Obsidian Wings

But Wait: There's More!

by hilzoy

In the crush of scandal-related news, there's one story I didn't want to overlook. Via TPM, the LATimes reports:

"Wilkes and his associates made their largest federal campaign donations to House Appropriations Committee member Rep. John T. Doolittle, a Republican from Sacramento, who received $82,000. Cunningham received $76,500, and $60,000 went to Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands). (...)

The Pentagon was slow to pay Wilkes because Army officials in the field preferred Audre's rival system, according to an inspector general's report. So in July 1999, co-conspirator No. 1 faxed Cunningham "talking points" on how to bully a Pentagon manager into releasing more government funds. These documents were included in Cunningham's sentencing hearing.

The memo instructed the lawmaker to demand that the Defense Department official shift money from another program to cover funds designated for ADCS. "We need $10 m[illion] more immediately," Cunningham was to tell the official.

If the official didn't cooperate, Cunningham was to say his next calls would be to two high-ranking Pentagon officials. The script called for Cunningham to add: "This is very important and if you cannot resolve this others will be calling also" — two names in this passage are blacked out in the memo. Despite Cunningham's threats, the Pentagon manager was unmoved, according to grand jury testimony.

A week later, Cunningham and Lewis called a Washington news conference to announce that they had slashed $2 billion in funding for the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, one of the Pentagon's prized programs, citing cost overruns. Both congressmen had been key supporters of the project, and their comments shocked Pentagon officials."

So: Brent Wilkes, otherwise known as "co-conspirator No. 1" in the Duke Cunningham indictment, needs more money. In order to get it, he begins by giving Cunningham explicit instructions, in writing, on how to deal with the Pentagon. When that doesn't work, Cunningham and Lewis, the head of the House Appropriations Committee, threaten to slash funding for fighter jets.

I am delighted to note that federal prosecutors have opened an investigation into Lewis' dealings with lobbyists.

I want to note a few points about this.

Someone Is Watching You (Part N, For N Large)

by hilzoy

Via everyone, USAToday reports:

"The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added. (...)

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information."

Remember: the Republicans are the party of limited government. And clap harder!

The only major telecom company that refused to participate was Qwest:

"According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.

Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial. (...)

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events."

You can find out what services Qwest offers in your area here. If I hadn't just signed a two year contract with Verizon, I would switch immediately, since this is the way I want my telephone company to think about my privacy, and about the law.

I just wish it were as easy to switch my government.

UPDATE: Yikes! No sooner do I post this than I discover another spying story:

"The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.

The inquiry headed by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers’ role in the program."

That's a clever way to ensure that a program never has to undergo legal scrutiny: just deny everyone who might investigate it security clearances! It would be interesting to know on what grounds these lawyers' applications were denied. Is there anything in their backgrounds that would suggest that they are security risks? If not, can the government simply decide not to give one of its own employees clearance for no reason whatsoever?

One lesson of all this: the Bush administration has no confidence in its own legal arguments. If it did, it would not have taken every opportunity to avoid judicial review or oversight. Some conservative bloggers may be convinced that everything they have done is perfectly legal, but apparently the Bush administration does not share their confidence.

Discuss!

by hilzoy

Per Francis' request (in comments), here is Atrios' list of things liberal bloggers agree on:

• "Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration


• Repeal the estate tax repeal


• Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI


• Universal health care (obviously the devil is in the details on this one)


• Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation


• Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice. On the last one there's probably some disagreement around the edges (parental notification, for example), but otherwise.


• Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code


• Kill faith-based funding. Certainly kill federal funding of anything that engages in religious discrimination.


• Reduce corporate giveaways


• Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan


• Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions.


• Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards "more decriminalization" of drugs, though the details complicated there too.


• Imprison Jeff Goldstein for crimes against humanity for his neverending stupidity


• Paper ballots


• Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. Obiously details matter.


• Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes.

