Snaffler’s Politics, Technology and errata

The pew Research Center’s survey of 742 American adults asked “do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?”

Self-identified Evangelicals were overwhelming in their support of torture, with nearly 87.5% stating that it can be justified. Those who are unaffiliated with any religious group were more than three times more likely to disapprove of torture. These numbers were extracted from a CNN article. The Pew Research Center’s page does not contain this information. The CNN report does provide some of the data in pie charts but it appears that CNN had access to the actual study.

Most Christian churches do dwell on the torture and execution of Christ as a “good thing.” So perhaps this is not surprising.

The current firestorm surrounding the release of Bush Administration torture memos overlooks the fact that the base memos have been public since October of 2007. I wrote about the Woo memo back then and condmened the legal reasoning as totally implausible. What is important to keep in mind is that this original memo was released during the Bush Administration. Intelligent people have been writing about this for some time and it should be obvious to all that the original Woo memo was released for the sole purpose of providing legal cover for the higher officials in the Bush administration. They can say, “but my lawyer told me it was legal!” Still, I find it amazing that we all act like it is new news. TV pundits pretend to either be shocked by the contents of the memos or shocked that Presdent Obama would release the memos.

The most amazing thing is that Fox and the other Goebbels spokespersons are defending the last administration’s war crimes. Apparently, if they can’t convince people that “enhanced” interrogation techniques are not torture, they fall back on the justification that it worked, so it must be O.K. Well, pulling fingernails, killing relatives, cattle prods, defleshing, the rack and fire also might work. So, I guess that means it is O.K. as well? Do they think Americans are that stupid? Well, I guess they do and what worries me is that they are likely right. I would guess that a lot of Americans would agree with the statement that “we ought to just shoot them” when talking about anybody arrested on suspicion of being a terrorist. So, they probably do believe that we are being unreasonably squeemish.

One question that has likely been mentioned by someone other than me is obvious. Does the U.S. Attorney General have any duty to prosecute officials for war crimes? The general rule here in the U.S. is that prosecutors have nearly absolute and unreviewable discretion to decide whom to prosecute. In some other countries, the prosecutor is not given as much discretion. This is one reason we see Spain and other European countries considering war crimes charges against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzelez, former Department of Defense general counsel William J. Haynes II, former Justice Dept. lawyer John Yoo, former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee (now a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit), and former under-secretary of defense Douglas Feith for supporting the use of illegal torture. One other reason for hesitating to bring war crimes charges is that it might introduce a “scorched earth” practice to elections. The winner of an election might simply arrest the losing incumbants and prosecute them for crimes. This would mark a sharp increase in political divisiveness.

Therefore, we may never see an actual trial with defendants brought before the particular tribunal. I doubt that Woo and others will be booking any trips to any countries that are considering war crime tribunals against former Bush staffers. Perhaps the next test will be when some country invokes a treaty to demand extradition. I believe that the U.S. government has been careful not to approve any treaty provision that could result in the forced extradition of U.S. politicians. So this may never come to pass either.

But at what point does weight of the crime outbalance the political considerations? Is there anything that a U.S. politician or administration official might do which is so abhorrent that extradition or prosecution is warranted?

Several unrelated news stories have started me thinking. Tell me if I’m crazy, but lets see if these things have the possibility of coming together.

First, we have politician Phil Gramm. He is widely credited (Washington Post, CNN, Guardian, Time, etc.) with being one of the masterminds behind our current global economic meltdown. This is based on his tireless efforts in the Senate to deregulate the financial and mortgage industries. He is a name sponser of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 which deregulated banks and one of five co-sponsors of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 which allowed the securitization of mortgage derivatives. This law included what has been called the “Enron loophole.”

After he successfully took the brakes off the financial sector, he was rewarded in 2002 with a position as Vice President of UBS Investment Bank (f/k/a “UBS Warburg”). Still with me?

