Pre-9/11 thinking: Is it underrated?

GOP Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani recently criticized President Clinton's handling of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, saying Clinton made "a big mistake" by treating the bombing as a criminal act instead of as a declaration of war. This has been a popular talking point among Republicans since at least 2004, when Republican Party Chairman Ed Gillespie said, "Terrorism is not a law enforcement matter, as John Kerry repeatedly says. ...this demonstrates a disconcerting pre-September 11 mindset that will not make our country safer." It's been repeated so many times that it barely registers anymore. But let's say Democrats do want to treat terrorism as a law-enforcement matter. Would that really be such a bad thing?

Look at recent attacks that have been thwarted. Most of them were uncovered using ordinary law enforcement techniques. The alleged JFK airport bombing scheme, for example, was uncovered when the suspects dropped off a video to be transferred to DVD, and a suspicious clerk reported it to the local police. Likewise, the Bush Administration's attempts to prosecute terrorism suspects have been much more effective when pursued through normal legal channels. Late last year, Salon ran an article comparing the mess surrounding Jose Padilla's case to the successful prosecution, through normal "pre-9/11" channels, of right-wing terrorist Demetrius Crocker. Crocker was convicted easily; Padilla's case is still not resolved. It's hard to draw the conclusion that the "post-9/11" thinking that Giuliani touts is the most efficient way to lock up terrorists.

Giuliani also has a lot to answer for in his own reaction to the 1993 bombing. In spite of that clear evidence that the World Trade Center was vulnerable, he personally insisted that the city's crisis center be located on the 23rd floor of Building 7. I've been waiting in vain for someone to publicly call him on this decision as he runs, as the Onion put it, for "President of 9/11."

Finally, it's disingenuous to say that the events of September 11, 2001 prove that Clinton's approach was inferior to Bush's. After the 1991 World Trade center bombings, we didn't have another successful Al Queda attack on our soil for over eight years. We won't know until 2009 if Bush has been similarly successful, although for the sake of our fellow citizens I hope he has.

The Sad CAFE

Congress is once again tinkering around the margins of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) law. While the effort is laudable, it's long past time we admitted that CAFE is obsolete and discussed alternate ways to encourage better fuel economy. While CAFE was partially responsible for a dramatic increase in fuel economy from 1975 to the mid 1980s, in recent years average fuel economy has declined. I believe this is in no small measure due to market distortions created by CAFE itself.

CAFE was passed in 1975 as a response to the 1973-1974 OPEC oil embargo. The concern then, as now, was with our nation's dependency on foreign oil. The law required (and still requires) that the average fuel economy of the cars a company sells meet a minimum standard. The goal was to double the 1974 passenger car fuel economy by 1985, to 27.5 mpg. Light trucks, however, were treated differently; no specific goal was set, only a guideline that the standard should be the "maximum feasible." The "maximum feasible" has always been interpreted to mean a standard significantly lower than that for cars. At the time, this probably seemed like a reasonable compromise; people did not generally drive trucks for pleasure, and they only represented 19% of total vehicle sales.

The consequences of this double standard were predictable for anyone who understands economics. In the 1990s, cheap gas created a demand for bigger, more powerful vehicles. Manufacturers couldn't cheaply meet this demand with passenger cars due to the fuel economy standards, so they created a new category of vehicles that were car-like, but met the CAFE definition of light trucks -- SUVs. Light truck sales exploded, going from 28% of the market in 1987 to 50% of the market in 2006. Meanwhile, average overall fuel economy declined, from 22.1 mpg to 21.0.

Further tinkering on the supply side, by changing the manufacturers' fuel economy rules, will probably not fix the problem, although recent proposals to make the car and light truck economy standards equal may help. What are really needed are demand-side incentives, because this is an area where basic free-market forces really do work. If there's public demand for higher fuel economy, manufacturers will scramble to provide it. It's not just rising CAFE standards that caused fuel economy to hit an all-time high in 1987; the Iranian revolution in 1981 triggered a vicious spike in gas prices that remained fresh in people's minds for several years afterwards, and they sought out economical rides. Today, interest in more fuel-efficient cars is starting to perk up as gas prices again reach record-setting levels. Abolishing CAFE and establishing a carbon tax, fuel tax, or even an income-tax incentive based on buying economical vehicles would go a long way towards speeding up this process. Unfortunately, these are politically difficult solutions, so what we'll probably get is more tinkering with the current, broken law.

