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I received an e-mail from Representative Chris Van Hollen’s office last week on the subject of H.Con.Res. 362, known to its detractors as the “Iran blockade resolution.”  (The e-mail may be read here.)

A disturbing part of that resolution (in my opinion) is:

[Congress] demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program;…

(emphases added) …which — given this administration’s “ready, fire, aim” methods — still seems to me like “waving a red cape in front of a bull in a china shop.” The gist of Van Hollen’s response to my own e-mail expressing opposition to H.Con.362 is this:

Some have interpreted language in the resolution as authorizing a blockade of Iran. The resolution makes no mention of military pressure-much less a blockade. H. Con. Res. 362 calls for the President to seek the international community’s support for an export ban on refined petroleum, not a blockade. Iran does not export refined petroleum products, it imports them. Therefore an export ban on refined petroleum would be enforced by customs inspectors and export administrators on the territories of the exporting countries, not in the Persian Gulf. This method is already in use by the international community, including the United States to enforce the four existing UN Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran.

Finally, I draw your attention to the final whereas clause of the resolution which states in explicit language, “Whereas nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Iran.” Since a naval blockade is by definition the use of force, the language of the final whereas clause of this resolution renders the prospect of a naval blockade simply out of the question.

First, it is of no consequence whatsoever that Iran imports refined petroleum products — in fact, preventing imports is the traditional purpose of a blockade.  Second, the resolution itself speaks of “stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran.”

Now I’m not alone in suspecting that the language of the resolution is a reckless demand for a naval blockade — whatever its sponsors may have intended, the measures envisioned can not be carried out without inspections and, if necessary, interdictions at sea.  From a July 10, 2008 letter by Lawrence Korb, Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan (ret.), and Lt. General Robert Gard, Jr. (ret.) urging Congress to abandon the resolution:

• The language demanding the President initiate an international effort “prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran,” is of particular concern because despite the protests of its sponsors, we believe that implementation of inspections of this nature could not be accomplished without a blockade or the use of force.

• Immense military resources would be required to implement such inspections of cargo moving through the seas, on the ground and in the air. The international community has shown no willingness to join in such an activity. Without a Security Council Resolution, implementation of these measures could be construed as an act of war.

Read the rest of this entry »

After a partly undeserved win on Monday, the sanity wing of the anti-bailout forces had to absorb a defeat in the Senate this evening, as “TARP 3: This Time with a Cherry On Top” was passed by a 74-25 margin.  Both Maryland senators voted for the bill; “nays” included Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, Jon Tester, and Byron Dorgan.

The bill was folded into a mental health bill, explaining the startling name “Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007″; it included mental health spending, but then got down to business on the bailout.  The FDIC increase is something Galbraith recommended a couple of days ago, and seems like a good idea.  But the bill is otherwise the same old pig, just a more expensive one, because it includes tax cuts for the well-off (AMT rollback) rather than a tax increase on the superrich.  Other features not included were a transaction tax to slow the wheels of reckless commerce a bit, or God forbid a “trickle up” bailout to keep people in their homes.

Possibly the most revealing aspect of the whole thing was when Senator Bernie Sanders’s inconvenient proposal to tax the superrich was squelched by the simple method of declaring it a voice vote — i.e., we’ll never know who voted against it.  Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell must have shared a hearty bipartisan laugh over that one.

This time, the “no blank check, no bailout” phone calls may have been matched by the “do something! do anything!” ones.  A certain eye-rolling derision about yahoos who dared question whether we must indeed do this particular plan crept into commentary by mainstream journalists like Steve Pearlstein and bloggers like Kevin “I swear I’m going to scream” Drum.*  More to the point, a Dow Jones plunge — plus breathless descriptions of it as the “biggest one day point drop ever” — no doubt spooked a lot of people.  So FUD — fear, uncertainty, and doubt — took over, and FUD won.

Now there’s no doubt there really is a credit crunch that is hurting businesses.  But there’s reason to think the “rescue” plan is actually causing the crunch.  Harvard’s Elizabeth Warren, writing at TPM Cafe:

At a Harvard panel discussion yesterday, economics professor Ken Rogoff made an interesting point: The liquidity crisis isn’t real. Or, to restate it: Any liquidity crisis is caused by the promise of a government bailout. Ken said that his many friends in investment banking said that there is plenty of money to invest in financial services, but right now it is “sitting on the sidelines.” Why? Because the financial services industry does not want to pay the terms demanded. As he put it, why do business with Warren Buffett who will negotiate a tough deal, if you believe that the government will ride in soon with cheaper cash?

