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Shutdown Updates
-- Tuesday afternoon / evening ---
Dave Johnson at CAF reminds us that, after all of the hyperpartisan screeching and back slapping, a deal to extend things for a couple/three months doesn't change anything with the hostage situation and it just keeps harming the economy. It does one more thing that Johnson doesn't specifically mention but he kind of hints at it. It convinces the country that the hard right-wing are ruthless and some of them are just crazy. The Crazy Man effect is pretty well cemented now. Next time around, just a number of weeks away, going into the next round of this mess, nobody will doubt that they'll do real damage to get what they want. They're holding the sequester card and they're holding the Crazy Eights.
Who is going to let them do this again without giving something up? Dems don't have the Bush tax cuts to negotiate with anymore. Obama gave up 85% of those permanently during the last hostage crisis. Dems don't have spending cuts to offer up because the White House made the incredibly destructive mistake of designing the sequester cuts that keep taking bigger and bigger bites as time passes. What do they have left? Obamacare, but that's not what the big money conservatives (behind all of this for the past three decades in one form or another) really wanted to begin with. In the end, they profit from Obamacare. It's a decoy. They want what they've always wanted. Social Security and Medicare and they want a nice flattened tax code and for corporations to pay no taxes. And these guys play the long game. Only the blind or bamboozled can't see that. Dave Johnson is clear-eyed here and says that the only deal that is a win for the Democrats is one that takes the means of making manufactured crises out of the hands of the Republicans, not one that just kicks this can down the road for them to do it all over again. If they really have the Republicans backed into a corner and are eviscerating them, then get a deal to stop this debt ceiling terrorism. If they're not doing that, then why are they not doing that?
Don’t Kick The Can Down The Road
In spite of promises not to negotiate with hostage-takers, now there are reports of a negotiated deal to “kick the can down the road” for a few months. In other words, the hostage will stay tied up in the basement, but won’t be shot right now. The pressure is off today and the kidnappers know that negotiation will happen and ransom will be forthcoming a few months from now.
OK, then. So let’s go back to the previous question. Can you imagine a sane businessperson hiring people, investing in new plant or equipment, or really doing anything now knowing that all of this starts again in a few months? Of course not. So the recovery is frozen for the time being.
A “deal” that kicks the can down the road means the ongoing economic harm just keeps harming for the next few months, and then maybe gets worse. And it means the hostage-takers can just do the same thing again, and then again, and then again.
We can’t support any deal that institutionalizes this tactic.
Dave Johnson writes some more, later on in the day, that I don't entirely agree with but my confidence level is lower here than on other things so I'll include this. Basically, he thinks that the Democrats consistently misunderstands how much damage the Republicans are willing to do and how far they'll go before relenting. I disagree with that. I don't think the Democrats doing the dealing are stupid. I think they're pretty brilliant at playing the game and knowing their opponent and that they absolutely knew they'd go this far, and guessed what the response would be pretty much every step of the way (except maybe with the sequester and defense cuts). I think the leadership of both parties have a lot of the same goals, essentially neoliberals and neocons in concert, as in the Thatcher/Reagan mold. But the two-party charade is important for the 1% and certainly not all the elected Dems are on board with austerity and the 1% agenda, so the game has to be played for them too. I don't think even half of the Dems are neoliberal and the majority of the base certainly isn't, based on how well progressive policies poll. If Dems go along too easily with cutting Social Security and Medicare, it's going to undermine the party, so everyone has to be convinced that TINA (there is no alternative). You'd think that this stunt from the Republican party, wrecking their reputation by taking things so far would be undesirable too, but I think they're trying to shake off the fringe and going for a makeover anyway after this.
Johnson thinks that the Dems consistently "misunderestimate" the Republicans and he's worth listening to. And I really don't think the Dems wanted things to go as far as they have with this debt ceiling fiasco. The Rs outcrazied themselves this time around. So here's an excerpt.
Misunderestimating Who They Are
There is a miscalculation at the core of Democratic strategies for ending the shutdown and avoiding default. Democrats keep saying, “They wouldn’t really do that.” But this calculation doesn’t “get it” about who and what the country is dealing with.
[...]