By the way, this isn't to say I have much sympathy for the American auto manufacturers' lobbying efforts against raising CAFE standards. They're offering the same litany of tired old excuses -- it's too expensive, it's not practical, it'll mean cars that are unsafe -- that they've offered in response to every new fuel economy and emissions control proposal since the 1960s. They're continuing to show the same lack of vision that caused them to hand over leadership of the industry to the Japanese in the 1980s. It's depressing to see that the Big Three (well, really, the Big 2.5) have learned so little in the last two decades.

Perjury matters

It's a common refrain at the moment, from right-wing and neocon hacks to journalists who, really, ought to know better: "Scooter Libby's perjury wasn't really a crime because there was no underlying crime."

Look, this is very simple: Patrick Fitzgerald was unable to convict anyone of the underlying crime because Scooter Libby perjured himself and obscructed justice. Or, even if you aren't persuaded that there would have been charges relating to the underlying crime had Libby not perjured himself and obstructed justice, surely you must at least admit of the theoretical possibility that someone, somewhere, might lie to investigators to prevent them from being able to file criminal charges.

So, if we go around saying that perjury and obstruction of justice aren't crimes if no one is charged with the underlying crime, where does that leave cases where perjury and obstruction of justice prevent charges relating to the underlying crime? Why would any witness with anything to lose ever tell the truth under those circumstances? You'd only ever be charged with perjury if you did it badly, and people managed to prove the crime you were lying about anyway. Prosecuting anything at all would become impossible if those things weren't crimes by themselves, and therefore incentives to tell the truth.

So, I support jailing Scooter, and not just because he's Dick Cheney's lackey, and not just because he has a very stupid name. I think there's a principle involved here that gets to the heart of how our system of justice, indeed any system of justice, has to work.

Okay. So. I don't want to go into this, but I can already hear the chorus of "well, what about Bill Clinton?" Shut up, chorus. ...sigh, but I guess I do have to answer.

It's not the same thing at all. Scooter Libby obstructed justice and lied to investigators regarding an extremely serious matter: the alleged outing of a covert CIA agent (an act which George H.W. Bush onced called "treason"). This would in fact be a very serious crime, so it is very serious to lie in order to cover it up.

Bill Clinton lied to an out-of-control prosecutor originally tasked with investigating a failed 1974 Arkansas land deal. When, after years and tens of millions of dollars spent, that turned out to be nothing, Starr started casting about for other things he could nail Clinton for. This makes sense if, and only if, you understand that Starr's real assignment was not "find out the truth about Whitewater," it was "get Bill Clinton for something." Starr had already tried to quit once to take a position at Pepperdine University, and been forced back to work by the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

So, Starr, who, remember, was supposed to be investigating a land deal, found out about a blow job Clinton had gotten outside his marriage, then asked him a question about it that had nothing to do with anything, making sure Clinton was under oath at the time. I want to stress, here, that no one, not even Clinton's fiercest detractors, has ever claimed that the blow job itself was a crime. That is what "no underlying crime" really looks like--not merely failure to prove the alleged underlying crime, but the total absence of any such allegation.

So, Clinton lied under oath about a matter of exactly no importance, to an irrelevant question asked during a bullshit gotcha investigation. He did this precisely once. Now, should he have told the truth? Of course. I mean, he should never have been asked the question, but one, you should tell the truth under oath even in moronic circumstances like this, and two, he and the rest of us would have been spared a lot of headaches had he just said "yep, I slept with her, can I go now?"

So if Congress had wanted to censure him...fine. (Moveon.org was founded to advocate precisely that course of action.) But I'm tired of people insisting that "perjury is perjury and the circumstances don't matter." That's simply not true, any more than it would be true to say that "theft is theft and the circumstances don't matter," and insist that stealing a pack of gum should carry precisely the same penalty as grand theft auto or holding up a bank.

No one believes that. But it's no sillier than arguing that lying in response to a bullshit question about sex ought to be regarded as precisely the same act as repeatedly lying to cover up a serious crime. It simply isn't. The trap Starr set for Clinton was a cynical abuse of perjury laws. Patrick Fitzgerald's conviction of Scooter Libby, on the other hand, is precisely the kind of case those laws were written to address.

Liberal media, my tailfeathers (hypocrisy edition)

Okay, lemme start by being shallow. Because, as shallow as our media discourse has become, as long as I talk about anything of substance anywhere in this post, I'm still doing way better than, say, Maureen Dowd.