I'm sure I could think of a few more things. I left off foreign policy because I find that most people who write about it imagine they're playing the game of Risk. It's nice to have nice bumpersticker doctrines which are ultimately meaningless, but basically "put grownups in charge" is my prescription. Kick the petulant children out.

...adding a few more things which would be obvious if we weren't living in the Grand and Glorious Age of Bush:

• Torture is bad
• Imprisoning citizens without charges is bad
• Playing Calvinball with the Geneva Conventions and treaties generally is bad
• Imprisoning anyone indefinitely without charges is bad
• Stating that the president can break any law he wants any time "just because" is bad

...oh, and I meant to include:

• Marriage rights for all, which includes "gay marriage" and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens."

Leaving aside the Jeff Goldstein part. I agree with all of these. Do you? Discuss.

Evading Oversight

by hilzoy

Via Kevin Drum and the Carpetbagger Report, an article in the WSJ (sorry, subscription wall):

"The Senate last week approved $109 billion in additional spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including $1.5 billion in added Iraq reconstruction money. The administration has spent $20.9 billion to reconstruct Iraq's infrastructure and modernize its oil industry, but the effort hasn't restored the country's electricity output, water supply or sewage capabilities to prewar levels.

A behind-the-scenes battle among legislators has made a crucial distinction between the new reconstruction money and that already spent: The new funds won't be overseen by the government watchdog charged with curbing the mismanagement that has overshadowed the reconstruction.

The administration's main vehicle for rebuilding Iraq has, in the past, been designated "Relief and Reconstruction" funds, which by law are overseen by a special inspector general, Stuart Bowen. The new money going toward similar reconstruction goals will be classified as coming from "Foreign Operations" accounts. The State Department is responsible for spending both pools of money.

By law, Mr. Bowen can oversee only relief and reconstruction funds. Because the new money technically comes from a different source, Mr. Bowen, who has 55 auditors on the ground in Iraq, will be barred from overseeing how the new money is spent. Instead, the funds will be overseen by the State Department's inspector general office, which has a much smaller staff in Iraq and warned in testimony to Congress in the fall that it lacked the resources to continue oversight activities in Iraq.

Exactly how and why the change was made isn't clear. Republican Appropriations Committee aides say legislators shifted the Iraq money to the foreign operations accounts at the request of the White House, not to curb oversight. They say administration officials sought the change to streamline accounting so the Iraq reconstruction would be incorporated into the State Department's operations and budget rather than kept in stand-alone accounts. (...)

A fight in Congress over the money flared in the final hours before the spending bill was approved, when a group of senators wrote an amendment that would have given Mr. Bowen oversight responsibility for the new money.

What happened next is a matter of dispute. The measure's sponsors say they asked Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, to allow the measure to be brought to a vote but were turned down. Mr. Cochran denies receiving such a request and says the amendment's sponsors could have formally introduced the measure but chose not to, according to his spokeswoman, Margaret Wicker.

The bill passed the Senate without the amendment. As the House version of the spending bill makes the State Department inspector general responsible for the new money, it is likely the funds ultimately will be treated that way. "This is nothing more than a transparent attempt to shut down the only effective oversight of this massive reconstruction program which has been plagued by mismanagement and fraud," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vermont)."

Some background on Bowen (from the WSJ again):

"Mr. Bowen is a Texas lawyer who parlayed a job on George W. Bush's first gubernatorial campaign into senior posts in Austin and Washington. He began the Iraq war lobbying for an American contractor seeking tens of millions of dollars in reconstruction work. Last October, California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman singled him out in a report on "The Politicization of Inspectors General" in the Bush administration. The report suggested that such auditors wouldn't be "independent and objective."

Instead, Mr. Bowen has become one of the most prominent and credible critics of how the administration has handled the occupation of Iraq. In a series of blistering public reports, he has detailed systemic management failings, lax or nonexistent oversight, and apparent fraud and embezzlement on the part of the U.S. officials charged with administering the rebuilding efforts."

