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Rep. Waxman Calls For Bush’s Housing Secretary To Resign Immediately

By Judd Legum on Sep 21, 2006 at 6:31 pm

An investigation by the Department of Housing and Urban Development Inspector General found that HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson instructed staff to award contracts to President Bush’s political allies and withhold them from his political opponents.

The news prompted Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) — the ranking member on the House Government Reform Committee — to call for Jackson’s resignation. Dallas Business Journal has the story:

The findings led Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., to call Thursday for Jackson’s resignation.

“If this report is accurate, Secretary Jackson should resign immediately,” Waxman said. “We must not allow taxpayer-funded contracts to be handed out to political allies as rewards for loyalty.”

The HUD Inspector General is refusing to release the full, 340 page report on Jackson’s conduct to the media. The Dallas Business Journal has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain it.

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Security

CIA Veteran Speaks: ‘There’s A Civil War In Iraq And Our Presence Is Contributing To The Violence’

By ThinkProgress on Sep 21, 2006 at 3:56 pm

Dr. Emile Nakhleh spent 15 years in the CIA and retired in June as the Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program, “the intelligence community’s premier group dedicated to the issue of political Islam.” Harper’s Ken Silverstein scored the first interview with Nakhleh since leaving the CIA. Some key excerpts:

On Iraq:

I have come to believe that our presence is part of the problem and that we should begin to seriously devise an exit strategy. There’s a civil war in Iraq and our presence is contributing to the violence. We’ve become a lightning rod–we’re not restricting the violence, we’re contributing to it. Iraq has galvanized jihadists; our presence is what is attracting them. We need to get out of there.

On Bush’s campaign for democracy:

We’ve lost a generation of goodwill in the Muslim world. The President’s democratization and reform program for the Middle East has all but disappeared, except for official rhetoric. … Because of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other abuses we have lost on the concepts of justice, fairness and the rule of law, and that’s the heart of the American idea.

On what to do in Iran:

I think it would be detrimental to our long-term interests to ignore the Iranian reality and let ourselves be blinded by our dislike for the current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. … The growing influence of Hezbollah, and its leader Hasan Nasrallah, across the region and within the Sunni street, and the growing regional influence and reach of Iran, are two new realities that we should recognize and engage. Iran’s nuclear issue is as much a failure of the nonproliferation approach as it is one of belligerence. Here too, I think, creative policies of engagement are called for and are possible.

Read the full interview HERE.

Media

On The Reading List

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 21, 2006 at 3:43 pm

I’ve always been puzzled by the realignment theory of American elections. I never really studied US history or US politics at the college level, so I’ve never been in a position to claim to be able to assess the arguments offered pro and con for this account of things. It’s clear that American political journalists act as if the political science underlying realignment theory is strong and sound. I’ve also always felt, based on my philosophical background, that the theory looked like a slightly absurd superstition. But who was really to say? Then I saw that one of Steve Teles’ recommended books for aspiring journalists is David Mayhew’s Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre of which Teles remarks:

American political journalists continue to talk as if “realignment” was still a meaningful phenomenon. Mayhew shows in this cool and clinical book that it’s not, and what is more, probably never was. He also makes some very suggestive comments on what might substitute for realignment as a large-scale explanation for political change.

Sounds like a book I should read. Since it would be a prejudice-confirming book at this point, though, I suppose I should also ask the collective wisdom of the internet to recommend a book making the case for “realignment” as a phenomenon with meaningful explanatory power.

Security

BREAKING: McCain Reaches Agreement With Bush On Military Tribunals

By Faiz Shakir on Sep 21, 2006 at 2:50 pm

NBC News reports that President Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) have reached a deal on military tribunals. Details of the compromise have yet to be released, but according to news accounts, “the White House has dropped its insistence on redefining the obligations of the United States under the Geneva Conventions.”

No word yet on whether Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) has also agreed to the compromise. Specter earlier took issue with the McCain, Warner, and Graham position:

I disagree with Senator McCain, Graham and Warner and the president trying to eliminate habeas corpus, that is judicial review, because we have so many complicated matters. When you come to the Geneva Convention, we have to follow the Geneva Convention.

More details to follow.

Climate Progress

White House Fools the Media Again with Warmed-Over Do-Nothing Climate “Plan”

By Joe Romm on Sep 21, 2006 at 2:30 pm

lucy-2.jpgThe media keeps getting suckered by Bush on climate the way Charlie Brown keeps getting suckered by Lucy.