As Glenn Greenwald points out, you don’t have to look to angry bloggers or tweedy economics professors for skepticism — former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and BB&T bank CEO John Allison share it, too.  Allison said the Treasury Department is

“totally dominated by Wall Street investment bankers,” and “cannot be relied on to objectively assess all the implications of government policy on all financial intermediaries.”

There’s some hope on the House side, where Pete DeFazio, Donna Edwards, Elijah Cummings and others have introduced a “No BAILOUTS Act” counterproposal.  Like the Senate bill, it includes an increase in FDIC deposit insurance, but parts ways after that, proposing a temporary end to the accounting “mark to market” rule (requiring banks to list defaulting mortgages as having zero value), restriction on short selling, and a “net worth certificate” program run by the FDIC which would provide cash to struggling banks in return for “promissory notes to repay the FDIC, counting the amount “borrowed” as capital on their balance sheets. This exchange provides short term capital, with [no] cash outlay.”The scheme was used successfully during the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s. I’m not sure that relaxing accounting standards is as much on point — but if it might save us all $700 billion I admit I’m interested.

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* Mother Jones must be spinning in her grave. Drum has been writing stuff that would embarrass Sarah Palin (at least, once you deprogrammed and educated her.)  E.g., “Paulson now works for the United States Treasury, but his instincts are the same as always: even if for no other reason than to boost his own ego, he’s going to want to drive the hardest bargains possible — and the weaker the opponent, the harder he’ll push.” Sure — right up to where the other guy says “so… where are you heading in 3 months, Hank?” Or: “So sure: we should all hope that after the election we can pass legislation that attacks the roots of the financial crisis. This includes financial market regulatory reforms, macroeconomic stimulus, and broad relief measures. Maybe it even includes a better bailout program if this one isn’t enough. But right now, we have what we have, and complaining about it is like refusing to turn a fire hose on a burning building because you’re afraid the water is flouridated. It’s time to pass the bill.” I thought Drum was supposed to be one of the smart ones. He can hope all he wants — now is the time to force reforms, not later when the crisis has (supposedly) been averted.  That’s when those hard bargaining types Drum goes on about will typically say “scr*w you, buddy.”
UPDATE, 10/2: Gordon Clark: Van Hollen Ignores Constituents, Votes for Failed Wall Street Bailout

Good for them — some of them, anyway.

Some folks like hilzoy at “Obsidian Wings” point out how little most of us know about derivatives, macroeconomics, and high finance, and suggest we should probably be circumspect about demanding any particular outcome to the situation:

It’s a judgment call, and one that requires a fair amount of sophisticated knowledge. I am of course trying to understand it as best I can. But I am not under the illusion that I could arrive at a view I feel real confidence in on my own.

But we citizens aren’t called on to craft the perfect financial solution to the difficulties many large lending institutions find themselves in.  Our task is simpler: to decide whether the proposed solution is fair enough — both overall, and of course to us.  As I replied in comments:

That’s all true, and I’m torn between acknowledging my lack of expertise and my gut sense that I’m being taken for a ride on this.

One rule of thumb I can apply, though, is that when there’s a major, major deal like this happening, I ought to hear screams of pain from both sides of the question. So far, I’m only hearing them from the “Main Street” side. That makes me lean to wanting to extract more from the lowlifes who created and enabled the untransparent mess we’re in — e.g., nationalization, voting shares in bailed out companies, tax surcharges on the very wealthy, etc.

(See also Nell’s comments throughout the thread, esp. here, here, and here.)  If Wall Street really was over a barrel, then the deal voted down on Monday too plainly favored them — and if they weren’t, we didn’t need to be discussing this scale of intervention at all. The other thing that even the most economically illiterate among us could see was that the negotiations were all done behind closed doors, denying most people their usual method of how to judge the outcome: news reports on committee hearings.

Thus, even though I’m not very knowledgeable at all about financial news, I still feel confident that the bailout defeat was richly deserved — and that it was a rebuke not just to the White House, but to the Democratic leadership that helped try to set off a legislative stampede.

