Able Archer

Wish I was there

Debate Blooper:

Mitt says he “would have loved” to serve in the military. What? Mitt was exactly eighteen in 1965. This makes Mitt fitt [sic—ed.] to serve in the subsequent draft, as the war really got under way that winter. However:

As the Vietnam War raged in the 1960s, Mitt Romney received a deferment from the draft as a Mormon "minister of religion" for the duration of his missionary work in France, which lasted two and a half years.

Before and after his missionary deferment, Romney also received nearly three years of deferments for his academic studies. When his deferments ended and he became eligible for military service in 1970, he drew a high number in the annual lottery that determined which young men were drafted. His high number ensured he was not drafted into the military.

The deferments for Mormon missionaries became increasingly controversial in the late 1960s, especially in Utah, leading the Mormon Church and the government to limit the number of church missionaries who could put off their military service. That agreement called for each church ward, or church district, to designate one male every six months to be exempted from potential duty for the duration of his missionary work.

Romney's home state was Michigan, making his 4-D exemption as a missionary all but automatic because of the relatively small number of Mormon missionaries from that state. It might have been more difficult in Utah, where the huge Mormon population meant that there were sometimes more missionaries than available exemptions. Most missions lasted two and a half years, as Romney's did.

Remember how Republicans slandered John Kerry, who volunteered to serve in Vietnam? Mitt Romney was actually in France.

—Douglas Carlucci

McCain keeps cool, Giuliani loses it

The King-who-never-was has failed. Rudy, you were born out of time. I wonder if you can still charge tens of thousands of dollars for your speeches about 9/11 now that you’ve given away so many for free.

In other Republican news, senator John McCain is slowly wrapping up the Republican presidential nomination. (McCain still sits in the Senate, so he deserves to be called senator, unlike Mitt Romney, who is no longer the governor of Massachusetts and so can no longer be called governor, and Giuliani, who despite leaving office in New York in 2002 is called mayor by serious television journalists; please remember, Mr. Russert and Mr. Blitzer, there are no titles of nobility in the United States. When you leave an office, you shed its title.) McCain is not winning without trouble; the far-right scream-blogs and Rush Limbaugh are tearing into him, and even G.O.P. spokesman Neil “Chamber of Commerce” Cavuto—that’s what I call him—dedicated a prominent portion of his Fox News show to a couple of McCain critics, including Representative Tom Tancredo. The criticism is based on two things: McCain’s “open borders” policies and his failure to support President Bush’s tax cuts, of which the right are as proud of as a prized pig. If the Republican coalition agrees on one thing, it’s that taxes always should be lowered; it’s like how everyone in the Democratic Coalition feels bad about poverty, the notion is at the very root of the organization.

Even a minor cleave into the Republican Party could cause its candidate to lose the election. Democrats are ferocious; they can’t wait to get to the polls and see what kind of kick they can give to the Party of Bush. Including the many nominal Republicans and unaffiliated voters who feel the same way, the Democrats probably already have a national majority. (This is an estimate based on a lot of reading and observation; I can’t quantify or prove it.) If just a million or so Republican voters stay home on election day it would ensure a Democratic victory.

McCain has a lot of work to do. Because of his reasonable approach to tax cuts—he won’t eviscerate the budget without figuring out first what’s going to happen to government programs, which is unbearable timidity for the Republican Party’s Club for Growth generation—McCain’s primary enemy is the worst possible: the Republican finance establishment. The Bush-Walker wing hedged its liability when it loaned the Republican Party to the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1990s by maintaining control of the party’s biggest publications and think-tanks. One wonders how the Wall Street Journal editorial board, the National Review, Reason, and the Weekly Standard will react to one-half of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance team as the Republicans’ standard-bearer.

His problems among commoner Republicans are enough as it is without this conservative opinion-machine set against him. An endorsement from the New York Times is not the sort of thing that wins elections in the states where the Republican Party built its electoral base. There has also been a prominent streak of nativism in the last several years, and in the party that has absorbed immigration paranoiacs McCain’s name is mud.

A lot of people are saying one thing would unite Republicans behind McCain: Hillary Clinton. I would tend to agree, but with caution. As I have said, it will not take a large number of dissidents to disrupt the Republican coalition this year. I am sure, as Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing talkers have anticipated, there are many Republicans who would rather relish four years of criticizing President Hillary Clinton than tolerate a moderate Republican in the White House. One despairs. Even in painful and obvious atrophy, the far-right still manages to manipulate both parties’ political considerations.

