Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Civil Rights, Constitution, Emergency, Government, Politics, Terrorism
Offered, without need for additional comment:
George W. Bush’s Disposable Constitution
Yesterday the Obama Administration released a series of nine previously secret legal opinions crafted by the Office of Legal Counsel to enhance the presidential powers of George W. Bush. Perhaps the most astonishing of these memos was one crafted by University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo. He concluded that in wartime, the President was freed from the constraints of the Bill of Rights with respect to anything he chose to label as a counterterrorism operations inside the United States.
Here’s Neil Lewis’s summary in the New York Times:
“The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense,” Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty wrote to Mr. Gonzales. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, they said, since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force. The Oct. 23 memorandum also said that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” It added that “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”
John Yoo’s Constitution is unlike any other I have ever seen. It seems to consist of one clause: appointing the President as commander-in-chief. The rest of the Constitution was apparently printed in disappearing ink.
More from the NYT piece:
WASHINGTON — The secret legal opinions issued by Bush administration lawyers after the Sept. 11 attacks included assertions that the president could use the nation’s military within the United States to combat terrorism suspects and to conduct raids without obtaining search warrants.
* * *
The opinions reflected a broad interpretation of presidential authority, asserting as well that the president could unilaterally abrogate foreign treaties, ignore any guidance from Congress in dealing with detainees suspected of terrorism, and conduct a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants.
And from Newsweek:
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the U.S. military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside the United States, deploy high-tech surveillance against U.S. citizens and potentially suspend First Amendment freedom-of-the-press rights in order to combat the terror threat, according to a memo released Monday.
* * *
In perhaps the most surprising assertion, the Oct. 23, 2001, memo suggested the president could even suspend press freedoms if he concluded it was necessary to wage the war on terror. “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully,” Yoo wrote in the memo entitled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activity Within the United States.”
Draw your own conclusions.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Depression, Emergency, Failure, Government, NYT, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Survival
for another happy-happy Monday morning post about the economy! Yay! Everyone gather around, and let Uncle Jim tell you a story…
“We’re screwed.”
Did you like my story? Oh, you want details? If you insist.
No, I’m not going to talk about the Dow being down below 7,000 for the first time this century (it’s at 6,900 as I write). Nor about the news this morning of AIG’s additional $61.7 billion loss last quarter. Those are just symptoms.
To really understand what is happening, listen to this weekend’s episode of This American Life, part of which I touched on last Friday. It’ll help explain how and why the fundamental problem is a political one: no one really wants to face the prospect of doing what has to be done to clean up this mess, because it would mean too many powerful interests get burned. Rather, everyone – all the bankers, all the investors, the US and European and Japanese governments – is hoping beyond hope that they can finesse their way through this, and things will skate by on the thin ice and get better sometime, somehow.
Why do I say that? Because, as they said in the “Bad Bank” episode, nationalization of banking systems has been done before. In fact, it’s been done a lot of times. But usually in this or that small foreign country, and under the direction/demand of the IMF as a condition of aid. Nationalization means that the government steps in to protect the overall economy by forcing corrections in the banking system directly – that is, the government takes over (to some degree) the operation of the banks for a period of time. And this means that while the government involved usually has to assume some of the costs, that shareholders and investors take the worst hit. Oh, and the bankers who created the mess usually get tossed out if not tossed in prison. (An aside: someone commented recently that if this were happening in China, that people would be executed. I can’t say that I think that would be a bad idea.)
But the current problem is so widespread, and involves so much of the business/monied classes in the US and Europe, that nationalization is generally considered a ‘nuclear option’, a last resort to be avoided at almost all costs.
Well, we’re seeing what “all costs” means, right now. I do actually want to talk about AIG a bit here. You should read Joe Nocera’s column from last Friday, titled “Propping Up a House of Cards“. Here’s a couple of relevant excerpts:
If we let A.I.G. fail, said Seamus P. McMahon, a banking expert at Booz & Company, other institutions, including pension funds and American and European banks “will face their own capital and liquidity crisis, and we could have a domino effect.” A bailout of A.I.G. is really a bailout of its trading partners — which essentially constitutes the entire Western banking system.
