The NYT’s Scott Shane presents what pretends to be a comprehensive review of the options for some kind of investigation into Bush era crimes. He reviews four options–a criminal investigation akin to Lawrence Walsh’s Iran-Contra investigation, a congressional investigation akin to the Church Committee, a bipartisan investigation akin to the 9/11 Commission, and nothing aside from currently investigations like the OPR review of Yoo’s and Bradbury’s advocacy on torture.

But there are two very disturbing aspects to his story. 

First, in a review of options for holding what we all know to be Dick Cheney responsible for shredding the Constitution, why would you present such a selective picture of Dick’s own history with efforts to hold Presidents responsible for violating the law?

Many Republicans, however, say the lofty appeals to justice and history mask an unseemly and dangerous drive to pillory the Bush administration and hamstring the intelligence agencies.

That was precisely the view of an aide in Gerald Ford’s White House named Dick Cheney when a Senate committee led by Frank Church of Idaho looked into intelligence abuses in the mid-1970s. A quarter-century later, as vice president, Mr. Cheney would effectively wreak vengeance on that committee’s legacy, encouraging the National Security Agency to bypass the warrant requirement the committee had proposed and unleashing the Central Intelligence Agency he felt the committee had shackled.

[snip]

But some Republicans saw Mr. Church as a showboat and his committee as overreaching. To Mr. Cheney, the Church legacy was a regrettable pruning of the president’s powers to protect the country — powers he and Bush administration lawyers reasserted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Shane’s claims about Cheney’s views are odd. He bases his characterization on no quote from Cheney, though many are readily available. And his first description–the claim that Cheney’s "precise view" of the Church Committee was that it was really about an "unseemly and dangerous drive to pillory the [Nixon?] administration and hamstring the intelligence agencies"–seems to contradict his later more accurate claim that Cheney believed the Church committee improperly constrained Presidential powers. Which is it? A personalized attack against one administration and the targeting of intelligence professionals or an attack on Presidential power? Or is Shane suggesting that Cheney’s view of any investigation now would be an attempt to pillory the Bush/Cheney Administration, which is a different stance than his prior position regarding investigations of Presidents?

And then, just as oddly, Shane makes absolutely no mention of the role that Dick Cheney played in the Iran-Contra investigation, as the ranking member of the Congressional investigative committee. Cheney was just as central a figure in defending Reagan’s (and Poppy’s) abuse of power as he was in defending Nixon’s.

What makes the weird approach to Cheney all the weirder is Shane’s mis-citation of Eric Holder on whether or not the Administration would prosecute those who devised the torture program, which Shane uses to set up some kind of equivalency between Poppy pardoning Cap Weinberger (who, after all, was protecting Poppy himself) with Obama’s and Holder’s disinterest in prosecuting those who implemented Cheney’s plan for torture. 

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said at his confirmation hearing that he, like Mr. Obama, did not want to "criminalize policy differences" by punishing officials for acts they believed were legal. The same language was used in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush when he pardoned six officials charged in the Iran-contra investigation. Mr. Bush called the charges "a profoundly troubling development in the history of our country: the criminalization of policy differences."

Perhaps I’m being overly sensitive to the word "officials" here–which seems to suggest those in some position of authority. But since we’ve already seen Kit Bond try to expand the meaning of Holder’s reference to "intelligence officers" to include political leaders, it seems some precision is worthwhile. Holder has clearly stated he won’t prosecute those who implemented Cheney’s torture (and warrarntless wiretapping, presumably) policy. He has remained non-committal on whether or not Dick Cheney is above the law.

Now, Shane does address this other scenario–prosecuting those, like Yoo, who justified torture, and those, like Cheney, who pushed for the regime (and note his use of "official" again here). But he pretty dismisses that as too hard (notwithstanding Carl Levin’s report which clearly shows the involvement of Rummy in the torture). 

But many legal experts believe that the Justice Department would be hard pressed to prosecute as torture methods that the department itself declared in 2002 not to be torture. And if an important goal is to determine who devised the policies, a push to prosecute might only persuade past officials to lawyer up and clam up. 

This whole story, after all, is about holding Dick Cheney and his minions accountable. And while none of the past examples Shane gives address the possibility of holding Cheney accountable (somehow, Shane ignores the Nixon investigation), he just throws a flaccid, "a push to prosecute [Dick Cheney] might only persuade [him] to lawyer up and clam up."

Really? Dick Cheney? And yes–I met Shane while we were both covering the Libby trial.

