Month: May 2009

The Worst Is Over?, Ctd

Megan isn't so sure about the green shoots:

I don't want to push the Great Depression analogy too far, but what's surprising when you go back to primary sources from 1930 is the optimism.  I don't mean to imply that everyone thinks things are just swell.  But while you know that they are facing the worst economic decade of the twentieth century, they don't.  They're expecting something more like the recession that followed World War I.  People are cutting back, but they're still spending, particularly because companies are slashing prices to move inventory.  It was the long grind of the years that followed, and the catastrophe of the second banking crisis, that scarred them permanently.  And this shows up in the economics stats and the stock market, which did not, as we like to imagine, simply decline in a straight line.

Parsing Obama On The Photos

A reader writes:

I admit that this is more of an intellectual exercise than something I am sure I believe.  But consider.

IF Obama anticipates prosecuting the perpetrators of torture for war crimes, they would presumably have a right to trial by jury.  But these photographs would be exactly the sort of pre-trial publicity that would routinely lead to lawyers asking for (and getting) a change of venue, due to the inflammatory nature of the photographs.

And there is no obvious venue where the photographs would not have been widely published as soon as they were available.

So one might, MIGHT, interpret Obama's action as indicating that he is serious about bringing the perpetrators to trial.  Now those who were involved, and are members of the military, don't have that right; they get a court martial.  So we are looking at civilians.  Maybe all the way up to the top of the chain of command — which individuals, I submit, would be those most likely to have legal counsel which would make the "prejudicial pre-trial publicity" argument most vigorously.

That may not be (one of) the motivations for Obama's action.  But then again, it just might.

The Recklessness Of Americans

Zubin Jelveh posts on a new study that reveals just how debt-dependent our culture has become:

Obtaining data from an unnamed credit bureau agency, Mian and Sufi track 100,000 homeowners living in all of the big cities across the country between 1997 through the end of 2008. They find that, on average, these households borrowed between $250 to $300 for every $1,000 in home price appreciation.

What did people do with the extra cash? Surprisingly, one thing they didn't do — at least on the scale that's been portrayed in the media — was trade up into new homes or investment properties.

More worrisome, these homeowners also didn't pay down credit card debts either, even as that type of debt doubled over the period. This happened even though credit cart debt carries a higher interest rate than the typical home equity loan, so in the long run consumers would have been better off doing this. In fact, Mian and Sufi find that the people most likely to tap their homes for cash were those who had the worst credit scores and the highest debt levels. And that's something which came back to haunt a number of these borrowers. Mian and Sufi find that about 20 percent of the defaults we're currently seeing are a result of people extracting too much equity out of their house during the boom years.

Problem Solved!

Michael Lind tries to sort out Social Security fact from fiction. Responding to the charge that, "We have only two choices, or a combination — cutting benefits or raising the payroll tax," he responds:

If you want to be revenue-neutral, the Social Security shortfall of about 2 percent of GDP between now and mid-century could be patched with general revenue funds diverted from defense, if without endangering our safety we could gradually lower defense spending from its present wartime level of about 4 percent of GDP to 2 percent, which is more than most other advanced industrial countries spend on defense.

But other countries aren't running a constantly expanding global empire. That empire expanded considerably under Bush and Obama seems intent on perpetuating and deepening it, despite the clear will of those who voted for him. There is no assurance we will withdraw from Iraq in significant numbers under this president – we're already backsliding – and he's pulling a Lyndon Johnson on Afghanistan. Where do you find the savings?

The Daily Wrap

The Dish took two big whacks on Obama today. The president so far has seemed indifferent to gay equality and defensive against Cheney by caving on the torture photos and covering up the crimes against Binyam Mohamed – much to the delight of neocons everywhere.

In better news, Ali Soufan testified before Congress on torture and Zelikow announced that his suppressed memo has surfaced. Also, New York appeared on the cusp of marriage equality.

Bloggers A.L. and Taibbi showed the incoherence of the Rove defense on torture. Reporter Ignatius, on the other hand, merely kept score. We also saw a major shift in the healthcare debate while cap and trade and hate crime laws percolated on the Hill. Dish readers challenged me on criticizing Obama, lauding nuclear power, and not wearing bike helmets.

Oh, and Aaron and I were caught on camera. He's the good looking one.

Dragging His Feet

Yglesias urges action on DADT:

The problem with the arguments for inaction isn’t that they’re wrong, it’s that they prove too much. The military is always doing important work under difficult conditions. And the president is always dealing with a variety of hugely important issues. No day is ever going to be a convenient day for the brass to stop doing what they’re doing, and start dealing with the difficulties involved in getting soldiers accustomed to serving alongside openly gay and lesbian crew members. And no day is ever going to be a convenient day for the White House political team to pick a fight with the military. But that’s a reason to avoid delay, not to embrace it.

That applies equally, it seems to me, to release of photos of past abuse. My fear in this as with the economy is that Obama likes to tear band-aids off very, very slowly.

Dawn Johnsen’s Confirmation In Doubt

Greenwald sighs:

The objections over Johnsen's involvement in NARAL are quite obviously pure pretext since NARAL's positions are squarely within the mainstream of abortion views and Johnsen was previously the acting OLC chief under Clinton without any objections; what changed, clearly, are both the tone and substance of her objections to Bush radicalism and lawbreaking.

What we are all learning is the interest of a government, including a military, that is naturally dedicated to protecting itself. It is one thing to change direction; it is another thing to hold the past accountable – because you need the same people to carry on the war and defend the country. It is increasingly obvious that isolating and cauterizing the damage Bush and Cheney did without wounding ourselves is very hard. And so the advocates for real change and accountability have to go through this buzz-saw of resistance. Obama wasn't kidding when he said it wouldn't be easy. The fate of Dawn Johnsen will tell us a lot about the seriousness of the change.

(Not) Supporting The Troops

One of Tom Ricks's readers, an Army National Guard lieutenant colonel, counters Krauthammer:

I told [my soldiers] the most important thing they needed to take away from all their preparations was that while it would be terrible to lose one of them or have one of them seriously physically injured, it would be worse to have them come home physically well and mentally broken because they had somehow lost their humanity. Torture destroys our humanity, and any equivocation (feel free to exercise the Kantian absolutist vs utilitarian argument to your heart's content) on the matter is just bullshit.

Ricks summarizes:

Those who endorse torture need to think twice about the effect it has on the moral and discipline of our troops. Also, think about his point that torture has two victims: the person suffering it, and the person inflicting it.