Now that Bush and Boehner are plainly incapable of delivering Republican votes for a bill largely of their own design, it just may occur to Democratic leadership that it’s time to go to with a bill that’s attractive to Democrats.  The beauty part?  If the crisis is really as grave as President Bush himself said it was on nationwide primetime TV last week, then he simply won’t be permitted to veto any bailout bill that gets to his desk, no matter how unpalatable the fine print is — Wall Street will need the money that bad.  A better bill could include increased protections for homeowners, real, voting equity in bailed out companies or outright nationalization, a “Millionaire Tax” on the super rich to pay for a good deal of the mess, and an independent new agency instead of the Bush Treasury Department running the financial cleanup process.

Of course, with this Democratic leadership I suspect all of the above is like the old joke “if we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.”  That is, to imagine a deal like the one above, you have to imagine people in a position to make that deal and willing to fight for it.  No one would be more pleasantly surprised than me if Pelosi, Hoyer, Van Hollen et al turn out to be those people.

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EDIT, 9/30: “–both overall, and” added.
UPDATE, 9/30: Kevin Drum scolds, Glenn Greenwald celebrates, and Matthew Yglesias further develops one of my points with a question: Where’s corporate America? Also, here is the roll call (ignore the description, the bailout bill was substituted in for H.R.3997, the one scheduled at the time) and a New York Times graphic sorting the no votes six ways from Christmas.
FURTHER UPDATE, 9/30: For selected articles I’ve bookmarked on all this using delicious.com, click bailout or mortgagecrisis.

Paulson power grab: Sec. 8. Review (35 comments);

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.

Dodd proposal: Sec. 8. Limits on review (7 comments)

a. IN GENERAL. Any determination of the Secretary with regard to any particular troubled asset pursuant to this Act shall be final, and shall not be set aside unless such determination is found to be arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or not in accordance with the law.

b. EXCEPTION. Notwithstanding subsection (a), the terms of a residential mortgage loan that is part of any purchase by the Secretary under this Act shall remain subject to all claims and defenses that would otherwise apply notwithstanding the exercise of authority by the Secretary or the Corporation under this Act.

Via the very interesting PublicMarkup.org project of the Sunlight Foundation. As the headings indicate, the proposed legislation is broken up into sections and opened up to comment by participants. While the heat-to-light ratio is high, there is some good discussion amid the invective — and the sheer amount of invective is yet another clue, if any further ones were needed, that this has touched a nerve.  (In that regard, the facebook page “No Blank Check for Wall Street” is growing steadily, and an allied WetPaint Wiki site is underway as well.)

Among the potentially useful comments at PublicMarkup.Org about Dodd’s counterproposal:

c. RETROACTIVE IMMUNITY Nothing in this act may be construed as providing retro-active immunity for illegal acts by financial institutions whose assets were purchased under Title I, Clause 2, or their subsidiaries, or their employees, contractors, board members, and other associated parties.
posted by lambert strether (Corrente) at September 22, 2008 [...]

I IMPLORE Senator Dodd to look into HOLC, the New Deal approach to an equivalent problem, which left people in their homes, cleaned up the bank’s balance sheets, and made the government a profit by the time it closed down.
posted by lambert strether (Corrente) at September 22, 2008 [...]

The thing which is missing for me is review of the mortgages that are failing for fraudulent origination or just plain excessively permissive underwriting. It seems to me that there should be different treatment for mortgagees and mortgage originators where the mortgage was fraudulent. The act should specify three tiers: fraudulent, excessively permissive, other bad loans. The inspector general should be able to review the loans and make the determinations, and the IRS should help by providing tax return information for the year of mortgage origination.
posted by Frank J at September 23, 2008

I’m no lawyer, and assume “arbitrary” or “capricious” are terms of legal art that are well defined. That said, Dodd’s Section 8a doesn’t seem like very much of a constraint to me.  While other parts of Dodd’s bill require disclosures to Congress, they don’t seem to provide for Congressional co-direction or other provisions for independence from or checks on the executive branch.   I think it’s going to be General Petraeus all over again if Paulson or his successor is questioned on any particular decision.

In general — though I hasten to add I’ve only skimmed it — the Dodd proposal doesn’t seem to provide equity stakes in companies receiving this kind of bailout, and it doesn’t seem to address the key “too big to fail” question that Senator Sanders raises.

