Military disability ratings: A 30% rating is the cutoff between receiving payments, staying within the military healthcare system, and eligibility for family coverage and is now given out more rarely than before the beginning of the Iraq war, despite the large number of soldiers with severe injuries. Whether disabled veterans are eventually covered by the military or receive some compensation from Social Security or the Department of Veterans Affairs, they usually have to wait 6-9 months for such monies to flow and often face severe financial distress, including homelessness, as a result. In 2006-2007, nearly 20,000 permanently disabled veterans have been so affected. In response, the Army has allowed for such veterans to draw their full paycheck for 90 days after discharge. This policy has not yet been fully implemented as of June 2008 and only partially addresses the time lag before government coverage kicks in.

As of January 2008, the Pentagon is required to follow the more liberal guidelines of the VA in awarding disability claims. In a screwy re-interpretation, the military rather than loosening disability requirements has, in fact, tightened them. In contravention of existing law, the January 2008 “wounded warrior” act, and the intent of Congress, the Pentagon has been limiting benefits to veterans blown up in Iraq, injured avoiding getting blown up in Iraq, or injured in training incidents on how not to get blown up in Iraq, stating, as only the military can, that these are not combat or combat-related injuries.

Earmarks: Special interest funding directed to a specific project by an individual legislator. The most famous example was Republican Senator Ted Stevens’ $223 million for a bridge to nowhere in Alaska. Earmarks exploded in number and expense under the Republicans. In his first 7 years, Bush signed spending bills containing 55,000 earmarks worth more than $100 billion. Bush only decided that there was something bad about them (nearly 6 years into his Presidency) when Democrats won control of the Congress.

Medicare privatization. This began in 1982 and grew throughout the 1990s with 17.3% of Medicare recipients enrolled in 1999 in private plans when it went into decline. Since the start of Medicare Part D (passed 2003, went into effect January 1, 2006), numbers have begun to rise again. One of the reasons for this increase is that they are being aggressively, and often unscrupulously, marketed to unsuspecting elders. In addition, private plans receive government subsidies to make them competitive with Medicare itself. This is money that could go to reducing Medicare premiums generally but instead goes to higher overhead and profits for private providers.

Signing of a nuclear cooperation deal with India December 18, 2006. This is another example of the Bush Administration and Congress’s selective approach to nuclear non-proliferation. Israel’s nuclear program is ignored. Iraq is, in part, invaded for a mythical program that existed only in the fevered imaginations of Cheney, Feith, Bush, and Rice. At the same time, nuclear moves in North Korea and Iran are opposed. Meanwhile the deal with India will allow it to dedicate some of its facilities completely to nuclear arms production.

On October 1, 2008, the Senate in an 86-13 vote approved the India nuclear deal clearing away the last legislative hurdle to it. It is difficult to see how the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, already much undercut, will survive.

Julie MacDonald, who has a degree in civil engineering and no background in the natural sciences, was named the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks in the Interior Department on May 2004. She altered and reversed conclusions in scientific reports to prevent species from being protected. The Bush Administration to date has listed 58 species (54 as the result of litigation) as endangered as opposed to 512 in the Clinton years and 234 by the first President Bush. MacDonald also hired Todd Willens who worked with the former Republican Representative and anti-environmentalist Richard Pombo. According to a March 2007 Inspector General report, she also passed on internal department documents to the oil industry and land developers in contravention of federal rules and to aid filing of lawsuits against the department. In one instance she pushed to have an endangered species which lived on her farm in California’s Central Valley (the Sacramento splittail fish) delisted. Facing oversight hearings, she resigned April 30, 2007.

The endangered species program has been without a director for a year and, as of July 2007, 30% of its positions are unfilled. On July 20, 2007, H. Dale Hall the current director of the Fish and Wildlife Service announced that 8 decisions made by MacDonald concerning species protection and land use would be reviewed and likely reversed. On November 27, 2007, it was announced that seven of them would be.

