Hello mothers, hello others; welcome to The Wheel, brothers. So, we are kind of in the ether, the no mans land, the void and vacuum between the end of basketball and the start of football again.

Yeah, yeah, that little soccer interlude was somethin, there is the comforting coo of baseball (well, unless you are a Dodger fan) and the big NFL lockout surrounding the draft was spectacularific and all that jazz.

But, other than the F1 Grand Prix Circus, ain’t none of it means jack shit without the sugar plum Pro Football Fairy dancing in the graspable future. And, now, we have it.

We did a fair amount of jabbering about the initial free agent signings last weekend and, yes, somehow stodgy old Bill Belichick and the Pats seem to have scooped the tabloid news. Go figure. Well, except, of course, the Iggles. Andy Reid, apparently freed up from worrying about his errant sons, has gone all ape shit. You know they still have the juju in them to sign Favre or Terrell Owens.

I don’t have a ton to throw out, other than to open the floor up for discussion. Well, okay, maybe one thing. Friday night, I watched something on ESPN called “Year Of The Quarterback”. They had a proposed new rating system to take the place of the admittedly complex and somewhat screwbally NFL Quarterback Ratings Formula. Which always struck me as somewhat suspect when Chad Pennington could rate above Brett Favre. Of course, now that Pennington is again gone to injury, Favre may be the only hope for The Fish.

I think Miss Marcy may wander in and add some material to this post, and heck I might add some later too; but I do not have a ton else to add right now.

The music this weekend is courtesy of Miss Stevie Nicks. The first video you may think was a Fleetwood Mac song (as it was indeed one of their most famous hits). But, huh uh mofos, Rhiannon was very much a Buckingham Nicks song before both of them joined up with Fleetwood Mac. As is Cathouse Blues, the second video. Stevie was, and still very much is, from Phoenix. She went to Arcadia High School (as did wonder Woman Lynda Carter and some dude named Steven Spielberg) where my daughter is about to start her junior year. If you find fault with all this local nostalgia, blame Jason Leopold, who started it by buying up some some Japanese masters of early albums by yet another very local in proximity artist named Alice.

WhaddaYaGonnaDo?? Rip this joint, that’s what!

[Errata – As Rosalind points out, Nicks’ Arcadia may actually be Arcadia High in California, although there are people around here who have said it is the Arcadia here. Stevie was born here though and her dad lived right here in Paradis Valley until he died a few years ago. Lots of Arcadia Highs out there, maybe she went to all of them!]

Last week, when analysts were contemplating a debt downgrade, they put a price tag on it: $100 billion.

A downgrade of the United States’ AAA credit rating is a bigger risk than a default and could over time add up to 0.7 percentage point to bond yields, members of a U.S. securities industry group said on Tuesday.

“That’s on the order of $100 billion over time that we will add to our funding costs,” said Terry Belton, global head of fixed income strategy at JPMorgan Chase. He was speaking on a conference call organized by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, also known as SIFMA.

Over time, he said Treasury yields could rise 60 to 70 basis points on a credit downgrade — “a huge number because we’re talking a permanent increase in borrowing costs.”

That would make it more costly for consumers and business to borrow money and could land the economy back in recession.

That’s a big number though.

A better way of thinking of it is how much every American will have to pay. That $100 billion among 310 million Americans works out to be $322 for every man, woman, and child to pay for the TeaBagger’s little temper tantrum.

To put that in perspective, that’s more than the 2008 Bush tax rebate gave to taxpayers (rebate checks started at $300/person).

So the TeaBaggers are now taking away whatever benefit we got from Bush’s last tax cut.

Banana Republic of America

The S&P is reportedly about to downgrade America’s credit. So the wingnut hostage-taking will end up costing us about $100B. [Update: While we are so badly governed we no doubt deserve to be downgraded, it appears we’re sufficiently powerful enough to bully the S&P still. S&P is now claiming they made errors in analysis and it’s looking like the TeaParty Tax downgrade is off.] Oops, wrong again. S&P pulled the trigger.

The wingnuts who shut down MN’s government last month were responsible for laying off 23,000 people. Meanwhile, Congressman John Mica, who was responsible for laying off 74,000 FAA workers, “didn’t know it would cause this much consternation. … People don’t have to get so personal,” he said with a sigh. “A lot of people hate me now and think I’m the worst thing in the world for what I did.

Apparently, TeaParty Nation head Judson Phillips thinks government spending creates jobs, but thinks it should only be spent on war toys, not highways.

Adventures in corporatist denial: Here’s ALEC claiming recent reporting about their corporate-funded hijacking of state governments are nothing to worry about. And here’s the Center for Competitive Politics assuring us we need not worry about a corporation forming and dissolving for the sole purpose of donating $1 million to Mitt Romney’s Presidential SuperPAC. Meanwhile, two ThinkProgress journalists were violently kicked out of the NOLA Marriott where ALEC is meeting.

The Chamber of Commerce is attempting to prevent the NLRB from ruling against employers that fire employees for talking about work conditions on social media.

While George W Bush was dodging the draft in 1972, Rick Perry was getting a “C” in “Animal Breeding”–a course within his major of Animal Sciences–at Texas A&M. But don’t worry. If he becomes President, I’m sure Vice President Rick Santorum can handle that aspect of the country.

I’ve long questioned the assertions that giving 1.3 billion Chinese (or even just the 300 million Chinese considered middle class) our American lifestyle was possible. Here’s one reason why: you can never create enough parking spots to affordably match our levels of car ownership. Meanwhile, Moisés Naím has a thoughtful post seeing the source in contemporary turmoil both in the declining middle class in developed countries and increasingly demanding middle class in developing nations.

The city of Central Falls, RI, has just become the municipal equivalent of Ireland. It just declared bankruptcy, but because of a new state law, bondholders will get paid before pension holders.

Justice and Injustice

Five NOLA cops were found guilty today of trying to cover up their role in shooting people on Danzinger Bridge in the aftermath of Katrina.

More people are using smartphones to collect evidence of what assholes their bosses are being.

The FBI is finally getting around to investigating News Corp’s hacking of Floorgraphics, which Chris Christie refused to investigate.

Surveillance Nation

A security consultant hacked the cell phone of MO’s Attorney General Chris Koster–it took him less than a minute–to show how easy it is to conduct Murdoch-style scams. Meanwhile, AT&T just committed to making sure its users have passwords to protect against this kind of hacking.

Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador who (as he reminds) was fired for whistleblowing about the British policy of cooperation with torture, asks whether Sir Peter Gibson, who heads the whitewash torture investigation, ever saw the documents the Guardian posted yesterday revealing an official policy of cooperating with torture.

German cops say full body scanners don’t work.

Fareed Zakaria calls our defense establishment, “the world’s largest socialist economy.” To some degree, he’s calling on DOD to cut pensions the same way other industries have (which I’m not cazy about). But he’s also calling out DOD for being too big to fail.

DOJ has written the 9th Circuit to remind it not to tell any secrets when it hears Jewel v. National Security Agency later this month.

The first time I read Nicholas Schmidle’s breathtaking account of Osama bin Laden’s killing, I gave up when I got to this passage:

John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, told me that the President’s advisers began an “interrogation of the data, to see if, by that interrogation, you’re going to disprove the theory that bin Laden was there.” The C.I.A. intensified its intelligence-collection efforts, and, according to a recent report in the Guardian, a physician working for the agency conducted an immunization drive in Abbottabad, in the hope of acquiring DNA samples from bin Laden’s children. (No one in the compound ultimately received any immunizations.)

The article, which alternated between incredibly detailed accounts of the SEALs’ actions with more generalized depictions of Obama’s leadership, seemed designed to puff up the operation anyway. And while I’m not at all qualified to fact check the military details of it, the fact that Schmidle cited the Guardian–and not any of his own sources–for the most criticized aspect of the raid tells you a lot about the agenda of his sources. Furthermore, the fact that the Guardian provided slightly different details about the outcome of the immunization operation than Schmidle …

A nurse known as Bakhto, whose full name is Mukhtar Bibi, managed to gain entry to the Bin Laden compound to administer the vaccines. According to several sources, the doctor, who waited outside, told her to take in a handbag that was fitted with an electronic device. It is not clear what the device was, or whether she left it behind. It is also not known whether the CIA managed to obtain any Bin Laden DNA, although one source suggested the operation did not succeed.

… may indicate yet another level of manipulation on this detail of the raid.

Since that first reading, a number of people who are qualified to fact check the military details have suggested it was a nice propaganda piece. But they all remained mum about how they could tell.

Which is why I found this article, which describes Schmidle’s efforts to avoid questions about his sourcing, instructive. Among other things, it explains that Schmidle has made linguistic mistakes when covering Pakistan in the past, and suggests he might have limited linguistic understanding here, too.

He even describes how the translator Ahmed hollered in Pashto at the locals that a security operation was ongoing to allay their suspicions about the nature of the cacophony in the cantonment town. (This detail caught my eye as the majority of persons in Abbottabad, where the raid took place, speak Hindko rather than Pashto.)

While this piece doesn’t tell us what details are false, it emphasizes that Schmidle did not source the article where it appears to be sourced, to the SEALs who took part in the operation.

Now, I’m not surprised folks within the Obama Administration are leaking such heroic versions of the OBL raid. But in the context of the Administration’s war on leaks, it deserves more discussion. For example, I find it telling that a “counterterrorism official” repeatedly refutes the events presented from the perspective of the SEALs that–we know–Schmidle isn’t reporting directly.

After blasting through the gate with C-4 charges, three SEALs marched up the stairs. Midway up, they saw bin Laden’s twenty-three-year-old son, Khalid, craning his neck around the corner. He then appeared at the top of the staircase with an AK-47. Khalid, who wore a white T-shirt with an overstretched neckline and had short hair and a clipped beard, fired down at the Americans. (The counterterrorism official claims that Khalid was unarmed, though still a threat worth taking seriously. “You have an adult male, late at night, in the dark, coming down the stairs at you in an Al Qaeda house—your assumption is that you’re encountering a hostile.”)

[snip]

Three SEALs shuttled past Khalid’s body and blew open another metal cage, which obstructed the staircase leading to the third floor. Bounding up the unlit stairs, they scanned the railed landing. On the top stair, the lead SEAL swivelled right; with his night-vision goggles, he discerned that a tall, rangy man with a fist-length beard was peeking out from behind a bedroom door, ten feet away. The SEAL instantly sensed that it was Crankshaft. (The counterterrorism official asserts that the SEAL first saw bin Laden on the landing, and fired but missed.)

These are, after all, some of the details that raise legal questions about the raid (and which John Brennan botched in the days immediately following the raid). And by presenting this story falsely as if Schmidle spoke directly to the SEALs, it allows whatever Administration official who gave it to him the ability to both admit that SEALs fired at unarmed men while providing a Hollywood version that glosses over that part. From a narrative perspective, it’s worthy of a popular novelist.

Finally, though, the whole thing raises questions about who leaked this, presumably with Obama’s explicit or implicit permission.

Here’s a list of the named sources Schmidle relies on, in rough order of appearance:

Shuja Nawaz, an expert on the Pakistani Army

John Radsan, a former assistant general counsel at the C.I.A.

General James Cartwright

John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser

Ben Rhodes, a deputy national-security adviser

Cartwright

Brennan

Ben Rhodes, the deputy national-security adviser

And here’s a list of the anonymous sources:

Senior defense and Administration officials

special-operations officer who is deeply familiar with the bin Laden raid

A senior counterterrorism official

a senior Defense Department official

a Pakistani senior military official

a senior adviser to the President

the special-operations officer

the special-operations officer

the counterterrorism official

The counterterrorism official

the special-operations officer

A former helicopter pilot with extensive special-operations experience

the special-operations officer

The senior adviser to the President

the senior Defense Department official

the special-operations officer

the special-operations officer

the special-operations officer

the special-operations officer

the special-operations officer

the special-operations officer

The senior adviser to the President

In other words, this story relies almost entirely on four sources: the special-operations officer, the senior counterterrorism official, the senior Defense Department official, and the senior adviser to the President. And among the named sources in the article are Obama’s counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, General James Cartwright, and Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. (Former helicopter pilot and assistant commander of JSOC, Brigadier General Marshall Webb, figures prominently in the narrative, though is not quoted by name.)