* * *
There’s more, believe it or not. A.I.G. sold something called 2a-7 puts, which allowed money market funds to invest in risky bonds even though they are supposed to be holding only the safest commercial paper. How could they do this? A.I.G. agreed to buy back the bonds if they went bad. (Incredibly, the Securities and Exchange Commission went along with this.) A.I.G. had a securities lending program, in which it would lend securities to investors, like short-sellers, in return for cash collateral. What did it do with the money it received? Incredibly, it bought mortgage-backed securities. When the firms wanted their collateral back, it had sunk in value, thanks to A.I.G.’s foolish investment strategy. The practice has cost A.I.G. — oops, I mean American taxpayers — billions.
Here’s what is most infuriating: Here we are now, fully aware of how these scams worked. Yet for all practical purposes, the government has to keep them going. Indeed, that may be the single most important reason it can’t let A.I.G. fail. If the company defaulted, hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of credit-default swaps would “blow up,” and all those European banks whose toxic assets are supposedly insured by A.I.G. would suddenly be sitting on immense losses. Their already shaky capital structures would be destroyed. A.I.G. helped create the illusion of regulatory capital with its swaps, and now the government has to actually back up those contracts with taxpayer money to keep the banks from collapsing. It would be funny if it weren’t so awful.
OK, still, AIG was just a symptom, even as central a role as it plays in this fiasco. What was the cause?
It’s tempting to say “greed” and just leave it at that. But the problem is bigger than that. It’s “trust”. Trust that housing prices would continue to rise, regardless. Trust that people would act rationally, and only buy homes that they could afford. Trust that loan officers would only loan to people who were qualified. Trust that bank managers would execute proper oversight. Trust that banking executives would exercise due judgment. Trust that credit markets would operate to offset risk with reserves. Trust that rating agencies would rate risk appropriately. Trust that the invisible hand of the marketplace would keep excess in check. And trust that failing any of these, the govermental regulatory agencies would intercede and enforce statuatory limitations.
Well, you can see where trust has gotten us. Take nothing on faith. Over the last couple of decades, regulation was relaxed and business sought to push the boundaries further, creating new financial instruments which the average person can barely understand. The experts told us it was all hunky-dory, and we believed them. But we should have noted that they were the ones to benefit from the whole scheme, and been less trusting. Or, more accurately, we should have demanded that our elected representatives in government were less trusting. But they stood to benefit as well, with the corruption of corporate donations to campaigns and lucrative Board positions once politicians left office.
I must admit to being sorely tempted to come to the conclusion that we deserve what is happening. Very sorely tempted.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Depression, Emergency, Failure, Government, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Weather
It’s been a warm week here in central Missouri. 40s early on, up almost to 70 midweek. Yesterday it was 60s. With sun, and the sort of rain you get in early spring.
Little wonder that the trees are starting to bud, jonquils break through the topsoil, snowdrops in full riot.
Naturally enough, it’s supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow.
* * * * * * *
NPR had a fascinating – and frightening – story this morning:
Taxpayer Beware: Bank Bailout Will Hurt
A single piece of paper may just be one of the most surprising and illuminating documents of the whole banking crisis.
It’s a one-page research note from an economist at Deutsche Bank, and it outlines in the clearest terms the kind of solution many bankers are looking for. The basic message: We should forget trying to get a good deal for taxpayers because even trying will hurt.
“Ultimately, the taxpayer will be on the hook one way or another, either through greatly diminished job prospects and/or significantly higher taxes down the line,” the document says.
The story called the piece of paper a “Ransom Note.” Or, as the presenter put it another way, “That’s a nice global economy you got there. Be a real shame if anything happened to it.”
Shakedown, baby.
* * * * * * *
But it may be too late for that, already. Surprising everyone, the US economy contracted at an annualized rate of 6.2% in the last quarter of 2008. Overnight, the government worked out a deal to own upwards of 36% of Citibank Corp. Consumer spending has dropped off radically as people react to the uncertain economy and start to pay down the historically high debt ratios – ratios which haven’t been seen since 1929.
And it’s not limited to just us. Japanese manufacturing output fell 10% just last month, on top of a 9.8% drop in December – a stunning drop, the likes of which has not been seen for over 50 years. That is a reflection of the drop off in demand globally.
* * * * * * *
There will be snow tonight and tomorrow. How much damage it does to the flowers and trees will remain to be seen. But it sure seems that spring is a long ways off.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Daily Kos, Depression, Emergency, Failure, Health, Society, Survival
For the first time since the Dance of Stupidity & Pain I took the dog for his morning walk today. Just got back. And gawds, does my knee hurt. Between the half mile walk and the 18 degree temp out, I feel like someone shot me just below the knee.