Let’s get this straight: A technology-only strategy cannot solve the global warming problem. So how can the Washington Post publish a basically favorable article about Bush’s technology-only “plan” — and do so the same week both the Congressional Budget Office and Senate Environment Committee explained that such a strategy can’t do the job?

The answer is that technology has sex appeal, and it is actually part of the answer. And that is precisely why conservative strategist Frank Luntz recommended making technology the cornerstone of the climate strategy for conservatives who want to appear as if they care about global warming but don’t actually want to do anything about it. This strategy is so good that Bush can get favorable PR for his plan even though he is cutting funding the most cost-effective technology strategy–energy efficiency.

The famous 2002 Luntz memo is available on the web–you MUST read this if you want to understand why U.S. climate politics at the national level is so divorced from reality — but many people and most of the media seem unaware of it. Heck, even smart people like Rafe Pomerance and William Fulkerson are cited in the Post praising the Bush plan.

That’s why I spend a chapter in my forthcoming book, Hell and High Water: The Solution and The Politics (William Morrow, January 2007) on this subject, which I call the Technology Trap. If we follow the Bush strategy, we doom the planet to catastrophic climate change. It is that simple.

We must have a price for greenhouse gases, as the CBO explains, and that means market-oriented regulations, like Bush’s father put in place for air pollution. But W follows the Luntz razzle-dazzle strategy: “We need to emphasize how voluntary innovation and experimentation are preferable to bureaucratic or international intervention and regulation.” Delay. Delay.

To sum up: As Climate Progress predicted earlier this week, Bush’s “astonishing U-turn on global warming” was a Double-U Turn. We are back where we started, taking no serious action to stop sea level rise of 20 to 80 feet. AAUGH!

UPDATE: Link to Luntz memo has been fixed. My apologies.

Yglesias

Idle Threats

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 21, 2006 at 1:52 pm

Another word on Iran. Hawkish-minded commentators seem to be observing that the Iranian regime doesn’t appear especially frightened by the prospect of American air strikes. They’re concluding from this what they invariably conclude from everything — that we need to be more hawkish in our posture in order to frighten Teheran. They assume that the Iranian leadership’s lack of fear is based on their estimation of our military capacities, our resolve, or something along these lines. They ought to consider another possibility — Bush’s threats aren’t very scary.

American experts disagree on the extent to which air strikes can destroy or set back the Iranian nuclear program. I have no idea what anyone is basing their estimates of this question on. There’s universal agreement, however, that we can’t destroy everything if for no other reason than we can’t be sure where everything may be. Thus, the Bush administration’s démarche amounts to the following — either abandon your nuclear program or we’ll partially destroy your nuclear program. This is not a very difficult choice to make. In addition, the regime in Teheran probably believes that unilateral American strikes on Iran will create the opportunity for an enormous propaganda win for Teheran, both domestically and internationally. All else being equal, they’d prefer not to have their nuclear program even partially destroyed. But since not having the program destroyed isn’t on the table, and the administration isn’t putting anything else of note on the table in exchange for voluntary disarmament, it’s a no-brainer to just let the bombs fall where they may.

Politics

VIDEO: BBC Reveals ‘Direct Link’ Between Tobacco Companies And Global Warming Deniers

By Judd Legum on Sep 21, 2006 at 1:41 pm

In a segment on Newsnight yesterday, the BBC revealed a “direct link between the tobacco companies and the claim that climate change isn’t happening.” In 1993 Philip Morris set up a “grass roots coaltion” to “cast doubt on studies showing that second-hand tobacco smoke is dangerous for health.” In order not to raise suspicion that the company was involved, Philip Morris decided to “‘link the tobacco issue with other more politically correct products’ and campaign on issues like global warming.”

The result was the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, which was “one of the first organizations to throw a smokescreen over global warming.” Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2006/09/BBC.320.240.flv]

We’ve posted the full transcript here.

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Politics

$3 billion.

By Payson Schwin on Sep 21, 2006 at 12:50 pm

Virgin CEO Richard Branson’s pledge to fight climate change. At the Clinton Global Initiative, Branson announced he was investing “100 percent of all future proceeds to the Virgin Group from our transportation interest, both our trains and airline businesses, into tackling global warming.” The donation exceeds the total amount of commitments from last year’s conference ($2.5 billion).

UPDATE: NYT reports:

Mr. Branson said the idea had grown out of a visit to his London home a few months ago by former Vice President Al Gore, who is on a prolonged worldwide speaking tour to promote “An Inconvenient Truth,” his documentary and book about global warming.

“You are in a position maybe to make a difference,” Mr. Branson said Mr. Gore had told him. “If you can make a giant step forward other people will follow.”

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