Why I left the Foreign Service III

Rome: Tethered Satellite. Firing of space agency chief.

One of the best parts of my job as Science Officer in various embassies was that I was the representative of NASA, and everyone loved NASA.  In addition to being glamorous, NASA had stuff to give away, like observation time on the space telescope, rides on the Shuttle, etc.  The local space agency always wanted to stay on my good side.  When I came to Rome, I inherited an agreement under which the Shuttle would carry a tethered satellite for the Italian Space Agency.  This satellite would be reusable.  It would ride in the Shuttle cargo bay, and when the Shuttle was in orbit, it would be released on a long tether to collect data away from the pollution of the Shuttle. Then, when the Shuttle was getting ready to return to earth, the satellite would be reeled in, much like a fishing line would be reeled in.  The satellite would be stored in the cargo bay and returned to earth until it was flown on another mission.  It promised huge savings because satellites are so expensive to build, impossible to repair in space, etc. 

On its first flight, however, the reel jammed, the tether broke, and the expensive satellite drifted off into space beyond the reach of the Shuttle.  For a change, being the NASA representative was not so great.  The crew of that Shuttle visited Rome, and while it was not billed as an apology tour for losing the satellite, that's basically what it was.  Meanwhile, the head of the Italian Space Agency was in political trouble.  While his problems were not directly linked to the failed satellite, losing the satellite did not help his position.  I was unhappy, because I was feeling snake bit.  I had had little to do with the mission, which had been planned long before I arrived in Rome, but I was there when it happened.  It turned out that because I was retiring, the head of the Italian Space Agency and I left Rome about the same time.  He was going to take some time off before moving on to his next venture.  While my only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it added to the dissatisfaction I was feeling about the job.  If the best part of my job, working with NASA, turned sour, there was not much left. 

Why I Left the Foreign Service II

Rome: Fisheries.  Constitutional responsibilities and Ambassador's letter. 

When I arrived in Rome, the State Department was in the process of being sued by four environmental organizations because the State Department, and the Embassy Rome Science Office in particular, had failed to enforce the driftnet fishing regulations of the United Nations.  My assistant was deeply involved in this issue and got daily updates from the trial in New York.  As usual for the government, the State Department lawyers could not try the case in court; Justice Department lawyers represented the US in court supported by State Department lawyers.  The reports always were that the US was winning, but when the verdict came in, the US lost.  The US was ordered to make the Italians enforce the UN regulations with regard to driftnets, and the Federal District Judge in New York would ensure that it did.  This meant that my office's dealings with the Italians on fisheries issues were all subject to review by the judge.  The main thrust of the regulations was to limit the length of the driftnets used by Italian fishermen who were fishing for swordfish.  They said Italians used driftnets that were too long and therefore caught too many swordfish, thus depleting the swordfish population.  

I thought first of all that this decision was an infringement on the executive branch's authority to conduct foreign relations, although I guess it is arguable that the UN resolution was a treaty, over which the courts have authority like domestic laws.  But this meant that my office's actions on fishery matters in Rome were under the constant review of a court in New York.  Anyway we had a big meeting, with a huge delegation from Washington meeting with an even larger Italian delegation, which agreed on guidelines drawn up in large part by my assistant and her counterpart, who was a young staffer for the head of the Italian Agriculture Ministry division of fisheries.  The linchpin of this arrangement turned out to be an Italian Greenpeace member who focused on the swordfish issue.  Whenever there was an issue, it would go to the Federal Court, the court would refer it to the environmental organizations that had won the case; they in turn would ask the opinion of the Greenpeace representative in Italy.  If he approved, the environmental groups would approve, and the court would approve.  

Just a day or two before I was scheduled to leave Rome for retirement, the Agriculture Minister summoned the Ambassador to discuss the swordfish issue.  I went along with the Ambassador because my assistant who was the expert and had negotiated the agreement was sick.  The Minister said that the agreement negotiated by the delegations was not workable because it was too tough on Italian fishery enforcement personnel.  It required them to do frequent, thorough inspections of driftnets, catches, etc.  The majority of swordfish fishermen were based in Sicily, and they were upset at the inspections.  Thus, they turned to the Mafia to get the inspectors off their backs, and the government inspectors found themselves under constant death threats from the Mafia.  The Minister said it was too much to put his men in such danger; we needed to give them more leeway.  He wanted to ease the terms in the agreement regarding inspections somewhat.  The changes were fairly minor and the Ambassador was willing go along, but I reminded him that he didn't have authority to agree on the spot with the Minister, because any change had to be approved by the District Court, which essentially meant getting the approval of Greenpeace.  The Ambassador was not happy to find his authority limited, which I must admit I stressed, because I didn't like it either.  I thought the State Department (and the Ambassador) had been unfairly, perhaps unconstitutionally, placed under the authority of the judge.  We got the changes approved on my last day in Rome, but the Ambassador and I parted on unfriendly terms.  On my last day of active duty in the Foreign Service, he sent me a short, bitter letter criticizing my work on the driftnet matter, the only such letter I received during my career.  Since I was retiring, it didn't matter to me.  But to me the whole mess was another example of the fact that the government did not work correctly.  I found it entirely inappropriate that Greenpeace Italy should control the American government's policy on fisheries issues, rather than my office, the Ambassador, and the fisheries officials in the State Department.  In Italy, Greenpeace could not get the Italian Government to do what it wanted; so, through its American branch it sued and got US courts to order the State Department to order the Italian Government to do what Greenpeace thought it should do.  I guess Greenpeace gets kudos for originality and persistence, but I don't think it says much good about the way our government works.  This was an issue that Greenpeace should have worked out within the Italian Government, or between the Italian Government and the UN, without US intervention. 

Rome: Tethered Satellite.  Firing of space agency chief. 

Rome: Help on North Korean Nuclear Proliferation. 

Rome: Denial of Visas to Children.  Helms-Burton and "Winds of War." 

MTCR and Skawina in Poland

Before I move on to Rome, there were some other disappointing events in Poland.

MTCR.  Before the fall of Communism, there had been some security failure at the embassy in Poland, so that even after the fall, there was a lot of concern about security of classified material.  As a result, there were a limited number of paper copies of classified cables, with few distributed to anybody except the office that had "action," i.e., that had to act on or respond to the cable from the Department of State.  In other embassies, more people might have gotten "info" copies, so that they would know more of what was going on in the embassy.

Besides overseeing the science cooperation, which was cancelled, I also had responsibility for environmental issues and some nuclear related matters, one of which was export control  matters such as the Zangger List, which controlled exports of items which might be used for nuclear proliferation.  In that capacity, I often dealt with a Polish diplomat at the Foreign Ministry,. Ambassador Strulak, who worked on a variety of proliferation issues.  One day while I was talking to him, he asked me if I could find out why the US had blackballed Poland's membership in the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).  This came as a shock to me, because I had worked on MTCR issues for years in the Department of State, and I had seen nothing about the MTCR in the embassy cable traffic.  It turned out that the "action" on MTCR cables went to the political section, and I did not get a copy in the science section, although after years of working on the issue, I had to be one of the experts on the MTCR.  In fact that is why Amb. Strulak had asked me about it.  On one of his visits to Washington, he was asking around in the State Department about why Poland had been blackballed, and someone had told him to ask me in Warsaw, because I was an expert.  Until then Amb. Strulak never knew that I had worked on missile proliferation as well as nuclear proliferation.

By then, however, I had been out of the loop for several years, working on other issues.  However, I called back to my old office and talked to the man then running it, Vann Van Diepen.  I had known Vann since he was in intern and I was an analyst in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research.  However, Vann told me there was nothing I could do, because President Clinton had personally decided to blackball Poland.  It's not unusual for an issue that can't be agreed between agencies to go to the White House for decision.  I also knew what the problem was: The MTCR was unwieldy because it basically operated on consensus.  The US wanted to get a more controllable management structure before it got too big, and adding Poland would have made it bigger.  On the other hand, the Poles wanted to cooperate so badly that they would not have been a problem in reaching consensus.

