brainiac conspiracy

No One Could Have Possibly Predicted

That installing an aging B-move actor in our governor's mansion would yield the most awesome results. Oh, wait:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said this morning that a statue of former President Ronald Reagan should be built at the state Capitol, and that a college, mountain range or lake should perhaps be named for him.

Schwarzenegger was with former first lady Nancy Reagan at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley for a ceremonial signing of legislation designating a day each year to honor Reagan. The former California governor died in 2004.

"Ronald Reagan is my hero," Schwarzenegger said.

Hey, why stop there? I've got some other landmarks in mind that we should name after Ronaldus Maximus. Let's start here, here, and then here.

Or else, perhaps, we could name one of these sites after Arnold instead. I am certain my fellow Californians would agree he richly deserves it:

Nearly 7 years after recalling him from office, California voters would like to have Gray Davis back . . . or at least they'd rather have him than Arnold Schwarzenegger. 44% on our most recent poll said they'd rather have Davis as Governor to 38% who picked Schwarzenegger.

---Vitelius

About That Nobel Peace Prize Again . . .

Glad to see we are still exporting the blessings of freedom to a needy world:

The United States is currently the world biggest weapons supplier---holding 30 per cent of the market---but the Obama administration has begun modifying export control regulations in hopes of enlarging the U.S. market share, according to U.S. officials.

President Barack Obama already has taken the first steps by tucking new language into the Iran sanctions bill signed in early July. His aides are now compiling the "munitions list," which regulates the sale of military items.

The administration's stated reason for the changes is to simplify the sale of weapons to U.S. allies, but potential spinoffs include generating business for the U.S. defense industry, creating jobs and contributing to Obama's drive to double U.S. exports by 2015.

Critics say the reforms are being rushed and warn that the expedited procedures could allow weapons technology to fall into the wrong hands.

India, which currently is seeking 126 fighter-jets worth over $10 billion, 10 large transport aircraft worth $6 billion, and other multi-billion dollar defense sales, could be among the possible beneficiaries. Allies seeking advanced U.S. weaponry and equipment, who now often buy elsewhere due to the cumbersome U.S. approval process, would draw immediate benefit from the reforms, U.S. officials said.

It would be nice to see an equal sense of urgency on the part of our Wise Leaders to create more jobs in sectors of our economy that didn't involve killing people, blowing shit up or spying on our neighbors, wouldn't it? Then again, being the empire that we are, we have no need to build stuff like wind turbines or solar panels or maglev trains, and sell them to other people. It's much simpler in the short term to conquer other people and consume their resources.

---Vitelius

Farm-Fresh Groper

Cesar Chavez must have hit the rev limiter by now:

Saying he didn't want to damage California's agricultural economy, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday vetoed a first-in-the-nation bill that would have given farmworkers the same rights to overtime pay enjoyed by all other hourly workers in California.

Applying the eight-hour day to agriculture would be burdensome to business and reverse longstanding labor practices, Schwarzenegger wrote in a veto message.

As recently as 1999, state lawmakers approved a bill that specifically exempted farmworkers from the eight-hour day, he said, "recognizing that agricultural work is different from other industries: it is seasonal, subject to unpredictability of Mother Nature and requires the harvesting of perishable goods."

The veto message echoed arguments made by both giant agribusinesses and organic-farm owners. They contended that growers need special exemptions from labor laws because they operate on tight profit margins and need to work long hours to harvest crops quickly to get them to market.

I guess those federal price supports and taxpayer-subsidized water set-asides just aren't enough to satisfy the shareholders anymore. Why don't we just re-institute the bracero program instead? While we're at it, why not abolish the corporate income tax and the minimum wage, and do away with overtime for all workers? There's nothing in the Constitution about overtime, is there?

Our functioning democracy was cool while it lasted, eh.

---Vitelius

Eavesdropping We Can Believe In

Jesus:

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words---"electronic communication transactional records"----to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication.

Huh?!? Then why would the bureau want this information in the first place? If I send an e-mail message to osama@binladenassociates.com, they're only going to take note of the address and not the content of my message? Please.

Then again, our awesome surveillance-industrial state already intercepts 1.8 billion messages every day, and it can't make sense out of half of what it receives, so sure, let's increase the government's caseload and invent more makework for everyone. We can always farm it out to contractors, after all.

I'm sure glad that when we get around to impeachment hearings next year that they'll revolve around Shirley Sherrod and ACORN, and not some trivial Fourth Amendment fluff like this.

---Vitelius

If You Build It, They Will Gamble

Atrios is not impressed with Sin City's transit infrastructure:

Spending a few days in a city like Las Vegas provides an opportunity to observe a place which is completely doing it wrong. I get that 3 months a year the weather is hellish, but otherwise the area around the strip is built at walkable and transit scale, but the walkability is damaged by regular interruptions, and decent transit isn't possible on the strip without a dedicated lane or elevation because the place is completely choked with traffic. Yes there's the monorail, built by people who obviously had no clue how to make transit useful instead of a novelty ride.

