From today’s New York Times:
The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.
The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.
The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.
The report is the latest to document the growing concentration of income at the top, a trend that President Bush said last January had been under way for more than 25 years.
And the “money shot” quote:
Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington who characterizes the Bush administration’s policies as YOYO economics, based on You (Are) On Your Own, said the differences in income growth explained why so many Americans have told pollsters that they are feeling squeezed.
“A lot of people justifiably feel they are working harder and smarter, they are baking a bigger and better pie, and yet their slice is not growing much at all,” Mr. Bernstein said. “It is meaningless to middle- and low-income families to say we have a great economy because their economy looks so much different than folks at the top of the scale because this is an economy that is working, but not working for everyone.”
Umm… aside from the really stupid quote about baking a bigger pie, is anyone else getting that pre-rape tax-increase feeling?
Posted on:
December 15, 2007 , by
newyank • Trackback
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Update: Iran says NIE Report is a Declaration of Surrender
So the Left thinks we should conduct a more “sensitive” war against Islamic-extremism?
From Reuters:
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran’s president said on Sunday the publication of a U.S. intelligence report saying Iran had halted a nuclear weapons program in 2003 amounted to a “declaration of surrender” by Washington in its row with Tehran.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also dismissed in an interview with state television the prospect of new U.N. sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt sensitive atomic work.
“It is too far-fetched,” he said when asked whether he expected the U.N. Security Council to impose fresh sanctions on Iran following two such resolutions since last December.
Ahmadinejad, who often rails against the West, told a rally earlier this month that the December 3 publication of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate was a “victory” for Iran.
He said on Sunday: “It was in fact a declaration of surrender … It was a positive action by the U.S. administration to change their attitude and it was a correct move.”
So, just how does a defeated nation handle the negotiations now that Iran is emboldened? We’ll see where “sensitive” gets us.
A portion of the “CYA” National Intelligence Estimate (“NIE”) report made public recently has apparently thrown gasoline on the proverbial fire in regard to the Iranian nuclear standoff.
The report, “liberally” written, gave Tehran a un-deserved geopolitical victory while attempting to discredit the Bush administration. The attempt IMHO didn’t completely succeed.
However, NIE reports are supposed to be designed to bring clarity to an issue. It seems as though this report did the exact opposite. Which can lead to dangerous and unforeseen consequences.
From the AP via Yahoo! News:
JERUSALEM - Israel’s public security minister warned Saturday that a U.S. intelligence report that said Iran is no longer developing nuclear arms could lead to a regional war that would threaten the Jewish state.
In his remarks — Israel’s harshest criticism yet of the U.S. report — Avi Dichter said the assessment also cast doubt on American intelligence in general, including information about Palestinian security forces’ crackdown on militant groups. The Palestinian action is required as part of a U.S.-backed renewal of peace talks with Israel this month.
Dichter cautioned that a refusal to recognize Iran’s intentions to build weapons of mass destruction could lead to armed conflict in the Middle East.
Read more: Israel, US report on Iran may spark war.
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December 15, 2007 , by
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Hmm… I thought only republicans were corrupt (sarcasm.) If Mr. Sharpton were a republican, the party would either force him to resign or refrain from running for office. Democrats, on the other hand, will probably encourage Sharpton to run for a Congressional seat or maybe advise the Hillary Clinton campaign.
From today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:
With a hidden FBI camera rolling inside a New York hotel suite in 2003, an unsuspecting Rev. Al Sharpton, Democratic candidate for president, spoke candidly.
Sharpton offered to help Philadelphia fund-raiser Ronald A. White win a multimillion-dollar business deal, if White helped him raise $50,000 for politics.
White offered $25,000. “If you bring my guys up on this hedge fund, and I have the right conversation,” White said, “I’ll give you what you need.”
“Cool,” Sharpton said.
The Inquirer obtained an account of the May 9, 2003, conversation, which was recorded as part of the Philadelphia City Hall corruption case. The tape helped spark a separate inquiry into Sharpton’s 2004 campaign and his civil-rights organization, the National Action Network. The FBI-IRS probe resurfaced publicly Wednesday, when Sharpton aides received subpoenas.
In an interview yesterday, Sharpton said there is “absolutely nothing illegal” about tying business deals to fund-raising because he is not a public official.
“The tapes vindicate me,” Sharpton said. “They show that I did not talk about bribing a public official or paying money under the table.”
The video was recorded by an FBI camera hidden in a lamp inside Suite 34A at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan. Sharpton and White were introduced by La-Van Hawkins, a Detroit businessman.
At the time, FBI agents were investigating White and Hawkins, suspecting that they were involved in pay-to-play in Philadelphia - raising campaign funds for Mayor Street and others in order to win municipal contracts for favored donors. Later FBI agents in the case infamously placed a bug in Street’s office, but it was discovered before it recorded anything.
Read more: Videotape shows Sharpton cutting a deal.
“The tapes vindicate me,” Sharpton said. Vindicate??? Hey Al, you were caught on tape making a deal with two people who were being investigated for political corruption. Someone please explain to me how that vindicates Mr. Sharpton.
