Comcast to purchase Time Warner for $45 billion

This is from CNN.com:

Comcast and Time Warner Cable could face a big, uphill battle against regulators in order to win approval for their $45 billion merger.

The combined company would bring cable or Internet service to about 30% of American subscribers and serve 19 of the country's 20 largest metropolitan regions. That would give Comcast, which is already the nation's largest TV, Internet and home phone provider, an even more sizable lead on its rivals.

Comcast (CMCSA, Fortune 500) and Time Warner Cable (TWC, Fortune 500) will have to gain approval from two regulators: both the Federal Communications Commission and either the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission. The agencies have not yet decided which will take up the case. (The FTC typically scrutinizes cable mergers but the DOJ usually handles media deals, including Comcast's 2010 purchase of NBCUniversal from GE (GE, Fortune 500).)

The companies said in a statement the deal will be "pro-competitive" and "strongly in the public interest." For instance, Comcast noted that it has higher broadband Internet speeds than Time Warner Cable, more high-definition offerings, and the deal will help make future broadband and digital TV deployment cheaper for the combined company.

 So Comcast is trying to purchase Time Warner for $45 billion, in a deal that would combine two of the biggest cable companies in the United States.  This would make Comcast the dominant provider for cable television, and internet service, reaching out to around one in three Americans.  According to Tim Hanlon, founder of Vertere Group, a media and technology investment advisory firm, '"This isn't about TV anymore -- it's about controlling a fatter, more intelligent pipe for multiple services that emanate from it," including broadband Internet, phone and home security monitoring.'

The control here for Comcast is about broadband internet.  Internet sites such as Hulu and Netflix online through your TV and computer.  However, downloading these movies and TV episodes requires a fast internet connection--certainly faster than your old modem, or even DSL.  Otherwise, when you play an online movie, it will pause at time, as the movie is being downloaded.  So it takes a lot of bandwidth to download and play such online content.  By gaining more control over cable and broadband internet, Comcast can certainly charge higher fees to their customers, who use download online content, and possibly even block internet sites, such as Hulu and Netflix, from Comcast broadband internet customers.  According to Michael Hiltzik: 

 Comcast CEO Brian Roberts tried to finesse the issue Thursday by arguing that the deal "does not reduce competition in any market or in any way," thereby acknowledging the paramount flaw in the nationwide cable market and trying to depict it as a virtue.

But the ramifications of the cable monopoly go beyond mere access to channels on your set-top box. As we observed back in August, the more damaging consequence of the cable monopoly is in broadband Internet access, where the power of the cable firms' monopolies is magnified by the lack of practical alternatives to their Internet services.

Yes, you can buy DSL Internet connectivity from your local telephone company. In some places, you can buy fiber-optic connectivity, also from a phone company (Verizon or AT&T). But DSL service is typically much slower than cable service and is geographically constrained even within service districts. (The further you are from a DSL connection box, or "central office," the crummier your signal.).

Verizon has ended its rollout of its FiOS fiber service; if your neighborhood doesn't have it now, it's not getting it. AT&T says it's still rolling out its Uverse fiber service, but hardly at a light-speed pace.

The harvest of this domination of broadband connectivity by cable monopolies is easy to see: In general, the U.S. has the lowest connection speeds and the highest prices in the developed world. The New America Foundation serveyed the world in 2012 to determine what customers could get for the equivalent of $35 a month. In Hong Kong, they could download from the Internet at 500 megabits per second (a half a gigabit); in Tokyo 200 Mbps; in Seoul, Paris, Bucharest (Romania) and Berlin 100. In Los Angeles, 10. Los Angeles is a Time Warner Cable monopoly.

The constraint here isn't technological, but commercial. Our fat and secure cable monopolies simply don't feel competitive pressure to provide customers with the fastest speeds at reasonable, affordable rates. When they do get pressured, they respond.

So in the end, consumers will end up with even crappier cable and broadband internet services from Comcast, while also paying higher rates.  

Bush pushes Senate to OK 180 nominees

This MSNBC story really shows the complete gridlock that has taken place between an arrogant Bush White House, and the Democratic Congress. From MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - President Bush vented frustration anew Saturday over the Senate's failure to vote on more than 180 of his nominations, including more than two dozen to the federal bench.

"Some have been waiting for more than a year," said Bush, who invited many of the nominees to the White House for an event on Thursday. "As a result, careers have been put on hold, families have been placed in limbo and our government has been deprived of the service of these fine nominees."

Democrats counter that Bush is equally responsible for the stalemate between the White House and Capitol Hill over presidential nominees to lead government agencies, preside over U.S. courts and serve on commissions. They say that in some cases, Bush has nominated people who have no chance of being approved by a Democratic-led Congress.

The Democrats in Congress, and the Senate, should not approve of any Bush-appointed nomination. It is now February 2008. Bush will be gone in less than 10 months. President Bush has shown himself to be a right-wing extremist, running a disaster of a right-wing administration that has screwed everything it has touched. The last thing we would need is for this incompetent of a president to continue stacking these government positions with his ideologues. These positions should remain unfilled until the next president takes office.

Bush sends $3.1 trillion budget to Congress

I am just speechless here. From MSNBC News:

WASHINGTON - President Bush sent the nation's first-ever $3 trillion budget proposal to Congress on Monday, contending that the spending blueprint will fulfill his chief responsibility to keep America safe.

The $3.1 trillion proposed budget projects sizable increases in national security but forces the rest of government to pinch pennies. It seeks $196 billion in savings over five years in the government's giant health care programs - Medicare and Medicaid.

But even with those restraints, the budget projects the deficits will soar to near-record levels of $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009, driven higher in part by efforts to revive the sagging economy with a $145 billion stimulus package.

Bush called the document, which protects his signature tax cuts, "a good, solid budget" But Democrats, and even a top Republican, attacked the plan for using budgetary gimmicks to claim the budget can return to balance in 2012, three years after Bush leaves office.

President Bush has sent a $3.1 trillion dollar gimmicky budget that is going to project deficits to soar to over $400 billion, just after he leaves office. It is really Bush governing at his finest--leave wreckage of his failed presidency to his successor. McClatchy News has more information on this $400 billion deficit in Bush's budget:

WASHINGTON — President Bush took office in 2001 with a budget surplus, but his final budget proposal envisions federal deficits of more than $400 billion a year for the next two years. As big as those numbers are, experts think that the administration is lowballing the deficits, and they put little stock in Bush's vow to balance the budget by 2012.

"I think the promise that it will be balanced by 2012 is ridiculous," said Chris Edwards, the director of tax policy for the Cato Institute, a libertarian policy research group.

Bush's estimates of a $410 billion deficit this fiscal year and $407 billion for fiscal 2009, budget experts said, rely on very low assumptions of war costs, unrealistic estimates on tax collection and spending cuts that won't sell politically, regardless of which party is in charge of Congress.

"No sensible analyst takes this (budget) estimate seriously," said Robert Greenstein, the executive director of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Edwards pointed to $70 billion in emergency Iraq and Afghanistan war costs budgeted for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1, a figure he called "totally phony" because it could easily end up closer to $200 billion, as it has in recent years.

This is the major point of Bush's budget deficit--the $400-plus billion deficit is based on low assumptions of the Iraq war costs. The Bush administration is budgeting $70 billion in emergency spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But that is not enough to fund the war. For 2007, the Bush administration needed to spend $196.4 billion in funding the Iraq war. We are seeing the same shadow games of this Bush administration pushing the costs of these wars out of the budget, then coming back to Congress asking for more emergency spending. And if Congress does not approve of the extra Bush emergency spending, well, Congress is not supporting the troops, and the U.S. will lose Iraq to the terrorists. This has been going on since the Bush administration invaded Iraq. And now we are looking at the total cost for this Bush failed war in Iraq to be approaching $2.4 trillion dollars over the next decade.