As I expected.
But it had to be done.
* * * * * * *
There was a good segment on NPR this morning, with an economic historian who has a new book out about the Great Depression. One of the things that emerged from the piece was his comment about how the current economic situation is frightenly familiar to the situation then. From the NPR website:
Ahamed calls the similarities between our current economic problems and the Great Depression “eerie.” He points out that both crises began with a bubble, and that both bubbles were caused, in his view, by mistakes in federal review policy. And, when both bubbles burst, they eventually led to a banking crisis.
But, he says, the leaders of today can learn from the lessons of the Great Depression: First, he says, we should not let the banking system collapse. Second, we should not go to extreme lengths to try to protect the currency. Third, we need to let the budget deficit expand.
“The problem of the Great Depression was … a failure of intellectual will. The danger this time might be a failure of political will,” says Ahamed. “To bail out the banks is going to cost a lot of money, and the American public are so angry that they are not, at the moment, willing to sign a blank check.”
* * * * * * *
The heating pad helps. And in a few minutes I’ll get up, go find some OTC stuff to take to help the pain. But I expect that it’ll ache for much of the day, and this will complicate my plans to do some conservation work this afternoon (I work standing – always have. Most binders do, since you need to move a fair amount.)
So, why did I go for a walk? It’s been less than a week – I could have easily put it off a bit longer, let the bruised bone heal some more.
Because, as painful as I knew this would be, I didn’t want to let the rest of my body lose too much ground. Oh, I’ve been doing other exercises these last few days, but nothing is as good for me as walking is. Pain isn’t always an enemy.
Understanding that, accepting that, is one of the first steps to maturity, I think. I remember when I first read the passage from Dune where young Paul is tested by the Bene Gesserit to determine whether he is “human”. I was perhaps 9 or 10, and the scene impressed me greatly, gave me a jump start on dealing with the pain which would come to me early in life.
* * * * * * *
As noted in some of my posts here about the economy, I’m more than a little pissed off about how we got into this mess. Quite honestly, I think there’s quite a few candidates for a “Head-on-Pike Award of the Month” competition, complete with categories for “Best Expression”, “Most Deserving”, and “Ideal for Throwing Things At”. That many of these same people still hold elected office, or have been receiving massive bonuses (or complaining about not being able to get the bonuses they ‘deserve’) just adds to my dark musings about appropriate means of getting said heads on said pikes.
So yeah, I’m angry. And yeah, that influences my willingness to just write blank checks to cover the debts that these various and sundry assholes created.
But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.
* * * * * * *
Anyone who has been through any kind of serious injury or disease knows that there comes a point where you have to make a decision. You have to either hide from the continuing pain as best you can, using drugs or changing your lifestyle, or you have to do your best to get past the pain and do whatever you can to cope with the effects of your injury.
Neither choice is necessarily “right”. But they each come with consequences.
I have made choices each way, depending on the situation. I will not judge the choices that another makes.
Except when those choices have consequences for me. Like this:
Jindal rejects La.’s stimulus share
Louisiana‘s Bobby Jindal, a Republican, became the first governor Friday to refuse officially a part of his state’s share of the $787 billion stimulus bill, while President Obama warned the nation´s mayors to spend stimulus money wisely.
While some governors were subtly backing off previous statements that they wouldn’t take their share of the windfall, Mr. Jindal issued a statement saying Louisiana would not participate in a program aimed at expanding state unemployment insurance coverage.
“Increasing taxes on our Louisiana businesses is certainly not a way to stimulate our economy. It would be the exact wrong thing we could do to encourage further growth and job creation,” said Mr. Jindal, although the Louisiana legislature could override his decision.
No, I don’t live in LA. But this kind of behavior – and similar behavior by other Republican governors elsewhere – will have an impact on all of us, across the country. That it comes from the party that got us into this mess doesn’t make me any more sympathetic. That it comes at this point when states have been sucking up billions of Federal dollars at every opportunity for decades means that I cannot possibly see it as in any way credible. It is just grandstanding, and hypocritical to boot.
* * * * * * *
Well, this has taken longer than I intended. I guess I had more to say than I thought. Or maybe I’m just in more pain than I realized, and am using this as a distraction.