Remember what led to the sequester? There was a fundamental miscalculation that led to these terrible economy-killing cuts taking effect. White House negotiators believed the sequester cuts were so terrible and stupid that Republicans wouldn’t really let that happen. So they offered these cuts as an inducement — a worst alternative — to coming to an agreement about taxes and cuts. (Never mind the mistake that any deficit reduction at all right now is economy-killing.) The idea was that the sequester cuts are so terrible and have such a disastrous effect on the country and economy — and people — that “they wouldn’t really do that.”
But they did that. Now many Republicans are celebrating the sequester cuts, calling the sequester an accomplishment. They are celebrating the damage that they have caused to our government.
If you “got it” about who they are then you knew that of course they would do that. [...]
Late in the day the House said they were putting together yet another deal. Boehner couldn't get the votes. They called off the Rules Committee meeting and the vote scheduled for Tuesday night. They went to the Capitol Hill bar or some such, and sulked. The talks between Reid and McConnell which we were told had fallen apart earlier were resurrected again.
--- Wednesday morning ---
No surprises overnight. The latest incarnation of a House deal is as dead as a doorknob and House Republicans get a scolding in the press.
Blue team fans are bringing down the house. Rs are humiliated, never a bad thing, but I'm not seeing the win here guys. We've got sequester level spending, which amounts to severe austerity level spending. The nation's credit rating is on downgrade warning. The stock market might be okay but that's not the market we should be watching for the imact right now. The country is convinced that the Rs are crazier than ever "take the deal!!" they're crazy!!" And out of this postponement "deal" comes the Bicameral Catfood Committee with enough time to set up the Grand Bargain, and the hostages are still tethered until a Grand Bargain is done. If this is what the blue team calls a win, you're 1) way too easy to please; 2) way too easy to fool; 3) jumping the gun. Come on, blue team, yes, you're all worked up on the way home from the stadium, but you're a heck of a lot smarter than that. But far be it from me to spoil the fun of simple minded red team/blue team kabuki, whipped up into a frenzy. What's weird is that a handful of them are so warped that instead of enjoying the party with their friends, they're obsessed with some kind of payback for the doubters, the members of the blue team who are not sufficiently loyal and who insist on looking at the bigger picture and mentioning the unmentionable Grand Bargain and another Catfood Commission being formed.
Meanwhile corporate wing of red team burning their own village to save it. In true form, is looking to get rid of their members who won't toe the line when they try to do their party makeover. Justin Amash is the first one to draw a corporate party backed primary challenger. Who knows how they're going to rein in their base, but that's their problem.
All that being said, it really does feel good not to have the president cave way ahead of time, giving pre-concessions and giving away his most valuable cards for absolutely no reason. This time around, he didn't have any cards left to give away, as far as I can tell. Actually, I'm wrong on that. He had the Obamacare card and he wasn't about to give that away. It didn't play out exactly as planned, given that the blue team hoped to have millions of people signed up for health care plans by now, while the Shutdown Circus was playing out. But I'm not one of the people calling for heads on that. Complex systems are always problematic when the are first rolled out into the real world. It would have been a lot better if they'd done more beta and load testing but we know from some leaks over the summer that they were really worried about making this deadline. It's probably absolute hell working on that project right now. And the main thing is, it wasn't vaporware, while the red clowns were trying again to take Obamacare down, there was something tangible there, implemented, and Obamacare, in toto, is a fiendishly complicated thing to implement. I hope they change the name of it after he leaves office to something more catchy than ACA and something different than the red clown name, Obamacare.
Anyway, we still don't know how much further the red clowns are going to take this. It looks like the House has been thoroughly beaten down and will vote for the package cooked up by the adults in the room, the Senate, who pretty much run everything on Capitol Hill and work hand-in-hand with the White House.
I thought the markets would go wild on Monday but that didn't happen. The markets seemed to be confident that a) this would get worked out at the last minute, par for the course with Congress and b) it wasn't time to do the freak out yet because it was going to go on for longer. The Simpson-Bowles ad campaign interestingly waited until yesterday to launch their ads too. I would still like to know how they knew the shutdown would still be going on then. Maybe they planned and created the ad in just hours.
Yves Smith has a good column from yesterday in which she talks about a lot of things but also about the credit market, which was closed on Monday, and which is much less visible, and how there has already been adjustment among fixed income investors. There's another auction of Treasuries today and they continue regularly and the shutdown circus impacts the amount of our debt interest payments.
