The Jobs Agenda Obama Refuses to Embrace

Topic:

Great Recession

The jobs agenda Obama refuses to embrace

By Robert Reich

Reuters/Jim Young

President Barack Obama

Originally published at Robert Reich's blog.

What did the president do in response to last week’s horrendous job report -- unemployment rising to 9.2 percent in June, with only 18,000 new jobs (125,000 are needed each month just to keep up with the growth in the potential labor force)?

He said the economy continues to be in a deep hole, and he urged Congress to extend the temporary reduction in the employee part of the payroll tax, approve pending free-trade agreements, and pass a measure to streamline patent procedures. To call this inadequate would be a gross understatement.

Here’s what the president should have said:

This job recession shows no sign of ending. It can no longer be blamed on supply-side disruptions from Japan, Europe’s debt crisis, high oil prices or bad weather.

We’re in a vicious cycle where consumers won’t buy more because they’re scared of losing their jobs and their pay is dropping. And businesses won’t hire because they don’t have enough customers.

Here in Washington, we’ve been wasting time in a game of chicken over raising the debt ceiling. Republicans want you to believe the deficit is responsible for the bad economy. The truth is that when the private sector cannot and will not spend enough to get the economy going, the public sector must step into the breach. Cutting the deficit now would only create more joblessness.

My first priority is to get Americans back to work. I’m proposing a jobs plan that will do that.

First, we’ll exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes for the next two years. This will put cash directly into American’s pockets and boost consumer spending. We’ll make up the revenue shortfall by applying Social Security taxes to incomes over $500,000.

Second, we’ll re-create the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps -- two of the most successful job innovations of the New Deal -- and put people back to work directly. The long-term unemployed will help rebuild our roads and bridges, ports and levees, and provide needed services in our schools and hospitals. Young people who can’t find jobs will reclaim and improve our national parklands, restore urban parks and public spaces, recycle products and materials, and insulate public buildings and homes.

Third, we’ll enlarge the Earned Income Tax Credit so lower-income Americans have more purchasing power.

Fourth, we’ll lend money to cash-strapped state and local governments so they can rehire teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and others who provide needed public services. This isn’t a bailout. When the economy improves, scheduled federal outlays to these states and locales will drop by an amount necessary to recover the loans.

Fifth, we’ll amend the bankruptcy laws so struggling homeowners can declare bankruptcy on their primary residence. This will give them more bargaining leverage with their lenders to reorganize their mortgage loans. Why should the owners of commercial property and second homes be allowed to include these assets in bankruptcy but not regular homeowners?

Sixth, we’ll extend unemployment benefits to millions of Americans who have lost part-time jobs. They’ll get partial benefits proportional to the time they put in on the job.

Yes, most of these measures will require more public spending in the short term. But unless we get this economy moving now, the long-term deficit problem will only grow worse.

Some in Congress will fight against this jobs plan on ideological grounds. They don’t like the idea that government exists to help Americans who need it. And they don’t believe we all benefit when jobs are more plentiful and the economy is growing again.

I am eager to take them on. Average Americans are hurting, and their pain is not going away.

We bailed out Wall Street so that the financial system would not crash. We stimulated the economy so that businesses would not tank. Now we must help ordinary people on the Main Streets of America -- for their own sakes, and also so that the real economy can fully mend.

My most important goal is restoring jobs and wages. Those who oppose me must explain why doing nothing is preferable.

Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was secretary of labor during the Clinton administration. He is also a blogger and the author of "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future." More: Robert Reich

Obama's Great Betrayal: White House begins new push for social spending cuts

July 11, 2011 at 22:31:54

White House begins new push for social spending cuts

By Patrick Martin (about the author)

President Barack Obama convened a new round of bipartisan talks on raising the federal debt ceiling and slashing domestic social programs with a meeting that began at the White House shortly after 6 p.m. on Sunday. Eight top congressional leaders, four each from the Republican and Democratic parties, joined Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden and White House aides for several hours of talks, then announced plans to reconvene on Monday.

