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Friday, March 22, 2013

Obama: Flim Flam Liar Man?




Obama’s Real Political Program

Never has a leading American Democrat (including the dean of "New Democrats," Bill Clinton) done less to promote "activist government" in support of less privileged people while getting so much undeserved credit for "trying" to help them.

 
(Image: Getty)


You have to hand it to Barack Obama when it comes to having it both ways: He never stops serving the ruling class, yet the mainstream media, from right to left, continues to pretend that he's some sort of reincarnation of Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully committed to the downtrodden and deeply hostile to the privileged and the rich.

The president's double game was never more adroit than during his most recent State of the Union address. Reacting to the speech, the right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer spoke on Fox News of Obama's "activist government" beliefs and his penchant for "painting the Republicans as the party of the rich" while portraying himself as the defender of the "middle class, Medicare and all this other stuff." Meanwhile, the "liberal" New York Times praised his "broad second-term agenda" as "impressive" and blamed the GOP for "standing in the way" of the many liberal reforms that the president supposedly wants to enact to help the poor and the middle class.

Yet the address contained hardly anything progressive: On the contrary, Obama's proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to only $9 an hour - and not for two years - was a populist parody. Under the president's proposal, a minimum-wage worker supporting a family of three (two parents, one child) would make $18,720 a year in 2015 - barely above today's federal poverty line of $18,480 and well short of the 1968 peak, inflation-adjusted, of $21,840 a year, or $10.50 an hour. Combined with Obama's mosquito bite of an increase in the top marginal income-tax rate to 39.6 percent - restoring Bill Clinton's top rate would still put it at way less than the Eisenhower-era top rate of 91 percent - the minimum-wage bill insults the many millions of less fortunate people who voted for the incumbent. So much for "activist government" and an "impressive" agenda.


Of course, I don't take this sort of hyperbolic commentary seriously anymore. If Obama ever had a "philosophy," it's about power sharing - that is, sharing parts of his plastic personality with the powers that be -- from the Daley brothers in Chicago who advanced his career, to the bankers and hedge-fund mangers who financed his campaigns, to the lobbyists and party barons in Washington who write his legislative proposals. Never has a leading American Democrat (including the dean of "New Democrats," Bill Clinton) done less to promote "activist government" in support of less privileged people while getting so much undeserved credit for "trying" to help them.

But as a student of propaganda and politics, I can't help but remark on how effective Obama has been at muzzling criticism, or even intelligent analysis, from the liberals who should be revolting against him. The other week I was reading the very pro-Obama Nation magazine when I happened upon "Defeatist Democrats." It was uncharacteristically critical of the Democratic Party and the president. With no byline at the top of the article, I found myself wondering who (now that Alexander Cockburn is dead) in the left-wing weekly's regular stable would write something as tough as this: "The decay of the Democratic Party can't be better confirmed than by the actions of its leader."

Noting that in the 2008 campaign Obama "championed" an increase in the minimum wage to $9.50 "but after winning fell silent" (even though the Democrats had solid majorities back then in both houses of Congress), the article went on to point out that after the 2012 election "Democrats privately blamed Obama for not running with the Congressional Democrats and refusing to share campaign money from the President's $1 billion stash." It quoted former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart as saying that "Democrats don't know what the party stands for," and predicted losses in the 2014 midterm elections if the Democrats pursued their strategy of "raising the money and taking care not to offend business interests by talking vaguely about the middle class and ignoring the growing poorer classes that are the Democratic Party's natural constituency."

Who was this mystery writer and why wasn't his name on the magazine's cover? At the end of the piece I found the answer, and the byline - Ralph Nader - who is among the last national political figures who will call something what it really is. His name wasn't on the cover because for liberals the Obama dream dies hard.
Lately, besides talking up "deficit reduction" and creating a "thriving middle class," Obama is pushing an even more ambitious and destructive "free-trade" agenda certain to weaken the middle class even more. The ultra-realistic Financial Times reported last month that Obama had put "trade at the heart of" his agenda. This means that we will no doubt see lovely bipartisan cooperation between the two enemy parties when there's real money on the table for their big donors.

Of the proposed deals, the most damaging for American manufacturing and decent factory wages would be the Trans Pacific Partnership, which if signed would follow on Obama's 2011 job-killing trifecta - the "free-trade" agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. More Japanese and other Asian imports would result, but Obama's cheerleaders in the media blur the debate by touting a supposed manufacturing revival they cutely call "insourcing." The insourcing "boom" is another administration fraud (see anything written by Alan Tonelson), but it neatly distracts people from the ever-increasing foreign trade deficit.