Admittedly, Shane’s weird story will probably not affect whether or not we get some kind of investigation into Cheney going forward (though I’ll be curious to see if anyone adopts Shane’s transparently bad logic and "analysis"). But I do find it a rather neurotic expression of a certain unwillingness to describe what is really going on here.

Whether it is Henry Paulson, Tim Geithner or the yammering dipsticks on CNBC, it seems the there has been a headlong rush to seek analysis, wisdom and solutions from the very self proclaimed geniuses that put the US and the world in the problem to start with. Aren’t there any big bankers/finance ministers that really got it right? Turns out there are, and he comes from a most unexpected place. From the Los Angeles Times comes the story of Riad Toufic Salame:

Instead, the silver-haired banker became a hero by playing it very, very safe. In 2005, he defied pressure from the Lebanese business community and bucked international trends to issue what now looks like a prophetic decree: a blanket order barring any bank in his country from investing in mortgage-backed securities, which contributed to the most dramatic collapse of financial institutions since the Great Depression.

So as major banks in America and Europe were shuttered or partly nationalized and thousands of people in the U.S. financial sector were laid off, Lebanon’s banks had one of their best years ever.

Billions in cash continue to pour in to the relative safety of Lebanese savings accounts, with comfy but not extravagant yields of 6%. A nation shunned for years as the quintessential failed state has become a pretty safe bet, or as safe a bet as investors are likely to find in this climate.

Well, that is kind of refreshing, how did Salame do it? By being a rational technocrat, eschewing excesses, turning a deaf ear to cries for irrational rates of return, maintaining tight regulation, imposing conservative balance-sheet requirements, refusing to launder dirty money and, most critically:

When the real estate boom crested this decade and investors began bundling debt into nebulous financial instruments fueled by easy credit, the pressure was on for Salame to let banks take advantage of the high yields.

But Salame steadfastly refused.

He says the mortgage-backed securities worried him from the start. He watched curiously as investment bankers engaged in what he calls "rituals" to please the credit ratings agencies and got back such safe assessments of their products. He didn’t get it. Why were these considered safe investments? They were just too complicated. They went against a major tradition in Lebanese and Middle Eastern banking: Know to whom you’re fronting cash and who’s going to pay you back.

"We could not really sense who would be responsible in the end to collect these loans," he said. "And we do not perceive banking as being a place to speculate on financial instruments that are not really concrete."

There, that wasn’t all that hard was it? Keep it simple, be willing to work and ding the bling. The way to responsibly run a nation’s banking system and economy is to adhere to good old fashioned principles of banking, economics and governmental regulation. It is really not hard, in fact it is blindingly simple.

Go with what you know.

This is weird. The DC Appeals Court apparently doesn’t want to give Obama time to make a deal between Bush’s minions and the House Judiciary Committee.

After specifically invoking the benefit of "permitting the new President"… "to express [his] views on the merits of the lawsuit" between the House Judiciary Committee and Harriet Miers and John Bolten last fall when it stayed Judge Bates’ ruling knocking down Absolute Immunity, and in spite of the fact that said new President asked for two additional weeks to submit his brief on the debate over Harriet Miers’ testimony, and in spite of the fact that HJC agreed to that two week delay, the DC Appeals panel has ordered DOJ to submit its brief by February 25, half the time the Obama Administration requested. 

That’s weird for several reasons. Normally, when the legislature and the executive get into a squabble, the courts like to have them try to resolve the squabble on their own. One of the reasons Obama had wanted two weeks was to try to broker a deal himself. Given reports that such a deal is taking some time, the order to submit briefs this Wednesday makes it much less likely that HJC and Bush’s minions will make a deal before the Appeals Court gets involved again.

The one-week extension also guarantees that Obama will submit his brief before Dawn Johnsen takes over at OLC; her confirmation hearing is scheduled for the same day as the new deadline for the brief. One way Obama could have responded to this suit would be to simply withdraw Steven Bradbury’s audacious memo expanding Absolute Immunity, but that won’t happen before Johnsen takes over.

Now, I have no idea why the Appeals Court is so antsy to get involved here, but there are several possibilities.

It’s possible that they’ve seen Greg Craig’s statement explaining that Obama will not "do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency" and they worry that Obama will craft a deal that preserves Absolute Immunity, and they want to prevent that from happening (though why they think John Conyers would agree to such a deal, I have no clue).