On May 21, 2008 in Congressional testimony, a GAO investigator Robin Nazarro stated that the review of MacDonald’s decisions had been too narrow and that 4 other Interior officials had been involved whose roles and decisions should have been examined: Craig Manson, a former Assistant Secretary at Interior, Brian Waidmann, chief of staff to current Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, Todd Willens, former Deputy Assistant Secretary, and Randal Bowman, special assistant to the Interior Secretary.

In an August 11, 2008 New York Times story, the Department of Interior is drafting a rule which would reduce mandatory reviews and allow government agencies to ignore how building and industrial projects impacted endangered species or how emissions from these projects affect global warming.

In its rush to finalize this rule, the Fish and Wildlife Service assembled a 15 member team to go through 200,000 public comments and gave them 4 days (32 hours) to do so (from October 21-24). This would require each team member to read on average 7 comments a minute (or one every 8.5 seconds). To say this makes a mockery of the government’s rule making procedures would be an understatement.

On December 15, 2008, Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney released a report revisiting Julie MacDonald’s time at Fish and Wildlife. In the report’s cover letter, Devaney concluded

Overall, however, MacDonald’s zeal to advance her agenda has caused considerable harm to the integrity of the ESA [Endangered Species Act] and to the moral and reputation of the FW [Fish and Wildlife Service], as well as potential harm to individual species. Her heavy-handedness has cast doubt on nearly every ESA decision issued during her tenure; of the 20 decisions we reviewed, her influence potentially jeopardized 13 ESA decisions. Macdonald’s conduct was backed by the seemingly blind support of former Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, Judge Craig Manson. Judge Manson so thoroughly supported MacDonald that even when a known error in a Federal Register notice, which was caused by MacDonald’s calculations, was brought to Manson’s attention, he directed that the notice be published regardless of the error. MacDonald was also ably abetted in her attempts to interfere with the science by Special Assistant Randal Bowman, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, who held the position and authority to advance the unwritten policy to exclude as many areas as practicable from Critical Habitat Determinations, as well as Attorney Thomas Graf, Office of the Solicitor, whose remarkable lack of recollection leaves one to speculate whether he was doing MacDonald’s bidding or was a rogue actor simply emulating her policy style.

The former Chief of Conservation and Classfication for the Endangered Species Program had this to say about MacDonald.

[MacDonald] was an odd choice for that position [Deputy Assistant Secretary] because she had no interest in species conservation. She [said] she didn’t like the outdoors; she never went outdoors. She never went to a national park or wildlife refuge and she never intended to . . . [MacDonald believed] there were other more important goals, like making sur people got water and electricity and developers had the opportunity to make profits.

MacDonald refused to be interviewed for the report stating: “Given the breathtaking arrogance with which you have conducted previous so-called investigations of me, I have no interest in any further discussions with your office.” The report contained no recommendation for action against MacDonald.

From tales of the revolving door. Darleen Druyun was a principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition and management where she negotiated a sweetheart deal worth $23 billion for leasing air tankers from Boeing. She was also negotiating at the same time for an executive position at Boeing. The deal was made. She left the Air Force and took up her new position at Boeing. In a 2004 plea agreement, Druyun pled guilty to fraud and was sentenced to 9 months in a minimum security prison, 7 months of home detention, 150 hours of community service, and required to pay a $5,000 fine.

In addition, Air Force Secretary James Roche and the Air Force’s top acquisition officer, Marvin Sambur resigned at the end of 2004 due to their roles in pushing the tanker deal.

Luis Posada Carriles is an anti-Castro terrorist who masterminded the October 6, 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner killing 73. He had worked before this with the CIA and after the Cubana bombing during the Reagan Administration helped funnel aid to the Contras. In 1997, he directed a series of bombings in Cuba against the growing tourist industry there. In April 2005, running out of places to hide, he requested asylum in the US but the following month was detained for entering the country illegally. Despite his terrorist past, he was released on bond to home detention on April 19, 2007. On May 8, 2007, a federal judge in Texas dismissed the case against him for lying to immigration authorities. Contrast his treatment to that of terrorists like the "waterboarded" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Apparently it is not what you bomb but who you bomb that counts.