Look, this really is pretty simple. Yeah, the deficits necessary to get us out of this depression are going to hurt. And it is galling that no small amount of money is going into the pockets of people who directly caused it, or to save the bacon of pols who are blathering about how they don’t want it. If you want, you can also be pissed off at those who “bought more house than they could afford” and who may now get bailed out of that bad decision. It doesn’t matter – be pissed at who you want, however you want – so long as this gets done. Otherwise, we will just continue to bleed, to suffer, to experience pain until it consumes us and ruins our lives for decades.
I know which path I’ll take.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to Daily Kos.)
Filed under: Climate Change, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Guns, Health, Humor, movies, Nuclear weapons, Predictions, Preparedness, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Weather
Gah – it’s 55 degrees here. Inside, I mean. No, we don’t have the thermostat turned that low. The heating system, an old hot-water radiator setup, just can’t keep up when the temps get down to below zero Fahrenheit. Not in an old house with minimal insulation (and no simple way of adding any). So we wander around, playing Quintet, waiting for something resembling normal weather to return, trying to get done what we can.
It’s sobering. And instructive. In Communion of Dreams I stipulate a long period of harsh winters for much of the northern hemisphere, following the ‘small’ nuclear war in Asia. Having lived through some 15 Iowa winters, it was easy to imagine what that would be like. But I was younger, and memory is fleeting. Combine those cold conditions for a prolonged period with an economic collapse, and those years in my novel would be brutal – moreso than any of us probably understand.
And let’s hope it stays that way. When I read things like this, I wonder whether I have been entirely too optimistic about our future. Then again, not like these geniuses have been right about anything else for the last couple of years.
Wait – they’ve been entirely too optimistic, too, haven’t they? That’s what got us into this financial mess.
Gods, now I really am depressed.
And cold.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Emergency, Failure, Government, Politics, Predictions, Society
So, last time I borrowed money from a bank, for a Federally-guaranteed Small Business Loan, it was a bit of a nightmare. They wanted to know everything down to my shoe size, with a fair amount of documentation to support the claim that I wear an 11 wide. And, needless to say, they wanted to know exactly what I was going to do with the $50,000 I wanted to borrow – complete with a detailed business plan, revenue forecasts, et cetera. Given that I wanted to borrow the money, I didn’t find this too onerous; rather it seemed to be a reasonable expectation, if a tad tedious.
But don’t expect that street to run both ways.
Where’d the bailout money go? Shhhh, it’s a secret
WASHINGTON – It’s something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where’s the money going?
But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation’s largest banks say they can’t track exactly how they’re spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.
“We’ve lent some of it. We’ve not lent some of it. We’ve not given any accounting of, ‘Here’s how we’re doing it,'” said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. “We have not disclosed that to the public. We’re declining to.”
The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what’s the plan for the rest?
None of the banks provided specific answers.
Well, no, of course they didn’t. It might lead to somewhat awkward revelations, such as this:
AP study finds $1.6B went to bailed-out bank execs
Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year, an Associated Press analysis reveals.
The rewards came even at banks where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar executive pay packages.
Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options, personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal securities documents found.
Your tax dollars at work.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI and dKos.)
Filed under: Constitution, Daily Kos, Emergency, Failure, Government, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Society
The radio said 13 degrees. It’s cold enough that the cats have left taking turns curling up on my lap, and have parked themselves on radiators. We’re fortunate that we can afford to heat this 125 year old house, at least enough to keep us warm if we wear layers.
And the news is as cold as the weather: 533,000 jobs cut last month, over one and a quarter million in just the last three months. Take a look on how Yahoo! news titled that link – it’s very telling. As I have written previously, I think we’re in for a long haul, something akin to a true depression rather than just a bad recession. All the elements are in place, many are already playing out just as they did during the Great Depression. And, as bad as it is, I think this is also a time of potential – potential to make some changes which would normally be resisted by entrenched interests: reregulation (intelligent reregulation) of the financial sector; revamping transportation to create an infrastructure supporting mass transit; introduction of single-payer health insurance; elimination of our insane War on (Some) Drugs.
75 years ago today, during the great Depression, Prohibition ended. It is time to do the same thing again, but with marijuana. Legalize it. Regulate it. Tax it. Treat it like alcohol. Pardon or commute the sentences of everyone in prison for using it or selling small amounts. Quit funding para-military squads in local police departments in the name of “stopping drugs”. It’s a waste of people and resources to fight this pointless war.