It’s possible they’ve read Obama’s Executive Order on Presidential Records–asserting that incumbent Presidents get to decide the Executive Privilege claims of their predecessor–and they believe that that claim puts Bush and his minions in too weak a position, so they’ve decided to press the issue in order to give Bush’s minions a stronger bargaining position.

Or it’s possible that the squabble between two administrations of the executive branch and the legislative branch just looked like so much fun that the Courts wanted to get involved.

In any case, with the Obama Administration brief due on Wednesday, we’ll have a better sense then of what Greg Craig’s statement on Presidential power really means.

Graphic by Twolf

I tell you what, those Republicans may not have squat for rational ideas, but they sure have some humor. Heck, it was less than two days ago we were watching Crockett and Tubbs Steele and Boner in "DC Vice". Fear not intrepid viewers, these jokers are bringin da funny all over. Our latest episode involves that wacky character Urkel Jindal, Governor of Louisiana. From Yahoo/Politico:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced Friday that he will decline stimulus money specifically targeted at expanding state unemployment insurance coverage, becoming the first state executive to officially refuse any part of the federal government’s payout to states.

In a statement, Jindal, who is slated to give the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s message to Congress on Tuesday, expressed concern that expanding unemployment insurance coverage would lead to increased unemployment insurance taxes later on.

Wow, the fine folks in Louisiana must find this hilarious since most governors are constantly scrapping to get their states funding they are in dire need of. And, as you may have heard, there are needs in Louisiana, part of Katrina ground central. Too bad they no longer have Dollar Bill Jefferson around to keep that stimulus money on ice.

What the hell though, life must be a hoot in a state run by a guy named Piyush who changed his name to Bobby because he identified with a character on the Brady Bunch. Personally, I don’t get it. He looks like Urkel to me.

[Awesome graphic by Twolf!]

There have been a number of moves in the al-Haramain suit, some of which I’ll review in more detail when I get back to work in earnest in Monday. But for now, there are three details I wanted to point out that reflect changing ground with regards to classification in the suit, just as the government files an appeal.

The Dead-Enders Admit Walker Didn’t Order Them to Declassify the Wiretap Log

The first comes in this government request for more time to respond to Judge Walker’s order, filed on Friday. In it, the dead-enders reverse a claim they made in January. Yesterday, they said,

In its Order of January 5, 2009, the Court directed the Government Defendants to “review the Sealed Document and their classified submissions to date in this litigation and determine whether the Sealed Document and/or any of defendants’ classified submissions may be declassified, take all necessary steps to declassify those that they have determined may be declassified and, no later than forty-five (45) days from the date of this order, serve and file a report of the outcome of that review.”

They specifically say that the review includes the stuff at issue in this suit–primarily the wiretap log that shows that al-Haramain was wiretapped illegally.

The Government can report today, as we indicated in a filing made on February 11, 2009, that we expect the relevant information at issue in the privilege assertion to remain classified.

Funny. These same dead-enders claimed, on January 22, that Walker had ordered them to get security clearances for al-Haramain’s lawyers so they could have access to the wiretap log, suggesting Walker had already ordered that access.

Second, the Court has held that due process requires that, for plaintiffs’ counsel to litigate the case, they must obtain security clearances for access to certain classified information, including the heretofore Sealed Document, court orders and possibly the Government’s classified filings in this case. Both holdings raise serious questions of law and would subject the Government to irreparable harm. [my emphasis]

The January 22 claim was a total misrepresentation of Judge Walker’s order, so I’m not surprised that the dead-enders are now asserting that they have simply been ordered to do a review–and (with their assertion that the log remains classified) that they retain ability to determine whether the document is classified or not. But the dead-enders have backed off one of their more egregious claims.

Like Dick Cheney, an Article III Court Is Not an "Agency" 

Meanwhile, on Thursday, al-Haramain submitted a filing that explains that while two lawyers for the plaintiffs have been deemed eligible for clearance to review the documents in the case, DOJ insists it can refuse them clearance by claiming they don’t have a need to now that information. Al-Haramain makes two responses that will make things interesting going forward.

First, in a move that parallels one that David Addington tried after his Fourth Branch claims were laughed to smithereens, al-Haramain argues that Judge Walker is not bound by the Executive Orders on classification since those orders only cover executive branch agencies.