So, to recap: Bush appoints someone from his campaign to an important job: auditing Iraq reconstruction funds. That person turns out to be surprisingly independent, and discovers a lot of fraud. I discussed one of his reports earlier; here's a summary of what it found:

"A new audit of American financial practices in Iraq has uncovered irregularities including millions of reconstruction dollars stuffed casually into footlockers and filing cabinets, an American soldier in the Philippines who gambled away cash belonging to Iraq, and three Iraqis who plunged to their deaths in a rebuilt hospital elevator that had been improperly certified as safe."

Our government's response? Recategorize Iraqi reconstruction funds so that he doesn't get to audit them anymore. Opponents try to introduce an amendment that would prevent this; it vanishes under suspicious circumstances. Result: no more of those inconvenient reports about what this administration is doing with our money.

Which brings us to the question of investigations.

In A Normal Administration, This Would Be A Major Scandal...

by hilzoy

Via Atrios, from the Dallas Business Journal:

"Once the color barrier has been broken, minority contractors seeking government work may need to overcome the Bush barrier.

That's the message U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson seemed to send during an April 28 talk in Dallas. (...)

After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe.""

This isn't just about vindictiveness; it's about values. When you run an agency, you are supposed to try to get the best possible work done. When you import some criterion other than merit into the decision-making process, you are deciding not to hire the best person for the job. There are times when that makes sense. Whether or not you agree with the idea of, say, giving extra weight to applications from businesses that hire people from desperately poor neighborhoods, it's clear what the idea is: you want to find good people to do the job, but you also want to encourage hiring in neighborhoods where employment is scarce and opportunities to earn a legal living are few, and so you give a boost to employers who hire in those neighborhoods. This is a matter of taking two legitimate goals into account; and while one can argue that one or another program is going about this in the wrong way or striking the wrong balance, it's not, in principle, a nutty thing to do.

Patronage is different. When you give jobs to your supporters, you're not just balancing one legitimate social goal against another. Rewarding people who hold particular views is not an appropriate goal for our government. And making a person's political views a prerequisite for getting government contracts is just odious. When someone does this, they are, essentially, saying that they have no regard for citizens' right to hold whatever views they want without forfeiting their right to compete fairly for government contracts; and that they care less about whether the work they're contracting for is done well than about keeping their political machine running.

This is exactly the sort of thinking that put Michael "Heckuva job!" Brown in charge of an agency he was manifestly unqualified to run. And it's just wrong, no matter who does it.

***

UPDATE: ThinkProgress notes that this is against the law:

"Government business shall be conducted in a manner above reproach and, except as authorized by statute or regulation, with complete impartiality and with preferential treatment for none. Transactions relating to the expenditure of public funds require the highest degree of public trust and an impeccable standard of conduct."

Circumstances in which it's OK to exclude a contractor:

"(b) Exclusion of particular source; restriction of solicitation to small business concerns

(1) An executive agency may provide for the procurement of property or services covered by this section using competitive procedures but excluding a particular source in order to establish or maintain any alternative source or sources of supply for that property or service if the agency head determines that to do so—

(A) would increase or maintain competition and would likely result in reduced overall costs for such procurement, or for any anticipated procurement, of such property or services;

(B) would be in the interest of national defense in having a facility (or a producer, manufacturer, or other supplier) available for furnishing the property or service in case of a national emergency or industrial mobilization;

(C) would be in the interest of national defense in establishing or maintaining an essential engineering, research, or development capability to be provided by an educational or other nonprofit institution or a federally funded research and development center;

(D) would ensure the continuous availability of a reliable source of supply of such property or service;

(E) would satisfy projected needs for such property or service determined on the basis of a history of high demand for the property or service; or

(F) in the case of medical supplies, safety supplies, or emergency supplies, would satisfy a critical need for such supplies."

"See! I can do it!"

by hilzoy

Via Mark Kleiman, a horrible story:

"Jared Guinther is 18. Tall and lanky, he will graduate from high school in June. Girls think he's cute, until they try to talk to him and he stammers or just stands there -- silent.

Diagnosed with autism at age 3, Jared is polite but won't talk to people unless they address him first. It's hard for him to make friends. He lives in his own private world.

Jared didn't know there was a war raging in Iraq until his parents told him last fall -- shortly after a military recruiter stopped him outside a Portland strip mall and complimented his black Converse All-Stars.

"When Jared first started talking about joining the Army, I thought, `Well, that isn't going to happen,"' said Paul Guinther, Jared's father. "I told my wife not to worry about it. They're not going to take anybody in the service who's autistic."

But they did. Last month, Jared came home with papers showing that he had not only enlisted, but signed up for the Army's most dangerous job: cavalry scout. He is scheduled to leave for basic training Aug. 16.

Officials are now investigating whether recruiters at the U.S. Army Recruiting Station in southeast Portland improperly concealed Jared's disability, which should have made him ineligible for service."

More below the fold.

Sneaky, Sneaky

by hilzoy

Via firedoglake: the Washington Post reports that the Republicans are trying to raise the debt ceiling again:

"A $2.7 trillion budget plan pending before the House would raise the federal debt ceiling to nearly $10 trillion, less than two months after Congress last raised the federal government's borrowing limit.

The provision -- buried on page 121 of the 151-page budget blueprint -- serves as a backdrop to congressional action this week. House leaders hope to try once again to pass a budget plan for fiscal 2007, a month after a revolt by House Republican moderates and Appropriations Committee members forced leaders to pull the plan.

Leaders also hope to pass a package of tax-cut extensions that would cost the Treasury $70 billion over the next five years. They would then turn Thursday to a $513 billion defense policy bill that would block President Bush's request to raise health-care fees and co-payments for service members and their families. (...)

With passage of the budget, the House will have raised the federal borrowing limit by an additional $653 billion, to $9.62 trillion. It would be the fifth debt-ceiling increase in recent years, after boosts of $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003, $800 billion in 2004 and $653 billion in March. When Bush took office, the statutory borrowing limit stood at $5.95 trillion."

I like this part: "buried on page 121 of the 151-page budget blueprint." I am weird enough to actually like reading budget documents, but even I don't always make it to page 121. Meanwhile, the Republicans will get to go on pretending to care about reducing the deficit by cutting the odd program that benefits people whose paychecks are barely enough to survive on, while cutting taxes that mainly benefit millionaires and hiding their massive increases in the federal debt ceiling on page 121 of a budget document.

The Democrats in Congress have a real plan to cut the deficit: PAYGO. All the Republicans have is subterfuge and empty gestures.

(Note: does anyone think that last sentence is excessively partisan or unfair? I thought before I wrote it, and as a description of Congressional Republicans on deficit reduction, I think it's accurate. If anyone wants to try to change my mind, though, feel free.)

Touché!

by hilzoy

Via TAPPED, a DCCC press release:

"Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Congressman Rahm Emanuel, today released the following statement on President Bush’s “best moment in office”:

“Five years after President Bush said he would find Osama bin Laden, we’re all glad to hear that all he’s caught is an apparently harmless fish,” said Congressman Rahm Emanuel, Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee."

Sad but true.

Roll Over, Alexis

by hilzoy

Via firedoglake, what Bush is really thinking about these days: his legacy:

"President Bush had dinner last month on the Stanford University campus at the home of George P. Shultz, who was President Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, and the topic of conversation was not, as might be expected, the war in Iraq. Instead, guests said, Mr. Bush spent the evening focused on how he could create a public policy center with his presidential library after he leaves office in 2009. (...)

So far Mr. Bush has said little publicly about his plans, although he told Bob Schieffer of CBS News in an interview in January that he wanted to create a policy center focused on the spread of democracy and Alexis de Tocqueville's vision of America as a nation made better by its "associations," or community groups.