Actually, the Las Vegas monorail is very useful, just not for people who live in Vegas. All of its stops save one (the Convention Center) drop you off at the doorstep of one hotel/casino or another, so if you're in town for business and need a quick and easy way to get from some Stripside hotel to the Convention Center, or simply want to go casino-hopping without doing a lot of walking, it's a big convenience. Of course, you can make a pretty reasoned argument against lavishing precious transit dollars on the tourist trade, but if there's an exception to the rule, one would think that Las Vegas is it. It's also a privately funded venture (which probably explains why it's so expensive to ride, among other things), and as such it does a decent job of feeding casinos and the Convention Center with a steady stream of customers and business travelers. I ride it whenever I'm there (always on business; I'm not a gambler) because attempting to drive (or hail a cab down) the Strip or Paradise or Flamingo Road at rush hour is a nightmarish experience that makes LA traffic seem positively rural in congestion density, and bus service there seems nonexistent. At least I've never noticed many of them. But otherwise, yeah, Las Vegas is a totally awesome case study in the kind of overdevelopment and sprawl that occur when city managers don't have a coherent mass-transit plan.

---Vitelius

I Think I'm Turning Japanese

Feel the epitome of financial awesomeness!

The disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street is growing.

Americans' confidence in the economy faded further in July, according to a monthly survey released Tuesday, amid job worries and skimpy wage growth. That's at odds with Wall Street's recent rally fueled by upbeat earnings reports from big businesses such as chemical maker DuPont Co. and equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. That's because the pumped-up profits are being fueled by cost cuts like layoffs and overseas sales. In fact, big companies have shown few signs they're ready to hire.

The Consumer Confidence Index came in at 50.4 in July, a steeper-than-expected decline from the revised 54.3 in June, according to a survey the Conference Board. The decline follows last month's decline of nearly 10 points, from 62.7 in May, and is the lowest point since February. It takes a reading of 90 to indicate a healthy economy -- a level not seen since the recession began in December 2007.

Our economy is fundamentally broken, and has been for years, and there are basically two ways our government could have fixed it at the macro-level: (a) Nationalize the major financial institutions the way the Swedes did in the early '90s, write off the banks' bad debts, administer haircuts to bondholders and shareholders, and spin off the remnants to smaller institutions subject to more stringent regulations. Would unemployment be higher? For the short term, likely yes. Would recovery begin sooner? Almost surely, yes. Markets usually respond more positively in the long run to certain, as opposed to uncertain, outcomes.

The other alternative would have been to (b) stem the flood of money being siphoned upward and away from an increasingly strapped producer class, i.e., workers, to an overfed and overindulged non-producer class, i.e., speculators, via wholesale revisions to the federal tax code. Would unemployment be higher? Possibly yes for the short term, but even if it were so, at least you'd have tens of billions of additional revenues pouring into the Treasury that you could use to hire people for federal jobs programs, infrastructure, alt-energy initiatives and the like instead of relying on self-correcting hands to make a bunch of fund managers start playing nice with others again. Unfortunately, both options have apparently been deemed by our wise leaders in Washington as unworthy of serious debate. Thus we usher in our own Lost Decade, and grease the skids for impeachment hearings in 2011 and '12.

This is what happens when you try to prop up a system of finance that is simply unsustainable in its present form. And it really did not have to be this way at all.

---Vitelius

A Parable For Our Times

Everything you need to know about the moral values that lie at the foundation of our National Security State, and the culture of crony capitalism that drives it, can be found right here:

Several years ago, David H. Brooks, the chief executive and chairman of a body-armor company enriched by United States military contracts, became fixated on the idea of a memory-erasing pill.

It was not just fanciful curiosity. A veterinarian who cared for his stable of racehorses said Mr. Brooks continually talked about the subject, pressing him repeatedly to supply the pill. According to Dr. Seth Fishman, the veterinarian, Mr. Brooks said he had a specific recipient in mind: Dawn Schlegel, the former chief financial officer of the company he led until 2006, DHB Industries.

There is no memory-erasing pill. And so Mr. Brooks sat and listened this year as Ms. Schlegel, her memory apparently intact and keen, spent 23 days testifying against him in a highly unusual trial in United States District Court on Long Island that has been highlighted by sweeping accusations of fraud, insider trading, and company-financed personal extravagance.

DHB, which specialized in making body armor used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, paid for more than $6 million in personal expenses on behalf of Mr. Brooks, covering items as expensive as luxury cars and as prosaic as party invitations, Ms. Schlegel testified.

