President Obama and Torture

Dear Readers,

I was saddened and disappointed to learn today that not only will President Obama not permit the United States to honor its treaty obligations and its own laws and investigate and prosecute Bush Administration officials for torture and other war crimes, President Obama put inappropriate pressure on the independent judiciary of Spain to stop Spain from following its laws and doing what President Obama should be doing here.

Before getting to the inappropriate pressure on Spain's independent judiciary.  I want to remind you of several facts.

• Throughout American history waterboarding by other countries of our soldiers has been prosecuted by us as torture, and waterboarding is by all normal standards considered torture.
• Torture is a war crime under all definitions of that term.
• Any treaty that the United States signs essentially becomes United States law.
• The United States has signed treaties that obligate it to prosecute war crimes and has separate laws that make torture a criminal act.
• Both former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney have publicly stated that they authorized and approved the use of waterboarding.
• So it is clear that former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney have admitted to committing war crimes and violating American anti-torture laws, and there is clear documentation that other members of the Bush Administration were involved in the planning and execution of war crimes and the violation of anti-torture laws.
• President Obama has failed to investigate these crimes and now it is clear has been involved in preventing others from investigating them as well.

What kind of a leader is that?

But back to the recent revelations.  The information of President Obama's inappropriate interference with Spain's independent judiciary became known as a result of the cables released by WikiLeaks and the reporting of David Corn at MotherJones.  The complete story is here. 

A Spanish civil rights group asked Spain's independent judiciary to

indict six former Bush officials for, as the cable describes it, "creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture." The six were former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; William Haynes, the Pentagon's former general counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and John Yoo, a former official in the Office of Legal Counsel.

The Obama Administration as well as Senator Judd Greg (R-N.H.) and Senator Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) put pressure on the Spanish government to interfere with the investigation and potential prosecution in order to preserve good relations with the United States. David Corn's article continues

The Americans, according to this cable, "underscored that the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the US and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship" between Spain and the United States. Here was a former head of the GOP and a representative of a new Democratic administration (headed by a president who had decried the Bush-Cheney administration's use of torture) jointly applying pressure on Spain to kill the investigation of the former Bush officials. Lossada replied that the independence of the Spanish judiciary had to be respected, but he added that the government would send a message to the attorney general that it did not favor prosecuting this case.

Unfortunately for justice, it appears that President Obama was successful at stopping an investigation and potential prosecution.  I believe this is the only known case of true bipartisanship that President Obama can take credit for.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Bush Tax Cuts and Leadership

Dear Friends,

The following is an email that I just sent to President Obama.

I was a big supporter of yours and gave you more money than I have ever given any candidate.  I also make over $250,000.
You have failed to keep your campaign promises and you have failed to fight for what you told me you believed in. There is still time for you to redeem yourself but you must begin to be a leader, you must take a stand and you must fight for what you believe in even if you make some people angry and even if you lose some times.
The House passed the bill that you said you supported for extending the Bush tax cuts for incomes up to $250,000.  Now you need to go public and throw your full support behind that bill.  You need to push the Senate to call the Republicans' bluff.  Make them vote against a tax cut for income up to $250,000 or else actually filibuster on the floor of the Senate. You also need to campaign before the American people so that they understand that it is the Republicans that voted against a tax cut on income under $250,000 because they wanted to give the really rich a bonus tax cut that will cost us $700 billion.  You need to take a stand here.  Your lack of leadership is hurting America.

I also just sent emails to my two Senators, urging them to call the Republicans' bluff. The Senate Democrats are meeting tonight apparently to decide on a strategy and some test votes.  We all need to put pressure on our Senators to fight for what is right. 

Please write President Obama (here), and please write to your Senators.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Unemployment Benefits

Dear Friends,

If you have not done so, please read The New York Times lead editorial today (here) entitled "The Unemployed Held Hostage".  As the editorial points out the extension of the Bush tax cuts for incomes over $250,000 would cost $700 billion over 10 years or an average of $70 billion a year, and the cost of a yearlong extension of unemployment benefits would cost $60 billion.  There is no reason to link these two issues although politicians are doing so.  That being said why is that according to the Republicans and conservative Democrats we cannot afford the extension of unemployment benefits but we can afford to give even more money to the top 2% of earners?  Here is how the editorial ends:

President Obama should pound the table for a clean, yearlong extension of unemployment benefits, and should excoriate phony deficit hawks — in both parties — who say that jobless benefits are too costly, even as they pass vastly more expensive tax cuts for the rich.