Preposterous though it may seem, Republican leaders in Congress, despite their simple-minded obsession with spending cuts, come off like straight shooters by comparison with Obama. As for Obama, well, as one of the president's former supporters put it to me, "He's one of them!" But if liberals like the odds for 2014, by all means, they should stay the course. They might well wind up with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

John R. MacArthur
John R. MacArthur is the president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine. An award-winning journalist, he has previously written for the New York Times, United Press International, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Under his stewardship Harper's has received eighteen National Magazine Awards, the industry's highest recognition. He is also the author of the acclaimed books The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America: Or, Why a Progressive Presidency Is ImpossibleThe Selling of Free Trade: NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy, and Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War.  He lives in New York City.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Why is Obama really meeting with Republicans?

SALON




Why is Obama really meeting with Republicans?

Despite his sudden outreach across the aisle, a "grand bargain" remains a long shot. There may be other motives




 
Why is Obama really meeting with Republicans?  
(Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster)
 
 
Does President Obama’s newly packed social calendar mean the fever of partisan bickering in Washington is breaking? That’s the question today after President Obama sat down for dinner with a dozen Republican senators last night and even picked up the tab himself. But don’t hold your breath.

Yes, Obama is engaging in a charm offensive, lunching with House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. Next Thursday, he’ll join the entire GOP Senate caucus at their weekly luncheon.

But will this gastronomical diplomacy actually lead to a deal to turn off sequestration, or maybe even the elusive “grand bargain” that Obama has been lusting after for almost two years?

Sen. Lindsey Graham, who attended last night’s dinner and chose the other 11 senators on the guest list, thinks it’s possible. “What I see from the president is probably the most encouraging engagement on a big issue since the early days of his presidency,” Graham told reporters. “He wants to do the big deal.”

“The big deal” that Obama wants would be some version of the “grand bargain” that Obama and House Speaker John Boehner almost struck in the summer of 2011: some tax increases, some closing of tax loopholes and lowering of tax rates, along with huge cuts to spending, especially on social safety net programs.

The current White House plan, which includes switching the way inflation is calculated in Social Security to shave costs and reduce benefits (they euphemistically call it the “superlative CPI”) is very similar to the one Boehner proposed last autumn. It certainly entails surrendering on something many Democrats (and Americans) vehemently oppose. So, theoretically, Republicans might be interested, right?

Well, it turns out Graham may be in the minority, in thinking some wining and dining from the White House will actually accomplish much. Others suggest Obama’s outreach is essentially for show, to quiet the criticism of Washington insiders that the president is aloof and not sufficiently bipartisan.

“Smells to me like he is just trying to ‘check the box’ of a personal presidential push after the whole Jedi-mind-meld thing at the presser,” one Senate Democratic aide remarked, noting that there is a growing caucus of scribes and pundits, like National Journal editor Ron Fournier, preoccupied with questioning Obama’s commitment to the gauzy ideal of bipartisan leadership. “He’s not gonna [make a deal] without revenues and the GOP isn’t going to do it with them, so no matter how many times they hit Plume for the tasting menu, I don’t really see it happening, at least in the short term.”

Another agreed with TPM’s Brian Beutler’s hunch that the charm offensive may be about placating Beltway opinion makers. “Seems more like kabuki theater aimed to appease DC elites. Do you really think folks like Ron Johnson are going to go for $600 billion in new revenue? I don’t think so,” the aide said.

“We don’t think that there is a significant deal worth doing — one that creates jobs and protects Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — that today’s Republican Party would agree to,” said Jeff Hauser of the AFL-CIO, a key ally of the White House.

But could this time be different? The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber laid out the best case for that alternative scenario this morning:
By reaching out to Republican senators who are sympathetic to the deal, Obama just may succeed at splitting some of them off from their leadership, giving him the 60 votes he needs to pass it in the Senate. [Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell can then curse his colleagues’ treachery in public while privately cheering the outcome. In fact, my guess is that once Obama has the magic 60 votes, he will get several more, since many senators will want to claim a share of the credit.
Even if that does work, Scheiber assumes Obama will needs only a few Senate Republicans on top of most of all of the chamber’s 53 Democrats. But that may be a tall order, considering how hostile liberal Democrats are to entitlement cuts.

“‘Chained CPI’ is just a fancy way to say ‘cut benefits for seniors, the permanently disabled, and orphans,’” Sen. Elizabeth Warren told Salon. “Our Social Security system is critical to protecting middle-class families, and we cannot allow it to be dismantled inch by inch.”

