Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
Nate, who is more of a Michigander than I am, drew this not-pretty picture of GM’s operating margin over the last half century. He explains that this picture shows that GM has been using healthcare and pension promises to put off the time it registers these real costs on its balance sheet as a way to get the benefit of labor but put off paying the true costs of it.
GM was
Let me start by saying I’m non-plussed by the call for Rick Wagoner’s head. I think Wagoner was making the right moves recently, but he was also responsible for years of inaction. So I’m not sorry to see him gone. In any case, Obama is forcing out the entire board of GM, so Wagoner would have had to go anyway.
That said, here’s what Obama seems to be announcing today:Chrysler will be
Marcy noted earlier the article in today’s Washington Post by Peter Finn and Joby Warrick detailing the story surrounding abu-Zubaydah’s capture and torture. I want to pick up where Marcy left off; i.e. the evidence that nothing was obtained from abu-Zubaydah’s torture is the reason the torture tapes destroyed.
Fox Business News has an article describing what it got in response to a FOIA request for Treasury documents on the bailout. While most of the interesting details were redacted because of attorney-client privilege, the documents do reveal the extent to which Citi and AIG were as arrogant when Treasury was negotiating this stuff as they have been in recent weeks.