Anyway, I was disappointed that no one thought it worthwhile to consult me or even to inform me that this matter was on-going, when I had been the main working level person handling this issue a few years earlier in Washington.  It was as if they didn't think the science office could handle a policy issue.

Skawina.  Although they didn't think I should be involved in political matters, it was pretty much accepted that I handled environmental issues.  This main mainly meant working with the Polish environment ministry, and supporting an organization called the Ekofundusz (or Eco-fund).  The Ekofundusz was a non-governmental group funded by forgiven US debt.  Instead of being repaid, the US authorized the Ekofundusz to finance environmental projects in Poland that it found worthwhile.  I don't remember its budget, but most of the projects were relatively small, maybe in the tens of thousands of dollars.

For me one of the best things about the Ekofundusz was that it provided a refuge for liberal environmentalists who had supported the overthrow of Communism.  In the mid-1990s when I was there, the old former Commies were back in power in many places, including the environment ministry.  The Ekofundusz was like a Brookings Institution or Heritage Foundation, it gave the anti-communist environmentalists an office and a little salary until they had a chance to get back into government.  This is the same kind of thing that the Maria Skladowska Curie Fund could have done for anti-Communist scientists and engineers, but by cutting off the funding, the Republicans cut them off at the knees.  Fortunately, because of the vagaries of the law, the environmentalists' funds were not cut off.

In addition, USAID had a much larger environmental program as part of its agenda.  One of its projects was to build a scrubber for an old electric power plant near Krakow, called Skawina.  I frankly didn't pay much attention to it, although AID was better than the political section about keeping me informed.  So, I knew we were building this scrubber, and we turned it over to the Poles.  After a while, I began to hear from my Polish contacts that the scrubber didn't work.  Basically, it blew exhaust from the power plant through a process in which lime stone was supposed to remove most of the sulfur from the gas.  When I began to look into it, it turned out that it didn't work.  The chemical properties of Polish limestone were not suitable for the process.  It was somewhat galling, because the main Poles complaining were old Communist apparatchiks who were happy to see the US fail, but they were right that the system did not work.  One took me to a much bigger power plant with working scrubbers; they were built by the Dutch, but were based on General Electric designs.  I think that when I left Warsaw for Rome, Skiwina was still not working.

Why I Left the Foreign Service I

As I complain about how things are going in the US, I think that I could have stayed in the State Department Foreign Service, but instead I retired almost 15 years ago.  Could I have made a positive difference if I had stayed in?  Or would I have continually been implementing policies that I disagreed with?  I came down on the latter side.  I thought I would write down why I did so, and consider whether, about 15 years later, it was the right or wrong thing. 

Brazil Space Program.  One of the first serious things that went wrong was years before I retired, while I was serving as the science officer in Brasilia in the 1980s.  NASA was a great asset for the US in relations with other courntries.  Because I was the embassy's representative for NASA, I had good relations with the Brazilian space agency, INPE.  INPE wanted to build some satellites and ground stations to monitor them with, to survey the Amazon.  The US bidder on the ground stations, Scientific Atlanta, for some reason failed to get its bid in on time and lost to a Japanese company.  I persuaded INPE to reopen the bidding, and as a result, Scientific Atlanta won.  Then the Defense Department, I think the office of Steve Hadley (who went on to be NSC chief), denied the export license for the ground stations.  My friends at INPE were livid and my good relationship ended.  I think Hadley was a Richard Perle acolyte in the Pentagon, and Perle hated Brazil. 