Yves:
A Debt Deal is Nigh! A Debt Deal is Nigh! Or is It?
We feel compelled to mention one matter: getting a debt ceiling/end the shutdown pact of some sort is merely a precursor to the hoped for performance of The Persecution and Assassination of What is Left of the American Middle Class, as Performed by the Inmates of the Beltway under the Direction of Barack Obama (more commonly described as the Grand Bargain or Great Betrayal).
[...]
But it’s also critical to recognize that the sanguine reaction of equity markets represents the reactions of a particularly happy-go-lucky bunch that has had the Greenspan and Bernanke put protecting their backs for a very long time. Fixed income investors are a much more sober and quant-y bunch, and with good reason. As Goldman’s senior partner in the 1970s, Gus Levy, remarked, “In bonds, you eat like a bird and you shit like an elephant.” In other words, the upside is modest and the downside is considerable.
[...]
And those dour fixed income investors have been quietly preparing for possible nasty outcomes even as the US stock market has stayed comfortably within its recent trading range. One indicator: one month Libor is lower than comparable Treasuries. Remember that the mere effort to get out of the way of bad possible outcomes can produce serious dislocations. Fixed income markets were closed Monday due to the commercial bank holiday. We’ll have a much better reading on the sentiment of the investors who matter over the course of the day. Remember Jim Carville’s saying: “I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everyone.”
[...]
Even thought the Treasuries are not at immediate risk of default if the October 17 date comes and the deal is not finalized (and remember, that can happen simply due to procedural issues even if Obama and Boehner sign off on an outline agreed by Reid and McConnell), there can still be plenty of disruption and collateral damage if the deal is not looking like it will be in hand either by or very shortly after October 17.
Now now Yves, you're spoiling the blue team Shutdown Circus parties with all those silly, inconvenient facts. Just pick up your pom poms, girl. Drinks are on the OFA.
And hey, I see that the dkos front pagers are using Robert Costa as a source. What's up with that?! ;)
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I'm creating this list of articles and other reference pieces about the Simpson-Bowles Catfood Commission, Pete Peterson, Fix the Debt and the other organizations and figures around the relentless campaign to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs. I'll keep adding to it, so if you have suggestions, I'll add them to this list and keep the list somewhere in the What's Happenin' diary for the next few months while this mess plays out. Feel free to reference the list or copy it or do whatever you like with it. I'm also on a little mission on Twitter to spread as much factual information about this situation as possible during the same time frame. When I learned about what was going on with the efforts to cut Social Security, I promised myself that I'd do whatever activism I was capable of to try to stop it. So far I've done a lot of diaries here urging people to contact Congress and the White House at key times, organized a blogathon and helped with others, and things like that. I'm not sure when the optimal time for that kind of organizing will be yet, so in the meantime, this is one of the small things that I can do. I'm open to ideas and suggestions (and if I forget to put this section in the diary some morning when I'm not at the top of my game, please remind me :).
Glenn Greenwald is starting a new venture and has a backer.
Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian's statements
Greenwald:
"My partnership with the Guardian has been extremely fruitful and fulfilling: I have high regard for the editors and journalists with whom I worked and am incredibly proud of what we achieved.
"The decision to leave was not an easy one, but I was presented with a once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline.
"Because this news leaked before we were prepared to announce it, I'm not yet able to provide any details of this momentous new venture, but it will be unveiled very shortly;"
Guardian:
"Glenn Greenwald is a remarkable journalist and it has been fantastic working with him. Our work together over the last year has demonstrated the crucial role that responsible investigative journalism can play in holding those in power to account. We are of course disappointed by Glenn’s decision to move on, but can appreciate the attraction of the new role he has been offered. We wish him all the best."
Glenn Greenwald Leaving The Guardian For 'Momentous' New Venture
Greenwald did not specify what his new project would look like, describing it only as a "momentous new venture" and a "once-in-a-career-dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline." He said that the site would be a general-interest outlet, that he would be responsible for its journalism output, and that it had substantial money behind it.
Speaking to the Washington Post's Erik Wemple, Greenwald said the site would have branches in New York, Washington and San Francisco, and that it was being funded by a "particular backer."
[...]
UPDATE 7:30 p.m. ET: Reuters reports that according to multiple sources, Greenwald's new venture is funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar
Just when it seems like there's almost no hope...