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UPDATE, 9/25: Lawmakers: Wall Street rescue accord reached
NOT SO FAST, 9/25: White House Meeting Fails to Yield Bailout Deal

As the $700,000,000,000 — or is it a trillion? — “look Ma, no strings” bailout proposal wends its way through debate in Congress, I can’t help remembering a mirror-image legislative fiasco of three years ago. From Elizabeth Warren’s summary of the Bankruptcy Bill of 2005:

Despite the very public bankruptcies of Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, Polaroid, United Airlines, US Airways and TWA, there are no new provisions to rein in corporations that are paying millions to insiders while they cancel employee health benefits and wipe out retirement plans. Instead, this bill focuses on families, clamping down on people who have been driven to bankruptcy by job losses, by medical problems and by family break ups.

Why?

Because those are the people who owe credit card bills, and the credit card companies are the driving force behind this legislation. Some in the Senate recognize this.

The bill is more than 500 pages long, all in highly technical language. But the overall thrust is pretty clear:

• Make debtors pay more to creditors, both in bankruptcy and after bankruptcy, so that a bankruptcy filing will leave a family with more credit card debt, higher car loans, more owed to their banks and to payday lenders.
• Make it more expensive to file for bankruptcy by driving up lawyers’ fees with new paperwork, new affidavits, and new liability for lawyers, so that the people in the most trouble can’t afford to file.
• Make more hurdles and traps, with deadlines that a judge cannot waive even if someone has a heart attack or an ex-husband who won’t give up a copy of the tax returns, so that more people will get pushed out of bankruptcy with no discharge.
• Make it harder to repay debts in Chapter 13 by increasing the payments necessary to confirm in a repayment plan, so that more people will be pushed out of bankruptcy without ever getting a discharge of debt.

The Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 was among the developments leading Warren Buffett and Paul Krugman to describe the direction of the U.S. economy as one towards a “sharecropper society” or “debt peonage”, respectively.

The Democratic Party will tell you it’s clear who was to blame:

2005: McCain Voted Against Exempting Medical Debt from Bankruptcy Means Test And Against Protecting Debtors’ Homes From Being Seized As A Result Of Medical Debt. During the debate on the 2005 bankruptcy reform bill, McCain opposed a number of amendments to protect individuals forced into debt because of high medical expenses. McCain voted against an amendment that would exempt debtors from the means test if their financial troubles were caused by medical expenses, and he opposed another amendment that would have exempted from the means test individuals who have incurred substantial medical debt on behalf of dependent or non-dependent family members, such as a parent or grandparent, or who have experienced a reduction in employment status while caring for such a family member. In addition, he voted against an amendment to provide a homestead exemption of at least $150,000 of the equity in the property the debtor uses as a primary residence if the bankruptcy stems from medical expenses. [S 256, Vote 16, 3/02/05, Failed 39-58: R 0-54 D 38-4 I 1-0; S 256, Vote 18, 3/02/05, Failed 37-60: R 0-54 D 37-5 I 0-1; S 256, Vote 17, 3/02/05, Failed 39-58: R 0-54 D 38-4 I 1-0]

Links added –revealing a heaping side helping of chutzpah, because one Senator Joseph Biden voted the same way on the medical expenses exemption amendment (vote 16), and abstained on the other two. While he wasn’t an official co-sponsor of the 109th Congress’s S. 256 bill, Biden explained in a letter to the editor of the L.A. Times that the bill was one big wonderful package –“Is this bill perfect? No. But over several congresses it has earned the kind of bipartisan consensus only balanced legislation can achieve” – and had to be passed as such.

Bearing this out, Senator Cornyn (R-TX) actually withdrew an amendment limiting corporate judge-shopping, “out of respect to the managers of this bill who say that amendments to this bill would endanger its ultimate passage,” an uncharacteristically indignant David Broder reported.  Broder continued,”A Cornyn spokesman told me the bill sponsors said his amendment would cost them the support of the two Democratic senators from Delaware.” They wanted, you might say, a “clean bill.”

So what?  Old news.

Maybe so.  But paraphrasing John Cole’s warning here, Chris Dodd, one of the flavors of the week in fighting back against the “Troubled Asset Relief Program,” might be to the financial meltdown what Joe Biden was to the “Fugitive Debtor Act of 2005.” That is, not necessarily the guy with the connections you’d want in a situation like this.  As a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, one might fairly ask how this snuck up on him, too.