I think Mitt Romney is done. He was either going to fill the role of anointed Republican left vacant by Bush’s abysmal vice president, or he was going to fail. He failed. No one wanted to buy what he was selling—probably because no one knew exactly what he was selling; he just kept assuring everyone it was what they wanted to buy.

—Douglas Carlucci

There is a great article by Peter Boyer in this week's New Yorker about Newark and Cory Booker. I was planning on criticizing the article, but it is really quite good, so you all ought to just read it. Unfortunately, it's not online, so you'll have to go down to the news-agent to get a copy, but it will be worth your coins.

—Douglas Carlucci

Blackwater and N.C. fight protesters

Journalist Jeremy Scahill, whose brilliant book Blackwater documents the rise of that North Carolina-based mercenary firm still active in Iraq, reports how seven protesters were arrested and jailed in Currituck, N.C., after holding a demonstration at the gate of Blackwater’s headquarters in Moyock, N.C.

Six of the seven protesters were tried and convicted after the presiding judge cleared the court of disinterested observers. According to Scahill:

Last week in Currituck County, N.C., Superior Court Judge Russell Duke presided over the final step in securing the first criminal conviction stemming from the deadly actions of Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush administration's favorite mercenary company. Lest you think you missed some earth-shifting, breaking news, hold on a moment. The "criminals" in question were not the armed thugs who gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded more than 20 others in Baghdad's Nisour Square last September. They were seven nonviolent activists who had the audacity to stage a demonstration at the gates of Blackwater's 7,000-acre private military base in North Carolina to protest the actions of mercenaries acting with impunity -- and apparent immunity -- in their names and those of every American.

The arrest of the activists and the subsequent five days they spent locked up in jail is more punishment than any Blackwater mercenaries have received for their deadly actions against Iraqi civilians. "The courts pretend that adherence to the law is what makes for an orderly and peaceable world," said Steve Baggarly, one of the protest organizers. "In fact, U.S. law and courts stand idly by while the U.S. military and private armies like Blackwater have killed, maimed, brutalized and destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis."

A month after the Nisour Square massacre, on Oct. 20, a group of about 50 activists gathered outside Blackwater's gates in Moyock, N.C. There, they reenacted the Nisour Square shooting and staged a "die-in," involving a vehicle painted with bullet marks and blood. The activists stained their clothing with fake blood and dramatized the deadly shooting spree. Some of the demonstrators marked Blackwater's large welcome sign -- with the company's bear claw in a sniper scope logo -- with red hand prints. The demonstrators believed these "would be a much more appropriate logo for Blackwater," according to Baggarly. "We're all responsible for what is happening in Iraq. We all have bloody hands." It took only moments for the local police to respond to the protest, the first ever at Blackwater's headquarters. In the end, seven were arrested.

The symbolism was stark: Re-enact a Blackwater massacre, go to jail. Commit a massacre, walk around freely and perhaps never go to jail. All seven were charged with criminal trespassing, six of them with an additional charge of resisting arrest and one with another charge of injury to real property. "We feel like Blackwater is trespassing in Iraq," Baggarly later said. "And as for injuring property, they injure men, women and children every day." The activists were jailed for five days and eventually released pending trial.

When their day in court arrived, on Dec. 5, the activists intended to put Blackwater on trial, something the Justice Department, the military and the courts have systematically failed to do. Their action at Blackwater, the activists said, was in response to war crimes, the killing of civilians and the fact that no legal system -- civilian or military -- was holding Blackwater responsible. The Nisour Square massacre, they said, "is the Iraq war in microcosm."

But District Court Judge Edgar Barnes would have none of it. So outraged was he at Baggarly, the first of the defendants to appear before him that day, that the judge cleared the court following his conviction. No spectators, no family members, no journalists, no defense witnesses remained. The other six activists were tried in total secrecy -- well, secret to everyone except the prosecutors, sheriffs, government witnesses and one Blackwater official. Judge Barnes swiftly tried the remaining six activists behind closed doors and convicted them all. It was as though Currituck, N.C., became Gitmo for a day.

It's not unusual for a judge to clear a courtroom when there is a disruption by the public. Nor is it rare for judges to try to prevent activists from turning the tables and attempting to put the government -- or in this case a mercenary company -- on trial. But witnesses that day report that there was no disruption -- and the defendants say they were immediately cut off when they strayed from the narrow scope of the trespass charge to discuss Blackwater's actions or the war.