Also included were university textbooks for his daughter, pornographic videos for his son, plastic surgery for his wife, a burial plot for his mother, prostitutes for his employees, and, for him, a $100,000 American-flag belt buckle encrusted with rubies, sapphires and diamonds.

The expense-account abuse, the prosecution has said, represented a pittance compared with the $190 million that Mr. Brooks and another top employee are accused of making through a stock fraud scheme in which he falsified information about his company’s performance---including significantly overstating the inventory of bulletproof vests---to inflate the price of the stock before selling his shares in 2004.

As a whole, the accusations might present just another cautionary tale of excess and entitlement in a powerful individual, but Mr. Brooks’s story stands out because of details and characters that give it the strange and sordid depth of a long-running soap opera.

“What makes it interesting isn’t that there is anything novel legally about it, but just how egregious this guy’s alleged behavior is, how gross the abuses are and how much greed is involved,” said Meredith R. Miller, an associate law professor at Touro College in Central Islip, N.Y. “Add in what the company does---the fact that this is a military contractor---and the facts are really interesting,” she said.

How much greed is involved? By the standards of the billions of dollars in appropriations that have been routinely embezzled in our perpetual war on terror, David H. Brooks was a minor-league operator, a nouveau-riche parvenu with pornstar tastes whose services could be bought for cheap in the larger order of things. If he'd been a bit savvier, he'd have retained a firm like Goldman to peddle his company prospectus instead of attempting to freelance on the taxpayer dime. Some people just don't know how to mind their manners, now, do they?

---Vitelius

They Don't Call 'Em Hogs for Nothing

Three more cheers for the greedy and avaricious self-correcting hand of free markets:

By most measures, Harley-Davidson has been having a rough ride.

Motorcycle sales are falling in 2010, as they have for each of the last three years. The company does not expect a turnaround anytime soon.

But despite that drought, Harley’s profits are rising — soaring, in fact. Last week, Harley reported a $71 million profit in the second quarter, more than triple what it earned a year ago.

This seeming contradiction — falling sales and rising profits — is one reason the mood on Wall Street is so much more buoyant than in households, where pessimism runs deep and joblessness shows few signs of easing.

Many companies are focusing on cost-cutting to keep profits growing, but the benefits are mostly going to shareholders instead of the broader economy, as management conserves cash rather than bolstering hiring and production. Harley, for example, has announced plans to cut 1,400 to 1,600 more jobs by the end of next year. That is on top of 2,000 job cuts last year — more than a fifth of its work force.

As companies this month report earnings for the second quarter, news of healthy profits has helped the stock market — the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is up 7 percent for July — but the source of those gains raises deep questions about the sustainability of the growth, as well as the fate of more than 14 million unemployed workers hoping to rejoin the work force as the economy recovers.

“Because of high unemployment, management is using its leverage to get more hours out of workers,” said Robert C. Pozen, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and the former president of Fidelity Investments. “What’s worrisome is that American business has gotten used to being a lot leaner, and it could take a while before they start hiring again.”

Running a business for the sake of shareholders first and foremost is also a terrible model for any corporation that's genuinely interested in remaining in business for the long term. Cutting costs to remain profitable can work for awhile, but try turning your company into an extractive enterprise and strip-mining it of assets for a period of years, and eventually, employee morale and productivity will suffer as too many jobs are piled onto the backs of an ever-shrinking workforce. Fewer eyeballs to inspect your company's product before it leaves the assembly line virtually guarantees poor product quality in the long run, and when that happens, and your customers go away and start buying Hondas and Kawasakis instead, your company's final destination is likely to be either bankruptcy or liquidation.

Of course, there are some things that government can do to stimulate employment, such as offering tax credits or job-training assistance to companies that hire more workers. Government can also dis-incentivize corporate cost-cutting and/or cash hoarding via the federal tax code. It's not like these people have been overtaxed in recent years:

The share that corporate tax revenues comprise of total federal tax revenues also has collapsed, falling from an average of 28 percent of federal revenues in the 1950s and 21 percent in the 1960s to an average of about 10 percent since the 1980s.

The effective corporate tax rate---that is, the percentage of corporate profits that is paid in federal corporate income taxes---has followed a similar pattern. During the 1990s, corporations as a group paid an average of 25.3 percent of their profits in federal corporate income taxes, according to new Congressional Research Service estimates. By contrast, they paid more than 49 percent in the 1950s, 38 percent in the 1960s, and 33 percent in the 1970s.

In other words, make corporate cash-hoarding unprofitable by imposing automatic windfall profits taxes on big businesses that pull shit like this. It shouldn't be considered any different than off-shoring or outsourcing, and the only way to stop this abusive crap from happening again and again is to let the CEOs of these companies know that actions have consequences, and that throwing thousands of productive employees out of work simply to pay quarterly dividends to a bunch of institutional investors is not a win-win situation. If your business model intentionally adds to the unemployment rolls, and hence to the cost of government, you're gonna have to pay the government back, one way or another. Seems logical enough to me.