I’ll stipulate Dodd and Biden are often very good guys — on FISA, on torture, on executive power — who generally have the national interest at heart.  But on issues like these they may conflate that interest with those of their big contributors and their state’s major businesses, going too far one time, not far enough the next.  For my part, I still favor Senator Bernie Sanders’s checklist for dealing with this bailout power grab:

a) Impose a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue;

b) Ensure that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them; and

c) Require that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the assumption of risk is rewarded when companies’ stock goes up.

2) There must be a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages. [...]

3) Legislation must be passed which undoes the damage caused by excessive deregulation. That means reinstalling the regulatory firewalls that were ripped down in 1999. [...]

4) … If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. We need to determine which companies fall in this category and then break them up.

That may still be too radical for, say, the new facebook group “No Blank Checks for Wall Street“, but (a) it sounds just about exactly right to me, and (b) join up, speak up, and wait a couple of days — it may sound about right to a lot more people by then.

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NOTES: several links via old “slacktivist,” “Pacific Views” and newsrack (”In peonage to Nosferatu“) posts.  Also, by way of having it handy from now on, here’s a helpful graphic comparing government bailouts since 1970.  Those really big circles at the right?  That’s us right now.

Had to admit… no, glad to admit: damn, he’s good. Maybe I’ve missed it before, but Obama gave McCain and the Republican Party a bunch of richly deserved rhetorical punches in the nose I’d begun to think he was too noble to deliver.  From his speech (video here):

“John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time? I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to take a ten percent chance on change. [...]

Now, I don’t believe that Senator McCain doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of Americans.  I just think he doesn’t know.  Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year?  How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans?  How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people’s benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

It’s not because John McCain doesn’t care.  It’s because John McCain doesn’t get it.  [...]

“In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own.  Well it’s time for them to own their failure.

And the long setup about the sacrifices his grandmother and mother made — followed by

I don’t know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine.

My satisfaction wasn’t completely undimmed.  On issues I’ve tracked, he still speaks of now being “the time to protect Social Security for future generations,” when it seems to me that issue is among the least pressing ones he needs to tackle.  While he spoke of Iran, at least he just spoke of “preventing” that country from getting nuclear weapons, which I suppose can be reconciled with our intelligence services’ best estimates that they’re already not trying to build any.  I wish he’d mentioned his opposition to torture as forcefully as Al Gore and Bill Richardson did in earlier speeches at the stadium.

But he remains an advocate of health care reform, and he remains committed to a time frame for getting out of Iraq.  And I’m relieved to see that he gets that he’s in a fight, that he knows what to do in that fight, and that he gets who he’s fighting for and who he’s fighting against.

For all that I focus on the text of his speech, though, it was seeing his family walk out on stage to thunderous applause when it finally sunk for me how far they’ve come, and maybe how far we’ve all come.  He always had my vote against John McCain.  Tonight, he earned back some less grudging support as well.

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SELECTED REACTIONS:

• eRobin (”fact-esque”) found plenty to be skeptical about, but her lede was still “My first impression, which is the one that matters most, was that this was the first time during the convention that I was able to suspend disbelief.    I heard “We are the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy” and I literally cheered.”
• Avedon Carol (”The Sideshow”): “That was pretty much the speech I’ve been saying he should give, and I believe he made some sales with it.”
• Jim Henley (”Unqualified Offerings”): “I thought Obama’s speech was effective politically, and I thought the schmaltzy intro video was even better. Whoever was in charge of picking out the stills and video clips had the eye of a genius. he/she/they did a masterful job of picking figure arrangements and body language that rebutted the “aloof, elitist” caricature.”
• Thomas Knapp, via Henley: “Make no mistake about it: Barack Obama isn’t running against John McCain, he’s running against George W. Bush. Tonight, he finally and firmly stood McCain next to Bush and stuck an “I’m With Stupid” t-shirt on him.”
• Roy Edroso (”alicublog”): “Everyone expected a strong speech from Obama, but its unexpected and best quality was confidence. He sold the package — traditional Democratic values with a dash of new-generation pizzazz — without any trace of doubt or apology, as if the Republicans hadn’t been going ahead of him for months, doing negative advance work.”
  