Of course, back in 2003, the Bush administration was estimating the costs of the Iraq war to be around $50 billion.

And you know what is even more crazy? The Bush administration actually admits that they've completely low-balled their $70 billion Iraq war estimate, and they admit that funding the war will cost even more than what they've budgeted for. Consider this from the MSNBC News story:

White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters that the war effort in 2009 would "certainly" cost more than the $70 billion included in the budget.

So I guess the Bush administration has admitted that they are going to lie this year about how much they are going to spend on the Iraq war. What else is new?

How about this little New York Times detail on military spending in the Bush budget:

The spending package for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 included no big surprises, especially since its key elements had already been reported in detail in recent days. The Pentagon’s proposed budget, for instance, is $515.4 billion, an increase of 7.5 percent over this year, meaning that military spending would be the highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II. And the White House’s plans for trimming Medicare and Medicaid have also been previewed.

In other words, we're basically spending the about the same amount of inflation-adjusted dollars today with the military, as we were since the Second World War. And I'm guessing that this $515 billion Pentagon budget doesn't even include the $200 billion emergency supplemental spending needed to continue the Iraq war. So total Pentagon spending will actually be around $700 billion dollars--not $515 billion as projected by the Bush administration.

What do you expect from a warmonger?

There is certainly more in this Bush disaster of a budget. While the Bush administration is pushing for more money to spend on their wars, they are also playing political games with the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) According to McClatchy News:

Although Bush offers a one-year patch to keep the creeping alternative minimum tax from ensnaring millions of taxpayers, his budget would allow the tax to hit 38 million Americans by 2012. That would be tantamount to a huge tax increase.

Late last year, Congress approved a one-year patch for the AMT, a tax that must be calculated in parallel to standard income taxes. This patch wasn't paid for, however, and so it added to the federal deficit, which will grow by roughly $150 billion once Congress passes an economic stimulus later this month.

President Bush is going to keep the one-year AMT patch for his term, but allow it to slowly expire during his successor's term. This keeps the Bush administration from admitting that they had to raise taxes to cover the huge deficits, but then force a potential Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama administration to force a painful tax increase on the American people in order restore some fiscal insanity to the federal government. If a tax increase is passed, the Republican Party will wail about how the Democrats are nothing more than "tax and spend liberals," who are destroying the American middle class. And the next Republican presidential candidate--can you say Jeb Bush--will vow to stimulate the economy by....Cutting taxes! Of course, this AMT patch that Congress provided was never paid for, thus adding to the federal debt. And you can bet that George W. Bush would love this AMT patch because it will never be paid for as well--just add it to the federal debt!

Now how about we get into some spending cuts. From McClatchy News:

To balance the budget later, Bush envisions sharp spending cuts in popular programs for the elderly and a spending freeze on everything the government isn't required to pay for.

Few expect Congress to make deep cuts in such programs as energy assistance to the poor, disease control and space exploration. And experts don't see Congress agreeing to Bush's suggestion to reduce Medicare spending by $556 billion over the next 10 years — just as politically active baby boomers — Americans born between 1946 and 1964 — begin retiring en masse after 2010.

Once war costs and revenue lost to AMT patches are factored in, annual federal deficits are likely to exceed $500 billion, forcing the U.S. government to issue more debt.

The New York Times has some more details on Bush's cutting of Medicare and Medicaid budgets:

Mr. Bush said his budget would slow “the unsustainable growth of entitlement spending” with proposed savings of $208 billion over five years. This includes savings of $178 billion in Medicare, $17 billion in Medicaid and $6 billion in student aid programs. The president proposes to raise $2 billion from new enrollment fees and higher pharmacy co-payments for certain veterans receiving health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

All I can think of here is that this latest Bush budget is a frickin' disaster. It is a warmongering budget of spending so much more of our treasure on guns, the defense industry, Haliburton no-bid contracts, and Big Oil excessive profits, while still destroying the social safety net for this nation's citizens. Will the Democrats in Congress stand up and say no to this latest Bush disaster? I doubt it. Nothing will really be done until after the November presidential elections. But even then, I wonder if it will be too late to fix this nation's problems even with a Democratic president stepping into the Oval Office in January, 2009.

Fire erupts in Eisenhower Executive Office Building

This is off MSNBC News:

WASHINGTON - Thick black smoke billowed from a fire Wednesday on the White House compound in the Executive Office Building.

The blaze appeared to be located near the ceremonial office of Vice President Dick Cheney on the second floor of the building. The vice president was across the street in his office in the West Wing of the White House.

A uniformed Secret Service officer stands on the White House grounds in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2007, as smoke pours out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Secret Service spokesman Darrin Blackford said the Old Executive Office building was evacuated as a precaution. District of Columbia firefighters poured water on the blaze and moved furniture from the building onto a balcony.

The Executive Office Building houses the Office of Management and Budget and staff of the National Security Council and other agencies.

My apologies, but the cynic in me has got to ask this one question. I wonder how many more secret documents, torture memos, waterboarding videotapes, Bush-approved U.S. attorney termination papers, failed Iraqi intelligence notes, and White House visitor logs that President Bush and Vice President Cheney wanted to conveniently destroy? All that paper could make some nice kindling in a utility closet....

The big comment I have is all those beautiful antiques, paintings, and historic furniture that are being destroyed by the fire and water damage.

State Department to use lasers to blind Iraqi motorists

I don't really know how to comment on this boondoggle of a story. From ABC News:

The State Department plans to equip its motorcade security details in Iraq with lasers to "dazzle" suspect motorists and helmet cameras to record it all.

U.S. officials also say the State Department plans to double the number of its diplomatic security agents to 90 so that one of its agents can accompany every convoy guarded by Blackwater and other private security contractors.

Security experts say the lasers, emitting a green beam and already in use at some U.S. military checkpoints in Baghdad, overload the optic nerve but, if used from at least 10 feet away, will not cause any permanent eye damage.

Lasers designed to cause permanent blindness have been banned by international law since 1995.

The lasers being sent to Iraq, experts say, are intended only to dazzle or temporarily blind vehicle drivers and alert them to stop.

So, the State Department wants to equip their security guards with these lasers in order to blind Iraqi motorists so they can stop--or crash! The State Department wants to blind Iraqi motorists so they can stop. Who is the madman in the State Department that thought up this insane idea?

Let's continue on with this story:

"I've had them tested on me, and while it is certainly uncomfortable, like a flashbulb going off in front of your face, there is no permanent damage whatsoever," said Tony Diebler, a former State Department security official who now works at Cohort, International, the company providing the lasers and helmet cameras to the State Department.

The lasers, with a pistol grip, are about the size of a three-battery flashlight. They sell for around $9,000 each.

Laser_dazzler The State Department has ordered 26 of the lasers for full field testing in Iraq.

"They are proving great so far, and State wants them like yesterday," Diebler said.

You have got to love the marketing here. Tony Diebler was a former State Department security official, who then went to work for Cohort International--which is building these $9,000 lasers. Diebler goes back to the State Department to sell these lasers, and State is all happy to buy these things--we've got back-scratching going on between Cohert and State. And let's not forget that Diebler said these lasers are perfectly safe--this guy is a frickin' salesman who will say anything to get the government to buy Cohort's laser products. At $9,000 a piece. I just know that the more State and the U.S. military uses these lasers against the Iraqi motorists, the greater the chance that you are going to see a major accident, as a motorist is blinded and unable to control their car.

Then again, what do you expect from a Bush administration that is more than happy to reward their cronies with wasted taxpayer dollars?

Veterans constitute a quarter of America's homeless

Chart showing state-by-state breakdown on the number of homeless veterans in the U.S. From MSNBC News.

I really don't have any words to express the disgust of this MSNBC story:

WASHINGTON - Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday.

And homelessness is not just a problem among middle-age and elderly veterans. Younger veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are trickling into shelters and soup kitchens seeking services, treatment or help with finding a job.