And even if the president could get liberal Democrats on board, he’d also have to worry about congressional Republicans. “Even if you believe dinner can change these politicians’ stated policy goals and pick up a couple Republican Senate votes for a grand bargain, you still have the problem in the House,” a House Democratic aide noted. “The majority of their caucus is ready to throw Boehner out if he brings up anything else that includes any revenue, plus you’re going to lose some Senate Democrats and most House Democrats if you bring something up that cuts Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits.”

The crux, at least when it comes to the Democratic side, will be a White House-endorsed plan to implement the so-called chained CPI, which changes the way inflation is calculated for Social Security Cost of Living Adjustments. While chained CPI has been called by some the least bad way to cut entitlements, most liberals absolutely hate it (although some groups, like the Center for American Progress, have endorsed it). Liberal critics point out there are plenty of other ways to strengthen the retirement program without cutting benefits, and over 100 House Democrats — the majority of the caucus — have already signed onto a letter saying they won’t support the CPI change.

“Strengthening Social Security should be handled as a stand-alone question. Making it part of a deficit reduction deal would not be a ‘grand bargain,’ it would be a bad bargain,” Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown told Salon. He remains “strongly opposed” to chained-CPI, a spokesperson confirmed.

Scheiber only gives this a passing mention in a footnote, saying, “I suspect the reaction on the left and from the public will be muted given the support of Obama and Senate Democrats.” That’s certainly possible, and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has said she could get chained CPI through her caucus, but Democrats have not shown any signs of backing down yet. If anything, they’ve ratcheted up the pressure, and Pelosi even recanted a bit on her support for the plan.

And chained CPI, despite Democrats’ opposition, is the most likely avenue for entitlement reform, as the White House has already taken raising the Medicare retirement age off the table.

Meanwhile, across the aisle, Republicans are still bitter after the fiscal cliff deal raised billions in new revenue and seem completely closed to even discussing the possibility of raising more. “This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over,” Boehner said last Friday after a meeting at the White House.
“It’s just for public relations,” another Democratic Hill aide said of the dinner. “The junior Republican senators get to have their faces splashed on TV, Obama gets to look like he’s being bipartisan and trying and reaching out to Congress, but when in the history of everdom have these breakout groups ever actually produced real legislation that’s become public law?”
Alex Seitz-Wald Alex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter. Email him at aseitz-wald@salon.com, and follow him on Twitter @aseitzwald.

A President Who’ll Cut Social Security – And the Sell Out Liberals Who Love Him Too Much




 
(Charles Dharapak/AP)

 The spectacle of a supposedly liberal President repeatedly and needlessly trying to cut Social Security is enough to bring a reasonable, economically literate person to the point of existential despair. To see leading liberal lights like Rachel Maddow and Ezra Klein chuckle indulgently at those foolish Republicans in Congress over the subject – Don’t they know he’s already giving them what they want? – is to risk plunging into the depths of that despair.

This week the President hosted a dinner for Republicans leaders where he worked to sell his budget proposal, including his harmful plan to cut benefits through the “chained CPI.” National Security was the main course and Social Security was the dessert.  And guess who wasn’t coming to dinner: The elderly, the disabled, or any policy experts who understand the disastrous implications of the chained CPI.

The Maddow/Klein exchange (which we’ll bring to you as soon as a transcript is available) is the crest of a building wave in pro-Democratic Party commentary which says, as Klein puts it, that “what we have here is a failure to communicate.” Klein says that at least “some of the gridlock (in Washington) is due to poor information.” Jonathan Chait bemoans the fact that Republicans ”won’t acknowledge (Obama’s)actual offer, which includes large cuts to retirement programs.“

Silly, silly Republicans. Klein quotes one reporter as saying of the White House, “They tell us three times a day that they want to do chained CPI!”