Exclusive: Greenwald exits Guardian for new Omidyar media venture
Omidyar, who is chairman of the board at eBay Inc but is not involved in day-to-day operations at the company, has numerous philanthropic, business and political interests, mainly through an investment entity called the Omidyar Network.
Forbes pegged the 46-year-old Omidyar's net worth at $8.5 billion.
[...]
Omidyar, a French-born Iranian-American, also founded the Democracy Fund to support "social entrepreneurs working to ensure that our political system is responsive to the public," according to its website.
Omidyar's active Twitter account suggests he is very concerned about the government spying programs exposed by Greenwald and Snowden.
You know there's something that's goin' on around here,
The surely, surely, surely won't stand the light of day.
And it appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long,
Appears to be a long
Time, yes, a long, long, long ,long time before the dawn.
Speak out, you got to speak out against the madness,
You got to speak your mind,
If you dare.
This is what that Freedom of the Press Foundation teaser was about on Monday. This is a big deal.
Freedom of the Press Foundation Launches SecureDrop, an Open-Source Submission Platform for Whistleblowers
October 15, 2013 San Francisco, CA: Freedom of the Press Foundation has taken charge of the DeadDrop project, an open-source whistleblower submission system originally coded by the late transparency advocate Aaron Swartz. In the coming months, the Foundation will also provide on-site installation and technical support to news organizations that wish to run the system, which has been renamed “SecureDrop.”
By installing SecureDrop, news organizations around the world can securely accept documents from whistleblowers, while better protecting their sources’ anonymity. Although it is important to note that no security system can ever be 100 percent impenetrable, Freedom of the Press Foundation believes that this system is the strongest ever made available to media outlets. Several major news agencies have already signed up for installations, and they will be announced in the coming weeks.
“We’ve reached a time in America when the only way the press can assure the anonymity and safety of their sources is not to know who they are,” said JP Barlow, co-founder and board member of Freedom of the Press Foundation. “SecureDrop is where real news can be slipped quietly under the door.”
Originally created by Swartz in partnership with investigative reporter Kevin Poulsen, SecureDrop is a Python application that accepts messages and documents from the web and encrypts them for secure storage. Each source who uses the platform is assigned a unique codename that lets the source establish a relationship with the news organization without having to reveal her real identity or resort to e-mail.
In addition to installation support, Freedom of the Press Foundation will provide media organizations with instruction on security best practices and long-term technical support. Small media organizations with significant financial need may also apply to Freedom of the Press Foundation for help obtaining hardware. The New Yorker, the first news organization to use the SecureDrop code, through its StrongBox project, will continue to operate its system.
Just a reminder about who Simpson-Bowles and Fix the Debt are. This is from December, 2012. Definitely read this. I note that the last paragraph that I excerpted says that the New America Foundation (a think tank very well connected with Obama) no longer has Pete Peterson listed on their funding page. I haven't studied it to see if another group name is being used, etc. But at the time of the writing of this article, clearly there was funding from Peterson. Who knows if he ditched them or if the fact that he's more well known now has required him to fund things in more interesting ways. There is at least one anonymous funder listed.
Fix The Debt Campaign's Bipartisan Veneer Masks Conservative Backing
Fix The Debt's leadership structure is also politically balanced: Democrat Erskine Bowles and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson (Wyo.) serve as the group's co-chairs, and the two steering committee co-chairs are former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D) and former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.).
But the bipartisanship is only skin deep, according to campaign finance records and non-profit tax filings reviewed by The Huffington Post, which reveal that Fix The Debt's biggest backers and partners are Republicans and Republican-allied.
HuffPost previously reported that members of the campaign's Fiscal Leadership Council currently calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare have benefited from billions of dollars in war contracts, bailout funds and tax subsidies. But the CEOs haven't just been taking -- they've been giving, too, in the form of political donations to many of the lawmakers who keep the spending spigots turned on.
Of the 86 CEOs on the council, all but 10 donated to political candidates in 2012, for a total of more than $3.2 million through Oct. 17. Of that, 79 percent, or $2.5 million, was donated in support of Republicans, while only 21 percent aided Democrats.
[...]
Three of the group's partners -- the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), Moment of Truth and The Can Kicks Back -- rent space from the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank partly funded by Peterson's contributions.