Even if the Executive Branch could control a federal judge’s disclosure of classified court filings to persons with security clearance, Executive Order No. 13,292 does not purport to do so, but merely states that “[a]n agency shall not disclose information originally classified by another agency without its authorization.” Exec. Order No. 13,292, § 4.1(c) (2003) (emphasis added). A federal court is not such an “agency.” Executive Order No. 13,292 makes this clear in defining “agency” as “any ‘Executive agency,’ as defined in 5 U.S. C. [§] 105; any ‘Military department’ as defined in 5 U.S.C. [§] 102; and any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.”

Of course, the Courts really are a branch of their own. And so–the al-Haramain lawyers argue–since Judge Walker currently has possession of the wiretap log and the filings in the case, he has the authority to decide whether they have the need to know what is in the filings pertaining to this case.

The Review Should Work Like CIPA

Then they make a move that is perhaps even smarter. They argue that decisions about access to documents covered by state secrets should work just like CIPA works.

Analogous authority under the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), 18 U.S.C. App. 3, which governs a criminal defendant’s access to classified information, is consistent with the notion of judicial authority to determine the “need to know” with regard to classified information that is under a court’s control. The provision of CIPA governing discovery of classified information by defendants, 18 U.S.C. App. 3, § 4, “gives the court the authority to regulate the access to classified information of persons assisting the defense.”

Aside from being common sense, this argument plays right into arguments members of Congress are making in their bills to limit state secrets claims from ending litigation.

The bipartisan State Secret Protection Act is modeled on existing protections and procedures for handling secret evidence. Specifically, the bill would require a court to make an independent assessment of the privilege claim, and would allow evidence to be withheld only if "public disclosure of the evidence that the government seeks to protect would be reasonably likely to cause significant harm to the national defense or diplomatic relations of the United States."

Under the bill, when this standard is met, a judge must protect the evidence from harmful disclosure, and shall consider whether a non-privileged substitute can be created that would prevent an unnecessary dismissal of the claims. The sponsors noted that through reasonable and uniform procedures and standards, their bill would strengthen national security and the rule of law, and would help restore checks and balances. [my emphasis]

In other words, al-Haramain is taking this suit in precisely the direction Congress would take it. 

I have no idea whether these arguments will work–Judge Walker has ordered the government to respond to al-Haramain’s arguments about who gets to limit the access to classified information in this case. And with the government’s appeal of the classification question, the whole thing is headed for the 9th Circuit in any case. But the question of who got to decide whether or not al-Haramain got to review these filings and the wiretap log has been unresolved since Walker’s January 5 order. With al-Haramain’s arguments, it bring the litigation squarely to the question of how these questions get resolved.

Via Laura Rozen comes reference to a chilling piece by Sam Quinones in Foreign Policy on the drug smuggling violence that has escalated to a total state of war rivaling levels in Iraq.

There are so many hot spots for attention these days – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gitmo, not to mention the ops that are being run on US citizens by their own government as a result of the Bush/Cheney decision to gin up a military rationale for surveillance domestically – that it is easy to forget what is going on just across the border. Easy, at least, until you take in Sam Quinones’ tale:

That week in Monterrey, newspapers reported, Mexico clocked 167 drug-related murders. When I lived there, they didn’t have to measure murder by the week. There were only about a thousand drug-related killings annually. The Mexico I returned to in 2008 would end that year with a body count of more than 5,300 dead. That’s almost double the death toll from the year before—and more than all the U.S. troops killed in Iraq since that war began.

But it wasn’t just the amount of killing that shocked me. When I lived in Mexico, the occasional gang member would turn up executed, maybe with duct-taped hands, rolled in a carpet, and dropped in an alley. But Mexico’s newspapers itemized a different kind of slaughter last August: Twenty-four of the week’s 167 dead were cops, 21 were decapitated, and 30 showed signs of torture. Campesinos found a pile of 12 more headless bodies in the Yucatán. Four more decapitated corpses were found in Tijuana, the same city where barrels of acid containing human remains were later placed in front of a seafood restaurant. A couple of weeks later, someone threw two hand grenades into an Independence Day celebration in Morelia, killing eight and injuring dozens more. And at any time, you could find YouTube videos of Mexican gangs executing their rivals—an eerie reminder of, and possibly a lesson learned from, al Qaeda in Iraq.

This is neither new nor isolated. When I was younger, I used to go down to Tijuana, it was a great time. It really was easy and fun; what Chinatown was to LA, Tijuana was to San Diego. No longer is even the formerly relatively civil Tijuana docile and appropriate for casual strolling about. Long ago, back in the sixties, on our way back to Kentucky to visit my grandparents during summers, we used to cross over into Juarez. Juarez was always a little scarier than Tijuana or Puerto Penasco, but, still, it was cool. That all changed in Juarez as far back as the late 70s and early 80s; then it became off of most people’s travel itinerary. Now it is all a war zone.