Second, we have an ongoing criminal investigation of both UBS and a number of wealthy Americans who have taken advantage of Switzerland’s bank secrecy laws to hide income and assets. Now, for the uninitiated, secret bank accounts have several important purposes, almost none of them good. One thing that such an account can do is to hide illegal income. This could be income from bribery, kickbacks, or pay for play schemes. Persons in positions of power can be corrupted with offers of cash or services. Dumb politicians such as Alaska’s Ted Stevens, take payment in things that anybody driving by their house can see, such as a remodeling of a home. Other idiots take tickets to games or flights and junkets where they can be seen spending the ill-gotten gains. But what is the smart politician or corporate executive to do if they don’t want to get caught? Why ask that the funds be transferred to an account at UBS. Apparently, UBS actually marketed this service actively recruiting lawyers around the world to set up the phony business accounts overseas to handle the transactions and to then siphon the money into the secret account.

Not only can the underlying transactions be illegal, but not reporting the income generated from those assets can also be illegal. The U.S. Government is aware of $14.8 billion in assets as of several years ago in 52,000 secret accounts. Nearly half of those accounts hold securities. The Justice Department’s suit alleges that UBS engaged in cross-border securities transactions in violation of United States securities laws. This is all spelled out in the lawsuit and the Justice Department press release.

So what is the possible connection between items one and two above? Lets see how this works. We know that one of the most powerful politicians in the United States, a man responsible for doing the financial services industry’s bidding took at job with UBS when his last term was over. Is it possible politicians have links to the UBS accounts? I won’t finger Phil Gramm as I know of no evidence that he opened up a UBS account with his employer or failed to report any income from any such account. But the connection between UBS and US politicians is there. Of course if you were to check for the Wikipedia entry noting Mr. Gramm’s involvement in UBS you won’t find it. It has been recently removed. Still, one wonders if American politicians have accepted bribes by big business as rewards for their diligence in helping out their friends at the banks, investment businesses, and other companies. I’m just speculating here. But it is an intriguing possibility. Wouldn’t you like to see the list of 52,000 secret UBS account holders? Does anybody seriously believe that no politicians are on that list? After all, politicians are among the most craven and greedy bastards among us. I’d be shocked if the list does not read like a Who’s Who of major players on the national political scene.

Can’t wait to find out.

Sources:

Slate article.
CNN Money article.
Wall Street Journal article.
Phoenix Business Journal article
New York Times article.

We pause now for a moment of silence. The GOP is dead. Although they still cling to elected positions, most everything that they stand for has been eviscerated. Indulge me while I review the death certificate.

Smaller Government. The GOP presided over the largest increase in federal power, size, and budget since the founding of the Republic. The legacy of the last eight years will be that the government has grown so large that it is seen as the savior of our failing economy.

Lower Taxes. Although the GOP has been successful in lowering taxes for the rich, what did it get us? Not only did trickle down economics not work (the middle and working classes have lost earning power), but the rich are now poorer than ever, after their investments, 401ks, and IRAs were been decimated with the crashing of the markets and the recession.

Defense. The GOP leaves USA with a military stretched to the breaking point with two foreign wars. While one was fought successfully and on the cheap (Afghanistan), the other was fought for the wrong purpose and at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. Even though we have at long last managed to kill most everyone with a rifle who is not allied with the ruling party, what purpose has been served? We have been left with a worn out military capability and R&D has been directed into military efforts that will probably not be helpful when dealing with the higher-level conflicts likely to appear in the future (Korea, Iran, etc.)

Free Enterprise. The twin cornerstones of free enterprise are the raising of capital for investing in new and ongoing ventures and the provision of short and long-term credit. The first cornerstone was blasted into pieces on September 15th with the crumbling of the investment banking sector led by Lehman Bros. The other cornerstone, commercial lending, is currently failing and within six months will be effectively nationalized. There will be no “capital” left in Capitalism.

Balanced Budget. The Bush Presidency and his cohorts in the GOP have seen the largest runup in governmental debt in the history of the world. Foreign intrigues, unregulated bailouts, no-bid contracts, wasteful spending, and poorly timed and executed tax cuts will enslave our children and our children’s children with the burden of debt for a half-century.

Freedom and Democracy. Torture centers and prisons placed beyond the reach of civil and criminal courts have permanently sullied our call for freedom, liberty and democracy. Our call to other nations to put down the instruments of death and oppression are laughed at. Our leaders are at best hypocrites and at worst war criminals. It will take decades for the United States to achieve a respected standing on the world stage. Fear has replaced respect.