The Veterans Affairs Department has identified 1,500 homeless veterans from the current wars and says 400 of them have participated in its programs specifically targeting homelessness.

The Alliance to End Homelessness, a public education nonprofit, based the findings of its report on numbers from Veterans Affairs and the Census Bureau. 2005 data estimated that 194,254 homeless people out of 744,313 on any given night were veterans.

In comparison, the VA says that 20 years ago, the estimated number of veterans who were homeless on any given night was 250,000.

Some advocates say such an early presence of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan at shelters does not bode well for the future. It took roughly a decade for the lives of Vietnam veterans to unravel to the point that they started showing up among the homeless. Advocates worry that intense and repeated deployments leave newer veterans particularly vulnerable.

“We’re going to be having a tsunami of them eventually because the mental health toll from this war is enormous,” said Daniel Tooth, director of veterans affairs for Lancaster County, Pa.

If you thought that the problems of Vietnam War veterans was bad enough, just wait until this group of Iraq war vets start demanding medical, psychological, housing, and job placement services from a government that has been bankrupt due to tax cuts given to the uber-rich, and a failed, imperialistic war in Iraq. Thank you, King George The Deciderer, for your incompetence in screwing up this country so badly.

Of course, it gets worst. Continuing further in the MSNBC story:

After being discharged from the military, Jason Kelley, 23, of Tomahawk, Wis., who served in Iraq with the Wisconsin National Guard, took a bus to Los Angeles looking for better job prospects and a new life.

Kelley said he couldn’t find a job because he didn’t have an apartment, and he couldn’t get an apartment because he didn’t have a job. He stayed in a $300-a-week motel until his money ran out, then moved into a shelter run by the group U.S. VETS in Inglewood, Calif. He’s since been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, he said.

“The only training I have is infantry training, and there’s not really a need for that in the civilian world,” Kelley said in a phone interview. He has enrolled in college and hopes to move out of the shelter soon.

Kelley said he couldn’t find a job because he didn’t have an apartment, and he couldn’t get an apartment because he didn’t have a job. I'm sorry, but I had to laugh at this statement. It is so absurd that this veteran get either a job or an apartment because one required the other. Is this the type of non-service that our veterans will be getting for the next 20 or 30 years? I honestly don't know.

FEMA holds fake press conference

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in the Twilight Zone here. This is from The Washington Post:

FEMA has truly learned the lessons of Katrina. Even its handling of the media has improved dramatically. For example, as the California wildfires raged Tuesday, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, had a 1 p.m. news briefing.

Reporters were given only 15 minutes' notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA's Southwest D.C. offices.

They were given an 800 number to call in, though it was a "listen only" line, the notice said -- no questions. Parts of the briefing were carried live on Fox News (see the Fox News video of the news conference carried on the Think Progress Web site), MSNBC and other outlets.

Johnson stood behind a lectern and began with an overview before saying he would take a few questions. The first questions were about the "commodities" being shipped to Southern California and how officials are dealing with people who refuse to evacuate. He responded eloquently.

He was apparently quite familiar with the reporters -- in one case, he appears to say "Mike" and points to a reporter -- and was asked an oddly in-house question about "what it means to have an emergency declaration as opposed to a major disaster declaration" signed by the president. He once again explained smoothly.

[....]

"Are you happy with FEMA's response so far?" a reporter asked. Another asked about "lessons learned from Katrina."

"I'm very happy with FEMA's response so far," Johnson said, hailing "a very smoothly, very efficiently performing team."

"And so I think what you're really seeing here is the benefit of experience, the benefit of good leadership and the benefit of good partnership," Johnson said, "none of which were present in Katrina." (Wasn't Michael Chertoff DHS chief then?) Very smooth, very professional. But something didn't seem right. The reporters were lobbing too many softballs. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA's greatness.

Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We're told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of external affairs, and by "Mike" Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John "Pat" Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin.

You can watch the YouTube video of the Fake-FEMA press conference here:



I'm dumbfounded by this. The first question I would have to ask is why did FEMA even create this dog-and-pony show in the first place? Granted, the southern California wildfires were some of the worst I've seen, but I didn't see a reason yet for FEMA to perform a disastrous CYA like this fake press conference. I didn't see the news media showing appalling conditions of people living in shelters with no food or water, like we've seen in the first few days after Katrina. That is not to say that FEMA did an excellent job here in the Southern California wildfires, nor is it to say that FEMA screwed up here. What amazes me here is that FEMA would be so scared of screwing up the disaster response to the wildfires, that they would screw up in creating this fake news conference, rather than just doing the job that they were suppose to do in the first place--respond to the disaster! It is like the Bush administration's incessant desire to PR-manage everything has filtered down into FEMA here. Hence, FEMA announces a press conference with only 15 minutes advanced notice, and then staffs the press conference with their own employees playing reporters, when the real reporters were unable to show up. FEMA would have been better off just issuing a press release, and left it at that.

STOP THE PRESSES--Greenspan sees threat of '70s-style inflation

This graph shows the changes in the annual inflation rate from 1965 to 2005, and how the prices compare between the two years. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan fears a gradual return of the 1970s inflation that crippled the U.S. economy.

I seriously wonder if Americans are either gullible, or ignorant. I found this story on McClatchy:

WASHINGTON —An important point in Alan Greenspan's much-hyped memoir has gone largely unnoticed: He acknowledges that global economic forces, more than Federal Reserve policy, kept inflation low and manageable for two decades.

By global forces he means free trade, the rise of emerging, cheap-labor economies led by China and India and the benefits from information technology and the Internet.

He warns that these forces — "globalization," in shorthand — are weakening as they mature. He fears that could mean a gradual return to persistent 1970s-style inflation over the next 20 years or so. And he worries that could cripple a U.S. economy that's already facing strains from the graying of the population over the same period.

Not everyone agrees.

"I do think he's overly pessimistic. Which is not to say things he's pointing to aren't real or potentially real," said Alan Blinder, a former Fed vice chairman and Princeton University economist who thinks that U.S. and European policymakers are unlikely to let inflation get out of hand because they learned hard lessons in the '70s.

Inflation measures the rise of prices across the economy over time. It's relatively stable at the moment: Consumer prices rose only 2 percent over the 12 months through August. But oil prices are high — more than $80 a barrel — commodities from corn to gold are flirting with records and Americans are increasingly fearful that free trade is hurting wages and workers at home, and may restrain it.

All those factors threaten to boost inflation.

It roared out of control from the late 1960s through 1981. Prices rose so quickly that they eroded the purchasing power of a dollar. In 1979, $100 on Jan. 1 was worth $87 by Dec. 31.

Well, our famous economic seer of the 1980s, Alan Greenspan, is now worried that the U.S. is returning to the 1970s inflation-style U.S. economy. And he writes about it in his memoir. The first question I have to ask is how long did Greenspan either know, or suspected, that the U.S. is heading towards this 1970s economic predicament? I know that, as an economist, Greenspan will talk on both sides of his mouth about economic conditions in the United States--well, we think that the U.S. economy could be heading in this direction, but it is also possible that the U.S. economy is heading in that direction. But does Greenspan even look into past economic history, and look for past economic and historical patterns that are comparable to current events in the United States?

The problem I have with Greenspan here is that he is too intent on looking at the weakening of globalization as the culprit for the rising U.S. inflation. According to McClatchy:

Greenspan, the leading economic seer of the roaring 1990s, fears that the table's being set for it all to happen again.

The biggest reason is that "having largely bestowed its benefits, globalization will slow its pace," he wrote.

For several decades, the benefits of globalization — primarily abundant foreign-made goods produced for low wages and purchased for low prices &mash; helped hold down U.S. inflation. But that's changing.

China, for example, the biggest source of U.S. imported goods, has a growing inflation problem. Its inflation rate hit an 11-year high of 6.5 percent in August.