We've offered corporate America plenty of carrots over the last thirty years. One of these days, our government would be well advised to try applying a few sticks as well. Not that I'm holding my breath waiting for it to happen, but it would be nice if someone in Washington would even dare to mention it.

---Vitelius

The Pentagon Papers 2.0

Are all right here. Is a social-networking site eligible for a Pulitzer Prize?

---Vitelius

Our Awesome Permanent Underclass

Thirty years later, it's mission accomplished!

83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.

61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.

36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.

A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.

Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.

As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.

In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% more than the average worker in the private sector.

The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.

In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.

More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.

For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.

This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.

Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.

Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 -- the highest rate in 20 years.

The top 10% of Americans now earn around 50% of our national income.

Meanwhile, the self-correcting hand of free markets continues to create wealth and prosperity for all:

Once one of the nation's most powerful unions, the United Auto Workers is credited by historians with lifting working conditions for all Americans and clearing a path for factory workers into the middle class. Union officials talk about "a fair wage," echoing ideals of justice and morality.

But in negotiations before and during the bailout debate, the auto manufacturers, seconded by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), emphasized the virtues of market forces, and a wage that would allow the U.S. companies to remain competitive with foreign rivals, particularly those building "transplant" factories in the United States.

Those transplant factories pay as much as $25 an hour, with bonuses but more limited retirement and health benefits.

Before pumping billions into GM and Chrysler, the Bush and Obama administrations leaned decisively toward the market view on wages.

During negotiations with Chrysler, the Obama administration called for "maintaining all-in hourly labor costs comparable to its U.S. competitors, including the transplants," according to an April memo describing the Treasury proposal.

The administration proposal also called for all new production employees to be paid the $14 rate, expanding a 2007 labor agreement that set up the lower rate, though only for some "non-core" jobs. In doing so, the administration went well beyond the pay cuts the automakers had envisioned, sources said.

"From the manufacturer's perspective, the line workers were always going to be getting $28 an hour," said a source familiar with the negotiations and the auto manufacturers' thinking. The person, who lacked authorization to discuss the issue, declined to be named. "Those jobs are difficult. But there are other jobs in the plant, and those are not nearly as stressful. Those were going to be the $14."

"The government didn't say $28 an hour was overpaying people," the source said. "But they saw the $14 rate as a way to lower overall labor costs to be competitive."

I sometimes wonder if we haven't already passed the tipping point where our economy eventually comes to resembles Mexico's, with an oligarchy of maybe a thousand families owning the entire country, an urban professional and mercantile class of some 20 to 30 million people, and 300 million peasants living off subsistence wages, food stamps and dumpster diving. At least it would solve our illegal immigration problem.

---Vitelius

For Want of a Good Lawyer

There's a reason why Republicans are so big on tort reform:

Shirley Sherrod should sue every one of these fuckers for defamation. And if the Obama administration had any cojones, they'd file an amicus brief on her behalf. If you can't legally muzzle these people, the least you can do is remind them that words have consequences, and can carry severe costs, if uttered with malicious intent.

---Vitelius

112th Congress: Sneak Preview

On the prospect of new investigations being held on the Iraq war during the next session of Congress, Josh Marshall waxes optimistic:

I think Mr. Rove's idea is that he and the other folks involved can try to rewrite the history -- or at least enough of a gloss for folks who aren't paying attention or are heavily invested in getting fooled -- while everybody is distracted, busy or just generally not watching. But I'd actually be eager to see this whole debacle re-litigated. I'm assuming this means all those involved are now ready? Eager to talk?

Rove's essay is dog-whistle talk, aimed at Congressional Republicans should they regain control of either House of Congress in 2011. And yes, there may very well be hearings on the Iraq war, but if there are, they won't be conducted in any better faith than the HUAC hearings in the '40s and '50s were. (Would anybody be shocked or surprised if the GOP leadership proposes forming an ad hoc Select Special Un-American Activities Committee to investigate the likes of MoveOn, ACORN and Bill Ayers next year? I wouldn't.) The hearings will focus not on the political feints and fakes and sleights-of-hand that were employed to sell the war to the American people but on the disloyalty of Democrats in Congress who dared to question the honesty of the Bush administration. The money quote in Rove's piece is here:

Saying the commander-in-chief intentionally lied America into war is about the most serious accusation that can be leveled at a president.

