The Issue Wonk. National Policy Facts and Analysis

Iraq: More is coming out about British Prime Minister Tony Blair, what he knew and when he knew it, before he signed onto Dubya's plan to invade Iraq. (TWW, Iraq, 11/28/09) AFP reported that Peter Goldsmith, then Britain's Attorney General, told Blair that deposing Saddam Hussein was illegal, that it violated international law. In a letter to Blair, Goldsmith explained that although UN rules permitted “military intervention on the basis of self-defence,” they did not apply in the case of Iraq because Britain was not under threat from Saddam's regime.

Afghanistan: Obama has knuckled under to the generals. He announced he's sending 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan. This will increase the number of U.S. troops to more than 100,000 and is the “largest single U.S. deployment since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.” (LA Times) However, according to the Washington Post, the real number could be as high as 35,000, and pointed out that the actual number of deployments is “murky.” Apparently Obama has an agreement with Defense Secretary Robert Gates that he can “deploy several thousand additional troops, as needed,” without getting approval from the White House. The number is up to 3,000 without a by-your-leave from the president. In addition, NATO said it will send another 7,000 troops from various countries, “with more to come.” (BBC) And don't forget about the contractors. Right now there are about 98,000 contractors, an increase of about 20,000 since April, and it is expected that Obama's “surge” is going to include more contractors. (TPMMuckraker) Now back to the speech. Obama had a surprise. He's giving it 18 months and then he's going to start pulling the troops out – so he says. The NY Times pointed out that any withdrawals are likely to be very limited and would depend on the situation on the ground. So, General Stanley McChrystal gets almost all of the 40,000 additional troops he wanted (TWW, Afghanistan, 8/15/09), Obama is again taking the middle ground, trying to please everybody, and we middle class taxpayers are again taking it in the wallet and, for the troops, in the ass.

Iran: What's with this country? Rather than comply with UN demands to stop working on the nuclear fuel plant it kept secret for years, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has upped the ante by declaring that they're going to build 10 new sites. Apparently Iranian lawmakers have been pushing to develop a plan to stop cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Remember, Iran, unlike Pakistan and India, is a member of the international nonproliferation treaty. So, it looks like they'll will be doing as North Korea did and pull out of the treaty. This isn't good. A U.S. official said they're just trying to “appear bullish.” But this latest action is going to make it easier for us to get support for stronger sanctions against them. (Wall Street Journal)

Honest Services Fraud: This is a law against public corruption. It's “often used to prosecute public officials who accept money, free tickets, or jobs for relatives when bribery cannot be proved.” U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Plamegate fame said that, in the Chicago area, “every major public corruption case in the last 10 years relied heavily on an 'honest services' charge.” But the law is going to be reviewed by the Supreme Court and it probably will be restricted in some way. Opponents say that “the law is ill-defined” and it “fails to spell out, for example, the point at which favors to a friend become a criminal scheme.” Conservative members of the Court are against the law as it is currently written. “In February, Justice Antonin Scalia sounded off in dissent when the court let stand the convictions of Robert Sorich and 2 other Chicago city officials for having schemed to steer city jobs to campaign workers. There was no allegation that Sorich and his co-conspirators had received any money.” (LA Times)

Comcast & NBC: They've cut a deal for Comcast to buy a chunk of NBC. Another big merger. This kind of a thing has been going on for more than 25 years and in every case I questioned it as being against the Sherman Antitrust Act. It appears there haven't been many of us questioning these mergers, expecially not the regulators. This time, however, it looks like someone is questioning it. The Christian Science Monitor reported that the Free Press, a think tank, has issued a report saying “the deal would give Comcast too much control over the market, which would mean unregulated rate hikes for consumers.” Ben Scott, policy director for the Free Press, said, “I don't see it as concern as [to] whether consumers will pay for [content] or if it's free, but [rather] how much will it cost. When you have that kind of market power, you can raise rates above what competition will normally produce in the free market.” Since it'll probably take more than one-half year for this thing to go through, it'll be interesting to see what regulators decide. Big business or the people? Anyone taking bets?

Senate Healthcare Bill: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released a report that says the Senate bill “would leave premiums unchanged or slightly lower for the vast majority of Americans. (Washington Post) Of course, that was the original bill. The amendments have started. On Thursday the first amendment was passed – the women's healthcare amendment. It mandates coverage for mammograms and Pap smears by insurance companies and eliminates co-pays and deductibles for most women. It passed 61-39. Wanna guess where the deciding votes came from? Olympia Snowe (R, ME), Susan Collins (R, ME), and David Vitter (R, LA) all voted for the bill. But there were Dems who voted against it. Russ Feingold (WI) and Ben Nelson (NE). Yup. (LA Times)

Ben Bernanke: Obama nominated him for another term as chair of The Fed. Yeah. He oversaw the biggest meltdown since the Great Depression and Obama wants to give him another chance. Well, I've told you many times how just 1 senator can put a hold on anything, including nominees, to gum up the works. This time Bernie Sanders (I, VT) has put a hold on Ben. Watch the video with Bernie explaining himself. Progressives are quite happy about it. (Open Left) But Bernie really started something. His boycotting of Bernanke was joined by Jim Bunning (R, KY) (The Hill), Jim DeMint (R, SC) (Reuters), and David Vitter (R, LA) (The Hill).

Jobs: The November unemployment number went to 10% from October's 10.2% and everyone is hailing the stimulus package as a success. In November we lost only 11,000, which is statistically 0. Analysts had expected a job loss of at least 100,000, so this was a surprise. I have to ask. If you didn't expect it, how can you attribute it to something? For the first time I saw a mainstream paper print what's really going on. The LA Times wrote: “The number of involuntary part-time workers – whose hours were cut or they couldn't find full-time jobs – was about 9.2 million last month. When these people, discouraged workers who dropped out of the labor force and others on the fringe of the labor market are added together, the nation's unemployment and underemployment rate stood at 17.2% last month, although that was down from 17.5% in October.”

Stimulus Package: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released its report on the effects to date of the stimulus package. It says that recipients of stimulus money report that it has saved or created 640,000 jobs, but this number may not be accurate for several reasons. First, they can't really determine how many of these jobs would have existed anyway. Second, they only have numbers from the recipients of funds; it doesn't include money those companies spent hiring other companies. And, third, they can't evaluate how the money getting down to working people may have created greater demand for goods and services, boosting other jobs. So, using modeling techniques, CBO estimates that the number of jobs created or saved may be as high as 1.6 million.

China's Stimulus: Obama's stimulus package is supposed to create jobs and business for the U.S. So, what's this? A Chinese construction company has been awarded a $100 million contract for a subway ventilation project in Manhattan, “marking the construction giant's third order in the United States' infrastructure space this year.” This gets better – or worse, depending on how you view it. “The new project, along with the $410-million Hamilton Bridge project and a $1.7-billion entertainment project it won earlier this year, signals China State Construction's ambition to tap the American construction market.” (China Daily) Great.

Food Stamps: This'll ruin your holiday season. Food stamps now help feed 1 in 8 Americans and, get this, 1 in 4 of our children. The NY Times did an analysis of the data and found a lot of diversity among food stamp recipients. You still see a lot of chronically poor inner-city families but now there are lots of newly unemployed suburban moms and fixed-income seniors. Even conservative areas where residents tend to disdain public assistance are seeing an increase in the number of food stamp recipients. States are eager to enroll people in the program because they're funded entirely by the federal government. Because many people who qualify for unemployment benefits don't get them, food stamps are the only form of assistance some people get. Or, as the Times calls it, “the safety net's safety net.”

The Fed: There are some proposals in Congress to start auditing the Federal Reserve Bank. Ben Bernanke, chair of the Fed, wrote an op-ed piece for the Washington Post, saying he's “concerned.” Of course he is. The Fed works in secret, doing what it wants, all in the name of monitoring the U.S. monetary policy. Policy set, I should add, not by elected officials but by these people with no oversight. He's afraid that the Senate version would strip him of his regulatory power. And the House version would repeal the 1978 provision that strips monetary policy from the hands of political influence. According to MarketWatch, the House version “would require the Government Accountability Office to audit the central bank's interest rate policy, agreements with foreign governments, foreign central banks and the International Monetary Fund. It also would permit audits of a roughly $800 billion Fed mortgage-backed securities purchase program, which could grow to $1.25 trillion.”

Financial SWAT Team: Mortgage companies haven't been modifying mortgages as they were paid to do when they were given $75 billion. So, under pressure, they've been getting better, but the modifications have been temporary, not permanent. The Treasury Department is getting pissed and is now putting together a SWAT team to kick some ass. They're going to put pressure on the lenders to make sure they're appropriately implementing the program. The servicers will have to issue 2 reports daily on their efforts to turn trial modifications into permanent mortgages. (McClatchy) They're going to use “a combination of public shame and monetary penalties” to pressure lenders. (Washington Post)

WEEKLY WONK

Originally Published: 12/5/2009