Wages in China grew 13.5 percent last year. As Chinese workers demand higher pay to cover rising prices, production costs rise. Eventually, the price of Chinese-made goods purchased by Americans will rise as well.

Just as inexpensive imports helped hold down inflation here the past two decades, inflation here will rise with import prices. How much, how fast? While U.S. inflation rates varied greatly over the years, on average from 1939 through 1989 consumer prices rose by 4.5 percent per year.

"That's probably not a bad first approximation of what we will face," Greenspan warns in his book "The Age of Turbulence." An annual inflation rate of 4.5 percent would reduce the purchasing power of $10,000 to $6,439 in one decade, according to the Tax Policy Center, run by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.

Greenspan says the threat of rising inflation is already here. He told CBS's "60 Minutes" that his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, faces a different economic chessboard from the one he had in the '90s.

"We were dealing with an environment back there where inflation was easing. We could have acted without the fear of stoking inflationary pressures. You can't do that anymore," Greenspan said.

Now I can understand the argument that a weakening of globalization could have an effect on the U.S. economy, but is it going to be so bad as to cause a return of the 1970s inflation? I'm not sure. But I do know that Greenspan is ignoring two huge variables here--the U.S. war in Iraq, and the Bush administration's funding this war with both tax cuts to the rich and the printing of more U.S. debt. And here is where history comes in. I wrote two blog posts on this subject. The first post I wrote was on May 11, 2006, titled Inflation worries, oil surge slam stocks:

It is President Bush's Anti-Great Society Program--destroy the social safety net of the federal government by cutting social programs' budgets, and then give out huge tax breaks to big corporations and rich elites, all while fighting two wars overseas. Oh, and pay for it, not by raising taxes, but by turning on the government's printing presses and just print dollars until the sun doesn't shine. George Bush is following the same playbook as Lyndon Johnson was in providing guns and butter during the 1960s with Vietnam and Johnson's Great Society anti-poverty programs. The only difference here is that Johnson was using the government to try to end poverty and create a social safety net for Americans, while also fighting his war in Vietnam. President Bush is using the federal government to not just destroy the Great Society safety net of President Johnson, but also to create a government-paid safety net for big corporations and rich elites. And Bush has got two wars to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a third war on the way in Iran, to Lyndon Johnson's one war in Vietnam.

However you spin this, it is going to spell disaster for the American economy. Lyndon Johnson turned on the printing presses to pay for his guns and butter. Bush has had the printing presses going full blast for the past five years--and another three years to go for his administration. Inflation is going to kick in soon, with higher prices that will hit businesses, consumers, and investors. Look at what has happened today--inflation worries and energy prices have slammed the Dow down by 141 points, the Nasdaq is down 48 points. Interest rates are rising--and the Feds are signaling that rates could still rise even further. Oil and gas prices can still go up, especially if investors are nervous about an upcoming American attack against Iran. If inflation pressures start forcing prices to rise, American consumers are going to cut back on their spending. The Feds are going to continue raising interest rates as a means to combat inflation, forcing businesses to cut back on investment in new factors of production. We're going to see the worst of both worlds--stagflation, where you could have a deep economic recession in the U.S., and rising prices due to inflation. It happened from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s.

But I fear that this will be much worst than what we've seen in the 70s.

The second post that I wrote was on August 28, 2006, titled Real wages failed to match a rise in productivity:

Think about this for a moment. The stagnating wages have been offset by the rising value of benefits, such as health insurance. But the problem with health insurance is that the price of health insurance has also been increasing, thus adding to companies labor costs. Instead of absorbing the costs of health insurance, companies have started passing those costs towards the workers in terms of higher health insurance premiums deducted from workers' paychecks. At the same time, wage increases have certainly gone to the top income brackets--including those of the CEOs. Thus, the inequality gap between the rich and poor has continued to increase. It is interesting how UBS investment bank has called this period as the “the golden era of profitability," and how corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960s. Lyndon Johnson had started both his Great Society program, and entered into the Vietnam War. And even Johnson's Great Society economic stimulus was added to John Kennedy's New Frontier's stimulus, which included tax cuts, economic reforms, wage, housing and medical regulations. There was a lot of economic stimulus in the 1960s, with Americans happily spending on consumer goods, and companies happily producing those consumer goods for profits. The danger of the 1960s economy was that the U.S. government was funding both this economic expansion and the Vietnam War by printing dollar bills--and not by raising taxes to pay for everything. We see the same thing happening now with Bush's tax cut stimulus and war in Iraq. And the economic benefits of globalization and productivity today have been going towards corporate profits, rather than wage increases.

The biggest pattern that I have been seeing is that in the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson financed both his Great Society programs and the Vietnam War by turning on the Treasury printing presses. Johnson did not raise taxes to pay for either the war or the Great Society programs. And in the 1970s, we started paying for this debt with inflation. Fast forward to today. We've got President George Bush paying for his tax cuts to the rich and the Iraq war by, again, turning on the Treasury printing presses. I will admit that when I wrote those posts, I was expecting a recession to hit the U.S. in 2007. What I didn't realize was that the housing bubble was expanding in 2006, offsetting the inflation worries, rising oil prices, and stagnating wages. Americans were happy because the value of their homes kept going up due to the housing bubble.

That bubble has crashed. Consumer sentiment has become worried about a combination of the housing crash, increased oil prices, and inflation worries. All of this could cause consumers to cut back spending. Businesses may continue their own investment and produce products for U.S. export, but business exports are not going to keep the U.S. out of a recession if consumers decide to cut back on spending. In the 1970s, we saw the results of Lyndon Johnson's policies of financing his war and Great Society programs through the printing of more money. What we currently have now is President Bush financing his Iraq war with printing even more money. And Bush still refuses to repeal the Bush tax cuts to the rich. Because of President Bush's disastrous economic policies and the war, we may end up heading towards a 1970s-style stagflation of increased inflation and an economic recession.

But there could be another reason here about Greenspan's insistence on blaming a potential 1970s-style inflation on globalization. And this stems not because of economic conditions, but rather political conditions. Greenspan supported both President Bush's tax cuts, and the Social Security privatization plan. But when the Iraq war started, Greenspan shifted his tune, saying that making the Bush tax cuts permanent in 2003, while the U.S. was at war with Iraq, would cause huge budget deficits, and fiscal discipline was needed. In other words, Greenspan performed a political CYA once the Bush administration started pushing their permanent tax cuts at the same time the U.S. was at war with Iraq. Greenspan also kept completely quiet on the link between oil and the Bush administration's war in Iraq, only to finally acknowledge it after he retired and wrote his memoir. He never publicly criticized the the link between oil and the Iraq war while he was the Fed chairman. I seriously wonder if Greenspan's admission in his memoir is another CYA attempt to protect his legacy. Greenspan kept interest rates low, creating the housing bubble that took place between 2001 to 2006. What was Greenspan's reason for allowing the housing bubble to continue growing, even though he knew it would collapse? Was Greenspan motivated to keep the housing bubble growing because in the last two years, it was also contributing to the U.S. economic growth while the country was at war? I can't answer those questions. But what I do suspect is that Greenspan has been performing some major political CYA here to protect his legacy. And this story about Greenspan predicting that the weakening globalization would cause a 1970s inflation in the U.S. may be another political attempt to protect his legacy. I don't recall ever hearing Greenspan presenting harsh criticism against both the Bush economic policies and the Iraq war--again, he spoke between both sides of his mouth on everything. Does Greenspan believe that he will be harshly viewed by history for his support of the Bush war in Iraq, even if that war could cause increased inflation, or even stagflation in the U.S. over the next ten years? Is this another Greenspan CYA attempt at shifting the potential causes for a 1970s-style inflation away from the Bush war and tax cuts and towards this weakening globalization, perhaps even cementing Greenspan's reputation as an economic seer beyond his term as Fed chairman?