Actually, accusing a president of aiding and abetting our enemies is quite a bit worse, but let's grant Rove's point because that's what the investigation will be about: Not Bush administration dissembling and deception, but Democrat treason that emboldened our enemies and endangered our troops. Don't tell me these people aren't capable of doing this, because they are. We know this because they have pulled this kind of crap before
---why shouldn't we expect them to do it again?

Only this time, there will be no Joseph Welch to spoil everybody's fun. Chairman Issa will make sure of it.

And that will only be the beginning. By the time the Iraq Re-Litigation hearings are wrapped up, we will have learned that Saddam's weapons were plentiful in number and smuggled into Syria, or Iran, or North Korea, or Venezuela, or whatever country Congressional Republicans want their next president to bomb. Serious policy people such as Frank Gaffney and Michael Ledeen will give testimony to this effect, and Ahmad Chalabi and Manucher Ghorbanifar will submit depositions from exile. Video corroboration will be furnished by Breitbart and Pajamas TV, and all of it will be played 'round the clock on Fox. And every page of the committee's findings will pass into general circulation---just as Whitewater, and Filegate, and Travelgate, and Fostergate were in the 1990s---by an uncritical mass media boiler-room operation that's more concerned with winning the daily news cycle and generating page views than fact-checking their sources and reporting reality.

On the other hand, if Republicans don't win back either house, there won't be any hearings at all since our wise leaders in the White House and on Capitol Hill prefer to look forward, never back. Congressional Democrats have had four years to re-litigate anything they wanted in regard to Iraq, but chose not to do so because an honest investigation would have exposed an embarrassing number of them as either willing accessories (Lieberman) or cowardly dupes (Kerry, Clinton, and anyone else who voted for the war authorization bill.) If there's anything that we should have learned from L'Affaire Breitbart, however, it's that modern-day conservatives have no sense of guilt or responsibility for anything they've done, and that's why the GOP won't hesitate to re-litigate the war---and use it to question the loyalty of those who opposed it---if they get committee gavels next year. The winners still do get to write history in this world. Maybe one day Congressional Democrats will figure that out, and try doing something about it in the future.

---Vitelius

Lincoln Was Wrong. We Should Have Let Them Secede

And we should do ourselves a favor and kick them out of the Union now.

Rep. Zach Wamp (R-03) suggested TN and other states may have to consider seceding from the union if the federal government does not change its ways regarding mandates.

"I hope that the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government," said Wamp during an interview with Hotline OnCall.

He lauded Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), who first floated the idea of secession in April '09, for leading the push-back against health care reform, adding that he hopes the American people "will send people to Washington that will, in 2010 and 2012, strictly adhere" to the constitution's defined role for the federal government.

It always cracks me up how these Great Southern Patriots™ fall over themselves to denounce one federal "takeover" program after another that's going to confiscate their taxes and rob them of their liberty when the Southern states themselves are the biggest bunch of welfare sponges in the Union.

Take a look at the numbers. Zach Wamp's home state sucks out a dollar and 30 cents out of the Treasury for every dollar it puts back in. Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana are even worse. With the exceptions of Texas and Georgia, every single state in the Old Confederacy is a net drain on the public purse.

If these guys really want their liberty, hey, that's fine with me. Just be ready when we cut off the gravy train and you assholes have to start supporting yourselves for a change. As it stands right now, my state is laying off schoolteachers by the thousands and shuttering libraries and public parks to help prop up the lifestyles of the brain-dead constituents who elect these greedy little pricks. We ought to try calling their bluff sometime, and dare them to actually walk. Can anyone give me a reason why allowing this to happen would yield anything other than a positive outcome to the Republic?

By the way, did anyone notice the biggest welfare queen of them all? You betcha!

---Vitelius

Nobody Knows De Trouble He's Seen

Given what all has happened this week, I have no idea why this guy chose to go there today:

Just as race issues have returned to the forefront of political debate, Virginia Sen. James Webb (D) on Friday reiterated his opposition to some affirmative action programs and suggested that white Americans are being "marginalized" by current government policies.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege," Webb writes: "Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers."

Gee, considering the awesome level of ethnic diversity on display in Jim Webb's workplace, it's easy to see how he's come to that conclusion.

And it's hard to argue the point when you see how African-Americans and other ethnic minorities have been fully integrated into the elitest of elite echelons of corporate influence and power:

In 1995, not one Fortune 500 CEO was a person of color. Today, 19 Fortune 500 companies are run by people of color.

Five Fortune 500 CEOs are Black.

More seriously, I suspect that Jim Webb's unique views on race have been to a great extent tempered by (a) his Southern-Appalachian upbringing and by (b) his long career in the military, which along with professional sports is arguably the most genuinely color-blind and meritocratic institution in American life. But Jeez, someone in the Senate leadership needs to pull this guy aside and ask him to dummy up on this subject once and for all. Better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool, and all that.