And Brennan and Rhodes were reported by Schmidle to be present at some of the key low attendance events described here, such as the meeting at which Obama announced his decision to go with a SEALs operation, and the meeting at which the SEALs briefed Obama after the mission. Which is all the more telling, given that Schmidle attributed his story’s sourcing to the SEALs recollections.

…some of their recollections—on which this account is based—may be imprecise and, thus, subject to dispute.

In other words, it seems likely that Brennan and Rhodes serve as both anonymous and named sources for this story.

John Brennan had a direct role in Jeffrey Sterling’s battles with the CIA. Sterling is now being tried for allegedly leaking information equivalent to the information included in this story. Mind you, if Brennan leaked these details, he no doubt did so under the Insta-Declassification schtick that Scooter Libby used when he leaked Valerie Plame’s identity and the contents of the Iraq NIE. If the President okays leaks, they’re legal in this day and age; otherwise, they deserve the harshest punishment.

Still, this story is so thinly-veiled an Administration puff piece, it ought to attract as much attention for the sheer hypocrisy about secrecy it demonstrates as it will for the heroism such hypocrisy attempts to portray.

Update: Here’s the reason I focused on Webb (shown typing on his computer above) as the “special-forces official.”

Brigadier General Marshall Webb, an assistant commander of JSOC, took a seat at the end of a lacquered table in a small adjoining office and turned on his laptop. He opened multiple chat windows that kept him, and the White House, connected with the other command teams. The office where Webb sat had the only video feed in the White House showing real-time footage of the target, which was being shot by an unarmed RQ 170 drone flying more than fifteen thousand feet above Abbottabad. The JSOC planners, determined to keep the operation as secret as possible, had decided against using additional fighters or bombers. “It just wasn’t worth it,” the special-operations officer told me. The SEALs were on their own.

Obama returned to the White House at two o’clock, after playing nine holes of golf at Andrews Air Force Base. The Black Hawks departed from Jalalabad thirty minutes later. Just before four o’clock, Panetta announced to the group in the Situation Room that the helicopters were approaching Abbottabad. Obama stood up. “I need to watch this,” he said, stepping across the hall into the small office and taking a seat alongside Webb. Vice-President Joseph Biden, Secretary Gates, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed him, as did anyone else who could fit into the office. On the office’s modestly sized LCD screen, helo one—grainy and black-and-white—appeared above the compound, then promptly ran into trouble. [my emphasis]

First, this passage describes Webb alone in the office that ultimately filled up. Sure, others must have known he was there, alone in the office, but it is a detail that no other people were present for.

More tellingly, why include the detail that Obama took a seat alongside Webb? It’s a detail that Schmidle could get from the photo–so it’s not a question of how Schmidle learned the detail. Rather, it’s a question of who would care (and who would orient the President’s actions from Webb’s perspective, rather than orienting Obama’s position in the room generally). In a way, it feels like one of those renaissance paintings that includes an image of the patron in the corner of the frame, just to make sure the viewer knows who sponsored the whole thing.

There’s something that bugged me about this article (indeed, bugs me about most economic analyses of our current crash). Amidst a discussion that fairly lays out some of the problems with the global economy (all the while ignoring that one critical issue in the US is a gutting of manufacture and unions and therefore increasing inequality), it talks about how to rebalance the global economy so as to return to “sustainable growth.”

What it failed to create, however, was the kind of virtuous cycle of growing sales, growing profits and growing employment, all feeding off of one another, to keep the economy growing even as the stimulus wears off — “escape velocity,” to borrow a term from aerodynamics.