It is interesting speculation here.

Ahmadinejad denied access to Ground Zero

I pulled the headline off Carpetbagger, and it just boggles my mind here. The original source story is through The New York Times:

A remark by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly that the Police Department was considering a request by Iran that its president visit ground zero set off complaints yesterday before the department corrected itself.

Late in the day, it said, the request had already been turned down.

Iran asked this month that its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, be permitted to visit ground zero when he attends the opening of the United Nations General Assembly next week.

Paul Browne, the chief spokesman for Commissioner Kelly, said the request — that Mr. Ahmadinejad be allowed to lay a wreath at the former site of the World Trade Center — had been made by Iranian officials earlier this month in a meeting that was also attended by officials of the United States Secret Service and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Mr. Browne said the request was rejected because the Iranians wanted Mr. Ahmadinejad to visit the area of ground zero where construction is under way, but he said that any additional request that he appear near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attack would also be denied out of concerns about security. Although relatives of the victims were allowed to visit the site briefly on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, members of the public are not allowed into the area.

Now I don't know what Ahmadinejad's political motivations are for visiting Ground Zero, but it feels like the U.S. is responding like a petty child here for refusing this request. President Ahmadinejad is certainly going to politically look good in the world view by laying a wreath at Ground Zero of the September 11th terrorist attacks. The problem here is that Ahmadinejad is going to politically look good in the world view even if his request is rejected by the United States, and by its own head of state, King George The Deciderer. Ahmadinejad, and Iran, had no connection to the September 11th terrorist attacks. For all I know, Iranians died in the attack, and Ahmadinejad wanted to pay his own respects to the victims of the attack. But by refusing to allow Ahmadinejad, who is a Muslim head of state, to participate in acknowledging the horrors of this September 11th attacks, the United States makes itself look very childish and petty in the view of the Muslim world, where the U.S. is currently embroiled in its disastrous war in Iraq. If Ahmadinejad were allowed to lay his wreath at Ground Zero, it may have been viewed in the world as a positive sign for the U.S. here. But then again, we're stuck with some fairly incompetent leaders in our country:

The possibility of a visit to ground zero, as suggested by Mr. Kelly yesterday, provoked a cool response from the White House.

“This is a matter for the City of New York, but ground zero would be an odd place for the president of a country that is a state sponsor of terror to visit,” said Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman.

Before the department’s clarification, the presidential candidates condemned the prospect of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s visiting ground zero.

“It is unacceptable,” said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Under no circumstances,” said Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York. “Ahmadinejad’s shockingly audacious request should be met with a vehement no,” said the former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney.

There is a big problem with the leadership of our presidential candidates here. The Republican presidential candidates are responding to this Ahmadinejad controversy in simplistic terms--Ahmadinejad is an “Islamofascist” nutcase, who should not be allowed to lay a wreath at Ground Zero. Ahmadinejad hates the U.S. and is developing Iranian nukes to give to terrorists--mushroom clouds in New York. It makes great anti-Iranian slogans that can be used for a Bush PR-campaign to go to war in Iran. But what I find even more amazing is that the Clinton campaign is also jumping on this simplistic GOP bandwagon. The Clinton campaign cannot allow Ahmadinejad to visit Ground Zero, because then the Clinton campaign would be targeted by the GOP as being "weak" against terrorists and Iran--even as the Republicans continue to target the Democrats as being "weak." By pandering to this self-serving Republican PR, Hillary Clinton shows her campaign as being "weak" towards agreeing to these simplistic GOP views. And it is not that simplistic as the Republicans want it to be--it is a complicated, nuanced problem that cannot be answered in a simplistic, macho term. There are ways to allow Ahmadinejad to lay his wreath at Ground Zero, and also to provide a "cool" U>S. response to Ahmadinejad's ceremony. One of Carpetbagger's commentators, Swan, suggested that Ahmadinejad should be allowed to lay his wreath at Ground Zero, but also allow the entire NYPD and NYFD to show up and watch Ahmadinejad at Ground Zero. There is a strong political and psychological statement that the U.S. could give to Ahmadinejad--we accept that you want to pay your respects to the victims of the September 11th tragedy, but we're also watching you. Unfortunately, the Republican Party does not understand nuance, and have been successful at forcing the Democrats to play this simplistic game.

Bush Nearing Choice to Lead Justice Dept.

I've been seeing some interesting news and blog stories about President Bush's search for a replacement U.S. Attorney General, since Alberto Gonzales resigned. So far, the attorney general's position has been temporarily filled by Paul Clement, who was the solicitor-general of the United States before Bush tapped him for this temp job. The Bush White House has been on a hunt for a new AG.

Now this little New York Times article is taking some notice:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 — The White House is closing in on a nominee to replace Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, with former Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson considered one of the leading candidates, administration and Congressional officials said Tuesday.

Reports of Mr. Olson’s candidacy suggested that President Bush, in choosing the third attorney general of his presidency, might defy calls from Democrats and choose another Republican who is considered a staunch partisan to lead the Justice Department. Mr. Gonzales is departing after being repeatedly accused of allowing political loyalties to blind him to independently enforcing the law.

“Clearly if you made a list of consensus nominees, Olson wouldn’t appear on that list,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who led the Judiciary Committee effort to remove Mr. Gonzales. “My hope is that the White House would seek some kind of candidate who would be broadly acceptable.”

The choice of Mr. Olson, or almost any other candidate on the list, would almost certainly draw opposition from some Senate Democrats. Democratic leaders had called on the White House to find a respected, moderate nominee to restore calm to the Justice Department.

You have got to love the audacity of this Bush White House. Congressional Democrats have been calling for President Bush to select a moderate, consensus nominee, and who does Bush choose? A controversial, conservative ideologue? Continuing further into the NY Times story, there is this detail:

The White House said Mr. Bush had not made a decision as of Tuesday, but officials added that the choice was a priority. Associates of several prospective candidates said they believed the field had narrowed, but none had been told when to expect an announcement.

Aides to Mr. Bush are calculating that Democrats, who spent months clamoring for Mr. Gonzales’s ouster, will pay a political price if they try to block confirmation of a new attorney general. The thinking inside the White House is that Democrats cannot call for new leadership at the Justice Department, then block it.

The Bush White House believes that they can stare down the congressional Democrats on this issue. The thinking is that if President Bush selects a "qualified" nominee, and the Democrats reject it, then the Bush administration can claim that the Democrats are playing partisan politics in rejecting a nominee who could bring integrity back into the Justice Department. The problem here is that President Bush is not selecting a nominee that could bring integrity and honesty into the Justice Department, but rather Bush is selecting another partisan hack. I seriously doubt there is going to be any difference with Olson as attorney general in comparison with Bush's previous hack of Alberto Gonzales. Olson will probably continue the Bush White House politicalization of the Justice Department. Consider this from the NY Times:

If nominated, Mr. Olson would be expected to face tough questioning from Democrats, especially over his role representing the Bush campaign in the Supreme Court case that decided the 2000 presidential election, as well as his involvement in partisan attacks during the 1990s on President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. Olson never denied being a leading figure in the anti-Clinton campaign, but there has been a dispute over his ties to a venture sponsored by the American Spectator magazine known as the Arkansas Project that sought damaging information about the Clintons. Mr. Olson said that he was connected to some negative articles, but that he did not learn of the project until 1997, when as a board member he authorized an audit that led to its end.

After Mr. Bush was elected and Mr. Olson survived a bruising confirmation battle to become solicitor general, he was regarded as a steady presence in the office that represents the Justice Department before the Supreme Court. In 2004, he counseled James B. Comey, a former deputy attorney general, when Mr. Comey confronted the White House over the legality of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program.