Why on earth does the entire political media establishment seem to think Fred Thompson, a bald, jowly, aging white dude with prominent crow's feet, is the sexiest thing in the universe? He is possibly the least attractive person running for president. I don't think attractiveness should have anything to do with who gets to be president, mind you, but why does everyone think this guy is good looking? Because he's on "Law & Order"? Being on TV does not make you handsome.

More importantly, why do Chris Matthews and others keep gushing about how "authentic" Thompson is? They present his "signature red pickup" from his senate campaign in the 1990s as proof of how "real" he is. Jamison Foser put it really well in Media Matters:

The pickup was, literally, a rented prop designed to help a wealthy actor/Washington lobbyist/trial lawyer play the role of salt-of-the-earth populist.

But Chris Matthews and the Beltway pundit crowd don't encounter many actual working-class voters as they stroll the dunes of Nantucket. A wealthy lobbyist/actor who rents a red pickup truck to play the role of a regular guy strikes them as "authentic" and "folksy." Mark Halperin wrote this week that Thompson won his first Senate race "after driving his trademark red pickup truck all over Tennessee."

It reminds me of the way these same rich pundits who like to pretend they're totally blue collar fell for yet another rich candidate who liked to pretend he was blue collar: George W. Bush. Remember how authentic and folksy everyone in the media seemed to find that multimillionaire son of a former president who'd gone to Yale as a legacy and never worked an honest day in his life? But, see, that didn't matter. He liked to clear brush! (Look; no one likes to clear brush. Not that a bunch of rich media guys would know that.)

And they'd always apply a double standard. The formula was always "John Kerry lives in a really expensive house! By contrast, Bush likes to clear brush on his ranch." As if those were not two different ideas. You can't contrast how much someone's house cost with what someone else pretends to like to do at his house. There would have been contrast there if, and only if, Bush's ranch had been really cheap. (It wasn't. Rich guys' pretend cowboy ranches never are.)

Now, because Fred Thompson rents a pickup just long enough to be photographed in it and then drives away in a luxury car afterwards, he's "authentic."

Meanwhile, John Edwards, who genuinely grew up poor but became rich later, is a big phony:

And what of another wealthy Southerner who used to be a trial lawyer? One who doesn't rent props to hide his good fortune? The pundits channel Holden Caulfield and declare John Edwards to be a big phony. Just this week, Bill O'Reilly ("I have no respect for him. He's a phony and is in the tank for special interest to damage this country. Edwards is going nowhere, but deserves to be called out."), Dennis Miller, and Tucker Carlson ("Is Edwards an appalling phony, I guess is my question?") described Edwards as "phony."

The rich trial lawyer/lobbyist who rents a red pickup, not to drive, but to use as a prop? The media tell us he's folksy and authentic. And the rich former trial lawyer who doesn't hide his good fortune? He's a phony.

And why is John Edwards a phony? Because he doesn't pretend to be poor. See, if he faked poverty, he'd be authentic, but because he doesn't pretend to be poor, he's a phony. Following this? Well, it only gets dumber.

Because, see, John Edwards is a phony because he advocates policies that would benefit poor people.

If you don't think that makes any sense, think about the apparent rationale that leads journalists to conclude that Edwards is a phony: his policy proposals to fight poverty. He's rich and wants to fight poverty, so they say he's a phony hypocrite. As we have explained, that simply isn't what "hypocrite" means -- it isn't as if Edwards is running around saying everybody should be poor, then going home at night and swimming in gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. That would be hypocrisy -- and that isn't what Edwards advocates at all. He wants to combat poverty. Hypocrisy is generally considered one of the most damaging qualities a politician can exhibit. Political reporters certainly behave as though that is the case. And yet they demonstrate an absolutely stunning lack of understanding of what hypocrisy actually is.

Got it? If you're not actually poor, but want to help poor people, you're a "hypocrite." Anything other than naked self-interest is hypocrisy.

See, all those rich Republicans who want to cut taxes only for themselves and other rich people, while running around posing for photos in rented pickups they pretend to own? That's "authentic."

Now excuse me while I go beat my head against a wall.

Women's de-lib

The Supreme Court made an amazingly short-sighted decision today.

The justices, voting 5-4, rejected a $360,000 award to Lilly Ledbetter, an Alabama Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. worker who said that almost two decades of discrimination meant her salary was 15 to 40 percent lower than what her male counterparts earned.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act typically gives workers 180 days from the time of the alleged discrimination to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

According to Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

Lilly Ledbetter was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire and Rubber’s plant in Gadsden, Alabama, from 1979 until her retirement in 1998. For most of those years, she worked as an area manager, a position largely occupied by men. Initially, Ledbetter’s salary was in line with the salaries of men performing substantially similar work. Over time, however, her pay slipped in comparison to the pay of male area managers with equal or less seniority. By the end of 1997, Ledbetter was the only woman working as an area manager and the pay discrepancy between Ledbetter and her 15 male counterparts was stark: Ledbetter was paid $3,727 per month; the lowest paid male area manager received $4,286 per month, the highest paid, $5,236.