In a somewhat similar case, Vang Pao, a leader of the American Hmong community who led Hmong forces in Laos against Communist troops during the Vietnam War, was arrested on June 4, 2007 for violation of the Neutrality Act and weapons charges as part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government of Laos. Despite the gravity of the allegations against him and the national security aspects, he was nevertheless ordered released on $1.5 million bail on July 12, 2007.

James Knodell, Director of the Office of Security at the White House, in testimony before the House Committee on Government Reform chaired by Henry Waxman said that no internal White House investigation was ever initiated (contrary to Executive order 12958 requiring one) in the period between July 14, 2003 when Valerie Plame a covert CIA agent was outed in a column by Robert Novak and September 29, 2003 when the Department of Justice asked the FBI to investigate pursuant to a request from the CIA of September 16, 2003.

Robert Cobb, NASA’s tame Inspector General since 2002, tipped off former NASA head Sean O’Keefe to audits he would be performing and search warrants the FBI would be executing. O’Keefe, primarily known for his forceful dealing with the 1991 Tailhook scandal, was an accountant by training without a scientific or engineering background whose tenure at NASA was marked by drift. He got the top NASA job in December 2002 through his connection with Dick Cheney and, while still NASA administrator, campaigned for Bush in 2004 as a "private citizen". He left in February 2005. The inappropriate contact between NASA administrators and the NASA Inspector General continues as well as its coverup. The NASA General Counsel Mike Wholley illegally destroyed a tape of a meeting (between the current NASA head Michael Griffin and Cobb and his staff) to avoid it ever becoming public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

In keeping with the ineffectiveness of the NASA Inspector General, a January 9, 2009 story reports that the GAO found that the NASA IG recovered only 36 cents for every dollar it spent on audits to prevent waste, compared with an average of $9.49 for other IGs. The NASA IG came in second to last among the IGs.

Evangelos Dimitros Soukas a convicted felon serving 8 years for tax fraud was scheduled to testify on April 12, 2007 before the Senate Finance Committee on identity theft and filing false tax returns. The Department of Justice challenged the right of the Congress to order a prisoner in federal custody to appear before it, even though this has happened numerous times in the past. A federal district judge did not agree with the DOJ and Soukas testified. The DOJ move appeared baffling, an empty assertion of Executive power, but, may have been pre-emptive to prevent more controversial prisoners from testifying in the future.

Excessive corporate pay, retirement, and severance packages in the Bush era. Even post-Enron, control over executive compensation still rests largely in the hands of the executives themselves and the compliant boards of directors they often select. Pay is still not coupled to performance and stock options still encourage executives to manipulate stock prices (which is very much not the same thing as performance as the Enron case showed) for their own benefit. Reporting the cost of stock options was not mandated by the SEC until August 2006. The total cost of multi-year options is still not reported fully but treated as a year by year expense making the true cost look smaller. Back dating of options so they could be purchased at a lower price was also fairly common until somebody noticed it constituted fraud. Spring loading, a variant of insider trading, i.e. exercising an option and buying just before news that will drive up the stock price, still occurs.

Eliot Spitzer the then New York State Attorney General (and not the SEC or the Bush Administration) announced on May 21, 2002 that Merrill Lynch had agreed to sever contacts between its analysis and investment divisions and to pay a $100 million fine. The lack of such separation was behind a lot of the dot com bubble in the 1990s as well as propping up Enron and facilitating its scams. It is a recognition of sorts of a systemic problem, although the fine was a tiny fraction of what investors lost and it is unclear how "objective" analysts are going to be even with the supposed wall to the investment side.

Scott Bloch initially deputy director for the Task Force for Faith Based and Community Initiatives became the head of the Office of Special Counsel (whose function is to protect whistleblowers) on January 5, 2004. Once there he summarily closed hundreds of ongoing cases, decried cases that had a "homosexual agenda", tried to use the office to protect a non-governmental employee who was a defender of Intelligent Design, gave 12 of his in-office critics the choice of immediate re-assignment to field offices or be fired, and was the subject of complaints filed with his own office. In April 2007, Bloch announced an investigation into Karl Rove’s political machinations. The real aims of such an investigation probably do not include carrying out a real probe but are more likely an attempt by Bloch to hold on to his job, derail efforts to remove the OSC from the purview of the White House, stymie other investigations into Karl Rove (see 224), conduct a whitewash, and/or run out the clock.