The talks began in the wake of the emphatic rejection by House Republicans of any tax increases for the wealthy. Speaker John Boehner announced Saturday night that there was no support for the relatively minor tax increases proposed by Obama Thursday as part of a "grand bargain" that would have put major cuts in Social Security on the table, in addition to the huge cuts in Medicare and Medicaid already being discussed. The deal also included a pledge to carry out sweeping tax "reform" to lower rates for corporations and the wealthy.

Many House Democrats publicly criticized Obama for injecting Social Security into the discussion on deficit reduction, but it was the House Republicans, particularly those linked to the ultra-right Tea Party faction, who effectively vetoed the larger deal.

Whatever the immediate results of the current talks, Obama's decision to put cuts in Social Security on the agenda has enormous political significance. For decades, the Democratic Party identified itself politically with the basic social programs established by Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal of the 1930s. Now, for the first time, a Democratic president has taken the initiative to attack Social Security, going beyond even what the Republican right is prepared to undertake at this juncture.

Boehner indicated that there was no possibility of enacting a package of spending cuts and tax increases that would reduce projected deficits by $4 trillion over the next ten years. He said the talks should focus instead on a lower goal of $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction, along the lines of bipartisan talks headed by Biden that collapsed June 30.

While the wording of the statement was conciliatory, praising Obama for "good-faith efforts to find common ground," Boehner effectively issued an ultimatum that any and all tax increases should be taken off the table. Less than 24 hours later, the talks resumed, with the White House issuing a perfunctory statement of its continued support for a "balanced approach" -- that is, including a fig leaf of selected tax increases for the wealthy to disguise trillions of dollars in spending cuts targeting the elderly, the sick, working families and the poor.

The budget talks in Washington have been through many twists and turns over the past seven months, dating back to December 2010, but each new stage has involved a further shift to the right by the Obama administration in response to pressure from the congressional Republicans, the corporate-controlled media and big business as a whole.

In December 2010, Obama caved in to demands by the Republicans -- even while the Democrats held wide majorities in both houses of the lame duck Congress -- and agreed to the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy for another two years. In April and May of 2011, the expiration of funding authorization for the current fiscal year prompted a further capitulation, as the White House agreed to $62 billion in spending cuts in fiscal year 2011, including major cuts in college student aid and housing programs.

The new deadline is the August 2 date set by the Treasury Department, when its financial maneuvers to avoid breaching the congressional debt ceiling or defaulting on the US debt will come to an end. Either Congress raises the debt ceiling to allow the Treasury to borrow the funds required to finance federal government operations, or, among other things, the Social Security Administration will have to withhold the $49 billion in monthly checks to the elderly, scheduled to be issued August 3.

As the price of raising the debt ceiling, Boehner and the House Republicans demanded deficit reduction measures equal to the amount of the increase in the debt ceiling, about $2.4 trillion, proposed by the Obama administration. The White House accepted this ultimatum and negotiated on that basis, until Obama proposed last week that the negotiators try to reach an even higher total of deficit reduction, at least $4 trillion over ten years.

According to press reports of the deliberations Friday, House Republicans rejected every single one of the tax increases on the wealthy proposed by the White House: allowing the Bush tax cuts for the rich to expire at the end of 2012, limiting tax deductions for upper-income households, ending favorable tax treatment of the income of hedge fund managers, ending tax subsidies to the major oil companies, and ending tax subsidies for the purchase of corporate jets.

These measures were proposed by Obama not because he expected any of them to be adopted, but in order to posture demagogically as an advocate of "shared sacrifice" and "fairness" before he capitulates again to Republican demands for even more savage cuts in basic social programs for working class families (See "Obama's hypocrisy on the corporate jet tax loophole".)

Spokesmen for the House Republicans taunted the White House over the proposed tax increases, noting that the Democrats had never adopted such measures when they controlled the House and Senate by large margins. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of California pointed out Sunday, referring to ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, "Speaker Pelosi did not have the votes for it when they had the majority."

In the Senate, the Democratic chairman of the Budget Committee, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, proposed a budget plan that explicitly abandons the longstanding claim that the Democrats want to end the Bush tax cuts for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and households making more than $250,000 a year.

The proposal would extend the Bush tax cuts permanently for individuals making up to $500,000 a year and households making up to $1 million a year, drastically reducing the additional revenue that would be generated from taxing higher incomes.

The Democratic plan called for a total of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, including $350 billion from discretionary domestic spending, but only $80 billion from Medicare, Medicaid and other health care programs, and nothing from Social Security.

It is a measure of the drastic swing to the right in both big business parties over the past three years that this plan, matching the Republicans dollar-for-dollar in deficit reduction and providing nothing in terms of jobs for the unemployed or relief for victims of the economic slump, is now described in the media as the "left" alternative to the proposals being worked out by Obama and the congressional Republicans.

The language of the media coverage has become increasingly disengaged from reality, as the television networks and newspapers seek to conceal from the American people the wrecking operation that is underway in Washington against bedrock social programs on which tens of millions of elderly, disabled and low-income people rely for their survival.

McClatchy News Service referred in one recent dispatch to the Republicans opposing "unpopular tax increases," although all public opinion polls show widespread popular support for tax increases on the wealthy that go far beyond anything proposed or supported by the White House.

The truth is that tax increases on the wealthy are "unpopular" only in those circles inhabited by congressmen, senators, White House aides and media pundits -- among the super-rich and particularly well-heeled sections of the upper-middle class.

Sanders: Obama Proposal Would Impoverish 250,000

Published on Sunday, July 10, 2011 by The Hill (Washington, DC)

Sanders: Obama Proposal Would Impoverish 250,000

by Erik Wasson

The Social Security Administration estimates that a proposal floated by the Obama administration would put 245,000 people into poverty, according to an analysis released by liberal senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Saturday.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has led the charge in the Senate to defend Social Security against benefit cuts. That level of impact would be felt by 2050 if a proposal to change the way inflation is measured is adopted, Sanders announced. The change to the way SSA would calculate the Consumer Price Index has been floated in debt ceiling talks between Congress and the White House. The White House has suggested revising CPI for both the tax code, in order to generate more revenue, and for benefits.

Social Security Administration’s Office of Retirement Policy estimated that by 2030, according to the report prepared for Sanders, there would be 173,400 more people living in poverty in the United States.

Benefits for those who are 80-89 would drop by $960 a year. Benefits for women would fall by 3.5 percent overall while men’s benefits would drop by 2.9 percent.

By 2050, seniors in the 80-89 age bracket would see benefits fall by $1,200 a year.

"I am especially disturbed that the president is considering cuts in Social Security after he campaigned against cuts in 2008," Sanders said. "The American people expect the president to keep his word."

This week Sanders demanded that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) join House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in flatly ruling out any benefit cuts to Social Security as part of the debt deal.

Reid in the past has said Social Security does not need to be reformed for decades. While Social Security is expected to be unable to pay full benefits by 2036, it is not a major driver of the budget deficit. Republicans want the program reformed now because they fear otherwise that as 2036 approaches massive tax hikes that could stall the economy would be demanded by senior citizens.

© 2011 The Hill

Obama and the Empire of the Rising Scum

Center for a Stateless Society

Empire of the Rising Scum

Posted by Kevin Carson on Jul 6, 2011 in Commentary •

In 2007, when he was still courting us and had to put on a clean undershirt every day, Barack Obama said: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Compare that to his current position on the War Powers Act.

But this is nothing new. Every day, it seems progressives have another reason for disillusionment with Obama. As libertarian commentator Anthony Gregory wrote in a recent column (“Why the Left Fears Libertarianism,” LewRockwell.com, June 30), this is really George Bush’s third term.

Obama dumped hundreds of billions in corporate welfare into the banking and auto industries, appointed General Electric’s CEO as his unemployment tsar, and “appointed corporate state regulars for every major role in financial central planning.”

He violated his pledges to close Guantanamo and end warrantless wiretapping, doubled down on Afghanistan, refused to halt rendition of prisoners, left the US gulag of black torture sites up around the world, turned Baghram AFB into Gitmo East, and authorized the torture of dissident Bradley Manning.

He abandoned all his assurances about transparency, and pushed through a healthcare “reform” that does for the insurance companies what Medicare D did for the drug companies.

Harry Browne used to warn that the laws you supported would most likely turn out to “do the opposite of what you thought you were supporting.” You’d expect everyone would know by now — but, like Charlie Brown, they keep trying to kick that ball — that “no law will be written the way you have in mind, it won’t be administered the way you have in mind, and it won’t be adjudicated the way you have in mind.” This is because “you don’t control government.”

It’s also because of the kinds of people running government. Jon Ronson, author of “The Psychopath Test,” claims that psychopathy is four times more prevalent in the top ranks of Corporate America as in the general public. I’m sure the same phenomenon prevails in government as well. As Ronson said, a consensus of leading psychologists said “psychopaths rule the world.”

There’s a good reason for this. As Robert Shea wrote in the aptly titled “Empire of the Rising Scum” (Loompanics Catalog 1990), the more successful an organization becomes at its ostensible function, “the more it attracts people who see the organization as an opportunity to advance themselves.” And because advancing in an organization is a talent like anything else, organizations tend to become dominated by apparatchiks: “[P]eople who are extraordinarily good at manipulating organizations to serve their own ends …” who can “out-a**-kiss, out-maneuver, out-threaten, out-lie and ultimately out-fight his or her way to the top of the pyramid — any pyramid.”

So ultimately, any large, hierarchical organization — regardless of its ostensible purpose — will serve the real primary purpose of getting bigger and increasing the power and wealth of those at the top. You get governments that create internal passport systems and put us under constant surveillance in order to “protect our freedom,” and giant corporations whose CEOs downsize customer service staff to goose their own stock options while publicly proclaiming that “customer service is our priority.”

Giant, top-down organizations are headed by people — frequently power-crazed sociopaths — whose main skill is bureaucratic in-fighting. The scum rises to the top.

So what’s the answer? To replace hierarchy with self-organization, and to replace authority with mutual agreement between equals.

Don’t give the scum any place to rise to.

Breaking Point: Obama and the Death of the Democratic Party

Published on Friday, July 8, 2011 by FireDogLake

Breaking Point: Obama and the Death of the Democratic Party

by Jane Hamsher

According to both the Washington Post and the New York Times, Obama is proposing cuts to Social Security in exchange for GOP support for tax hikes. Lori Montgomery in the Post:

At a meeting with top House and Senate leaders set for Thursday morning, Obama plans to argue that a rare consensus has emerged about the size and scope of the nation’s budget problems and that policymakers should seize the moment to take dramatic action. As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal.

And Jay Carney’s carefully chosen weasel-words today do not contradict this:

“There is no news here – the President has always said that while social security is not a major driver of the deficit, we do need to strengthen the program and the President said in the State of the Union Address that he wanted to work with both parties to do so in a balanced way that preserves the promise of the program and doesn’t slash benefits.”

Nobody ever says they want to “cut” Social Security or Medicare. They want to “save” it. Just ask Pete Peterson, he wants to “save” it. Likewise AARP. They don’t want reduced benefits for senior citizens, they want to “preserve” it for future generations. If they have an enormous customer base they can market private “add-on” accounts and other retirement products to when Social Security goes bye-bye, I guess that’s just a happy coincidence.

Now if you think that this is something the President is doing because it’s the only way to get Republican cooperation you can stop reading here, because we’re going to disagree. From the moment he took the White House, the President has wanted to cut Social Security benefits. David Brooks reported that three administration officials called him to say Obama “is extremely committed to entitlement reform and is plotting politically feasible ways to reduce Social Security as well as health spending” in March of 2009. You can only live in denial for so long and still lay claim to being tethered to reality.