No real surprise here—just like in Iraq and Washington, different laws exist for Blackwater in North Carolina. I hope the next president, Democrat and Republican, has the will to restrain and eventually dismantle Blackwater.

Read the whole article here.

—Douglas Carlucci

Tet offensive

Thursday, January 31, marks the fortieth anniversey of the Tet Offensive, when North Vietnamese fighters raided over one hundred cities and towns in South Vietnam hoping to provoke a popular uprising against the U.S. military and its puppet South Vietnamese "government." Mike Marqusee marks the macabre anniversary in today's Manchester Guardian:

For an American public reared on a belief in US supremacy, Tet was a shock. For three years they had been assured that the war in Vietnam was being won. Now the disparity between US government claims and the reality on the ground became untenable. The antiwar movement was vindicated. In the New Hampshire primary, held on March 12, President Lyndon Johnson was embarrassed by the strong showing of antiwar candidate Eugene "Gene" McCarthy. On March 31, two months after Tet, he announced that he would not seek re-election and offered to open negotiations with the North Vietnamese, who accepted on April 3.

Tet caused fear and trembling in the corridors of power, but in the wider world the spectacle of the greatest power on earth defeated by an army of poor people inspired millions. The student revolts for which 1968 is famous took off in the wake of Tet, first in Germany and Italy, spreading subsequently to the US, France, Mexico and Pakistan.

However, the US war in Vietnam was to continue in its destructive fury for another four years. US policy did change after Tet - towards "Vietnamisation", in which reliance on air power increased. US casualties fell, from 16,000 killed in 1968 to 600 in 1972. On the other side the toll rose. Perhaps half the 5 million killed in the war, according to Vietnam government figures, perished during these post-Tet years.

Here is the ominous lesson for Iraq. There are few things as dangerous as an imperial power in retreat. Yes, the war is discredited and the major presidential candidates promise to reduce US troop numbers. None, however, seems prepared to abandon the mission in Iraq, which is also propped up by an array of corporate interests. As Vietnam showed, the alternative to a prompt and complete withdrawal is not a happy compromise, but prolonged devastation.

Read the whole article here.

—Douglas Carlucci

Losing confidence in the finance industry

Gretchen Morgenson has a smart analysis of the uncertainty at the center of the present financial crisis. More to come this week at Able Archer on the listing economy.

—Douglas Carlucci

Failed mortgages in the cities

The United States Conference of Mayors is asking the federal government for help in dealing with the abandoned houses and strained budgets caused by the high rate of home foreclosures in the last several years. The New York Times reports:

As more than 250 mayors gathered in Washington for the winter meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors, many agreed that the collapse of the subprime market had left a growing problem of vacant houses, depressed property values, tighter credit, and a need to cut services to close municipal budget gaps.

“It’s an economic tsunami that is hitting our cities,” said Mayor Douglas H. Palmer of Trenton, the president of the conference. “We need federal action not six months from now, but within the next 30 days.”

The conference called on Congress to raise the limits on loans bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stimulate the mortgage market, and increase Community Development Block Grants to help stabilize neighborhoods.

In December, the conference released a study that said that home values would drop by $1.2 trillion in 2008, hitting city budgets the hardest. States are also beginning to suffer; on Wednesday, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington reported that at least 16 states had predicted budget shortfalls for 2009 totaling over $30.1 billion.

“We’re the ones left boarding up these places, cutting their grass, doing demolition on the abandoned structures, picking up the trash, making sure no one breaks in,” said Mayor Frank Jackson of Cleveland.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which includes Cleveland, has more than 16,800 homes that have been abandoned because of foreclosures.

“Anything from the federal government short of a massive infusion of resources into urban centers to rebuild infrastructure and pay for services is too little, too late,” Mr. Jackson said.

The federal government has not begun to cope with the social costs of so many home foreclosure caused by the failure of these so-called “subprime mortgages”—home loans for individuals with bad credit, usually with interest rates that can be adjusted at the will of the creditor. This should surprise no one; the federal government is always quick to bail out unscrupulous bankers, whether in the savings-and-loan of debt-securities business, but the bureaucrats are usually out to lunch when middle- and working-class people get shafted by financiers.

This isn’t as simple as dollars and cents. These homes were built in real cities, on streets where real people live their lives. As the Cleveland mayor points out in the Times article, homes abandoned after foreclosures blight neighborhoods, causing the value of all homes—mortgaged or not—to decline. Areas with an abundance of abandoned property also tend to attract ne’er-do-wells.

This is a conundrum for municipal governments, which have to deal with the added obligations of an unusual amount of abandoned properties while dealing with the fact that no one is paying taxes on the same properties. Some city officials are coping by cutting costs, while others are asking the courts to force the creditors to pay the social costs of the subprime mortgage business:

City officials in Sacramento have responded to a $55 million projected budget shortfall for next year city by ordering an immediate hiring freeze and an end to some discretionary spending.

In Virginia, Fairfax County is facing a $220 million deficit for the coming fiscal year and is considering cuts to school districts.

This month, Baltimore’s mayor and City Council announced plans to sue Wells Fargo Bank, contending that the bank’s lending practices discriminated against black borrowers and led to a wave of foreclosures that has reduced city tax revenues and increased its costs.

Cleveland has sought monetary damages from 21 lenders.

“By driving down the value of nearby homes, foreclosures also drive down city revenues and place additional financial burdens on the city and its residents,” said Mayor Sheila Dixon of Baltimore. “It is our responsibility to do what we can to stop it.”

Mr. Palmer said the conference had not taken an official stance on the issue of cities suing lenders. He said that Trenton had had a 14 percent increase in foreclosures in the past year but that suing did not seem prudent because litigation would take at least two years.

He said cities should require lenders to pick up the cost of upkeep for abandoned properties after foreclosures occur.

—Douglas Carlucci

Horton on John Yoo

Scott Horton rebuts John Yoo on his blog at Harper's.

Yoo is the Justice Department lawyer who argued for the president's right to torture anyone, anywhere under his authority over the military.

—Douglas Carlucci

Blunt leaving, offended

Fired Up! Missouri flags a story from the St. Joseph News-Press that includes some odd speculation about why Republican Gov. Matt Blunt will not be seeking re-election:

Rep. Jim Guest, R-King City, predicts that U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri, also will step down soon for health reasons. If U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, Matt Blunt’s father, is appointed to the senatorial post, Mr. Guest said he believes the current Missouri governor will go after the congressional seat.

I used to write and edit for The Maneater, the student paper at the University of Missouri, so I know a fair amount about the state's politics. I remember Missouri politicians having remarkably loose lips, but it's particularly odd for a state politician to speculate that a U.S. Senator will be "stepping down," particularly one as eminent as Christopher "Kit" Bond, who was just re-elected in 2004 and is as powerful a name in Missouri politics as the Blunts. Also, the Missouri Republican Party is not in as strong a position as it was in the earlier part of the decade, so it seems unlikely the incumbent governor would leave less than a year before the gubernatorial election in order to take up another government post. On the other hand, the Missouri governership is not as esteemed as the state's Congressional delegation, which seems to hold most of the power in the state political parties.

In other news, Blunt denied any connection between his decision to leave his post and legal fees paid to a Kansas City firm by his campaign organization. He also said he is not under investigation, and took offense at the question.

—Douglas Carlucci

Political economy

I am going to write more about American economics in this space. I think the country is beginning to recognize it's in for a serious economic readjustment.

This week the media is finally beginning to acknowledge what has been obvious to many observers for some time: the credit market is in chaos, and assets based on consumer debt and institutional bonds may be in for still more billions in write-downs.

It's not a secret that for the last fifteen years we have been a nation that worships the Dow as though it is a sort of oracle of good feeling. I would argue that this itself is dysfunctional: stock markets are no doubt useful for companies to gain capital, but an economy where the main activity is attempting to guess the value of securities is bound to the sort of wild fluctuations of the last fifteen years: an internet bubble, a housing bubble, the discovery of billions of worthless securities backed by bad debt.

A lot of this is caused by a cultural problem: as a society, we are obsessed with appearances. Recall the late 1990s, when billions of dollars of securities were circulating that were sold by companies that had no reasonable plans to turn a profit. Yet, to our chattering classes, the very existence of these securities were proof that old economic rules were now moribund and we were entering the era of the New Economy. Recall one of the media's favorite economic indicators: housing starts. As long as we were building houses, the thinking went, the economy was healthy. Now we know many of those houses were purchased on credit that could not be repaid. Once that was out, it was evident it would be a difficult proposition to built still more houses, especially considering how many have already been repossessed.

We need to confront our habit of economic speculation. Until that happens, the country is going to go between periods of wild over-valuation and too-tight credit markets. This is what I will try to write about this year.