Posted on:
December 15, 2007 , by
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Claims of Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton and KBR
From ABC’s “The Blotter”:
A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.
“Don’t plan on working back in Iraq. There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston,” Jones says she was told.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.
Read the entire story: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR.
First of all, my thoughts go out to the victim, her family and everyone involved in trying to settle the many issues that need to be put to rest in a case like this. I’m going to watch this story and post updates as it develops. There are already a handful of bloggers questioning the story as reported by ABC. And of course, the Left is already bolstering the Bush – Cheney Inc. conspiracy.
But I’m not going to question the reported facts just yet. Having said that, there’s something about this story that doesn’t quite add up; we’ll see…
Posted on:
December 10, 2007 , by
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Update: Congress Knew About Waterboarding in 2002
More proof that Democrats continue to exploit issues of national security for political gain. This from Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen of the Washington Post:
Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002
In Meetings, Spy Panels’ Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in an interview two months ago that he had informed congressional overseers of “all aspects of the detention and interrogation program.”
“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
Read more: Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002.
How to turn a non-scandal, into a scandal in order to get legislation passed…
The mainstream media reports:
December 6th, the New York Times runs this story:
C.I.A. Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing Interrogations
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.
The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. The tapes were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that video showing harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to legal risks, several officials said.
In a statement to employees on Thursday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, said that the decision to destroy the tapes was made “within the C.I.A.” and that they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value.
With the media template established, CNN runs this story on the 7th:
CIA director: Tapes of interrogations destroyed
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogations of al Qaeda suspects because they no longer had “intelligence value” and they posed a security risk, CIA director Michael Hayden said Thursday.
The tapes were made in 2002 and destroyed in 2005, Hayden said in a letter to CIA employees obtained by CNN.
They were made as “an internal check” on the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques, believed to include waterboarding, a technique that involves restraining a suspect and pouring water on them to simulate drowning.
The agency made the decision to destroy the tapes “only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries,” Hayden said.
The two paragraphs at the end of this story are the most revealing about what this incident is REALLY about:
Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, said news the CIA destroyed the videotapes “is troubling, and it fits a pattern we have seen repeatedly during this administration.”
“When an administration abandons the moral high ground to take the low road, they are mortgaging the historic commitment to human rights that is part of the legacy of every American. The damage is compounded when such actions are hidden away from accountability,” Leahy said in a statement.
Senator Patrick Leahy. Why is this significant? Over the years, Senator Leahy has coordinated leaks within the CIA and other intelligence agencies to embarrass Presidents or worse. A good round-up of “Leaky” Leahy’s legacy can be found on Jim Kouri’s web site. So I’m not surprised to see his name turn up in the midst of this story.
On the 8th CNN runs the headline on it’s web site establishing a direct connection to the President:
Bush: ‘No recollection’ of tapes
WASHINGTON (CNN) — U.S. President George W. Bush “has no recollection” of videotapes of CIA interrogations of some al Qaeda suspects or of plans to destroy the tapes, a White House spokeswoman said.
Then publishes poll results designed to bolster the story:
Poll results: Waterboarding is torture
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A majority of Americans consider waterboarding a form of torture, but some of those say it’s OK for the U.S. government to use the technique, according to a poll released Tuesday.
Asked whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture, more than two-thirds of respondents, or 69 percent, said yes; 29 percent said no.
Asked whether they think the U.S. government should be allowed to use the procedure to try to get information from suspected terrorists, 58 percent said no; 40 percent said yes.
The NYT ran the following stories on the 8th. The first one designed to establish the premise that the C.I.A. disobeyed the better judgment of (Democrats) congress:
C.I.A. Was Urged to Keep Interrogation Videotapes
WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 — White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda, government officials said Friday.
The chief of the agency’s clandestine service nevertheless ordered their destruction in November 2005, taking the step without notifying even the C.I.A.’s own top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, who was angry at the decision, the officials said.
And then the “money shot” piece from the NYT:
Lawmakers Back Limits on Interrogation Tactics
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 — In a sharp rebuke to White House counterterrorism policy, a Congressional conference committee has voted to outlaw the harsh interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency against suspected high-level terrorists.
The vote to require all American interrogators to abide by the Army Field Manual, which prohibits coercive methods, came during negotiations of the Senate and House intelligence committees over the annual intelligence authorization bill. It will not be the last word on the subject; the full House and Senate must still pass the bill, and it would likely face a veto by President Bush.
But passage of the interrogation restriction — by one vote in a tense, three-hour meeting on Wednesday behind closed doors — reflected Congress’s growing disenchantment with the harsh tactics authorized by the White House after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was the latest setback for the administration’s insistence that what it calls “enhanced” interrogation techniques are a critical part of gathering intelligence to thwart future terrorist attacks.
The Left jumped all over this incident as more evidence that Bush – Cheney Incorporated are lying, evil neo cons who need to be impeached. That aside, what we have here is Democrats, in a well-coordinated PR campaign (vis-a-vis the mainstream press) manipulating the political “system” in Washington.