Olson provided a huge service in arguing the Bush administration's case in the Supreme Court's decision on the 2000 presidential election, and Olson was involved in digging up dirt to use against the Bill and Hillary Clinton in the late 1990s. For his own services in helping to first elect Bush in 2000, it appears that Olsen will be awarded the attorney general position.

TPM Muckraker has some excellent background information on Olson, while the Carpetbagger Report has a great post on the story.

Update: It appears that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has thrown a gauntlet down in stating that Ted Olson will not be confirmed as attorney general. According to Talking Points Memo:

Senate Democrats will block Ted Olson from succeeding Alberto Gonzales as attorney general if President Bush nominates him, Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday.

"Ted Olson will not be confirmed," Reid, D-Nev., said in a written statement. "I intend to do everything I can to prevent him from being confirmed as the next attorney general."

The comment gave weight to Republican warnings that Olson, a former solicitor general, would face brutal confirmation hearings and that the White House can't afford a fight now over who will head the troubled federal law enforcement agency.

[....]

Earlier Wednesday, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a former Judiciary Committee chairman, said he talked with about 10 Democrats about Olson and that some made noises, if not outright threats, about blocking his nomination.

"I have been warned by a number of Democrats that they're not going to let that happen," Hatch said of an Olson confirmation. If the White House thinks Olson would sail through the Senate, Hatch said, "then they don't understand the people up here."

Reid's comments were the first indication that Olson's nomination would be dead-on-arrival on Capitol Hill.

Democrats, including current Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, indicated they would mount strong challenges to Olson if Bush nominates him. "He is certainly not a consensus nominee," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "He has a very political background."

It appears that the Democrats are digging in, and outright rejecting President Bush's potential nomination of Olson to the attorney general slot. And knowing how this Bush White House loves to confront the congressional Democrats, I'm guessing that President Bush will announce Olson as his AG pick, just to be spiteful against the Democrats. Is Friday a good time for Bush to announce Olson as AG, just as Alberto Gonzales is leaving?

US gives consumers a day to discuss unsafe imports

I can't believe the hypocrisy of this Bush administration. Here is a short Reuters News story to read:

WASHINGTON, Aug 30 (Reuters) - The Bush administration will conduct a meeting this fall to hear Americans' advice on how to stem a wave of unsafe imports from China and other countries, officials said on Thursday.

The all-day meeting on Oct. 1 at the Agriculture Department in Washington is designed to gather suggestions about how the government and companies can better ensure the safety of imported food and other products.

U.S. consumers have been jarred in recent months by a spate of recalls of unsafe children's toys, chemical-laced toothpaste, and dangerous additives in pet food and seafood.

Most of the goods under scrutiny come from China. Beijing is taking steps to crack down on unscrupulous exporters, but it also is seeking to fend off some of the blame.

Bush's panel, headed by Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and including officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture Department and other agencies, will present two reports this fall.

An Agriculture Department official said comments from October's meeting, made in person or teleconference, will contribute to the second report which will set out specific actions the government can take to safeguard against perilous products.

Comments can be submitted at http://www.fda.gov/dockets/ecomments or http://www.regulations.gov

We've got a national problem here--too many unsafe imports coming in from China! How do we resolve the problem? Obviously the Bush White House doesn't have a clue here, which is why they scheduling this special meeting between government officials and consumers on how to stem these unsafe products from entering the country. Sounds very serious, doesn't it?

Now let me point you to this July 27, 2007 CBS News story, titled Shrinking Consumer Agency Losing Ground:

(AP) The Consumer Product Safety Commission could soon shrink to the point where it can't effectively protect the public, veteran Commissioner Thomas Moore says.

Many employees at the agency responsible for overseeing the safety of many thousands of consumer products are looking for other jobs because "they have no confidence the agency will continue to exist — or will exist in any meaningful form," Moore said in a statement Thursday.

"The commission can either continue to decline in staff, resources and stature to the point where it is no longer an effective force in consumer protection," said Moore, "or with the support of Congress it can regain the important place in American society it was originally designed to have."

The number of full-time staffers has shrunk to about 400, less than half the size of the staff in 1980.

[....]

The agency also has been hampered by a vacancy on its three-member commission.

With only two of three commissioners, the agency had no quorum and has been unable to make rules about product standards, mandate recalls and assess civil penalties for the last six months.

Congress could soon restore those powers to the agency for a limited time despite the commission vacancy.

Bush's pick to head the safety commission, Michael Baroody, withdrew his nomination in May after strong opposition from some Senate Democrats because of his career as a manufacturers' lobbyist.

Do you see the contradiction here? The Bush administration is more than happy to strangle the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) so that the administration's corporate and manufacturing interests can sell cheap, unsafe products to American consumers for more profit. Look at who President Bush nominated to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission--a lobbyist for the manufacturing agency! Michael Baroody was a senior lobbyist for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Baroody called for the weakening of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and President Bush was more than happy to install Baroody as head of the commission. Of course, it didn't help that Baroody was getting a $150,000 severance check from NAM for his services as a lobbyist, just before he had planned to take over as head of the CPSC. This scandal forced Baroody to withdrawal his nomination in May, 2007. And President Bush has yet to appoint a successor here. And why should he? If the Bush White House couldn't politicize the CPSC with the appointment of Baroody, then the next best alternative is to leave the agency hampered as it is. And manufacturers can continue flooding the U.S. market with unsafe products.

And it is not just the Consumer Product Safety Commission here. Consider what the Bush administration has done to the Food and Drug Administration. According to this Feb 26, 2007 ABC News story:

The federal agency that's been front and center in warning the public about tainted spinach and contaminated peanut butter is conducting just half the food safety inspections it did three years ago.

The cuts by the Food and Drug Administration come despite a barrage of high-profile food recalls.

"We have a food safety crisis on the horizon," said Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia.

Between 2003 and 2006, FDA food safety inspections dropped 47 percent, according to a database analysis of federal records by The Associated Press.

That's not all that's dropping at the FDA in terms of food safety. The analysis also shows:

There are 12 percent fewer FDA employees in field offices who concentrate on food issues.

Safety tests for U.S.-produced food have dropped nearly 75 percent, from 9,748 in 2003 to 2,455 last year, according to the agency's own statistics.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the FDA, at the urging of Congress, increased the number of food inspectors and inspections amid fears that the nation's food system was vulnerable to terrorists. Inspectors and inspections spiked in 2003, but now both have fallen enough to erase the gains.

"The only difference is now it's worse, because there are more inspections to do more facilities and more food coming into America, which requires more inspections," said Tommy Thompson, who as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services pushed to increase the numbers. He's now part of a coalition lobbying to turn around several years of stagnant spending.

The Bush administration's budget request for 2008 includes an additional $10.6 million for food safety at the FDA; the lobbying group said 10 times that increase is needed. Even though the FDA increased its overall spending on food between 2003 and 2006, those increases failed to keep pace with rising personnel costs.

"It's not just outsiders like us who have been watching it for a while. People who worked in the Bush administration are coming out and saying the agency is not working at its current resource levels. It just can't manage the job," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group.

[....]

The United States last year imported about $10 billion more in food, feed and beverages than it exported, according to Census figures. Even as imports grow in volume and diversity, the number of FDA inspections is shrinking: agency inspectors physically examined just 1.3 percent of food imports last year, about three-quarters as much as in 2003.

[....]

A recent Government Accountability Office report noted that most of the $1.7 billion the federal government allocates to food safety goes to the Agriculture Department, which is responsible for regulating about 20 percent of the food supply. The FDA, responsible for most of the other 80 percent, gets about 24 percent of the total.

So while the U.S. is importing more food from abroad, the number of FDA inspectors have been shrinking. This is forcing the inspectors to inspect even less of the nation's food supply, causing a greater vulnerability to our food supply.

Let's also not forget who President Bush chose to serve as commissioner of the FDA:

President Bush nominated Andrew von Eschenbach to serve as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration yesterday, but a dispute over the “morning-after” pill all but ensures the nomination will go nowhere for months or even years.