That’s right: The White House has been trying to impose this benefit cut on Social Security’s elderly and disabled recipients for years, and Republicans don’t even know.  Neither do most Democrats, for that matter. They think they voted for a President who will defend those benefits, not work relentlessly to cut them.
But Democrats like Maddow, Klein, and Chait know better. They know exactly what Obama’s been trying to do.  And their only complaint seems to be that he’s not doing effectively enough. We’re not hearing much from the ‘left’ side of the debate about the profound flaws, biases, and inherent cynicism behind both the President’s policy and his rhetoric.
Here are the facts:
  1. Research suggests that Social Security cost-of-living increases are already inadequate. (See studies on “CPI-E” for more details on the best ways to increase them.)
  2. Obama’s proposed chained-CPI cut would typically reduce benefits for 3 percent, and by as much as 6 percent for some recipients.
  3. The White House’s decision to label this cut the “superlative CPI” is grotesque. It suggests that elderly women who receive an average of $950 or so per month are receiving “superlative” benefit increases each year.
  4. The Administration’s insistence on speaking of “entitlement reform,” mixing Medicare (which has a real cost problem because of our for-profit health system) with Social Security, is a cheap trick first devised by Republican consultants.
Progressive commentators – or neutral but well-informed observers – should be emphasizing these points. Instead we’re hearing that the President’s opponents are foolish for not knowing the President agrees with them! Each of MSNBC’s major personalities has developed his or her own personal brand of eye-rolling at Republicans. In this case we’re told that Republicans are stupid for not knowing the details of Obama’s budget proposal – especially his planned cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Stupid? Stupid like a fox – or, if you prefer, like a Fox News Network.  By feigning ignorance of the President’s plan, they’re forcing the White House to repeat it over and over: We want to cut Social Security, guys! We want to cut Medicare!

“They tell us three times a day …”

Surprisingly, both Maddow and Klein buy into the implausible premise that Senate Republicans, each of whom have large staffs and access to Republican Party employees, literally don’t know that Obama has offered to cut Social Security as part of a Grand Bargain.  As a result of their feigned ignorance, the White House is now reiterating that offer, repeatedly and publicly.

“Obama renews budget offer to cut social safety nets,” says a typical story on this subject from Reuters.

This is shaping up to be quite a victory for the GOP. Unless something changes, they’re about to see a core Democratic program cut – and the Democrats will take the heat for it! The only thing that can stop that outcome is concerted public pressure from the Democratic base.

That’s what makes the Maddow/Klein school of partisanship so tragic in this instance: By reducing this disastrous idea – the product of all the “buy-partisan” cash being spread among leader of both parties – they’re defusing political blowback from the party’s base. Public pressure from Democratic voters could stop this headlong rush into a decision that will harm America’s seniors and disabled – and save their party from a potential political catastrophe.

Maddow, Klein and others know – or should know – that Social Security doesn’t contribute to the deficit. They know – or should know – how politically damaging this move would be. They know – or should know – how much it would harm seniors. They should be demanding that the President defend the program, while forcing his opponents to attack it.

Instead they’re applauding him for doing the dirty work himself, and criticizing his shrewd opponents for their lack of public gratitude.

How short can a Democrat’s memory be? The Republicans regained the House in 2010 by forcing Obama to make these offers, albeit far less publicly than he’s doing now. Then they ran to his left with a fraudulent “Seniors’ Bill of Rights,” after ensuring that the Democrats’ polling on this issue plunged by a startling 25 points. (At the time Obama was less trusted than George Bush on Social Security, despite Bush’s attempt to dismantle and privatize the program).

Now the Republicans are outplaying the President once again. They’re exposing his agenda on Social Security, an agenda which became evident when he appointed anti-Social Security pitchmen Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to lead a ‘deficit commission’ shortly after his election. Now, in a form of media-related collateral damage, this strategy may also wound the credibility of commentators like Maddow and Klein.

Jonathan Chait asks, “Would teaching Republicans about Obama help?” Not nearly as much as teachers voters about Obama’s proposal would hurt. The President’s Social Security proposals are deeply misguided, both as policy and as politics, and this flattering commentary is deeply damaging.

As part of their long game, Sen. Lamar Alexander and the GOP issued a press release entitled “If the History Books Were Written Today, We Would Remember President Obama for the Sequester.”

They know that’s not true. Of course the President won’t be remembered for the sequester. If things don’t change, we’ll remember President Obama for cutting Social Security – and his party will pay the price.  Disabled and elderly Americans will pay an even higher price. And the Republicans will be laughing all the ways to the polls in 2014.

Richard Eskow
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a well-known blogger and writer, a former Wall Street executive, an experienced consultant, and a former musician. He has experience in health insurance and economics, occupational health, benefits, risk management, finance, and information technology. Richard has consulting experience in the US and over 20 countries.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Obamagate: The Sequester Is President Obama's Fault





 

Now that we are counting up the days of the sequester instead of counting down, it would be a good time to cast blame. And my candidate is President Obama.



 
President Obama speaks about the sequester with emergency responders at the Eisenhower Executive Office building in the White House complex last week. (Photo: AP)

I'm not blaming Obama for the reasons that Bob Woodward came up with in his fantasyland. I am blaming President Obama and his administration for trying to be cute and clever rather than telling the public the truth about the economic crisis. The result is that the vast majority of the public, and virtually all of the reporters and pundits who deal with budget issues, does not have any clue about where the deficit came from and why it is a virtue rather than a problem.