And if you think it’s only the President, and the progressives in Congress will oppose him, we’ll have to disagree about that too. Nancy Pelosi can always come up with the votes she needs to pass whatever the White House wants, and she’ll do it again this time. It’s her only chance to ever be Speaker again. If the Democrats somehow manage to retake control of the House, she needs Obama’s support. She’ll shake her fist and say things like any health care bill “without a strong public option will not pass the House” — and then turn around and force her caucus to walk the plank.

Progressive Democratic “leaders” like Raul Grijalva will fold once again like a house of cards if need be — and they know it. Today, the Huffington Post reports:

Progressives Won’t Criticize Obama For Proposed Social Security Cuts

Grijalva and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), a vice chair of the caucus, defended the president for signaling he would be willing to take a look at changes to the programs, arguing there are ways to restructure entitlement spending to save money without hurting beneficiaries.

Translation: They’ll wait for the whip count to see if their votes are needed, and if not, they can let somebody else be the “rotating villain” this time. But just in case, they’re leaving the back door open for themselves.

What we’re watching is the death of the Democratic Party. Or, at least the Democratic Party as most of us have known it. The one that has taken its identity in the modern era from FDR and the New Deal, from Keynesianism and the social safety net. Despite any of its other shortcomings (and they are myriad), the Democratic Party has stood as a symbol for commitment to these principles. As recently as 2006, Democrats retook the House in a surprise wave election because the public feared that George Bush would destroy Social Security, and they trusted the Democrats over Republicans to secure it. Just like George Bush, Obama now wants to “save” Social Security….by giving those who want to burn it to the ground the the very thing they’ve wanted for decades.

Any member of any party who participates in this effort does not deserve, and should not get, the support of anyone who values Social Security and cares about its preservation. The amount of damage that the Democrats under Obama have been able to do has been immeasurable, by virtue of the fact that they are less awful that George Bush. But where George Bush failed, Obama will probably succeed.

Which means we’re watching another casualty here: Democracy. Or at least, the illusion that we live in a democratic society. The public, regardless of party, overwhelmingly opposes cuts to Social Security and Medicare. But elected officials of both parties are hell-bent on conspiring to bring the programs to an end. They seem to have come to grips with a fact that the public has not: their tenure in office depends on carrying out the wishes of oligarchical elites.

There is only one thing you can reasonably conclude as you watch the political theater that is transpiring: what the voting public thinks really isn’t all that important. And to the extent that it does matter, it can easily be channeled by those with sufficient money to pay the tab. Samuel Johnson said that patriotism was the last refuge of scoundrels, but in our modern era, that honor goes to tribalism. The list of horrors that people found intolerable when George Bush was in office, but are now blithely accepting because “Sarah Palin would be worse,” grows longer every day.

We’ll fight this, because it’s the right thing to do. We will probably lose. But we will make it as painful as possible for any politician from any party to participate in this wholesale looting of the public sphere, this “shock doctrine” for America. And maybe along the way we’ll get a vision of what comes next. Because what we believe in as Americans, and what we stand for, is not something the Democratic party represents any more.

© 2011 FireDogLake.com

Jane Hamsher is the founder of firedoglake.com. Her work has also appeared on The Daily Beat, AlterNet, The Nation and The American Prospect.

Obama’s Rightward Drift in Pursuit of ‘Business Confidence’

Published on Tuesday, July 5, 2011 by In These Times

Obama’s Rightward Drift in Pursuit of ‘Business Confidence’

by Roger Bybee

President Obama’s news conference last week was seen by liberals as heavily pressuring Republicans to agree to raise the debt ceiling without chain-sawing through the vital functions of government.

Some observers thought Obama forcefully cornered the Republicans at their most vulnerable in his remarks, as columnist EJ Dionne wrote:

President Obama put a question to congressional Republicans that should be asked over and over and over until they blink: Are they really willing to risk the nation’s credit and economic turmoil in order to preserve tax breaks for corporate jets, outlandishly low tax rates for hedge fund managers and loopholes for the oil companies?

Yes, Obama succeeded at exposing the Republicans at their most absurd. But first, you have to wonder why President Obama is negotiating with the Republicans at all.

Why not have the Republicans talk directly to their most valued constituencies—the CEOs, Wall Street bankers and hedge fund traders, and the investor class? Do you think for one second that these forces would allow Republicans to interrupt their current streak of good fortune—astronomical profits, a 23% increase in CEO pay, a huge array of tax loopholes to exploit, and a growing share of national income—by precipitating needless financial turmoil?

To the extent that Obama does not force Corporate America to step in and slap the Republicans into shape, he risks trading away vital safety-net programs.

For those concerned about the condition of workers, Obama at moments reflected his distance from both the plight and the perceptions of working families, esp[ecially the nearly 6 percent who are jobless or under-employed.

Obama has entirely dropped the populist, anti-globalization voice that carried him to victory in 2008. Instead, on June 29 he often sounded as if he had transformed himself into a moderate Republican who was petrified at the thought of being too identified with the cause of working people:

Right now, Congress can advance a set of trade agreements that would allow American businesses to sell more of their goods and services to countries in Asia and South America—agreements that would support tens of thousands of American jobs while helping those adversely affected by trade. That's pending before Congress right now….

I think these trade deals [with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama] will be important -- because right now South Korea, frankly, has a better deal when it comes to our trading relationship than we do.

Labor leaders like AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and Machinists political director Matt McKinnon have thoroughly dissected the South Korea agreement, showing how it is a NAFTA-style agreement that will result in funneling products made under near-slavery conditions in North Korea and China into the US. The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that it will result in the loss of 159,000 more U.S. jobs.

DEFENDING THE RIGHT TO RELOCATE U.S. JOBS

Worse, in discussing the National Labor Relation Board’s decision to impose penalties on Boeing for relocating jobs from Washington State to South Carolina in order to punish the Machinists union, the president felt obligated to defend the right of corporations to relocate jobs:

...as a general proposition, companies need to have the freedom to relocate. They have to follow the law, but that’s part of our system.

True, Obama cheered the fact that Boeing intended to keep the jobs in the United States—even though it would means denying workers union representation and skill-appropriate wages in South Carolina. Further, his rationale—that corporations are entitled to near-total freedom to relocate-- easily extends to sending jobs to Mexico, China, and South Korea.

Obama’s thinking on this is far out of touch with the anxiety felt by 86 percent of Amercans polled in fall 2010, who expressed the belief that much of America’s economic troubles could be traced to the offshoring of jobs.

BUSINESS CONFIDENCE KEY WORRY

Even with U.S. corporations sitting on record savings of $2 trillion while generating massive profits each quarter, Obama repeated the corporate talking point that America’s budget deficit somehow impairs “business confidence” and deters job creation. How could business possibly feel any more confident, or more accurately, arrogant?

Well, President Obama still plans somehow to make things even better:

What we need to do is to restore business confidence and the confidence of the American people that we’re on track -- that we’re not going to get there right away, that this is a tough slog, but that we still are moving forward.

Despite occasional forays into progressive terrain like proposing an infrastructure-building program, Obama’s news conference was more memorable for his adoption of the conservative framework on explaining sluggish job growth: We need less regulation, more free trade agreements, stronger business confidence in the government’s ability to reduce deficits.

As President Obama drifts rightward in accepting the Right’s framing of the economy, he may gain the confidence of a some business leaders who doubt the capacity of the current Republican field (e.g, Michele Bachmann?) to manage the country's economy.

But as for the confidence and enthusiasm of all the disaffected and alienated voters—who are still left out of the glorious recovery that has been reserved for Corporate America—and whom Obama succeeded in mobilizing in 2008, the president’s current concerns and rhetoric hardly seem inspiring as the 2012 elections loom larger.