I’m trying very hard to get with the program and root for the home team and everything. And in fits and starts, the star attractions at the Democratic Convention in Denver are starting to make the case why I should: McCain has morphed into Bush in both politics and campaign style, and we can’t afford four more years of McSame. Fine, I can buy that. And it looks like between Obama’s nomination, Hillary’s motion to finish up by acclaim, and then Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and Joe Biden last night, the punditocracy and blogocracy are agreeing it was a good day for Democrats, party unity, chances in November, etc.

Over at “Obsidian Wings,” publius is very pleased with Kerry in particular, who made a good impression earlier in the day at a panel on the Middle East and then in the convention with a good stemwinder of a speech. For my part, I liked much of Kerry’s speech, especially the parts contrasting Senator McCain and Candidate McCain.  I’ll leave the campaign play by play of it all to others.  As I commented at Obsidian Wings, two things stood out for me.

First, it was unambiguously great to hear a major American politician say, on prime-time TV,

President Obama and Vice President Biden will shut down Guantanamo, respect the Constitution, and make clear once and for all, the United States of America does not torture, not now, not ever.

Second, it was distinctly less great to hear him claim, 30 seconds or so earlier,

Iran is defiantly chasing [nuclear weapons].

Not according to the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran last December, they’re not. As loyal readers know, this claim is unfortunately also baked right in to the Democratic platform, giving the go-ahead for Senators Evan Bayh and Jay Rockefeller to repeat it as well.

For all that I strongly approved of much of what was said last night, I’m very uneasy about and disappointed with high level, allegedly serious Democrats catapulting the propaganda like this.  If they know something the national intelligence community doesn’t, they should say so.  Meanwhile; it’s insidious in much the same way that the baseless claims about Iraqi WMD were insidious.  As another speaker (and another Iraq AUMF “yea” vote) put it last night, albeit with a different target: that’s not change, that’s more of the same.

A few days ago I gave the Democratic platform a somewhat magnanimous “gentleman’s B” regarding civil liberties and respect for the rule of law — long on rhetoric, short on some of the specifics I hoped for, but arguably pointed more or less in the right direction. I now see, via Jonathan Schwarz (”A Tiny Revolution”)*, that the foreign policy sections of the draft Democratic platform (a.k.a. “Renewing America’s Promise“) contain an old familiar whopper (emphases added):

The world must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. That starts with tougher sanctions and aggressive, principled, and direct high-level diplomacy, without preconditions. We will pursue this strengthened diplomacy alongside our European allies, and with no illusions about the Iranian regime. We will present Iran with a clear choice: if you abandon your nuclear weapons program, support for terror, and threats to Israel, you will receive meaningful incentives; so long as you refuse, the United States and the international community will further ratchet up the pressure, with stronger unilateral sanctions; stronger multilateral sanctions inside and outside the U.N. Security Council, and sustained action to isolate the Iranian regime. The Iranian people and the international community must know that it is Iran, not the United States, choosing isolation over cooperation. By going the extra diplomatic mile, while keeping all options on the table, we make it more likely the rest of the world will stand with us to increase pressure on Iran, if diplomacy is failing.

This performs the neat trick of promising no illusions about Iran only to provide one in the very next sentence. The Democratic platform committee notwithstanding, the United States intelligence community published a National Intelligence Estimate just a year ago that famously — well, maybe not famously enough — concluded (emphases added):

We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.

It also quietly resuscitates the ugly “all options on the table” code for “we already got nukes, know what I’m saying?” If you were a Tehran leader, you’d already halted any nuclear weapons work, and you heard yourself being threatened with possible nuclear strikes (all options, remember) for something you’d already stopped doing, what would you do? A) regret stopping, B) restart on the “might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb” principle, C) find ways to credibly threaten or actually cause pain to whatever U.S. personnel or interests might be in the vicinity, D) all of the above.

Sad to say, the “abandons its nuclear weapons program” language was already a feature of the Obama “Blueprint for Change” (p. 29 of 33).** But it used to be the only mention Obama’s platform made of “table” was of coming to one or having a seat at one, not keeping “all options” on it.