$550 is quite a disparity, and I don't buy into the argument that a "poor performance evaluation" caused her to be paid less than the lowest-earning male counterpart, especially one with less seniority. But, of course, that's not the provocation for the five justices (including the wretched Samuel Alito, who replaced Sandra Day O'Connor) making that decision. No, they stuck to the "letter" of the Civil Rights Act, saying that since the 180-day deadline had passed, Ms. Ledbetter's statute of limitations had expired and thus she was not eligible for any remuneration.

How could she have discovered the disparity within the time frame that she was still an employee? When was the last time any employee ever went around to his or her fellow employees and compared their salaries? As far as I know, that's still considered a very rude and over-reaching question. And I know of no set procedure, elaborated by any federal or state government, in place to assist workers in investigating incommensurate wages. You face your evaluation and you accept what you get, or you can leave. To me, that posits the final frontier for discriminatory practices, precisely because there's no oversight in that area and no recourse for any potentially wronged employee.

As some have noted, apparently Congress can change the language of the statute to close up that loophole. If Congress can't stop this war, they at least have it within themselves to eradicate legal wiggle room for corporate miscreants.

Dangerously wrong.

From a Seattle P-I article about a gang of protesters dressed in prison outfits and wearing mascot heads of Bush, Cheney, and others:

But not everyone finds the costumes humorous. Nadine Gulit, a spokeswoman for the local group Operation Support Our Troops, has seen the chain gang at protests in the Seattle area, and she believes the demonstrators are in poor taste.

"They're very offensive for anyone," Gulit said. "They're wasting their time ... They don't seem to realize that Bush is a soldier, too. He's our commander in chief."

Uhm, no, Nadine. No matter how well he plays dress-up, George W. Bush is not a soldier, he's a civilian. Elected, civilian leadership of the military is one of the most important principles of our government; it helps ensure the people will control the military, and not vice versa.

Changing the status quo won't happen in a heartbeat

The upset over the "cave" on the Iraq war spending issue is pretty much reaching a climax, which is understandable. The Democrats have done a dodge-spin-parry on the issue of timetables for withdrawal in favor of fostering domestic spending, a prospect that sets Republicans' teeth on edge:

The bill includes the nearly $100 billion that President Bush requested for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as billions in domestic spending, including $6.4 billion in hurricane relief and $3 billion in agricultural assistance.

Republicans were unhappy about the added domestic spending, but said they were relieved the final measure did not attempt to set a timetable on the war.

While this is not an excuse, I can almost understand their logic. Bush and the Republican party have abandoned our country's infrastructure pretty heavily. The Democrats moved into Congress with all the glassy-eyed shock of a homeowner discovering his house is built on a sinkhole and is loaded with termites, bad plumbing, toxic mold and hazardous electrical wiring. Oh, and the roof's missing.

So they're going from room to room, picking up assorted trash, figuring that will help until the roofers finally become available (hopefully) on January 20, 2009. No, we really can't wait that long, but better late than never, right?

All right. This is business as usual. And believe it or not, this isn't being said in a pox-on-both-your-houses way. It's the way the status quo feels the game has to be played when your opponent won't abide by the rules. It's probably also the way they feel when the right wing is defining all the terms in the corporate media. (Blow Job Bill is going to be such a strain on Hillary, haven't you heard? This is important!)

However, the victory of getting the House and the Senate to fund some badly needed domestic relief is not enough for throwing billions of dollars and thousands of lives down a rathole. Perhaps we should thank them for their concern for the needy in America, and then shout in their ears "BUT WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING?!" That's our function. Support the positive aspects, and then directly, firmly, and constantly, force their hand with our combined strength. We're the coalition that funds the ideals of the Democratic party. We're not the "left"; we are the people. And we have a long slog to take over from the unconcerned rich, the overfunded religious zealots, and the mindless sheep. This is our only house, so we have to work hard to fix it.

Markos put it pretty well:

I have news for you guys -- this won't be the last disappointment we'll ever suffer. Heck, politics is about perpetually fighting battles, and no one -- no one -- has an undefeated record....

That doesn't mean 'stop being angry'. It means, 'stand tough and fight back'.