Do I rejoice? No. I do not rejoice. The United States is a weaker place after the Bush Presidency. We would be better off if we had well managed and carefully regulated investment banks and commercial lenders. We would be better off with a taxing structure that was fair. We would be better off militarily if our resources had not been squandered in Iraq and if we had killed Osama Bin Laden instead of Saddam Hussain. We would be better off if we had not increased our debt load. We would be better off if we had not followed in the footsteps of the Gestapo, the KGB and the Stasi by embracing torture as an accepted means of interrogation.

The Madoff scandal has thrown a light in to dark and secret corner of the SEC. What we find there is a total lack of interest in conducting fraud investigations. For at least a decade, thel SEC has spent most of its money and time trying to beef up disclosure and accounting rules with the goal of raising the bar high enough for law-abinding corporations so that they would be protected from the securities class action lawyers. In some ways, this is a reprisal of the Enron scandal. Opaque accounting, fanciful economics, fantasy projections, and “we are smarter than you” attitudes are common to both Enron and Madoff’s hedge fund. Although Sarbanes-Oxley imposes complicated and very expensive disclosure and practice requirements on companies, it continued the free market approach of letting the markets weed out the bad players. The theory was that if we allow the market to have open access to these new disclosures that companies who have disfunctional business plans will be weeded out. The problem with this theory is that this simply creates a marketing challenge for a company that is cooking the books. Cloak your operation in financial wizardry and issue Ponzi dividends to your investors and investors will continue to jam the door trying to get in so they can lose their money. What is needed is active investigation and enforcement. The news articles of pre-crash SEC investigations read like an exercise in pedantery. Countless securities schemers have been uncovered and sued in state and federal courts without the slightest hint of interest by the SEC. The SEC is too concerned with tripping up companies on minor disclosure issues that have no real effect on the underlying value of a company to spend much time prosecuting those who are not stealing billions. Perhaps if it had been more zealous in prosecuting event he smaller fish, there might be more of an institutional knowledge base to identify and pursue larger frauds.

The Daily Mail reports that Goldman Sachs will take its $14 billion share of the bailout money and hand it over to its 443 partners in the form of bonuses. Each partner will receive at least $6 million.

There is more to the story than the Daily Mail is telling us, perhaps one reason that this is not being reported here in the U.S. of A. (They probably would have been paid regardless). But one thing that these newly socialized institutions may not have realized is that once you are an organ of the State, your salary is subject to inspection by the masses. So I suspect that this will generate a lot of bad publicity.

In other news, the Daily Mail uses the following as its http tag for the article listed above:

h t t p://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1081624/Goldman-Sachs-ready-hand-7BILLION-salary-bonus-package–6bn-bail-out.html#fuck_mccain_obama

Republicans and neocons the world over can let out their breath. VP Cheney has endorsed John McCain. In making his endorsement he noted that John McCain “understands the danger facing the United States.” Of course, Cheney has understood this danger very well, as he sees it every morning when he looks in the mirror.

Sarah Palin looked about as happy as a fundametalist sunday school teacher at a lesbian sleepover. She was clearly uncomfortable. I got the impression that she was told she had to do it and that she absolutely didn’t agree with that plan.

Various online sites have noted the filing of the Investigation into the Removal of Nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006. The report was authored by the Justice Department’s own offices of Inspector General and Professional Responsibility. The report concludes on page 357:

The most serious allegation that we were not able to fully investigate related to the removal of David Iglesias, the U.S. Attoreny for New Mexico, and the allegation that he was removed to influence voter fraud and public corruption prosecutions. We recommend that a counsel specially appointed by the Attorney General assess the facts we have uncovered, work with us to conduct furthe investigation, and ultimately determine whether the evidence demonstrates that any criminal offense was committed with regard to the removal of Iglesias or any other U.S. Attorney, or the testimoney of any witness related to the U.S. Attorney removals.

The reason that the report was unable to come to a conclusion was the refusal of Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, William Kelley, Monica Goodling, and Senator Pete Domenici and his Chief of Staff to coooperate with the Justice Department’s own probe.

The report also states that the sworn testimony by the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, Kyle Sampson, and others was “inconsistent, misleading, and inaccurate.”

A few days later, the Justice Department did announce that a prosecutor was being named to investigate the criminal charges.