The basic story is incredibly simple. Demand from the private sector collapsed when the housing bubble burst. We lost $600 billion in annual demand due to residential construction falling through the floor. We will not return to normal levels of construction until the vacancy rates return to normal levels. Vacancy rates are still near post-bubble record highs.

We also lost close to $500 billion in annual consumption spending due to the loss of the $8 trillion in housing-bubble-generated equity that was driving this consumption. This demand will also not come back.

This creates a gap in annual demand of more than $1 trillion. The stimulus, which boosted demand by roughly $300 billion a year in 2009 and 2010, helped to fill part of this gap, but was nowhere near big enough. Furthermore, stimulus spending fell off quickly in 2011 and the stimulus is now pretty much gone altogether. This means that we are still faced with a huge hole in private sector spending.

We know the Republicans love the Job Creators and President Obama has gone out of his way to show his love also. But in the real world, investment in equipment and software has never been much above its current share of GDP except in the days of the dot.com bubble. This means that unless we drug investors so that they are willing to throw hundreds of billions of dollars into the stock of worthless companies, we are unlikely to see any substantial rise in investment.

As a result we are stuck with an economy that is mired well below full employment. President Obama's top economic advisers from his first term all claim that they understood this point. But they said that they could not get a bigger stimulus package through Congress.

That assessment may well be true, but the real issue is what President Obama did after the stimulus package passed. He could have told the country the truth. He could have said what all his advisers claim they told him at the time: the stimulus was not large enough and we would likely need more. He could have used his presidency to explain basic economics to the public and the reporters who cover budget issues.

He could have told them that we need large deficits to fill the hole in demand that was created by the collapse in private sector spending. He could have shown them colorful graphs that beat them over the head with the point that there was very little room for investment to expand even under the best of circumstances.

He could have also explained that consumers would not go back to their bubble levels of consumption since the wealth that had supported this consumption had disappeared with the collapse of the bubble. The public would likely understand this point since most homeowners had themselves lost large amounts of equity and understood that they were much poorer as a result of the collapse of the bubble.

In this context the only choice in the near term is between larger budget deficits and higher unemployment. The people who clamored for cuts in government spending and lower deficits are in fact clamoring to throw people out of work and slow growth.

We will never know if President Obama could have garnered support for more stimulus and larger deficits if he had used his office to pound home basic principles of economics to the public and the media. But we do know the route he chose failed.

He apparently thought the best route to get more stimulus was to convince the deficit hawks that he was one of them. He proudly announced the need to pivot to deficit reduction after the passage of the stimulus and then appointed two deficit hawks, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, to head a deficit commission.
This set the ball rolling for the obsession with deficit reduction that has dominated the nation's politics for the last three years. Instead of talking about the 9 million jobs deficit the economy faces, we have the leadership of both parties in Congress arguing over the debt-to-GDP ratios that we will face in 2023.

This would be comical if lives were not being ruined by the charade. The unemployed workers and their families did not do anything wrong, the people running the economy did.

Now the sequester comes along, throwing more people out of work, worsening the quality of a wide range of government services and denying hundreds of thousands of people benefits they need. Yes, this is really stupid policy and the Republicans deserve a huge amount of blame in this picture.

But it was President Obama who decided to play deficit reduction games rather than being truthful about the state of the economy. There was no reason to expect better from the Republicans in Congress, we had reason to hope that President Obama would act responsibly.

Dean Baker
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer and the more recently published Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of The Bubble Economy. He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Glenn Greenwald: Why the Obama Administration's Persecution of Bradley Manning Should Terrify Us All




The Government's charges portend a dangerous new world for journalists and whistleblowers. 

 
 
Bradley Manning is escorted from a hearing, on January 8, 2013 in Fort Meade, Maryland. Manning has told a military tribunal that he leaked incident logs from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks in order to start a "public debate".
 
The following is a Democracy Now! interview with Glenn Greenwald on the terrifying persecution of Bradley Manning.

As we broadcast from the Freedom to Connect conference, we look at one whistleblower who used the Internet to reveal the horrors of war: U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning. Military prosecutors have decided to bring the maximum charges against Manning after he admitted during a pretrial hearing last week to the largest leak of state secrets in U.S. history. In a bid to secure a reduced sentence, Manning acknowledged on the stand that he gave classified documents to WikiLeaks in order to show the American public the "true costs of war" and "spark a debate about foreign policy." Manning pleaded guilty to reduced charges on 10 counts, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. But instead of accepting that plea, military prosecutors announced Friday they will seek to imprison Manning for life without parole on charges that include aiding the enemy. Manning’s court-martial is scheduled to begin in June. We speak with Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, who has long covered the case, about what this means for Manning and its broader implications for whistleblowers and the journalists they often approach.