The rot runs deep. The newfound belligerence is of a piece with H.Con.Res.362, a resolution demanding that the President increase pressure on Iran to abandon a nonexistent nuclear weapons program among other things by “…prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran” — i.e., a blockade. I.e., an act of war. This rash piece of legislation has been co-sponsored by 265 Representatives at latest count. The tally includes a number of major Democratic figures — Rahm Emanuel, Barney Frank, Steny Hoyer, Chris Van Hollen, and Henry Waxman among them — many no doubt congratulating themselves on reaching across the aisle to nutballs like Issa, Pence, King, Hoekstra, Rohrabacher, or Westmoreland, or kind of across the aisle to Bush Dogs like Heath Shuler or Lincoln Davis.

There’s more bad news tucked in here and there among the platform’s foreign policy pages; for example, the promise of 92,000 more, not fewer troops in our standing armed forces must rank high among them (p. 28, and also no surprise to Obama watchers).

But maybe it’s more worthwhile to highlight a central, innocuous-looking conceit of Obama’s and of many Americans. From page 2 of the “Renewing America’s Promise” platform:

The Democratic Party believes that there is no more important priority than renewing American leadership on the world stage.

Really? Might it not be at least as important to have our facts straight first?

And even when we do (from time to time), might there not be problems so critical — e.g., global warming — that solving them takes priority over who gets to be at the head of the victory parade? Might there not be problems — e.g. nuclear proliferation — that all but require us to forego conventional measures of leadership, by beginning to disarm our own vast nuclear arsenal?

In truth, there may be no more important priority than redefining just what it is we mean by “leadership on the world stage.” Has our global reach in the past decades to, say, Saudi air bases, Afghan fighters, or Iranian coup d’etats helped us or hurt us? Does the 5,000th nuclear warhead make us more or less secure? Do we prefer to lead in aircraft carriers at sea, or liberties preserved at home? Do the American people gain, or does someone else, when United States policy fixates on protecting overseas oil fields and pipelines instead of education and infrastructure?

There may be much that’s good about this draft platform. But the Democratic Party is missing an opportunity to level with itself and the American people by insisting that the United States government must continue to run the world (or at least try to) on its own terms, without regard to the facts, and without regard to the American people’s desire or ability to bear any burden or pay any price our masters in Washington decree.

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* Schwarz credits Don Bacon (”War is a racket”), perhaps via correspondence; I found no specific entry at the site.
** The document is printed two reduced pages per printed page; by its own pagination, the “abandons” cite is on p. 52 of 59.
UPDATE, 8/18: “desire or ability” instead of “manifest inability”

On July 27 I attended a “Listening to America” event in Silver Spring, Maryland. The meeting at Mayorga Coffee Factory was held to gather local consensus positions for the Democratic party platform.

I had been alerted to the event — sponsored by the Democratic Party and Obama presidential campaign — by the people at “GetFISARight.net,” an online group dedicated to opposing and reversing the FISA Amendment Act passed in July. So I went with a fistful of fliers proposing platform planks dedicated to reversing this and other erosions of constitutional rights in the past eight years.

I found no argument at the meeting, and much agreement, so that one of the “GetFISARight” planks could be folded in to a broad set of planks under the rubric “Rebuilding and Reclaiming Our Basic Rights.” In the slightly rearranged and polished result that was circulated to attendees late last week as a report of the Platform Meeting, the passage read:

• It is critical to repeal or substantially amend laws that violate constitutionally guaranteed rights, including the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments law, the Military Commissions Act, related executive orders, and executive signing statements. We must endeavor to replace these with laws that reaffirm our fundamental rights and hold accountable all parties who violate those rights.

Thus, as can be seen by comparison with the original flier version, the “GetFISARight” language (the 2d bullet point in that flier) was reported back in essentially verbatim form, as were other points asserting that health care, education, a living wage, and housing were basic human rights. Similarly, language from a second focus group concerned with energy, global warming, economic and immigration challenges was accurately conveyed back to meeting attendees.

Likewise, I’m pleased to say, some of the gist of this message has emerged in the “Draft 2008 Democratic National Platform” presented by the Platform Drafting Committee chaired by Arizona governor Janet Napolitano. Turning to pages 48-50 of that document, even the phrase “Reclaiming” is used in the title of the relevant section, “Reclaiming our Constitution and Our Liberties,“ showing at very least that great minds think alike.