"I would like to leave behind a legacy or a think tank, a place for people to talk about freedom and liberty, and the de Tocqueville model, what de Tocqueville saw in America," Mr. Bush told Mr. Schieffer. "I would like for there to be a place where young scholars come and write and think and articulate and opine and teach.""

News flash, Mr. President: there are already lots of places where young scholars come and write and think and articulate and opine and teach. We call them "universities". You've been to several, although we understand you might not remember much from your time there.

But seriously: who would have thought that George W. Bush was a fan of de Tocqueville? Nothing about him suggests a special respect for those free and independent American citizens, jealously guarding their right to participate fully in public life, that de Tocqueville so admires. His conduct does not reveal anything like de Tocqueville's concern for the separation of powers, his wariness of excessively concentrated power, or his fear that Americans might one day be rendered servile and acquiesce in their own enslavement.

In fact, the idea of Bush as an admirer of de Tocqueville is so odd that it occurred to me that he might be confusing de Tocqueville with someone else entirely. So, as a public service, I present a few excerpts from de Tocqueville for Bush to reflect on.

Corruption Watch

by hilzoy

Via TPMMuckraker: Rep. Bob Ney's ex-chief of staff is pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and to violating the one-year ban on lobbying. The 'criminal information' documents on his plea claim that he and others provided "things of value to public officials to induce and to ensure favorable official action and other assistance to their clients when needed", and specify one "Representative #1", whose chief of staff Volz was, as having performed official actions after receiving those "things of value".

As Josh Marshall says, bad news for Ney. But good news for us, not only because it's always good news when the law catches up with corrupt officials, but also because it's important to show that selling your public service for expensive golf trips can land you in jail.

And speaking of expensive golf trips, now might be a good time to mention this story, which came out on Saturday:

"Prosecutors have e-mails showing Rep. Tom DeLay's office knew lobbyist Jack Abramoff had arranged the financing for the GOP leader's controversial European golfing trip in 2000 and was concerned "if someone starts asking questions."

House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting free trips from lobbyists. DeLay, R-Texas, reported to Congress that a Republican advocacy group had paid for the spring 2000 trip that DeLay, his wife and top aides took to Scotland and England.

The e-mails obtained by The Associated Press show DeLay's staff asked Abramoff -- not the advocacy group -- to account for the costs that had to be legally disclosed on congressional travel forms. DeLay's office was worried the group being cited as paying the costs might not even know about them, the e-mails state.

Abramoff's team sought to low-ball the cost estimates and DeLay's office ultimately reported to Congress a total that was a few thousand dollars lower than the one the lobbyist provided, the documents show.

"We should give them the most minimal numbers for cost of the hotel (do not include golf), food and plays," Abramoff wrote two assistants at his Preston Gates lobbying firm in an e-mail from June 29, 2000. One of those assistants, Susan Ralston, now works for top White House adviser Karl Rove. (...)

Federal prosecutors have secured the cooperation of Abramoff and Rudy, and are investigating whether DeLay filed false public reports to disguise the source and size of political donations, travel and other gifts he received from special interests. Several witnesses have been questioned in recent months about the Scotland trip e-mails. (...)

Ralston wrote she had a follow-up conversation with DeLay's office. Hirschmann wanted "a name" of someone at the GOP group who would attest to paying for the trip and was concerned whether the center's executive director, Amy Ridenour, knew about the costs.

"She (Hirschmann) just wants to make sure that if someone starts asking questions that Amy Ridenour knows about these s," Ralston wrote."

Tom DeLay is going down. It couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

And yes, I feel the same way about Rep. William Jefferson:

"A Louisville man pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court to bribing Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) with more than $400,000 in payments, company stock and a share of the profits to promote the Kentucky firm's high-tech business ventures in Africa."

If he is corrupt, he should go to jail, and shame on him.