With war raging between Mexico’s narcogangs, and with plenty of cash available from drug sales to Americans—$25 billion a year, by one reliable estimate—cartel gunmen began to grow discontented with the limited selection of arms found in the thousands of gun stores along the southern U.S. border. Instead, they have sought out—and acquired—the world’s fiercest weaponry. Today, hillbilly pistoleros are showing signs of becoming modern paramilitaries.

Mexico’s gangs had the means and motive to create upheaval, and in Mexico’s failure to reform into a modern state, especially at local levels, the cartels found their opportunity. Mexico has traditionally starved its cities. They have weak taxing power. Their mayors can’t be reelected. Constant turnover breeds incompetence, improvisation, and corruption. Local cops are poorly paid, trained, and equipped. They have to ration bullets and gas and are easily given to bribery. Their morale stinks. So what should be the first line of defense against criminal gangs is instead anemic and easily compromised. Mexico has been left handicapped, and gangs that would have been stomped out locally in a more effective state have been able to grow into a powerful force that now attacks the Mexican state itself.

Hillbilly pistoleros indeed. Lou Dobbs on CNN may be, and in fact clearly is, a raving belligerent maniac regarding Mexico and brown people, but that doesn’t mean there is no problem on the other side of the border, and it doesn’t mean that it is not bleeding in to this side. It is a problem, and it is here; trust me, the next part hits right in my city, Phoenix.

Americans watch this upheaval with curious detachment. One warning sign is Phoenix. This city has replaced Miami as the prime gateway for illegal drugs entering the United States. Cartel chaos in Mexico is pushing bad elements north along with the dope—enforcers without work and footloose to freelance.

Phoenix—the snowbird getaway, the land of yellow cardigans and emerald fairways—is now awash in kidnappings—366 in 2008 alone, up from 96 a decade ago. Most committing these crimes hail from Sinaloa, several hundred miles south. In one alarming incident, a gang of Mexican nationals, dressed in Phoenix police uniforms and using high-powered weapons and military tactics, stormed a drug dealer’s house in a barrage of gunfire, killing him and taking his dope.

I wish I could say that Quinones has overstated this; he has not. So far, the infiltrating drug gangs, when I did major drug cases we called them "Sinaloa Cowboys", seem to mostly prey on their own rivals and have not really started taking from the general population of Phoenix. But the fear of expansion is palpable, and is exactly what the execrable Sheriff Joe Arpaio feeds off of to pull his anti-Hispanic oppressive raids and policing publicity stunts. The sad, but predictable, part is that, of course, Arpaio is so busy running stunts with the media (he even has his own Fox reality show now) that he doesn’t even come close to lifting a finger against the real violence. That is left to the Phoenix Police Department while he preens around.

You don’t have to watch or listen to Lou Dobbs, no sentient being should have to do that lately, but do not discount the seriousness of the violence; and it is growing. Is it epidemic yet? No, not there yet, not on this side of the border anyway. However, among all the other things on our, and President Obama’s, plates, this one needs to be added to the list before it does metastasize out of control. Please go read Sam Quinones’ entire piece, it deserves that.

Why GM Matters

[As I indicated yesterday in the post "Why American Industry (And Its Future) Matters", we have the privilege of having author William J. Holstein today at Emptywheel and Firedoglake. Mr. Holstein has a long and rich history as a journalist and author. Most importantly for today, he has plunged into the history and ethos of General Motors and produced an incredible work detailing just how critical General Motors, the American auto industry, and American industry itself is to the United States economy and way of life.

As Michael Fitzgerald observed at bnet.com, "Holstein is using GM as a symbol for whether it makes sense for the U.S. to bother with manufacturing. That might sound odd for a country that for now probably remains the world’s largest manufacturing economy. But Holstein argues that our political and financial leaders don’t get manufacturing, and don’t think it’s important. This is the crux of the Main Street vs. Wall Street debate, and it is shaping up as the core fight of economic policy over the next few years: do we get a justifiable return if we invest in making things, or should we focus on information-driven innovation?"