It’s been well over 20 years since I last used pot. If it was legalized tomorrow, I’m not sure I’d ever use it again. I don’t have a dog in this fight, from that perspective. But as someone who loves liberty, who hates to see government empowered through fear-mongering, who thinks that we will need all of our resources to deal with *real* problems rather than artificial ones, the time has come to end Prohibition again. And I hope that the new president will have the balls to do so.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI and Daily Kos.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, BoingBoing, Emergency, Failure, Feedback, Government, Guns, Kindle, Marketing, NYT, Politics, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, RKBA, Society
An update to this post… In the four days since the site went public, we’ve had almost 75,000 hits. That’s more hits than I’ve had to the Communion of Dreams site this entire year. I’d say it’s off to a good start. Interesting that it has already started to propagate beyond the usual gun forums and whatnot – we got a lot of hits from a link on SomethingAwful, and we’re seeing some links from people’s Facebook and Myspace pages.
* * *
Did you see this post in the NYT about the future of publishing? I was going to write about it, but have been occupied with other matters. Then I saw this piece by Clay Shirky in response, and figured I’d just tell people to read what he said. An excerpt:
There are book lovers, yes, but there are also readers, a much larger group. By Gleick’s logic, all of us who are just readers, everyone who buys paperbacks or trades books after we’ve read them, everyone who prints PDFs or owns a Kindle, falls out of his imagined future market. Publishers should forsake mere readers, and become purveyors of Commemorative Text Objects. It’s the Franklin Mint business model, now with 1000% more words!
* * *
Got a note from a friend in response to yesterday’s doom & gloom report. He asked what my advice would be for anyone wondering about how to handle some modest investments (and acknowledged that I am not a financial advisor in any professional way). My reply:
Warm clothes and sturdy shoes.
* * *
Well, I have other matters to attend to. Have a longer post working in the back of my mind, perhaps for later.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Emergency, Failure, Flu, Government, movies, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Writing stuff
Sometimes I wish that I listened to my own advice. For literally decades, my mantra of advice for friends has always been “trust your instincts”. This isn’t just some mystical mumbo-jumbo: a healthy, functioning human brain with a decent amount of education and experience is an amazing data processor, with multiple layers of analysis always going on – and one of them is what your subconsious is considering that kicks up to your conscious awareness as a “gut feeling”. This is the premise behind the book Blink (which I haven’t read, but have read enough about from the author and others to have a decent understanding of).
OK, so what am I going on about now?
[Mild spoilers ahead.]
Just this, when I originally conceived Communion of Dreams, I was writing a book about . . . wait for it . . . the aftermath of an economic collapse. Yeah, the bulk of the book you see now was pretty much the same. But the backstory was more about how a series of severe but not pandemic flu epidemics lead to the collapse of the world economy around 2011 – 2012. And how that collapse would lead to a significant downturn of the human population worldwide, as the carrying capacity of the planet changed. Yes, I still had the extant plot device of the Fire Flu there, but it was to be what Diabolus became in the current version – a terror threat that played off of the memories of what happened a generation previously.
But I was writing this initially around 2000 – the economy was just too good, things seemed like they would be smooth sailing forever. Trying to get people to think about, let alone believe, that an economic collapse could occur was just too difficult. Most people only understand the functioning of the economy when it smacks them in the face – and in spite of the brief downturn following the 9/11 attacks, few people understood what was building on the horizon.
So I went with the current revision of the book.
I should have trusted my instincts. They have only very seldom let me down. Because now there is a growing awareness of the precariousness of our economic situation. Most people are still only thinking that we’re in for some “rough times”, which I gather they think will be a limitation of how many new plasma televisions they can buy. But even that level of understanding would be enough for them to understand what I was (or, rather, would have been) writing about in that earlier version of Communion.
And yes, if you look at what I said above, you can conclude that I think that things are actually going to get a lot worse for a lot longer than what the current awareness believes. It really depends on how foolishly our government and business leaders act – right now I am not optimistic. Will it mean a global economic collapse? As one of my favorite actors in one of my favorite roles said:
Personally, I’d give us one chance in three. More tea anyone?
Jim Downey
(With apologies for having my Monday doom and gloom a day late – it was a busy weekend launching Ballistics by the inch.)
Communion Of Dreams 