---Vitelius

Your Liberal Media OSX Scapegoat

Insightful analysis, courtesy of the Post: If only Obama would make another awesome speech about race, or hire some more white people for his administration, right-wing crazies would stop playing racial politics.

---Vitelius

They Are Still Playing the Race Card Today

And am I guessing they will for as long as Barack Obama is President of the United States:

The Obama administration, already under fire for unprecedented allegations of racial bias, faces a new bias claim from a most unlikely source: one of the administration's own inspectors general.

Decisions on which car dealerships to close as part of the auto industry bailout -- closures the Obama administration forced on General Motors and Chrysler -- were based in part on race and gender, according to a report by Troubled Asset Relief Program Special Inspector General Neal M. Barofsky.

[D]ealerships were retained because they were recently appointed, were key wholesale parts dealers, or were minority- or woman-owned dealerships. [Emphasis added.]

Thus, to meet numbers forced on them by the Obama administration, General Motors and Chrysler were forced to shutter other, potentially more viable, dealerships. The livelihood of potentially tens of thousands of families was thus eliminated simply because their dealerships were not minority- or woman-owned.

Shocking, isn't it? This must be an example of what happens when

raw, hard, sewage-filled Chicago politics came into play.

Indeed! On the other hand, there's one thing you'd never know from reading this breathless prose: The fact that the determination of which auto dealerships to close was made by the auto companies themselves, not by the administration.

SIGTARP found that the Auto Team was not involved in determining which dealerships to terminate.

That's right. The "Auto Team," which was the Treasury-appointed task force headed by Steven Rattner, had nothing to do with it. GM and Chrysler decided on their own which dealerships to close based on formulas that incorporated the Toyota business model of consolidating dealership operations into a relatively small number of mega-dealers located primarily within urban areas, to maximize efficiencies, i.e., the number of sales per dealership, and to minimize competition between dealerships. Some dealerships were also, apparently, retained because they were minority- or woman-owned, but that was a decision made by General Motors and Chrysler, not the administration, and most likely for the sake of public relations. The Inspector General's primary complaint against the administration here has nothing to do with dealership closures, which it acknowledges were necessary, but the pace at which those dealerships were closed under guidance from Treasury. But you'd never know that from reading this essay, now, would you?

But by all means, read the entire post. It's masterwork of half-truths, omitted truths, and outright lies. Note, for one, the selective use of pull quotes. A passage in the IG's report that reads

SIGTARP does not dispute that Government assistance was necessary to prevent the failure of GM and Chrysler, and nothing in the audit suggests otherwise. Treasury’s letter seems to imply that Treasury was faced with the decision either to encourage the acceleration of dealership terminations substantially, as it did, or let the companies fail altogether. This is a false dilemma with no factual support: no one from Treasury, the manufacturers or from anywhere else indicated that implementing a smaller or more gradual dealership termination plan would have resulted in the cataclysmic scenario spelled out in Treasury’s response; indeed, when asked explicitly whether the Auto Team could have left the dealerships out of the restructurings, Mr. Bloom, the current head of the Auto Team, confirmed that the Auto Team “could have left any one component [of the restructuring plan] alone,” but that doing so would have been inconsistent with the President’s mandate for “shared sacrifice.”

Is magically transformed into this handy bromide:

Thousands of jobs were lost, unnecessarily, due specifically to Obama's "mandate for shared sacrifice".

Thus the Barofsky report, which criticizes the administration not for its decision to demand that the manufacturers downsize their operations, but rather criticizes the speed at which it demanded the downsizing, becomes an indictment of an administration imposing its will on the powerless automakers---even though the automakers, and GM in particular, had already been downsizing their dealer operations for years, and already had plans in place for additional closures.

Note also the insinuation of sinister motives based on absolutely nothing at all:

Additionally, it has been widely theorized that dealers targeted for closure as a result of Obama's interference were predominantly those who donated campaign contributions to Republicans. Although evidence to date is largely anecdotal, given what we've already reported about the Obama administration's handling of the auto bailout, such speculation does have considerable grounds for support.

"Widely theorized" . . . "considerable grounds for support." In other words, there's no evidence whatsoever that politics were behind the decision to close any rural car dealerships, and we have no evidence to present to you now. But that's our story, and we're sticking to it. Why let facts get in the way of a juicy talking point?

Then again, this is the same Website that published a lengthy essay two years ago that claimed in all seriousness that Barack Obama's bestselling autobiography, Dreams from My Father, was actually written by . . . Bill Ayers. Yeah, that Bill Ayers. Don't believe me? Take a look for yourself.