I think that is right. Since we cannot layout the entire book in the intro here, Bill and I decided to focus on the emerging technology, and specifically battery/electric technology, and the new product lines, that GM is producing. With that said, what follows are prepared remarks in that regard by Bill Holstein. Take a look, and then join us in discussion. I am looking forward to the best and brightest that inhabit our little corner of the world participating in and driving this. Oh, and visit Bill anytime at his blog WilliamJHolstein.com Also, I heartily recommend purchasing his book, it is a fascinating look into a critical issue of our time, not to mention a great read. – bmaz]

*****
By: William J. Holstein:

It’s time to cut through all the nonsense about General Motors “not making cars that Amrericans want to buy.” The truth is that GM has seized design and performance leadership over its longtime nemesis, Toyota. Toyota’s cars these days resemble appliances, i.e. refrigerators on wheels. They don’t break, but they hardly inspire.

In terms of their physical appearance, GM vehicles have real attitude. The new CTS has a very bold and aggressive front end that designer John Manoogian came up with at the last moment. He and his team decided to take the V-shape that used to stop at the bumpers and let it plunge below the bumpers toward the ground. They also inserted grilles on the right front panels merely for decorative purposes. That nearly drove the engineers crazy because of the challenge of stamping a piece of sheet metal with an odd hole in the middle of it. But they did it. At first, the competition could not believe that GM had figured out how to achieve that.

GM’s design revival started in the late 1990s with the new creased look of the Cadillac. But it accelerated with the arrival of Bob Lutz in 2001. Lutz is the quintessential “car guy” and he took responsibility for product development. He acknowledges, and Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner acknowledges, that design got lost at GM for at least two decades. The flamboyant designers of the 1940s and 1950s faded away and were replaced by engineers and bean-counters who relied on “clinics,” or panel sessions with consumers, to decide what the market wanted. This was a disastrous way to design cars—consumers can only respond to what they see on the road. They can’t anticipate the new and exciting.

Lutz helped allow the designers, led by Ed Welburn, to once again take risks and insist that the engineers and metal stampers and accountants let designers pursue their dreams. Designers have to play. They have to tinker. They have to reach into history to identify the themes and motifs that turn Americans on. That’s exactly what GM’s designers are doing these days. For my book, I walked through GM design studios in the United States, Germany and China. They are filled with young people from all over the world who are excited about working for GM. That could never have been said 10 years ago.

Not enough Americans understand why General Motors’ effort to develop the Chevrolet Volt with a lithium ion battery is so important. Here’s why:

Alliance Bernstein estimates that lithium ion batteries could be a $150 billion a year industry by 2030. It is a new industry waiting to be born. It’s a perfect example of the so-called “green industries” that President Obama says he wants to see in America.

But right now, the Americans are lagging behind Japan, China, South Korea and the French in developing these batteries that are considered more efficient and longer-lasting than previous generations of batteries, such as the nickel metal hydride battery that is in the Toyota Prius.

GM has invested $1 billion so far in this battery project and has tapped LG Chem, a unit of the LG group of South Korea, to develop a particular variety of the lithium ion batter. LG will make the battery cells in Korea and bring them to Michigan where they will be packagd into systems that can actually be built into the Volt.

It’s true that the Volt will be relatively expensive when it comes out by the end of 2010—somewhere in the $35,000 to $40,000 range. But what GM hopes to do is introduce the lithium ion battery into other models and into other geographic markets like China so that it can drive down the costs. It’s much like gearing up the semiconductor or flat panel display industries. Once you can achieve scale, you can drive costs way down.

If GM can get momentum with the lithium ion battery, it’s likely that more and more of the “value added” elements of making the batteries will end up on American soil. This is great from many different perspectives—it creates jobs, it eases our dependence on foreign energy sources and it will diminish emissions. In fact, if you operate the Volt for only 40 miles, there will be zero emissions. That’s because the Volt will go 40 miles between charges. If you go further, a gasoline turbine kicks in to recharge the battery. At that point, the driver would be consuming gasoline and emitting carbon dioxide. But 78 percent of Americans drive 40 or fewer miles each day. So most people who own a Volt will not be emitting anything during the course of their daily lives.

That’s different from the way the Prius works. It has a gasoline engine and a battery-powered engine. When you accelerate the vehicle, the gas engine is doing the work. But when you are idle, or when you are coasting or braking, the battery takes over. But it is not possible to operate the Prius in the battery-only mode for any extended period of time. This difference in how the Volt is equipped is another part of the breakthrough that GM is on the verge of achieving.

This is another element of why GM is important to America’s future. If the government forces GM into bankruptcy or other downward spirals, the Volt program almost certainly would be delayed—and with them, America’s hopes for being a player in the lithium ion future.