Glenn, welcome Democracy Now!

GLENN GREENWALD: Great to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the significance of what the military prosecutors are pushing for now, life without parole for Bradley Manning, and what he said in court last week, not far from here, just down the road at Fort Meade.

GLENN GREENWALD: There are several levels of significance, the first of which is the most obvious, which is that this is a case of extraordinary prosecutorial overkill. The government has never been able to identify any substantial harm that has come from any of the leaks that Bradley Manning is accused of and now admits to being responsible for. Certainly nobody has died as a result of these leaks, even though the government originally said that WikiLeaks and the leaker has blood on their hands. Journalists investigated and found that there was no evidence for that. So, just the very idea that he should spend decades in prison, let alone be faced with life on parole, given what it is that he actually did and the consequences of it, is really remarkable.

But even more specifically, the theory that the government is proceeding on is one that’s really quite radical and menacing. That is, that although he never communicated with, quote-unquote, "the enemy," which the government has said is al-Qaeda, although there’s no evidence that he intended in any way to benefit al-Qaeda—he could have sold this information, made a great deal of money, had he wanted to. All the evidence indicates that he did it for exactly the reason that he said, with the intent that he said, which was to spark reform and to bring attention to these abuses. The government is proceeding on the theory that simply because the information that’s leaked ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda had an interest in it, that constitutes aiding and abetting the enemy. And what that essentially does is it converts every form of whistleblowing or leaks into a form of treason. There’s evidence that Osama bin Laden was very interested, for example, in Bob Woodward’s book—books, which have all sorts of classified information in them at a much higher level of secrecy than anything Bradley Manning leaked. That would mean that not only the leakers to Woodward, the highest-level members of government, but even Woodward himself, could be depicted as a traitor or be accused of aiding and abetting the enemy. It’s an extraordinarily menacing theory to journalism and to whistleblowing and leaking.

AMY GOODMAN: The judge in the case, Denise Lind, asked an interesting question of prosecutors. She said, Would you be going after him in the same way if he had given this information to The New York Times, as opposed to WikiLeaks?

GLENN GREENWALD: Right, and they said, "Absolutely."

AMY GOODMAN: They said, "Yes, Ma’am."

GLENN GREENWALD: And there’s even an indication that you could take this theory and use it to prosecute journalists, as well. Obviously journalists are not subjected to the uniform rules of military justice, but there are theories that the Obama—that the Bush administration has suggested, and that the Obama administration has even played around with, that if journalists are participating in or somehow encouraging leaks of serious classified information, that they, too, could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for endangering American national security. And so, it isn’t just a threat to Bradley Manning, it’s not just a threat to whistleblowers, it’s really a threat to the very act of investigative journalists. And if you talk to real investigative journalists, even one at establishment newspapers like The New York Times, Jim Risen—the most decorated investigative journalist in the country, one of them, the Pulitzer Prize winner, has himself been implicated and drawn into some of these cases—there is an extraordinary chilling effect that has descended, by design, over the entire news-gathering process.

AMY GOODMAN: I just wanted to go to some of Bradley Manning’s quotes. Testifying before a military court Thursday, U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning said of his motivation to leak classified documents, quote, "I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information ... this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general." He added, quote, "I believed that these cables would not damage the United States. However, I believed these cables would be embarrassing." He said he took the information to WikiLeaks only after he was rebuffed by The Washington Post and The New York Times. It was interesting. He said he had gone to The New York Times and The Washington Post first.

GLENN GREENWALD: Right. Well, what’s really interesting about that statement—obviously he’s making the statement in court when he’s facing a prospect of life in prison, and so some people might call the sincerity of those statements into question. The interesting thing to me, though, is that in the chat logs that were published over a year ago with the government informant who turned him in, he said very much the same thing while he thought he was speaking in complete confidence, to somebody who had promised him confidentiality, about what led him on this path, that he had become disillusioned first about the Iraq war when he discovered that people they were detaining weren’t really insurgents but were simply opponents of the Maliki government, and he brought it to his superiors, and they ignored him. He then looked at documents that showed extreme amounts of criminality and deceit and violence, that he could no longer in good conscience participate in concealing. It was really an act of conscience, pure conscience and heroism, that he did, knowing he was sacrificing his liberty. And what’s so persuasive to me isn’t just this extremely deliberative, thought-out statement that he gave in court, but how closely it tracks to what he thought was a private conversation explaining his behavior, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about who is covering this trial?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, what’s really fascinating is that there have been several individuals who have been covering every single step of the trial, and almost none of them works for a major media outlet. There are independent journalists—like Kevin Gosztola, who writes for Firedoglake, the liberal blog; there is Alexa O’Brien, who is simply an independent journalist who writes on the Internet and covers her own expenses and operates independently—who are the real sources for the coverage of the Manning trial.