Be that as it may, this little ditty is almost certainly going to be played and re-played ad nauseum on the Mighty Wurlitzer over the next couple of days. I heard it on Mark Levin's syndicated talk show this afternoon while driving home from my day job (which is what inspired me to run down the report), and I have little doubt it will get circulation on the other AM bottom-feeder shows as well. Just so you know, they have no intent on relenting from employing the pet-toy narrative that Obama Hates White People™ as a motivating tool to drive their base to the polls in November. Because the Fear of a Black Planet is what they have trafficked in, and how they have built their base, for the last 40 years, and they have no intention of stopping any time soon, even though the nation's evolving racial demographics are rendering their racist appeals increasingly obsolete with each passing year. That's one nasty thing about reptiles---they'll keep thrashing and fighting and writhing about, even after their heads have been cut off. It's not a pretty sight, but we'd better be ready for much, much more ugliness in the years ahead.

And finally, since I took the administration to task the other day for its initial handling of L'Affaire Sherrod, I'll give credit where due and give Tom Vilsack some props for doing the honorable thing. But the race-bagging of the NAACP and Shirley Sherrod are only a sneak preview of what we are going to see in the coming months. Don't say you weren't alerted ahead of time.

Update: To be fair, the IG's report contains some valid critiques: That the Treasury representatives acted at times in undue haste; that the auto companies' assets might have been better unwound in a more leisurely, less deadline-driven manner; and that the Auto Team members may have been poorly advised on certain elements of the auto companies' restructuring strategies. But as usual, the noise machine cannot leave well enough alone and report the straight facts without applying a race-based spin to the report that has no basis whatsoever in the actual writtten work. So there we are.

---Vitelius

The Empress's New Dress Designer

Is already taking measurements for her Spring 2012 wardrobe:

In conversations with a handful of top-level Republican strategists in New Hampshire, it became clear that Palin has three basic problems she must solve between now and 2012 if she wants to make run at victory in the Granite State.

* Time spent: New Hampshire voters expect -- nay, demand -- to meet (and then meet again and again) the candidates running for president. Palin simply has spent almost no time in the state -- either meeting and greeting activists or recruiting the top-tier political operatives that could begin putting the pieces in place for a run. "It's honestly difficult to say for sure how well Sarah Palin would connect with the voters of New Hampshire given that she has only spent a few hours of one day here," said Mike Dennehy who led Sen. John McCain's (Ariz.) Granite State campaigns. Cullen contended that Palin has "exactly two personal relationships" with New Hampshire voters: Jason Recher and Steve Duprey. Recher, a former advance man for McCain's campaign, now oversees Palin's political operation, while Duprey is a former state party chairman and McCain loyalist.

* Ideological Misfit: Palin's brand of in-your-face social conservatism might not be the best fit for the flinty fiscal conservatives who tend to carry the most influence in the state's presidential primary. "Presidential candidates who run from the right to the right usually don't fare well here," said one senior New Hampshire strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly. Indeed, a look at past competitive New Hampshire primary winners -- McCain in 2008 and 2000 being the prime examples -- suggests that Palin's brand of conservatism might not be as natural a fit in the state as some have expected.

* Independents: New Hampshire has an open primary system, meaning that independents can choose to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary for president. McCain relied heavily on independent voters to surge to a stunning upset of then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire primary, and non-affiliated voters also fueled his comeback in the state in 2008. With Obama almost certain not to be challenged for his party's nomination in 2012, independents are likely to play a very influential role in determining the Republican nominee. Palin has struggled mightily to court independent voters since the 2008 campaign; a recent Quinnipiac University national poll showed just 33 percent of independents viewed her favorably, while 50 percent saw her in an unfavorable light.

Cut to the chase already. Palin will suck in New Hampshire because she (a) is utterly lacking in any substantive knowledge of federal policy, (b) has shown no inclination over the last two years to acquire such knowledge, (c) is one of the most inarticulate and incoherent political leaders ever to grace the national stage, and (d) she's an inveterate liar to boot. Granted, New Hampshire may trend somewhat more Republican than its neighbor New England states, and to be fair, there are plenty of places in Wingnut America---primarily in Dixie and the Mormon West---where her cornpone Mama Grizzly schtick will resonate with the army of trailer-camp birthers and baggers. But the citizens of New Hampshire are some of the most well-educated, upwardly mobile, and politically egalitarian in the United States. They are among the nation's most conservation-minded citizens; they have a workforce that's more unionized than the national average; and they have a relatively small number of senior citizens. They also have one of the lowest high-school drop-out rates, and their teen pregnancy rate is the second-lowest in the nation. Does this sound like Palin Country to you?

Simply put, the state of New Hampshire is fertile ground not for dingbat pseudo-Christian populists like Palin but for the kind of educated, articulate and knowledgeable Republican moderate that Mitt Romney used to be before he got right-wing religion. John McCain, still campaigning as a moderate pre-Palin, won the state primary in 2008, and between he and Mitt, they scooped up 70 percent of the Republican vote. With McCain out of the picture, this state is Romney's to lose, and if he modifies his message to earn the good graces of New Hampshire voters, the results on election night won't even be close.

---Vitelius

One Step Forward, 37,000 Steps Back

Granted, the following is simply cut-and-pasted from a DOT press release I received yesterday, but it's an example of the kinds of projects related to the Recovery Act that are still going on out there, and which nobody in Our Liberal Media® seems to be doing a terribly good job of reporting:

Major construction began today on the Doyle Drive Replacement Project, one of the nation’s largest, most complex and labor intensive Recovery Act-funded highway projects. Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez joined state and local officials southeast of the Golden Gate Bridge as excavation began on the first of four tunnels.

For more than a half-century, replacing Doyle Drive has been a priority for state, local and federal officials. Recovery Act funding helped this project begin a year earlier than originally planned.

When completed in 2013, the project will replace the 73-year-old Doyle Drive southwest of the Golden Gate Bridge. The project will also result in structural and seismic improvements to the Presidio Trust and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area nearby.

“The Recovery Act is helping make travel in and out of the city safer and easier,” said Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez. “This major investment in labor, time and funding will directly benefit quality of life for San Francisco-area residents.”

The new access to the Golden Gate Bridge from the south side will feature six lanes and a southbound auxiliary lane of new roadway for 1.5 miles from the bridge through the Presidio Trust to Richardson Avenue/Lombard Street.

The improvements will significantly reduce the risk of an earthquake cutting off this key commercial artery for the Bay Area. Closure of Doyle Drive due to earthquake damage would have dramatic economic consequences. It is the city’s primary access route from the Golden Gate Bridge, and links San Francisco with San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties to the south and Marin and Sonoma Counties to the north.

Twelve different funding sources, spanning federal, state, regional and local governments, will finance this billion-dollar project. The Recovery Act provides $128 million including $83 million in formula funds allocated toward the current tunnel excavation, and a $46 million Recovery Act-funded TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant. The TIGER grant will provide additional funding for construction of the Girard Interchange, which will create access from the Presidio Parkway to local roads, improve safety of an aging road and replace a bridge rated as the worst in California for structural sufficiency.

Of the more than $26.6 billion in ARRA highway funds available nationwide, California’s share is $2.57 billion. As of July 19, the state had funded 943 projects totaling $2.47 billion, with 412 projects under way and 122 completed.

Obviously, this is all great shit. It improves local infrastructure, it gives people jobs, and it provides a boost to the local economy. It's also a reminder of what the Recovery Act coulda-shoulda-woulda been like if it had been as large as it needed to be. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

---Vitelius

He Was Not Afraid to Dieor Be Killed in Nasty Ways

Glad to see that our brave, brave Sir Robin Agriculture Secretary is now making his personnel decisions based on whatever Beck and Breitbart recommend.

I think what is really means is this: If you (a) are a member of an ethnic minority, and (b) hold a mid-level-or-higher political appointment in the current administration, you're fair game for the Fox Noise Machine. You also can't count on the White House to watch your back, so if you've ever said anything involving race relations that could be taken out of context by Breitbart's tape editors---and who the hell hasn't?---you might as well start typing up that resignation letter now. Since the wingnuts have already signaled their intent to prove beyond any doubt that Barack Obama hates white people, sympathizes with Panther separatists, and is using his radical Marxist agenda to obtain reparations for Negroes, we can expect to see quite a bit more of this shit in the weeks and months to come, though it wouldn't hurt much if some folks in the administration tried pushing back every now and then. That's still the best way to handle schoolyard bullies. Maybe one of these days they'll figure it out.

---Vitelius

"A Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone"

I'm trying to figure out why J.D. Hayworth got raked over the coals so badly over his infomercial since he's only describing in simple terms, as Dana Priest reminds us today, how our government functions now: As a giant money-laundering service working for the benefit of an increasingly bloated and overfed private sector.

I wish I could say that anything that I've read up to now in this Post series has been truly shocking or surprising, but after 30 years of this shit, none of what Priest describes seems out of place in the least. It's not so much that we've outsourced so much government work to the private sector---as she notes, private contractors have performed some important work, and driven some notable innovations. It's just a shame that we keep throwing all that money at the private sector with the goal of blowing things up and killing people for profit rather than engineering high-speed rail lines, or devising new course curricula for public schools, or other things we might have once deemed essential. But since we truly are an empire now, we have to keep doing the things that empires do, and one of those is to keep an army of mercenaries on permanent government retainer. The mercenaries may use laptops rather than muskets now, but the play-for-pay dynamic is exactly the same. And if the mercenaries prove unreliable---as mercenaries often do---just hire more of them, and bill the taxpayers later.

---Vitelius