A Bush family friend, von Eschenbach was appointed acting FDA commissioner in September when his predecessor abruptly resigned over financial disclosure problems.

Eschenbach also has some major connections with the Big Pharmaceutical companies, which brings up even more questions of whether Eschenback will protect the American public's health over that of the profits from Big Pharma.

Finally, I want to include this May 23, 2004 Denver Post article showing what happens when the Bush administration chooses industry lobbyists to become regulators:

WASHINGTON -- In a New York City ballroom days before Christmas, a powerful Bush administration lawyer made an unprecedented offer to drug companies, one likely to protect their profits and potentially hurt consumers.

Daniel E. Troy, lead counsel for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, extended the government's help in torpedoing certain lawsuits. Among Troy's targets: claims that medications caused devastating and unexpected side effects.

Pitch us lawsuits that we might get involved in, Troy told several hundred pharmaceutical attorneys, some of them old friends and acquaintances from his previous role representing major U.S. pharmaceutical firms.

The offer by the FDA's top attorney, made Dec. 15 at the Plaza Hotel, took the agency responsible for food and drug safety into new territory.

"The FDA is now in the business of helping lawsuit defendants, specifically the pharmaceutical companies," said James O'Reilly, University of Cincinnati law professor and author of a book on the history of the FDA. "It's a dramatic change in what the FDA has done in the past."

Troy's switch from industry advocate to industry regulator overseeing his former clients is a hallmark of President Bush's administration.

Troy is one of more than 100 high-level officials under Bush who helped govern industries they once represented as lobbyists, lawyers or company advocates, a Denver Post analysis shows.

In at least 20 cases, those former industry advocates have helped their agencies write, shape or push for policy shifts that benefit their former industries. They knew which changes to make because they had pushed for them as industry advocates.

The president's political appointees are making or overseeing profound changes affecting drug laws, food policies, land use, clean-air regulations and other key issues.

Government watchdogs call it a disturbing trend, not adequately restrained by existing ethics laws.

Among the advocates-turned-regulators are a former meat-industry lobbyist who helps decide how meat is labeled; a former drug-company lobbyist who influences prescription-drug policies; a former energy lobbyist who, while still accepting payments for bringing clients into his old lobbying firm, helps determine how much of the West those former clients can use for oil and gas drilling.

"When you go to work in lobbying, it is clearly understood and accepted that your job is to advocate for the interests of those who hired you," said Terry L. Cooper, a University of Southern California ethics and government professor. "When you go to work in government, you are supposed to be responsible for upholding and maintaining whatever you can identify as the public interest."

The bottom line here is that the Bush administration was responsible for creating this entire mess of unsafe food and products getting into our market. The Bush White House is interested in only one thing--protecting their corporate and business masters, while providing them with a greater ability to rake in excessive profits at the expense, the health, and safety of the American public. The administration doesn't need to conduct this meeting with American consumers to decide how to improve the safety of imported products--just get rid of the industry lobbyists and corporate executives who are mis-regulating our government agencies, and start increasing the budgets of those agencies that protect us from unsafe food and product imports. And if the Bush White House balks at increasing the budget for these regulatory agencies...well...we can always take the $50 billion that President Bush wants to waste in the Iraq war, and use it to protect us from unsafe imported products.

Attorney Scandal Part Deux--Shake up at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota

If the scandal involving the eight U.S. attorneys, who were fired by the Bush administration to be replaced by Bush loyalists, was bad enough, there apparently is a new scandal brewing in the U.S. Attorney's office in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Talking Points Memo is all over this new scandal here, here, and here. I'm going to start with this Fox 9 KMPS News story on this scandal:

MINNEAPOLIS -- It’s a major shakeup at the offices of new U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose.

Four of her top staff voluntarily demoted themselves Thursday, fed up with Paulose, who, after just months on the job, has earned a reputation for quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings.

Deputy U.S. Attorney John Marty is just one of the people dropping themselves in rank to simply a U.S. Attorney position. Also making the move are the heads of Paulose’s criminal and civil divisions and the top administrative officer.

The move is intended to send a message to Washington – that 33-year-old Paulose is in over her head.

Paulose was appointed before the 8 U.S. Attorneys were given their pink slips, but she has deep connections to the scandal.

Rachel K. Paulose has drawn criticism since her swearing-in ceremony last month as the United States attorney in Minneapolis. Jean Pieri/St. Paul Pioneer, via Associated Press.

She was a special assistant to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, worked as a senior counsel for deputy attorney general Paul McNulty and is best buds with Monica Goodling – the assistant U.S. Attorney who recently took the Fifth rather than testify before Congress.

Add to the suspicions the fact that Minnesota’s former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger stepped down just as the White House was developing its hit list.

Heffelfinger responds to questions whether he was forced out by saying, “emphatically no.” But there’s been a lot of speculation that Heffelfinger, a moderate Republican, may have been able to read the writing on the wall.

And indeed, some of the early White House memos indicate three people on the hit list resigned before they could be fired.

Paulose was not available for comment on the shake-up.

So we've got four U.S. attorneys demoting themselves because they do not like Paulose's "quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings." And this demoting is taking place among the top staff there--not only is the Deputy U.S. Attorney demoting himself in protest, but also the heads of the "criminal and civil divisions and the top administrative officer." This is a huge message that is being sent by the staff to the Bush White House on Paulose's qualifications and competence regarding this job. In other words, the staff is saying that Paulose is not qualified to hold this position at U.S. Attorney.

But there is more to this story. According to WCCO Channel 4 News:

The four top administrators in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota have resigned their administrative positions. According to highly placed sources, the administrators have quit in protest over the job being done by Rachel Paulose, the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota.

[....]

The Bush Administration did not want to see this happen and in an eleventh hour attempt to prevent it, sent a top justice official to Minneapolis Thursday to mediate the situation. The mediation failed.

[....]

Late Thursday afternoon the four top administrators in her office resigned their management positions in protest of what three well-placed sources say was "a highly dictatorial style" of managing.

Paulose confirmed that John Marti, a first assistant U.S. attorney, Erika Mozangue, head of the office's civil division, and James Lackner, who heads the office's criminal division, have "decided to go back to being prosecutors," said her spokeswoman, Jeanne Cooney.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune confirmed that Paulose's staff quit their management positions due to Paulose's "management style and communication than politics." In addition, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that the Department of Justice is sending a top official to help Paulose:

A Justice Department official in Washington is expected to return to Minneapolis next week to help run the U.S. attorney's office in Minnesota, according to an attorney with knowledge of an upheaval that led three lawyers to quit their management jobs Thursday.

The official, John Kelly, the chief of staff and a deputy director in the U.S. attorney's executive office in Washington, may wind up being tapped to be the first assistant to U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose in Minneapolis, the attorney said Friday.

Kelly's potential role in quelling turmoil in the 110-person office underscores the dissatisfaction among some prosecutors with the 34-year-old Paulose's management style, which several sources described as abrasive and, at times, disrespectful.

[....]

Kelly first came to Minneapolis at Paulose's request to try to bridge the divide between Paulose and her top assistants, said the attorney, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for job protection. But they resigned later that day to return to prosecuting cases full time.

"She had briefed him that there was an uprising," the attorney said. Initially, Kelly was scheduled to have short interviews with the attorneys but the meetings went nearly two hours, the attorney said.

Paulose declined to comment on Friday after issuing a brief statement. "We have work to do," the statement said. "The office remains focused on our law enforcement priorities and service to this community." The Department of Justice did not respond Friday to the Star Tribune's requests for comments.

[....]

A second federal attorney, also speaking on the condition of anonymity because of worries about job security, described an office environment in Minneapolis in which lawyers and support staff felt that they would face retribution from Paulose if they disagreed with her.