On December 18 and 21, 2006, Bloch had a private service Geeks on Call come in to scrub the drive on his personal office computer. He kept a back up on a thumb drive which he has refused to surrender to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) currently investigating him. On May 6, 2008, the FBI raided Bloch’s home and the OSC.

On October 20, 2008, Bloch announced his resignation to be effective January 5, 2009. On October 23, 2008, Block was fired by the White House.

Lax security at US nuclear facilities and airports exposed by whistleblowers Richard Levernier and Bogdan Dzakovic for which they were punished.

The 120,000 hours of counter terrorism related recordings that the FBI had not translated by September 2004; related to this is the case of Sibel Edmonds. She blew the whistle on the backlog and the dubious skills and allegiances of some of the translators the FBI was employing. For this she was rewarded by being fired.

Monica "Loyalty oaths" Goodling comes up again in an investigation of the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) into whether she used party affiliation in determining hires of entry level prosecutors. Did she? Given Gonzales‚ March 1, 2006 order delegating hiring authority to her and her role in the US attorney hiring and firing scandal, the answer is obvious.

A July 28, 2008 report by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility found that Monica Goodling had used political considerations in violation of federal law and departmental policy in hiring decisions in a wide range of non-political career positions including Immigration Judges, Assistant US Attorneys, and detaillees to various offices at main Justice. Kyle Sampson and Goodling’s predecessors as White House liaison Susan Richmond and Jan Williams were also found to have been involved in political selections for non-political positions. The report concluded with the now familiar refrain that although they had broken the law since they were no longer with the DOJ no action could be taken against them but the report’s findings should be used for any future position they might have with the DOJ. On August 12, 2008, Attorney General Michael Mukasey in a speech to the ABA in New York reiterated that there would be no prosecutions for these political hires: “not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime,” especially if you are a Republican.

Michael Baroody who was Executive Vice President of the National Association of Manufacturers a powerful K Street lobbying group was nominated by Bush on March 1, 2007 to head the Consumer Products Safety Commission. NAM has sought to limit or even eliminate corporate liability for unsafe products and environmental practices. NAM decided to give Baroody a $150,000 extraordinary payment on his way out the door. It is hard to say whether this is simply a further conflict of interest or just straightforward bribery. On May 23, 2007, Baroody withdrew his nomination, one day before the beginning of hearings.

The Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) created February 19, 2002 created a database the Joint Protection Enterprise Network (JPEN) [sorry for the acronym gobbledygook] composed of TALONs Threat and Local Observation Notices. These are basically raw unvalidated reports of threats posed by dangerous civilian group like the Quakers. The idea of the military spying on civilians is unsettling. The Founding Fathers after all fought a revolution over such abuses and in the 4th Amendment enunciated: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." Beyond this, CIFA did not follow its own guidelines in how it managed the material it obtained. The story does not end there. Duke Cunningham swung CIFA work to Mitchell J. Wade’s company MZM in exchange for bribes. He was aided in this by CIFA Director David A. Burtt II and his top deputy Joseph Hefferon. In August 2006, Burtt resigned and Hefferon retired when the Cunningham-MZM connection was made public.

On November 30, 2005, two days after Duke Cunningham enters into a plea agreement, all TALON reports were deleted from the JPEN database. However, the TALON program continues. (These programs never really die.) In keeping with the DOD (Department of Defense) Inspector General’s usual lackluster performance, a report requested by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo in January 2006 and released June 27, 2007 on TALON failed to address who was responsible for violations in following the program’s guidelines or why they occurred. The report also didn’t examine if current safeguards were adequate or if the program should continue. The Department of Defense (DOD) announced that it will close the TALON system on September 17, 2007. Per the press release, the Pentagon "is working to develop a new reporting system to replace Talon, but in the interim, all information concerning force protection threats will go to the FBI’s Guardian reporting system." It has also been reported that CIFA will keep a copy of record as evidence that the program was properly administered (or if they want to start it up again as some point). As for impropriety, yes, this occurred, but the real problem with the program is that it is and was blatantly unconstitutional. Nor as I pointed out earlier do these programs ever die. So is TALON really gone? No. Names are changed but functions remain and the data are never destroyed.