Democrats have been attempting to shut down efforts to fight al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups as early as 2001. Their attempts have largely failed. Many have taken particular aim at America’s use of interrogation techniques. So what you have here is a perfect example of Democrats coordinating with their Allies in the media, to achieve a political goal that they otherwise could not achieve at the ballot box.
The “plot” also includes several perks: they’ll probably be able to take down one or more Bush administration officials (or appointees); and they’ll embarrass the President in the process.
Of course, bloggers left and right are offering their own spin:
Blackfive blogger, good ol’ Uncle Jimbo, sums up the C.I.A.’s justification for destroying the tapes. I agree with the point about moving public opinion toward more restrictions. Restrictions legislated by our dear stuffed-shirt liberals in Washington:
There are two good reasons to destroy the tapes. Hayden put the first one front and center, our interrogators are shown on them. Keeping their identities secret is very important, and something Valerie Plame could have paid more heed to. Once the interrogations were completed and transcribed, there is no use to them other than the ghoulish watching of human suffering.
Which brings us to reason number two. They were almost certainly horrifying and awful and their viewing by many Americans would cause a reaction. It would likely move public opinion toward more restrictions on what methods may be employed. We have already put too many and the unpleasantness of the coercive techniques would be offensive to some who would otherwise approve of using all techniques short of torture.
Larisa Alexandrovna claims to know how the C.I.A. works:
Anyone who has studied anything about the agency and its operations, even the most illegal and violent ops undertaken, knows that the agency does not take a collective piss without permission from the White House. Someone gave the order for those tapes to be destroyed and it has nothing to do with covering up the torture, because, the CIA has done plenty worse that it continued to keep on file for ages.
Emptywheel provides a mind-boggling lefty-spin—except for the last sentence of the following paragraph:
It strikes me that there aren’t that many “former intelligence officials” who would have been present for both the initial Congressional briefing and within Porter Goss’ inner circle at CIA when the tapes were destroyed. Granted, Goss brought a bunch of his loyal flunkeys with him from Congress, but these former intelligence officials are really limited to Goss’ flunkeys and Goss himself. All of which makes me wonder whether Mazzetti’s sources for the larger story aren’t Goss’ flunkeys, which would really raise questions for me about their motivation. Almost as many questions as I’ve got about how Crazy Pete and Dick Durbin ended up on the same side of an issue. It’s enough to make you really be cautious about the politics involved in this story.
Macranger points out an important FACT (emphasis added):
Let the hand-ringing continue. Again, outside of the NY Times and their “anonymous” sources NO ONE knows what the tapes contained. Whether they contained waterboarding is non-statement of fact as NO ONE has seen the tapes except those within the agency and the - this is important - the CIA’s watchdog group who determined that the techniques - whatever they were - were legal.
Chuck Adkins tries not to blow a head gasket, but does anyway:
…One thing I will say, without putting a Political spin on it. There have been some Democrats who have said that they were aware of the tapes too. So, I believe much of this hyperventilating by the left is quite silly. Honestly, If there has been withholding of evidence and lying to investigators, people should go to jail, no matter if they are Democrat or Republican. If you lied,go to jail, just that simple. Justice should not be, with the emphases on should not be, based upon one’s political party.
Ed Morrissey adds much needed clarity to the discussion:
…Rodriguez decided for himself what his legal obligations required in terms of retention. Despite the expressed will of Congress, the White House, and the CIA’s own attorneys, Rodriguez destroyed the tapes — even though his own boss had gone on record as demanding their retention. Afterwards, the agency didn’t bother to inform anyone of the destruction for almost a year, and lied about the one-time existence of the tapes to federal prosecutors working on the Moussaoui case.
This clears the White House of responsibility for the decision and the cover-up. Mark Mazzetti reports that George Bush didn’t know about the destruction until Hayden announced it publicly on Thursday. Porter Goss found out about it at the same time as John Rizzo, and vented his anger at the destruction of the tapes, as did Rizzo. In this case, the destruction appears to have been a compartmentalized operation by Rodriguez. The CIA informed the intel committee leadership in 2006 that they had defied their wishes and destroyed the tapes.
Why? In November 2005, Congress began asking questions about aggressive interrogation techniques. The CIA hid the tapes abroad instead of securing them at Langley, hoping to avoid subpoenas. When that strategy looked weak, they simply destroyed the tapes.
James Oliphant opines about the political outcome for the Bush administration:
For the administration, the revelation comes at a particularly inopportune time, as Congress is considering whether to limit the authority of the CIA to employ aggressive interrogation techniques beyond those permitted for other government agents and the U.S. military. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), among others, called upon the Senate to pass the legislation in response to the CIA’s disclosures.
Of course, Bluto of Jawa Report, states what most of us think about the worst Congress in History (so far):
Unfortunately, operational security must take a back seat to congressional witch-hunts these days. That means the motivations for destroying the tapes are muddled. Was Rodriguez practicing some CYA, or were the operational security considerations foremost in his mind?
There’s also a good round-up on MemeOrandum.
Posted on:
December 8, 2007 , by
newyank • Trackback
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