[snip]

The truth is we’re in something of a trap. Until imbalances are corrected, the U.S. and global economies are unlikely to return to robust and sustainable growth. And yet to the extent that we address these imbalances, the correction process will inevitably be a short-term drag on an already weak economy.

I mean, aside from Pearlstein’s blind reverence for the market, he’s right about the notion of balance. It is true, for example, that the newly rebalanced globe, America will play a smaller role as the consumer of last resort.

But it’d be nice if, at the same time as analysts think about rebalancing the global economy, they’d consider what their idea of “sustainable growth” meant in the past–and what it would mean in the future if it continued unchecked. After all, the sustainable-growth-that-turned-out-to-be-unsustainable of the last 60 years of a globalized economy caused climate change which will be an increasing drain on even a growing economy as disasters become worse and more frequent.

The spending on unnecessary consumer goods, the transportation miles driven, the dietary patterns, the waste. Those things caused climate change. Those are the things economists would like to return to, if slightly adjusted around the globe.

Since we’re going to be spending the next couple of years trying to find “sustainable growth,” do you think we could also keep in mind what would be truly sustainable for the globe?

As anticipated, the French have just opened an investigation into whether IMF Chief Christine Lagarde intervened in a settlement Bernard Tapie won with a state-owned bank during her tenure as Finance Minister. At the rate we’re going, the developing world might just get their demand for a President from one of their countries.

The government has joined on the side of big oil in an anti-fracking lawsuit initiated by Eric Schneiderman. Schneiderman says a project is going forward without required NEPA review; the government says the case is not yet ripe.

Salon says JSOC will be operating in 120 countries by the end of the year. That would mean the US’ transnational gang of illegal combatants would be active in 60% of the world’s countries. This is another case where we’re still insisting on our legal rights as a nation, while leading the push to undermine the nation-state with illegal transnational organizations.

A Boston tax lawyer has helped someone–no one knows whom–form and dissolve a corporation for the sole purpose of funneling $1 million into Mitt Romney’s Presidential race.

Chris Soghoian finally got DOJ to hand over numbers for how many emergency warrantless requests it submitted to ISPs in 2009. Whereas in 2008, they had asked for the information from 17 accounts, in 2009 they asked for communications content from 91 accounts.

The can, on the FAA shutdown, has been kicked. One month down the road.

SEC’s Inspector General has reported that one of the guys who missed the Madoff Ponzi scheme in 2005 and 2006 got an award in 2010. Effectively, it seems he got $1,200 extra for cleaning up the catastrophe he missed the first two times he reviewed it.

The Guardian has liberated the UK’s policy on cooperating with liaison services that torture. ((h/t Rosalind) As the Guardian explains the policy basically sets up a bureaucracy to weigh whether the value of the information outweighs the imperative not to torture.

The interrogation policy – details of which are believed to be too sensitive to be publicly released at the government inquiry into the UK’s role in torture and rendition – instructed senior intelligence officers to weigh the importance of the information being sought against the amount of pain they expected a prisoner to suffer. It was operated by the British government for almost a decade.

[snip]

One section states: “If the possibility exists that information will be or has been obtained through the mistreatment of detainees, the negative consequences may include any potential adverse effects on national security if the fact of the agency seeking or accepting information in those circumstances were to be publicly revealed.

“For instance, it is possible that in some circumstances such a revelation could result in further radicalisation, leading to an increase in the threat from terrorism.”

The policy adds that such a disclosure “could result in damage to the reputation of the agencies”, and that this could undermine their effectiveness.

It’s bad enough that the Brits have taken such a calculating approach to torture–effectively saying, well, sometimes you’ve got to let the US or Uzbekistan torture for you.

But in their discussions–in effect, the last two paragraphs of the guidelines–about whether information gathered by torture is reliable or not suggests the strong possibility that they’re better not asking if information came from torture.

The circumstances in which detainee information has been obtained will be relevant in assessing its reliability. Accordingly, the Agency should wherever possible seek as much context as possible, particularly if the intelligenece is threat-related. However, the Agencies’ ability to do this is often limited and, in any event, they may not press to be told the precise sourcing where to do so might damage co-operation and the future flow of intelligence from the liaison service in question.

It is established as a matter of law that information may be used as the basis for operational action, whatever the circumstances in which it has been obtained. However, where it is established that information has been obtained by torture, it is not possible to rely on that information in legal proceedings, for instance to justify the Agency’s operational actions or to support the taking of steps against an individual, such as deportation or exclusion. LAs are able to advise on the possible application of this evidential bar in particular cases.

Much of this policy appears to designed to allow for the use of torture, while pretending that doing so doesn’t implicate Britain in the torture.

But because of this insulating effort, the Brits seem likely to avoid asking about the conditions under which information was collected.

And yet they would treat it as potentially reliable intelligence, precisely when knowing torture elicited it might cause the government to reassess its accuracy.

It all seems designed to set up a industry of torture, in which abusive allies confirm their value in the war on terror by using torture to produce “leads,” which the Brits will then treat as accurate in an effort to pretend that torture doesn’t lie at the heart of this industry.

Charlie Savage tells the headline story from Leonie Brinkema’s opinion on whether or not James Risen must testify in Jeffrey Sterling’s leak trial.

“A criminal trial subpoena is not a free pass for the government to rifle through a reporter’s notebook,” wrote the judge, Leonie Brinkema of the United State District Court in Alexandria, Va.

But I’m just as interested in a few other things she says. First there’s the way she dismisses the government’s claim that two of the people who testified to the Grand Jury–Jeffrey Sterling’s ex-girlfriend and a former CIA officer with knowledge of the MERLYN operation–would be unable to testify at he trial.

The government had argued that the girlfriend was protected by spousal privilege and that the former CIA officer would be hearsay.

Separate and apart from Risen’s concession regarding the admissibility of his grand jury affidavit at trial, see Mot. p. 45, other evidence relied upon by the Court in its Memorandum Opinion similarly would be inadmissible at trial. For example, the grand jury testimony of the witness cited by the Court at page 7 of its Memorandum Opinion would be inadmissible under Rules 801(c), 802 and 803 of the Federal Rules of Evidence and United States v. Acker, 52 F.3d 509, 514-515 (4th Cir. 1995)(availability of spousal privileges to testifying and non-testifying spouses). The grand jury testimony of the witness cited by the Court at pages 7, 9, 10, 20, and 34 of its Memorandum Opinion – testimony that this Court deemed one of the key facts in its conclusion – is inadmissible hearsay on its face absent some exception; yet Risen treats the admissibility of the testimony of both witnesses as a foregone conclusion.

But as Risen’s lawyer Joel Kurtzberg pointed out during the hearing on Risen’s subpoena, she’s not his wife!

They actually cite in their papers as to the testimony of Mr. Sterling’s ex-girlfriend, suggest that it wouldn’t be admissible because they cite to a Fourth Circuit case about the marital privilege.

And in fact, if you look at the case they cite, the case holds the exact opposite. It holds that if you are not married, even if you have been living together I believe for 26 years in that case, the marital privilege doesn’t apply.

Here’s how Brinkema dismisses this William Welch gimmick.

Although the government argues that the spousal privilege would prevent this witness from testifying, nothing in the record indicates thta Sterling and the witness are married now or were married during the time of Sterling’s alleged statements.

More interesting still is the way Brinkema dismisses the government’s claim that the CIA officer’s testimony would be inadmissible hearsay.

Brinkema starts by citing Federal Rules of Evidence describing the exception for a statement against interest.

A statement is admissible under this exception if: (1) the speaker is unavailable; (2) the statement is actually adverse to the speaker’s penal interest; and (3) corroborating circumstances clearly indicate the trustworthiness of the statement.

After noting that Risen’s testimony would be unavailable if she found that reporter’s privilege prevented his testimony or if he refused to testify, she then invokes the Espionage Act.

Risen’s statements are adverse to his penal interest because receiving classified information without proper authorization is a federal felony under 18 U.S.C. 793(e); see U.S. Sentencing Guidelines Manual 2M3.3 (providing a base offense level 29 for convictions for the “Unauthorized Receipt of Classified Information.”). 6

6 The government clearly recognizes Risen’s potential exposure to criminal liability and has offered to obtain an order of immunity for him.

Brinkema uses the overzealous interpretation of the Espionage Act the government itself has been floating lately as a way to force the government to have the former CIA officer testify, which I suspect they’d much rather not do.

And note that footnote about immunity. I’m not sure whether we knew the government had discussed offering Risen immunity or not, but particularly given claims they’re pursuing his testimony so aggressively as a way to jail him for protecting his sources, it is an interesting revelation.

Finally, there’s one more passage I find telling. In the middle of a passage discussing whether the government has access to the information Risen would testify to via other means, she notes,

The government has not stated whether it has nontestimonial direct evidence, such as email messages or recordings of telephone calls in which Sterling discloses classified information to Risen; nor has it proffered in this proceeding the circumstantial evidence it has developed.

In a case in which the government has pointed to records of emails and calls, Brinkema notes, the government has never said whether or not it has the content of those emails and calls. Given that this statement is a non sequitur (it appears amid a discussion of circumstantial evidence), and given that Brinkema knows the government may have improperly accessed Risen’s phone records in the warrantless wiretap case, I find her comment mighty suggestive.

Susie linked to this clip.

And while she’s right to point to all the evidence that L’il Luke Russert is an ignorant toad about how many jobs Obama’s trade deals will send overseas, I’m more amazed by his arrogant response to being asked about slave and dead labor.

Here’s my take on the exchange, starting from where Dylan Ratigan first interrupts L’il Luke to call him on the claim trade deals will create jobs.

L’il Luke [reciting a script]: A few things where they could find common ground are free trade agreements that are pending with South Korea and Colombia and Panama. It’s unclear whether or not [overtalk]

Ratigan: Hold on, hold on.

[Luke adopts self-satisfied smile]

Ratigan: Are you referencing those free trade deals?

L’il Luke: I am referencing the free trade deals.

Ratigan: I mean, come on now Luke, let’s talk about that for a second.

[Luke bites his lips]

That Panama deal’s nothing but a bank secrecy haven–

[Luke bursts out laughing]

That’s basically what that Panama deal is.

[Luke finally manages to look serious]

The South Korean deal is a way to hire North Korean slaves to make South Korean products so that we can refund the North Korean government–

[Luke has lost it again, openly laughing]

–After giving them sanctions, I call that the “let’s give them a nuke anyway plan,”

[Luke looking down, trying to compose himself, looks up again, biting his lips]

You know, what are we talking about? [Relents]

I’m giving you a hard time.

L’il Luke: No, I know you are. [Laughs] You threw me off my game there a little bit.

Ratigan: Tell me the truth, Luke.

L’il Luke: Aw look, —

Ratigan: When they discuss the South Korean trade agreement around Congress, do they refer to it as “hey let’s give North Korea a nucl- anyway plan?”

L’il Luke [finally adopting his serious pundit face]: No they do not.

Ratigan: They don’t?

L’il Luke: They say it’s a job creator.

Ratigan: For who? For North Korean slaves?

L’il Luke: For the United States, no, they say for the United States. They say it’s a job creator, can immediately [create] thousands and thousands of jobs.

[finally finding comfort in the Village script again, but trying to move on]

You also heard today from President Obama–

Ratigan: How?

L’il Luke [completely sheepish look]: The [??] of free trade, you take the tariffs away, people, you know, build things here,

Ratigan: No, no no. But the tariffs are away, and if I’m exploiting the ability to access a rigged Chinese currency system and North Korean slave labor,

[L’il Luke furrows his brow slightly, affects to look concerned, bites his lips again, shifts his head]

Seems interesting.

L’il Luke: It does.

Ratigan: My Colombian, the Colombian deal’s my favorite. That’s a big job creator.

[L’il Luke looks worried. He hasn’t studied for this test.]

Whaddya say we do a deal with the only country in the world that openly murders all labor organizers–

[L’il Luke has just decided he’s not having fun anymore; juts out chin, peeved now that Dylan is making him play this game]

–to ensure that they will never ask for a raise ever.

L’il Luke [apparently grasping on something he read in college or heard at a cocktail wienie fest]: Well, Colombia, though, in all fairness, Colombia has had massive strides in improvement in terms of their security. I mean, you’re bringing up something that George Miller–

Ratigan: But I’m saying the murder rate of union organizers on a per capita–

[Juts out chin, affects his serious look]

L’il Luke: Well, that’s why there’s Democratic opposition in the House for it right now and they have to figure out that, you know, technicality there.

“That, you know, technicality.” That Democrats think maybe it’s a bad idea to open into unfettered competition with a country that kills labor organizers. But that slave labor in Korea, that cheap labor in China? That–that sounds interesting.

L’il Luke is only where he is because Daddy combined his down to earth Buffalo roots with actual knowledge and–in the years before his death–access, access, access.

But it’s L’il Luke’s smugness that makes me want to vomit. Ratigan is trying to talk about how working people die over this shit. And Luke, shaken for the moment off his tight Village script, not only doesn’t have the knowledge to engage with Ratigan, but doesn’t even have the respect for the subject to avoid laughing openly.

What do you think of your kid, now, Timmeh Russert? Laughing at the idea of slaves and dead workers?

Our Dying Economy

The National Employment Law Project has a report showing how this Depression is hollowing out middle class jobs, with 8.4% of all middle wage jobs gone (and that’s on top of a process that had already started before the Depression). One profession that has shown growth among middle wage jobs, though, is “bailiffs, correctional officers, and jailers”–they make up over 81,000 of the news jobs. Sarah Jaffe has more. Meanwhile, ALEC is pushing policies that allow private prisons to employ inmates at less than prevailing wages, effectively undercutting real businesses.

The DC Circuit has shot down an SEC rule that would make it easier to get dissident Directors in corporate board elections. To back it’s decision, the panel seems to have badly cherry-picked studies to claim that giving stockholders greater say in corporate governance is a bad thing.

Obama missed an opportunity to blame Republicans for letting Delta’s union-busting get in the way of FAA reauthorization–and instead losing billions in the process. Instead, he blamed Congress generally.

Reuters reports on reverse mergers, in which companies use dormant shell companies to get listed on US exchanges, while avoiding the scrutiny an IPO would require. Of 122 Chinese companies that used reverse mergers to list on US exchanges, they have lost $18 billion in market capitalization.

Our Dying Empire

David Axe reports that the arms we’re giving to African troops to fight al-Shabaab in Somalia ending up in al-Shabaab’s hands; the troops are selling the weapons because their paychecks are withheld from them.

Joshua Foust looks at how a shift of aid–things like USAID–to the Defense budget just as we start talking about cutting big money from national security puts such aid at risk. Meanwhile, Nancy Youssef catches the Republicans doling out an extra $50 billion to DOD.

In 2009, USA Today reported that retired officers were getting up to $330/hour to consult with DOD on things like weapon systems as part of a mentor system. So DOD passed rules that required those retirees to reveal their ties to defense contractors. The result? Most of the participants–all but 20 of the 158 mentors in the program when they first identified this gravy train in 2009–have left the program. (h/t POGO) No wonder Republicans are working so hard to prevent Obama from passing an Executive Order requiring transparency on other contracting–because transparency actually works.

Justice and Injustice

Radley Balko writes about Corey Maye’s return home after being released from death row.

Rummy’s effort to claim qualified immunity in a suit a US citizen filed for the abuse he was subjected to at Camp Cropper has failed. Here’s the opinion.

Ron Wyden says he will block the Intelligence Authorizaiton bill over FISA changes and transparency. I hope he keeps his word.