The Guardian, the newspaper for which I write, has actually done a very good job, as well, of sending a reporter most of the time and covering the proceedings, but for a long time The New York Times simply ignored the trial. The newspaper that battled the Nixon administration over the Pentagon Papers, that was a beneficiary not only of Daniel Ellsberg’s leaks but also Bradley Manning’s leaks, simply ignored it and had to be shamed into finally sending somebody by those independent journalists, who kept banging on the table, saying, "Why isn’t The New York Times here?" And then, finally, their own public editor said it’s actually disgraceful that The New York Times hasn’t done more—or done anything—to cover this trial.

And I know, as somebody who writes about this case a lot, who has an extreme amount of interest in it, that I get my news from Kevin Gosztola, Alexa O’Brien, independent journalists who are at the trial, from The Guardian, as well. But in general, American establishment media outlets—I don’t think the name Bradley Manning has been mentioned on MSNBC once in the last two years, except maybe on a weekend morning show. He just doesn’t exist there. He doesn’t exist on CNN. It just has been blacked out.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the transcripts of decisions, of what’s going on in court?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, the irony of this proceeding is that what led Bradley Manning to do what he did was that virtually everything the U.S. government does is cloaked in secrecy, everything it does of any significance, and that whistleblowing and leaks, unauthorized leaks, is the only way we find out about what our government is doing. And a perfect microcosm illustrating how true that is is the Manning proceeding itself. There is more secrecy at this proceeding than there is even at Guantánamo military proceedings under George Bush. The docket is often classified and kept secret. Court orders are kept secret. There is no transcript available, so Alexa O’Brien had to transcribe his statement, Bradley Manning’s statement, using whatever instruments that she could. It really is a mockery of justice, what has taken place, and it really reflects the motivations that led Manning to do this in the first place.
AMY GOODMAN: The decision that came down from the Supreme Court on surveillance, you see it in some ways tying into this.

GLENN GREENWALD: I see it completely connected. That decision last week—in 2008, the Democratic-led Congress passed a law essentially authorizing massive new surveillance powers, allowing the U.S. government to surveil and eavesdrop on the conversation of American citizens without
warrants. And instantly, theACLU filed a lawsuit saying that this law, this major new eavesdropping law, is unconstitutional. And they got all kind of journalists and activists and human rights groups to say that the mere existence of this eavesdropping power severely harms them. Five years later, the Supreme Court said, because this eavesdropping program is shrouded in secrecy, nobody can prove that they’re being subjected to the eavesdropping, and therefore nobody has standing to sue; we won’t even allow the law to be tested in court about whether it violates the Constitution.

So, this has happened over and over. The government has insulated its conduct from what are supposed to be the legitimate means of accountability and transparency—judicial proceedings, media coverage, FOIA requests—and has really erected this impenetrable wall of secrecy, using what are supposed to be the institutions designed to prevent that. That is what makes whistleblowing all the more imperative. It really is the only remaining avenue that we have to learn about what the government is doing. And that is why the government is so intent on waging this war against whistleblowers, because it’s the only thing left that shines light on what they were doing. And those who want to stigmatize whistleblowing as illegal would have a much better case if there were legitimate institutions that were functioning that allow the kind of transparency that we’re supposed to have. But those have been all shut down, which is what makes whistleblowing all the more imperative and the war on whistleblowing all the more odious.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Glenn Greenwald. He’s a columnist and blogger for The Guardian. He’s author of With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. And he is a constitutional lawyer.

Glenn Greenwald is a constitutional law attorney and writes for the Guardian. He is the author of four books, most recently "With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful."

How Obama Got Into the Republican Party’s Head

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How Obama Got Into the Republican Party’s Head

The president likes to make Republicans look like “kooks.” And they usually take the bait.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) leaves a news conference in the U.S. Capitol on February 5 in Washington, DC.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) leaves a news conference in the U.S. Capitol Tuesday.
Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images


“Attn skeet birthers,” tweeted David Plouffe. “Make our day—let the photoshop conspiracies begin!”