© 2011 In These Times

Thanks to Obama Torture crimes officially, permanently shielded

Friday, Jul 1, 2011 07:02 ET

Torture crimes officially, permanently shielded

By Glenn Greenwald

In August, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder -- under continuous, aggressive prodding by the Obama White House -- announced that three categories of individuals responsible for Bush-era torture crimes would be fully immunized from any form of criminal investigation and prosecution: (1) Bush officials who ordered the torture (Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld); (2) Bush lawyers who legally approved it (Yoo, Bybee, Levin), and (3) those in the CIA and the military who tortured within the confines of the permission slips they were given by those officials and lawyers (i.e., "good-faith" torturers). The one exception to this sweeping immunity was that low-level CIA agents and servicemembers who went so far beyond the torture permission slips as to basically commit brutal, unauthorized murder would be subject to a "preliminary review" to determine if a full investigation was warranted -- in other words, the Abu Ghraib model of justice was being applied, where only low-ranking scapegoats would be subject to possible punishment while high-level officials would be protected.

Yesterday, it was announced that this "preliminary review" by the prosecutor assigned to conduct it, U.S. Attorney John Durham, is now complete, and -- exactly as one would expect -- even this category of criminals has been almost entirely protected, meaning a total legal whitewash for the Bush torture regime:

The Justice Department has opened full criminal investigations of the deaths in CIA custody of two detainees, including one who perished at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The decision, announced by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., means continued legal jeopardy for several CIA operatives but at the same time closes the book on inquiries that potentially threatened many others. A federal prosecutor reviewed 101 cases in which agency officers and contractors interrogated suspected terrorists during years of military action after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but found cause to pursue criminal cases in only two. . . .

The two token cases to be investigated involve the most grotesque brutality imaginable: they apparently are (1) a detainee who froze to death in an American secret prison in Afghanistan in 2002 after being ordered stripped and chained to a concrete floor, and (2) the 2003 death of a detainee at Abu Ghraib whose body was infamously photographed by guards giving a thumbs-up sign. All other crimes in the Bush torture era will be fully protected. Lest there be any doubt about what a profound victory this is for those responsible for the torture regime, consider the reaction of the CIA:

"On this, my last day as director, I welcome the news that the broader inquiries are behind us," said a statement from CIA Director Leon Panetta, who will take over as defense secretary on Friday. "We are now finally about to close this chapter of our agency's history" . . . . At CIA headquarters on Thursday, Holder’s announcement was greeted with relief. . . .

Consider what's being permanently shielded from legal accountability. The Bush torture regime extended to numerous prisons around the world, in which tens of thousands of mostly Muslim men were indefinitely imprisoned without a whiff of due process, and included a network of secret prisons -- "black sites" -- purposely placed beyond the monitoring reach of even international human rights groups, such as the International Red Cross.

Over 100 detainees died during U.S. interrogations, dozens due directly to interrogation abuse. Gen. Barry McCaffrey said: "We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A." Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who oversaw the official investigation into detainee abuse, wrote: "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Thanks to the Obama DOJ, that is no longer in question. The answer is resoundingly clear: American war criminals, responsible for some of the most shameful and inexcusable crimes in the nation's history -- the systematic, deliberate legalization of a worldwide torture regime -- will be fully immunized for those crimes. And, of course, the Obama administration has spent years just as aggressively shielding those war criminals from all other forms of accountability beyond the criminal realm: invoking secrecy and immunity doctrines to prevent their victims from imposing civil liability, exploiting their party's control of Congress to suppress formal inquiries, and pressuring and coercing other nations not to investigate their own citizens' torture at American hands.

All of those efforts, culminating in yesterday's entirely unsurprising announcement, means that the U.S. Government has effectively shielded itself from even minimal accountability for its vast torture crimes of the last decade. Without a doubt, that will be one of the most significant, enduring and consequential legacies of the Obama presidency.

The rule of law is a campaign slogan, nothing more; And Barack Obama is George W. Bush.