"Disagreement is treated as disloyalty," the attorney said.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune gives an example of Paulose's "disagreement is treated as disloyalty," here:

One case that caused a rift in the office soon after Paulose started involved a narcotics case, according to the two federal attorneys.

Paulose ordered that an internal memo be prepared for high-ranking Justice Department officials who would be coming to Minneapolis from Washington to highlight the office's high-profile cases, the attorneys said.

Paulose instructed the head of the narcotics section, Andy Dunne, to state in the memo that prosecutors had won convictions that ended drug dealing by St. Paul's Latin Kings gang, they said.

Dunne was told by Paulose to say that the Latin Kings were the biggest gang in St. Paul and that the office's recent convictions would stop the so-called Latin King Nation, the attorneys said.

But Dunne told Paulose he couldn't abide by the request, one of the attorneys said, and when he refused, Dunne was forced to give up his position as chief of the narcotics section. Dunne would not comment Friday.

Another attorney, who has knowledge of office operations, said Dunne and several others stepped down because of the way Paulose treated them. "It gets to the point where you can't manage in that environment," said the attorney, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Paulose has clearly defined her prosecution priorities: guns, child porn, immigration enforcement, public corruption and methamphetamine trafficking.

As a result, some enforcement programs have been scaled back, one attorney said. Among them: going after landlords who have not removed lead paint from their properties, easing up on enforcement of laws protecting people with disabilities and health care, that source said.

Al Durand, the office administrator who took early retirement in February after 26 years, said Paulose had a tendency to micromanage people in the office. "She got involved in a lot more detail than previous administrations ever did," he said.

That is the new scandal here. Interestingly enough, this latest scandal is starting to be picked up by mainstream media outlets of The New York Times, USA Today, Yahoo News, Forbes, and numerous other news organizations. What we have here is that the Bush White House decided to appoint their own little political "Bushie loyalist" in this position of the U.S. Attorney for Minneapolis. Unfortunately, Rachel Paulose, who the Bush White House appointed into this attorney slot, turned out to be a Bible-quoting, tin-pot dictator, who was clearly not qualified for this job. This is another example of nepotism, and cronyism on the Bush administration's part in rewarding friends and political supporters with top government jobs.

Update: I've been thinking about this story here. I know that there have been plenty of previous administrations that have engaged in some type of cronyism, appointing political friends and perhaps family members into government jobs. But I don't think I've ever seen the amount of cronyism that has taken place with this Bush White House. Rachel Paulose was a Bushie loyalist who was rewarded with a position as U.S. Attorney in Minneapolis. We've seen how Karl Rove's aid Timothy Griffin was appointed as a U.S. Attorney for Arkansas--just before the 2008 presidential elections can take place, with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton running. You can bet that Griffin will his attorney position to initiate political investigations into former president Bill and Hillary Clinton's past--Whitewater Part Two? There is this April 4, 2007 ABC News story reporting that President Bush appointed businessman Sam Fox as U.S. ambassador to Belgium in a recess appointment. Fox contributed $50,000 to the conservative group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which was responsible for airing a series of controversial ads attacking 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry's Vietnam military record. Senate Democrats opposed Fox's nomination. Then there is Michael D. Brown--Heckuva-Job Brownie! Brown was appointed to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency by President Bush, despite having no experience in disaster planning. Brown's "qualifications" for managing FEMA was his 11 years of managing the the Arabian Horse Association. If anything, Hurricane Katrina clearly showed just how damaging the Bush administration's cronyism has destroyed the U.S. government's ability to protect and help its citizens in times of emergency. And I have found even more examples of Bush cronyism here, here, here, here, and here. And the Bush cronyism isn't confined to domestic politics. There have been a number of reports documenting Bush cronyism in Iraq, and even Homeland Security. And finally, let's not forget that President Bush selected his White House counsel Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court, only to have Miers withdrawal her nomination from Senate questions regarding her qualifications, and lack of judicial record.

It is just incredible.

Karl Rove's fingers caught in the cookie jar--more thoughts on the U.S. attorney purge

I've been reading through news articles and the emails regarding the Bush administration's firings of the U.S. attorneys. For the past week, the stuff has been coming out so fast here. TPM Muckraker still has some of the best news coverage of this scandal. McClatchy has a good selection of articles for the mainstream news. There was even a huge document dump of White House emails to the public regarding this attorney purge. You can find the emails here in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. You can find a list of the New York Times stories regarding the attorney purge here, and a list of the Washington Post stories here. For the best overall summary of this scandal today, you can check out Countdown with Keith Olbermann's story on Rove, and Gonzales. Olbermann's story on Rove has been posted on YouTube in two parts.

Here is Part One:



And here is Part Two:



So what happened? I think there was a convergence of two separate political events that created the genesis of this attorney purge. The first even was the complaints Rove received by state Republicans regarding the U.S. attorneys. What is interesting about this event is that the Bush White House was already politicizing the U.S. Attorney's office. You can view a study reporting this politicizing of the U.S. Attorney's office here. I have not gone through this study yet. But one thing I do recall back in 2005 has been the publication of GOP scandal after scandal. Duke Cunningham pleaded guilty to bribery charges in November, 2005. The Tom DeLay scandal started breaking out late August and early September of 2005. My first posting on the Jack Abramoff scandal was in June 2005, but the Abramoff scandal goes back to around August of 2004. And let us not also forget that there was an investigation looking into the Valerie Plame affair, and the intelligence failures leading up to the Bush administration's war in Iraq. These were the scandals that were battering the Bush White House at that time--the convergence of the second factor to contribute to the attorney purge. Now the Bush administration probably couldn't do anything regarding the investigations into the intelligence failures, but they could slow down the investigations into the corruption cases against the GOP congressional officials by purging the U.S. attorney's office. Even better yet, if you can selectively target certain attorney's offices with Bush loyalists, you can use them in future investigations against the Democrats--say, putting a Bushie into a U.S. attorney's office in Arkansas to look into any dirt that can be found and used against Senator Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential elections. And by stacking the U.S. Attorney's Office with even stronger Bush loyalists, gives the Bush administration even greater control of the Justice Department, and what investigations to pursue or abandon. It was complaints by state Republican officials, and the continuing GOP "culture of corruption," that prompted this idea of an attorney purge in the Bush White House.

Who first thought this attorney purge up? My guess is that Karl Rove first brought up the idea of a complete attorney purge, replacing them with Bush loyalists. This is speculation so far. But what is really important here is that an exchange of emails took place between Rove, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and White House counsel Harriet Miers. This genesis of replacing all of the U.S. attorneys started in 2005, and was refined to selectively replace the eight U.S. attorneys near the end of 2006. What this scandal really shows is that the Bush administration systematically planned to politicized the entire U.S. Attorney's Office, and use that office for long-term Republican political goals. The Bush administration fired U.S. Attorney Carol Lam as a possible means to shut down the Duke Cunningham corruption investigation. The administration forced Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummings out to give the slot to Rove operative Timothy Griffin. U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias was fired because he didn't pursue a corruption case against a state Democratic legislator hard enough to hand down indictments before the 2006 midterm election. The U.S. attorney for Washington state, John McKay was removed because he would not "convene a federal grand jury to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the [2004 governor's] race." There was even some speculation that Karl Rove was involved in a lawsuit contesting the election. The U.S. Attorney for Arizona, Paul Charlton, was forced to resign after "butting heads" with the Bush Justice Department over death penalty cases. But there is more here on Charlton. Apparently Charlton was also conducting two investigations into land deals involving Republican Representative Rick Renzi. So there are crass political reasons for the Bush White House to remove these attorneys. Even better yet, a small provision that was slipped into the Patriot Act allowed President Bush to appoint interim attorneys for an indefinite period of time and without Senate confirmation. It is a beautiful scam for the Bush White House to take complete political control of the U.S. Attorney's Office.

And it almost worked.