It was Feb. 3, a week and change since Plouffe had left the White House and joined Twitter, and he was already on top of a meme. The New Republic had asked President Obama whether he’d ever shot a gun. “Up at Camp David,” he’d said, “we do skeet shooting all the time.” A small number of conservatives asked—totally reasonably—whether there was any proof. The White House released a photo of the president firing a shotgun.

But it did so by having deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer call the critics “skeeters,” and then came Plouffe, egging it on. “Day made,” he tweeted, hours later. “The skeet birthers are out in full force in response to POTUS pic. Makes for most excellent, delusional reading. #whereistrump”

Why, in 2013, is the White House still talking about Donald Trump? Has any of its domestic enemies been vanquished as completely as the host of The Apprentice? No, none of them have. The point of this exercise didn’t become clear until Tuesday, when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor wrapped up a sophisticated two-day exercise in Republican rebranding. Day 1 meant a visit to a D.C. charter school with media in tow. (“Eric Cantor grabs a plastic dinosaur from the pile of toys in front of one-year-old Mekhi Scott, taps the beast on the table and growls, RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”) Day two meant an hourlong speech at the American Enterprise Institute, flanked by Real Americans Who Feel the Real Impact of Washington.

“With us today is Erin Shucosky,” said Cantor. “Erin has been a clinical nurse for 30 years in Baltimore. She spent the past 10 years coordinating the research on a study to approve new replacement discs to treat patients suffering from crippling neck and back pain.” Alas, “the new medical device tax in Obamacare makes it harder for researchers to develop these innovative devices in the U.S. and thus makes it harder for patients like Erin to get the care they need.”

Republicans have been talking about scrapping that medical device tax since five or six seconds after Obamacare passed. Democrats like Elizabeth Warren have joined them. A Google News search on that tax reveals around 3,200 recent stories. A search for tales of Obama and the great skeet hunt: 135,000.

The easy knock on the Republican “rebranding” campaign is that it microwaves ideas and gimmicks from previous, partially successful campaigns. This White House makes that harder, because it has an intuitive understanding of what could make Republicans look stupid. The Republicans are aware of this tactic, and they resent it, one of them describing it to me as “finding four people on Twitter and making it look like they speak for us.”

But it usually works. In 2008, as Plouffe recalls in his memoir The Audacity to Win, the Obama campaign repeatedly pivoted away from damaging stories by making the stories themselves sound nutty. They focus-grouped possible attacks on Obama’s friendship with Bill Ayers, and according to Plouffe, “it became clear we could not blow off the subject as simply more negative politics from McCain.” But the McCain campaign “utterly flubbed their injection of the Ayers argument into the main artery of their communications.” Its vessel was not McCain, but Sarah Palin, “who had almost zero credibility and little standing with the broader electorate.”

This continued into 2009. But after the election, for a while, it stopped working. The White House portrayed Republican obstinacy as kookery, elevating the most colorful-sounding kooks. On Feb. 19, 2009, CNBC’s Rick Santelli denounced the nascent Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan and called for a “Chicago Tea Party” to protest this plan to bail out “the losers’ mortgages.” Asked about it the next day, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs delivered a long, prepared denunciation of Santelli, daring him to drink “decaf.” This only inflamed the Tea Party.

From then through 2010, Democrats hoped that the most extreme-looking Republicans would bring the entire party down around them. They didn’t. The GOP’s opposition was actually mostly popular, because the 2010 electorate and (to a lesser extent) the broader public also opposed the president’s health care bill, and doubted that the 2009 stimulus package had worked.

The Republican House of Representatives changed that relationship. After the debt limit fight of 2011, voters consistently blamed Congress, not the president, for Washington’s inexplicable manias. And that’s why Republicans have launched the ever-evolving rebrand. Cantor’s AEI speech was crafted to tie every Republican idea to a Hallmark movie problem. Instead of talking “tax reform,” there was this: “In our attempt to make the tax code simpler, we must continue to demonstrate support for young parents who invest in having kids and raising a family.” Instead of a lecture on school choice, there was the tale of Rashawn, who “flunked the first grade” and was put “in special education classes,” so broken is the system.

Every Republican leadership move this year has been designed to take away the president’s “kook” card. That was clear on Tuesday, as the party rejoiced at news that the president wanted “tens of billions of dollars in short-term spending cuts and tax revenue” to replace the scheduled cuts of sequestration. They’re aware of just how easy it is for the president to portray them as radical, and to spotlight their weirdest tics, and that he will get another chance to do this next week at the State of the Union. But how reasonable do they need to sound before people pay attention to them? They are learning that, at a speed much slower than skeet.