[Emphasis added]
Judd Gregg has been working on this for years. Years. He used to partner with Conrad. Now neither of them are in the Senate anymore but Gregg is still clearly on the case.
More about Fix the Debt (
CEO Council Demands Cuts To Poor, Elderly While Reaping Billions In Government Contracts, Tax Breaks
The companies represented by executives working with the Campaign To Fix The Debt have received trillions in federal war contracts, subsidies and bailouts, as well as specialized tax breaks and loopholes that virtually eliminate the companies' tax bills.
[...]
During the past few days [remember, this is an old article from 2012], CEOs belonging to what the campaign calls its CEO Fiscal Leadership Council -- most visibly, Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein and Honeywell's David Cote -- have barnstormed the media, making the case that the only way to cut the deficit is to severely scale back social safety-net programs -- Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security -- which would disproportionately impact the poor and the elderly.
As part of their push, they are advocating a "territorial tax system" that would exempt their companies' foreign profits from taxation, netting them about $134 billion in tax savings, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies titled "The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks" -- money that could help pay off the federal budget deficit.
[Emphasis added]
Another U.S. Whistleblower Jailed? Investor Jailed After Exposing Corrupt Azerbaijani Oil Deal
In a Democracy Now exclusive, we look at the case of multi-millionaire American businessman and philanthropist Rick Bourke, who blew the whistle on a fraudulent scheme by international criminals to gain control of the oil riches of the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan -- only to end up as the only person sent to jail by federal prosecutors in the massive conspiracy. Since May, Bourke has been held in a federal prison, serving a term of one year and one day for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for alleged knowledge of the bribery that allegedly took place in 1998.
Other investors in the Azerbaijan scheme included former Democratic Senate Majority leader George Mitchell, and major institutions including Columbia University and AIG, but no one else was jailed in the United States. High-ranking former U.S. and British officials from the CIA and MI6 have raised serious concerns about the conviction of Bourke in part because the key witnesses during his trial were allegedly intelligence assets working for the U.S. government. They are not the only ones who question Bourke's guilt. Even the judge in his case has admitted having doubts. At the time of Bourke's sentencing, Shira Scheindlin of the Federal District Court said, "After 10 years of supervising this case, it is still not entirely clear to me whether Mr. Bourke was a victim, or a crook, or a little bit of both." We speak to Bourke's lawyer, the law professor and renowned attorney Michael Tigar, as well as former Washington Post reporter Scott Armstrong. "Why is it that they would go after the guy that blew the whistle on the thievery and bribery, Rick Bourke?" Tigar asks. "Why is it that the Czech citizen and the guy, the ex-patriot, and the German-Swiss lawyer all are walking free; the American citizen, philanthropist, and so on, is sitting in a minimum security jail? Well, investment in the Azerbaijan hydrocarbon industry is now safely in the hands of major petroleum companies. Is that a reason?"
Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson Reach New Heights of Hypocrisy in "Fix the Debt" Ad
The Campaign to Fix the Debt, the $40 million dollar astroturf “supergroup” that CMD exposed on the cover of the Nation magazine, has shifted into high gear in an effort to leverage the debt ceiling crisis into cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
Today, the group launched a six figure TV ad buy that reaches new heights of hypocrisy -- and that is saying a lot.
[...]
This is rich from a group that has been hyping a debt and deficit crisis since its launch in July 2012, even though the deficit has been cut in half in recent years. In January 2013 Fix the Debt steering committee member and former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen admitted that Fix the Debt's strategy was to create an "artificial crisis" to achieve a "grand bargain" on Medicare and Social Security.
Action
Rally Against Mass Surveillance
October 26th, 2013 in Washington, D.C.
Right now the NSA is spying on everyone's personal communications, and they’re operating without any meaningful oversight. Since the Snowden leaks started, more than 571,000 people from all walks of life have signed the StopWatching.us petition telling the U.S. Congress that we want them to rein in the NSA.
On October 26th, the 12th anniversary of the signing of the US Patriot Act, we're taking the next step and holding the largest rally yet against NSA surveillance. We’ll be handing the half-million petitions to Congress to remind them that they work for us -- and we won’t tolerate mass surveillance any longer.
12pm Eastern, Saturday October 26th
Gather at Columbus Circle in front of Union Station, then march to the Capitol Reflecting Pool
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