So let’s dispense with this myth that “GM only makes gas-guzzling SUVs.” GM is back in the car design business, and back in style.

I have a busy morning here, but want to draw attention to an article this morning in the New York Times by Robert Pear on the ongoing discussions of healthcare reform for the United States:

Since last fall, many of the leading figures in the nation’s long-running health care debate have been meeting secretly in a Senate hearing room. Now, with the blessing of the Senate’s leading proponent of universal health insurance, Edward M. Kennedy, they appear to be inching toward a consensus that could reshape the debate.

Many of the parties, from big insurance companies to lobbyists for consumers, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, are embracing the idea that comprehensive health care legislation should include a requirement that every American carry insurance.
…
“There seems to be a sense of the room that some form of tax penalty is an effective means to enforce such an obligation, though only on those for whom affordable coverage is available,” said the memorandum, prepared by David C. Bowen, a neurobiologist who is director of the health staff at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

The proposal for an individual mandate was one of the few policy disagreements between Mr. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton in their fight for the Democratic presidential nomination. She wanted to require everyone to have and maintain insurance. He said he wanted to “ensure affordable coverage for all,” but would initially apply the mandate only to children.

The 20 people who regularly attend the meetings on Capitol Hill include lobbyists for AARP, Aetna, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Business Roundtable, Easter Seals, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the United States Chamber of Commerce.

"Many of the parties, from big insurance companies to lobbyists for consumers, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, are embracing the idea that comprehensive health care legislation should include a requirement that every American carry insurance." Yeah, no one could have anticipated that I guess. It suggests that those allowed in these discussions are overwhelmingly tied to the current system; few if any represent alternative approaches. So what is Kennedy’s staff doing? And why are people sworn to secrecy? Surely this deserves more light. With regards to "mandate," the mandate they’re talking about is everyone required to purchase insurance. That does little to control total costs, which is the macro issue that drives the long-run insolvency claims about Medicare/Medicaid and the fact that US costs are higher than elsewhere.

If everyone must have PRIVATE insurance, that’s full employment and industry expansion beyond that for the insurance industry. OTOH, if we move to universal care and single-payer, that cuts the throat of the private health insurance industry. I know which seems more palatable to me. I’ll be honest, I had to struggle to find anything positive to say at all about the things laid out in Pear’s article. There is maybe some help in this for the truly poor. Pretty clear though that for the rest of the country, they are going to keep getting raped as usual on healthcare; perhaps even more so. This doesn’t do squat for anybody in my family, nor anybody I know. I understand that is not the overriding criteria of judgment, but it does matter to me. But we are going broke paying for medical insurance because we all have to buy individual policies that don’t provide that great of coverage and cost a fortune.

We only need the mandate because we refuse to consider true national health insurance. Obama was focussed on bringing costs down during the campaign–the best way to get costs down, despite his protestations, is to get the ones who use the service least to pay into the pot.

If the gov’t was going to offer a program that undercut the private plans (which it easily could because of efficiency), it would theoretically drive private costs down or drive private insurers out of business. . . which would mostly be fine with me. However, with a medicare-for-all model as a competitor, we could make that mandate seem much less burdensome to individuals (and less expensive to the federal gov’t). . . and those that wanted to keep private insurance or demand supplemental plans from the market could do that. . . which sounds like a much freer market solution than the one we have, or the patchwork I expect to get.

As I have said for a long time now, the proper way to craft and pitch a doable healthcare reform is to make it "Medicare For Everyone!"

[The thoughts expressed in this post, aside from the Pear NYT quote, are an amalgamation of those from a discussion I had online with a few extremely bright good friends]

BartCop/Political Humor

At the end of December last year, Emptywheel reported that noted high powered Washington lobbyist Miss Vicki Iseman had filed a defamation suit against the New York Times. At issue was a February 21, 2008 Times article that Iseman contended lead people to believe that she played hanky blankie with McCain; but, as EW noted at the time:

What was at issue in the article was the appearance of an affair, not an affair itself, and the beliefs of McCain staffers about that appearance of an affair.

That was exactly right then, and it is still right now and ought to be kept in mind in light of the news yesterday that Iseman’s lawsuit was dismissed:

A lobbyist’s lawsuit against The New York Times over the newspaper’s account of her ties to Senator John McCain has been settled, both sides announced on Thursday.