On April 1, 2008, in response to a FOIA request by the ACLU, the Pentagon released documents that showed that CIFA had used the FBI to get around restrictions on its own use of administrative warrants (National Security Letters or NSLs, see item 98) and that it had not provided any guidance on their use or kept adequate records of them. The next day the New York Times reported that General James R. Clapper Jr., Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, was recommending to Secretary Gates that CIFA be closed down and that “some of its operations” be moved to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). In other words, roll up the program but not the function.

Bush’s March 6, 2003 news conference. Less than two weeks before the start of the Iraq War, the “independent” press willingly play-acted spontaneity in what was a heavily scripted propaganda piece promoting the war.

An investigation into Bill Frist former Senate Majority Leader was closed on April 27, 2007. He was not indicted for insider trading in selling his stock in the family’s large healthcare company HCA shortly before a major fall in its stock price. It was all just a coincidence, a very profitable coincidence.

Julie Myers was made Assistant Secretary of DHS to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a recess appointment on January 4, 2006 after the Senate failed to vote on her nomination. Bush re-nominated her January 9, 2007. She was confirmed by voice vote on December 19, 2007. Myers is another Bush hire whose lack of experience is overshadowed by who she is related to. She is the niece of former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General Richard Myers. She is a protégée of Michael Chertoff and was his chief of staff when he headed the Criminal Division. She is married to John Wood former chief of staff to Chertoff at the Department of Homeland Security and is currently US Attorney for the Western District of Missouri replacing Bradley Schlozman.

At ICE, she has sponsored aggressive, high profile, and controversial raids against illegal immigrants. The irony of someone whose success is based not on hard work but on connection imprisoning those who are hard working but without connection is I suspect lost upon her.

Randall Tobias, US Director of Foreign Assistance and head of US Agency for International Development (USAID) with the rank of Deputy Secretary of State since March 29, 2006. Before this he was our first Global AIDS Coordinator (October 2003) where he criticized condom use, discouraged outreach to sexworkers, and promoted abstinence only programs. As Director of Foreign Assistance, he continued to oversee the Global AIDS program. He resigned April 27, 2007 after it came out that he had been named as using a Washington escort service. I am not a prude about these things but I do see a problem between his personal activities and his public positions.

Robert E. Coughlin II was hired in March 2001 at the age of 29 as a Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs. In May 2002, he became Deputy Director of the Office of Intergovernmental and Public Liaison at the Justice Department until he transferred to US Attorney’s Office for Eastern Virginia in November 2003. During this time, he accepted meals, sports and concert tickets, and a golf outing (in all worth about $6,180) from Kevin Ring, a former aide to Representative John Doolittle (R-CA) who subsequently worked for Jack Abramoff. In return, Coughlin kept Ring and through him Abramoff apprised of deliberations at the DOJ and gave them advice on proceedings there related to their lobbying interests. In one case, he helped them get full funding for a $16.3 million jail construction contract for Abramoff clients the Mississippi Choctaw. On June 25, 2002, the contract was approved, and Ring emailed Coughlin “CHA-CHING!!!!” In another case, Coughlin expedited review for Abramoff’s Jewish Eshkol Academy so that it could admit foreign students. At the same time, Coughlin was providing these services he was engaged in talks for a possible position with Abramoff’s lobbying firm. After his stint in Eastern Virginia, Coughlin became deputy chief of staff of the Criminal Division at the DOJ, a position he resigned on April 6, 2007 when his dealings with Ring first came out. On April 22, 2008, Coughlin pled guilty in a plea agreement to one count of taking actions in his official capacity in which he had a financial interest (i.e. the gifts he received). In exchange, for a sentence of 6