Obama Loses His ‘Constitutional Law Professor Hat’

by Charles Davis / July 1st, 2011

As a candidate for president, Barack Obama was a Distinguished Constitutional Scholar. As a president waging an illegal war? He’s just some guy who, gosh, isn’t really in a position to talk about that complex document he took an oath to uphold and defend.

At a press conference this week, NBC correspondent Chuck Todd — presumably under strict orders not to ask about Newsweek’s Princess Di cover — questioned the erstwhile legal scholar about whether he felt the War Powers Resolution, which forbids the president from deploying troops without congressional consent except in cases of imminent danger to national security, and even then for only 60 days, passed constitutional muster.

Well, the president replied, “I’m not a Supreme Court justice, so I’m not — I’m not going to put my constitutional law professor hat on here.” And so he didn’t, declaring it irrelevant — “I don’t even have to get to the constitutional question” — as he was already abiding by the law in question, rejecting the claim his actions “in any way violate the War Powers Resolution.”

But the president didn’t really want to get into legal specifics, other than to point out that the resolution was passed in the wake of the Vietnam war and probably wasn’t intended to apply to countries merely having the shit bombed out of them by U.S. forces (like, say, Cambodia). There’s a reason Obama didn’t want to put on his “constitutional law professor hat” during the press conference: he lost it during the 2008 campaign.

Back then, ages ago I know, Obama had no qualms addressing thorny legal issues concerning executive power. “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,” he told The Boston Globe.

You can see how such become inconvenient when you’re the one unilaterally authorizing the wars.

Obama also probably didn’t want to delve into the details because, when not reading the War Powers Resolution with the special goggles handed out to die-hard Democratic loyalists, it’s quite clear — indisputable, really — that the Obama administration is violating the letter of the law. Contrary to administration claims, bombing a country and trying to assassinate its leader most certainly do qualify as acts of war, or “hostilities” in the resolution’s terminology. And it’s most certainly the case that by helping its NATO allies do the same, U.S. forces are being asked to “command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government,” and that there’s an “imminent threat” that those forces “will become engaged,” all of which triggers the War Powers Resolution. That means Obama’s roughly three-month old war is, if it weren’t illegal from the start, explicitly so since the 60 day limit on non-congressionally authorized troop deployments expired a month ago.

As for all those complaining about the blatant illegality of the latest and greatest humanitarian bombing campaign — what Obama called the “noise about process and congressional consultation and so forth” — the president declared it was much ado about nothing. “I’ve had all the members of Congress over to talk about it,” he patiently explained, maintaining U.S. involvement in the war he once said would last “days, not weeks,” had. “So a lot of this fuss is politics.”

Politicians being politicians, the president’s assessment is no doubt partially true, though it’s a two-edged sword as Obama’s own unwillingness to seek what almost certainly would have been easy congressional approval of the Libya war back in March likewise had a lot to do with politics. Seeking congressional approval may have spurred a wider debate about the wisdom of entering yet another war at a time when social programs at home are being slashed and Americans are increasingly tired of being known only for burgers and bombs, and seeking an authorization to use force may have required Obama to lay out an endgame scenario — an actual plan — rather than platitudes about freedom and America’s uniquely heroic role in world affairs.

“We have engaged in a limited operation to help a lot of people against one of the worst tyrants in the world, somebody who nobody should want to defend,” Obama added during the press conference, bravely taking on the influential Gaddafi Lobby in Washington. “[W]e should be sending out a unified message to this guy that he should step down and give his people a fair chance to live their lives without fear. And — and this suddenly becomes the cause celebre for some folks in Congress? Come on.”

Got that? Dissent aids the enemy. Unity is Strength. The rule of law is a campaign slogan, nothing more. And Barack Obama is George W. Bush.

Charles Davis is a journalist based in Washington, DC. More of his work may be found on his Web site. Read other articles by Charles.

This article was posted on Friday, July 1st, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Libya, Obama.