Read the rest of this entry »

As advertised, I went to a nearby “Listening To America” Democratic platform drafting meeting yesterday. The idea was that “people all across America will hold Platform Meetings in their homes, or in their local churches and even coffee shops, to help build the Democratic Party’s platform for change from the bottom up.”

Signing in to “Listening to America” platform
drafting event
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

As it happened, ours really was in a coffee shop, the Mayorga Coffee Factory in Silver Spring. About twenty people showed up to the area set aside for us and signed in.

I brought a bunch of “Restore Our Rights & Demand Accountability” fliers I’d printed out drafted by the GetFISARight.net organization,* proposing three additions to the Democratic platform:

• Stop government practices that violate the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, privacy, and due process, including warrantless surveillance on Americans, secret evidence in military courts, torture, illegal imprisonment of U.S. citizens and others, and arbitrary racial and religious profiling.
• Repeal or substantially amend laws that violate constitutionally guaranteed rights, including the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments law, the Military Commissions Act, related executive orders, and executive signing statements. Replace these with laws that reaffirm our fundamental rights and hold accountable all parties who violate those rights.
• Restore constitutional rights that the Bush administration has eroded through its lawless theory of unchecked executive power, including dissent, free speech, assembly, habeas corpus, privacy, due process of law, and equal protection.

When the meeting began, it quickly became clear I’d have trouble getting all of those points adopted. The goal, it turned out, was to actually try to draft a single platform statement reflecting a group consensus, rather than perhaps voting on a series of possible statements like those above and just forwarding that to the higher ups in the process. The moderators — two very nice and able people from the policy side of the Obama campaign, Keith Harper and Chris Goldthwait (sp.?) — had in mind that we’d eventually form a couple of clusters around the commonalities that emerged as people introduced themselves and explained what they hoped for from the meeting. While I wasn’t alone in bringing the Constitutional/rule of law/civil liberties concerns to the table, there were plenty of other agendas — housing, health care, women’s reproductive rights, global warming, energy, education, poverty, to name just the ones I was able to jot down.

One woman (A.) noted how in other parts of the world, things like health care, education are considered human rights, and that (I’m paraphrasing) we need to catch up with that. So I suggested that maybe my civil liberties/constitutional erosion concerns and those like education and health care might be joined up under a single rubric of “restoring and expanding rights,” and that’s pretty much what happened.

The meeting broke up into basically one “rights” group and another “problems” group (energy, global warming), and got to work. After a bit of philosophical discussion about whether we were for expanding rights or reclaiming ones that were there all along, we settled on “Rebuilding and Reclaiming Our Basic Rights” as a title, and then A. came up with a pretty good preamble. From my notes:

The Democratic Party has long recognized that the most significant role of government is to protect basic human rights. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his “Four Freedoms” speech, set forth a comprehensive vision of human rights, and Eleanor Roosevelt fought hard to ensure that vision of human rights was incorporated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Success - getfisaright.net point adopted
Originally uploaded by Thomas Nephew

Then Keith, our moderator, said it was time to get specific - “put some meat on the bones.” I figured of the ones I’d brought, I most wanted the second one, because it mentioned accountability (i.e., prosecutions, I explained to one guy before the meeting started).

So I said that I knew I’d said a lot already, but I really hoped that point could be part of our platform recommendations. And people were OK with that; we dictated it to the “raporteur”/Obama organizer (Mona) keeping track on a poster sheet. Hooray! We then went on to “rebuild and reclaim” other basic human rights — living wage, education, health care, housing — with codicils that, for example, reproductive health care was part of the picture for universal health care. When we got back together with the rest of the meeting, no major changes were made by either group to the overall result.

I guess it’s true: sometimes all it takes is showing up. Of course I can’t guarantee that these points will make it to Denver or actually become part of the Democratic party platform. But it’s to the credit of the Obama campaign that they have this much grassroots input to the platform, and I think they’ll have to take note of all of us somehow. At any rate, it felt like a good afternoon’s work to me.

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* An alternative excellent flier focused on the FISA Amendment Act per se. I picked the “PlatformConstitution.pdf” one on the theory that it might help to put the FISA Amendment Act in a broader context in a platform discussion.

UPDATE, 7/29: You, too, can be part of a platform drafting team — follow this link to Netroots Nation’s Democratic Platform and vote on or write your own plank on Civil Liberties!
(UPDATE, 8/11: the full text of the 7/28 Silver Spring consensus statement is here.)