I agree completely and could not have said it better.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Immoral Tax Breaks

 Dear Friends,

If you have not yet read Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Paul Pierson and Jacob S. Hacker, you need to do so.  It is impossible to summarize this book, and it would be inappropriate to reprint the entire book in this blog, so please read the book and then act accordingly.

Early in the book, the authors dispel the theory that the average person and our political system will take action to keep "runaway inequality" in check.  The authors summarize what has happened as follows:

Inequality in what people earn has skyrocketed.  But instead of offsetting this rise, government taxes and benefits have actually exacerbated it, an outcome witnessed in virtually no other nation.  And when we look beyond the highly visible redistribution that occurs through government taxes and benefits, the picture grows even starker.  In a range of areas, from labor law to financial market regulation, public policy has reshaped the economy to favor those at the top.  Far from"soaking the rich," elected political leaders have treated the rich more solicitously than ever, even as the rich have grown massively richer at the expense of the majority.

Here are a few statistics that the authors cite:

• In 2009 (while the rest of the economy was really hurting) Goldman Sachs paid its employees an average of nearly $600,000.
• In 2009 the top 25 hedge fund managers earned an average of $892 million each.
• From 1979 to the eve of the recent Great Recession, the top one percent received 36% of all gains in household income.
• Between 2001 and 2006, the top one percent received over 53% of all gains in household income.
• Between 1979 and 2005, the top 0.1 percent of households (roughly 300,000 people) received over 20% of all after-tax income gains while the bottom 60% (roughly 180 million people) received 13.5% of all after-tax income gains.

The United States has the greatest disparity in both income and wealth of any nation on earth.  Earlier in my lifetime, I was proud to say that the United States had a progressive tax policy.  That is certainly not the case today.  While the income tax has progressive rates, they are much less progressive than they use to be.  In addition, the rich are able to avoid the impact of these progressive rates through a plethora of deductions, credits, and special rates on capital gains and dividends to say nothing of elaborate tax shelters. 

The other taxes that we have are all very regressive.  The payroll taxes are the same percentage for all regardless of income and are even capped so that most of the income of the rich avoids payroll taxes.  In addition, since the employer has to match payroll taxes, they are a direct cost to hiring people.  Sales taxes are also very regressive.  They apply the same rate regardless of the purchasers' income of wealth, and the rich spend a much smaller percentage of their income and wealth than the rest of the people. 

As a consequence, the rich pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than the poor and middle class.  That is wrong.  It is not just unfair to the non-rich.  It is not good for the country.

With all of this as background, how is that that there can be any debate about the extension of the Bush tax cuts for incomes over $250,000 a year?  It seems that everybody agrees the Bush tax cuts should be extended with respect to income up to $250,000.  The Republicans and the conservative Democrats contend that we must extend the Bush tax cuts for all income because a failure to do that would limit job growth.  There is no evidence to support that claim.  In fact, giving a tax break to the top 2% of earners will do nothing to help job growth.  I should note that it is these same Republicans and conservative Democrats that are insistent on reducing the deficit.  The blatant hypocrisy of fighting for tax breaks for the very wealthy that will increase the deficit by $700 billion over 10 years while also calling for reduction in benefits to the poor and middle class to reduce the deficit should be shouted out loud constantly by President Obama and leaders of the Democrats. 

Tax cuts for the poor and middle class are very stimulative to the economy and will create jobs because the money will be spent.  Tax cuts for the rich will not stimulate job growth because the money will be saved and not spent.  They will just increase the wealth disparity in this country which is already obscene.

President Obama and the Democrats are already talking about compromising on this issue.  They must not compromise.  We must not let them compromise.  Please write President Obama (here) and contact your Representative and Senators.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal