Hardcore GOP addicts, those most dependent on Karl Rove's crack, don't seem happy unless they're shot up with hate for something or somebody. Right now, it's the
New York Times which, as
Larry Johnson pointed out yesterday, has been a pusher for the Bush administration many times. But, as any street pusher knows, the addicts don't care about what you sold them in 2002; they want their fix today. Now. And, as
The Sopranos reminds us about criminal enterprises (like the Bush administration), you can't quit supplying the goods. Ever. Or else.
A letter writer to today's New York Times opines that the paper's decision "to publish details of the government's financial monitoring program is shameful."
Yes, it's no secret, but people do get lax -- until someone raises the alarm again, as you just did.
I presume that the heightened media coverage will now cause the targeted parties to redouble their efforts to mask what they're doing.
The inanity of the letter writer's arguments aside -- he stomps on his righteous stand with "it's no secret" -- the "targeted parties" have all along masked what they're doing. In the June 24, 2006 print issue of the National Journal, there's an interview with Stuart Levey, "the Treasury Department's top counter-terrorist official," in which Mr. Levey explicates all the ways that terrorists have altered their transaction methods.
"Suspect transactions" have dropped in dollar value, which "could mean they are breaking up the same amount of money into smaller denominations in order to escape detection." Levey also notes that "terrorist cells [are] funding their activities more through petty crime such as credit card fraud or drug dealing" and that his office is seeing "a greater use of cash couriers ... to transport money around." Even without Levey's informed observations, it's clear that the terrorists can and do adapt their methods to get financing.
Then there's the elephant in the room. "Iran is really the central banker of terrorism," Levey tells the National Journal. The Bush administration's failure, for six long years, to deal with Iran -- instead becoming encumbered by a ruinous Iraq invasion and occupation -- will be discussed ad nauseum by pundits and historians for hundreds of years to come.
By the way, the New York Times has an editorial today that defends its decision to print the SWIFT story:
[C]ritics have claimed that the paper was being unpatriotic or even aiding the terrorists. Some have even suggested that it should be indicted under the Espionage Act. There have been a handful of times in American history when the government has indeed tried to prosecute journalists for publishing things it preferred to keep quiet. None of them turned out well -- from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the time when the government tried to enjoin The Times and The Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers. [...]
The Swift story bears no resemblance to security breaches, like disclosure of troop locations, that would clearly compromise the immediate safety of specific individuals. Terrorist groups would have had to be fairly credulous not to suspect that they would be subject to scrutiny if they moved money around through international wire transfers. In fact, a United Nations group set up to monitor Al Qaeda and the Taliban after Sept. 11 recommended in 2002 that other countries should follow the United States' lead in monitoring suspicious transactions handled by Swift. The report is public and available on the United Nations Web site. ... (Read all)
Now, please, allow me a moment for a few real issues, the kind that won't stir Karl Rove's addicts because they don't satisfy their cravings for hate-filled, self-righteous attacks:
- No Republican hue and cry here: "Congress failed last week to raise the federal minimum wage which has stagnated for nearly a decade. ... In contrast to the GOP leadership, the American public overwhelmingly favors a minimum wage increase. In fact, most Americans would be more likely to vote for a Congressional candidate who favors increasing the minimum wage.
It's easy to understand why a majority of Americans would like to see an increase in the minimum wage. According to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis:
- The federal minimum wage has remained at $5.15 for nine years.
- Since its last increase in 1997, the minimum wage has lost 20 percent of its value.
- The minimum wage is at its lowest level in terms of purchasing power in fifty years.
- At 31 percent, the minimum wage is at its lowest as a share of the average American wage since 1947.
- It takes a full day of work for a minimum-wage worker to buy a tank of gas.
- No Republican hue and cry here: "Congress cut $12 billion out of the federal student aid programs in order to help finance tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans," reports Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio). And have you noticed the number of new TV ads (besides the ubiquitous refinancing ads) for student loan financing, which is really yet one more way for financial institutions to put their hooks into middle-class Americans?
- No Republican hue and cry here: Alaska senator Ted Stevens, "legendary pork barreler--$646 million in goodies for Alaska last year alone," wants to turn Washington state's Cherry Point port on Puget Sound into an "international oil superport." Puget Sound's ecosystem "is already on the verge of collapse [and nothing] threatens the future of Puget Sound more than the risk of catastrophic oil spills." Why is Ted Stevens hellbent on turning the Sound into a super byway for oil tankers? "According to federal election reports, the oil and gas industry ranks first on his 1989-2006 aggregate donors list, giving $370,000 (lawyers are second)." And then there's the revenge factor: Ted Stevens wants to get back at Washington state's Senator Maria Cantwell (2006 campaign site) for standing up to him, defeating his amendment to drill for oil in ANWR, protecting Puget Sound from oil tankers, and her boldness in arguing with Stevens -- live on C-Span (how dare she?!) -- to swear in the oil executives appearing before the committee. Contempuous of Cantwell's request, and spitting fire, Stevens belligerently refused.
Really, it's an endless list, those REAL issues that the Republicans ignore, while their kingpin pusher Karl Rove shoots up the GOP base with the drugs they crave: anything that's anti-gay, that promotes faux patriotic prohibitions against flag burning, and that plays on the right's implicit racism (the immigration debate and the Voting Rights Act renewal).
There's something venal, negative and divisively hateful about the thrust of most GOP politics. They're revolting. And it's time we revolt.
-- To be concurrently published at No Quarter --