The suit, filed by Vicki L. Iseman, the Washington lobbyist, was settled without payment and The Times did not retract the article. In an unusual agreement, however, The Times is letting Ms. Iseman’s lawyers give their views on the suit on the paper’s Web site.

Their opinion is accompanied by a joint statement from both sides and a note to readers, which is also appearing in Friday’s edition of the newspaper.

Let me boil down to the bone what has been accomplished legally as a result of Iseman’s complaint. Not a damn thing; both parties are sticking to the same exact public positions they maintained before the meritless suit was filed, it is just that for the sake of their pocketbooks they have agreed to take the pissing match back out of the costly court litigation system. And, now that they are back into an ink fight as opposed to boxing with attorneys, let’s take a look at how Times Editor Bill Keller describes the matter in a published statement today:

What the article set out to do, and did, was to establish that Senator McCain — a man whose career was ensnared by scandal and then rebuilt on a reputation for avoiding even the appearance of impropriety — was sometimes careless of that reputation. The story reported that a senator who cast himself as the scourge of lobbyists rode on the private jets of business executives with interests before his committee, and that a senator who disdained the influence of corporate money accepted corporate money to support that very cause.

The article also reported, in that regard, that the senator’s behavior toward Ms. Iseman convinced some of his aides that his relationship with the lobbyist had become romantic; that the aides warned the senator this could endanger his reputation; and that they set out to limit Ms. Iseman’s access to the senator. Our reporting was accurate.

Yep. The Times, in the joint spirit of both plaintiff and defendant wanting to get the heck out of court, also published a self serving piece from Iseman’s lawyers, Rod Smolla and Coleman Allen (of the ridiculously named firm of Allen, Allen, Allen & Allen. What, couldn’t they just be QuadrAllen or something?).

So, this suit has been conclusively established to have been a big bunch of nothing, not that such wasn’t patently obvious from the get go. And nobody has put a dent in John Weaver’s proposition that it was bad optics for McCain to be seen playing hanky blankie with Vicky Iseman, even if that was all it was. Now I don’t know the history of all those Allen boys, but Rod Smolla has a bit of a reputation for being very dogged on First Amendment plaintiff’s cases and for persevering against odds to victory. But here, even Smolla knew this complaint was hopeless garbage that had to be bailed from fast.

The real question here is what real end was serviced by the imposition of this meritless and hopeless lawsuit by Iseman and her attorneys? It is impossible to see anything of material gain they netted out of the suit; they were complaining in the press before the suit, and they have been reduced to that after the suit. Was John McCain just that hard up to try to retaliate against John Weaver? Was there some other sub-surface purpose?

Graphic by Frederick

Well, you just knew that the GOP wouldn’t take the bonecrushing loss in last November’s elections to Rico Suave Obama and the too cool for school Dems lightly. They were, like an octogenarian on Viagra, going to get hip. Or a hip replacement. Whatever.

They started by electing the rootin tootin slick dick midnight mustache Michael Steele as RNC Chairman. When coupled with Boner John Boehner, their ultra- tanned sensitive Minority Leader, this is a clear cut recipe for the GOP surgarific return to power. Let’s check in on their street cred. From today’s CNN Political Ticker:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says his party is going to launch an "off the hook" public relations campaign that will update the GOP’s image by translating it to "urban-suburban hip-hop settings."
…
He added, jokingly, that “we need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets.”

Steele described the new multi-platform PR offensive as “avant-garde, technically. It will come to [the] table with things that will surprise everyone — off the hook.” Asked whether that meant cutting-edge tactics, Steele demurred. “I don’t do ‘cutting-edge,’” he said. “That’s what Democrats are doing. We’re going beyond cutting-edge.”

Booyah. Get down James Brown and Fitty Cent take a backseat. Now let’s look in on the Steeley One’s partner in vice, Boner Boehner. Oooh, here he is jawing up the GOP stimulus position (yeah, okay, bad imagery) and his homeboy. What a twofer:

The stimulus has passed. In addition to voting against it, Republicans are all over the airwaves trashing it.

The leader of their pack is John Boehner, the man with a tan. According to him, the stimulus will not create jobs. According to Michael Steele, the new RNC Chair, if you work and earn money, you do not necessarily have a job. According to all Republicans who voted no, this bill, with terrible ideas such as helping states pay for Medicare, assisting our elders and our children, is a disaster for our country.

That’s right; the Tan With a Plan. Wow. What a dynamic duo. Crockett and Tubbs roll in DC. Oh yeah, and Sistah McKracka is going to take the toobz by storm. What could possibly go wrong?