Polish Science Fund.  In the 1990s I went to Poland as embassy Science Counselor, where my main job was to oversee science cooperation beteen the US and Poland under a joint fund called the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund which was to continue for five years.  After about two years, the Republicans under Newt Gingrich were elected, and cut off funding for the cooperation under a clause in the agreement allowing either side not to fund it if funding was impossible.  This was clearly inserted into the agreement for Poland, which faced many financial challenges as it emerged from Communism, but the US used the clause instead.  For the rest of my tour, I was periodically called into the Polish Foreign Minsitry by a senior official and berated for the US not fulfilling its commitment.  Meanwhile, Polish scientsts who had lost most of the government funding also lost what would have been an American lifeline, a sort of anti-Marshall Plan.  As an added insult, the Ambassador eliminated my science office in the embassy, because there was no more joint program to oversee. 

Government Shutdown.  Meanwhile, the State Department asked me if I would like to go to Rome, because the Science Counselor there had been fired for some other budgetary reason. I agreed, but on the day I was leaving Warsaw with the car packed, Embassy Rome called and said don't leave because the government shutdown meant there was no money for travel.  However, my wife and I then had no place to live.  The house the embassy had rented for us was empty and was being returned to the owner.  The idea that the US government would put us out on the streets of Warsaw was so abhorrent to me that it was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back, as far as continuing to work for the US.  I was usually the good soldier, doing as I was ordered, but this time I was so mad that I called Rome to see if I could get their order reversed.  I did, and we started driving to Rome, but for me the damage was done.  The US government had said, "Hey, you're expendible.  You and your wife can die freezing on the streets of Warsaw.  We don't care." 

Vietnam War.  It reminded me of the day I arrived in Vietnam, and the Army assigned me to Dong Ha on the DMZ, so close to North Vietnam that the dot on the map for Dong Ha projected into North Vietnam.  I went where the Army told me to go, but for the State Department to do that to me and my wife was, I thought, beyond the pale.  There have been a lot of Foreign Service officers assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan (without spouses), but hopefully, the State Department didn't drop them off in some God forsaken village and say, "Hey, we can't afford to come back for you.  You will have to walk back.  Try to avoid the Taliban."  When I was at an artillery firebase near the Laotian border, Firebase Barbara, we had no American infantry support because we were turning over the war to the Vietnamese.  We had two American "dusters" assigned to protect us, old anti-aircraft guns that fired 40 mm rounds with every round a tracer, firepower that tended to inspire some awe in the North Vietnamese.  One night when there was a alert that we might be attacked because of activity spotted by an intelligence fly-over, our battalion headquarters said, "Don't give any gasoline to the dusters.  Their supply people are lazy and incompetent.  We don't want to help them out."  Of course the alternative was to have the dusters not shoot to protect us.  We gave the dusters the gas they needed.  They blew away several square kilometers at the base of the mountain, and we were not attacked.  Did the penny pinchers in Washington really want us to die?  Probably not, but did they really care?  Probably not.  Did they really care about us in Warsaw?  Probably not. 

When we got to Rome, things did not get any better for me from a policy perspective.  More on this later,  Some topics: 

Rome: Fisheries.  Constitutional responsibilities and Ambassador's letter. 

Rome: Tethered Satellite.  Firing of space agency chief. 

Rome: Help on North Korean Nuclear Proliferation. 

Rome: Denial of Visas to Children.  Helms-Burton and "Winds of War." 

Republicans want America to fail

Today on CNBC in an interview with Maria Bartaromo, Nuriel Roubini said that it made no difference what economic proposals Obama made because the Republicans would oppose anything. He said they want the economy to be as bad as possible because that helps their election chances next year. So Roubini thinks the Republicans want America to fail. How terrible!

It is not unlike what Paul Krugman says in his NYT column. He said Bernanke is less likely to move aggressively to support the US economy if Rick Perry is going to call him a traitor for doing so.

The upshot is that the Republicans are willing to propose actions to push the US into a depression, or block Democratic actions to avert a depression, just so they can defeat Obama in the 2012 election. How disloyal to this country can you get! And how insensitive to the suffering of their jobless fellow citizens!

How We Got into Libya.

The Europeans wanted to get into Libya. To a certain extent, it's their backyard. I thought the Israelis too wanted us in, but now I'm not so sure. The impetus for Bernard-Henri Levy's Libya visit may have been more French than Jewish. Clinton and Rice wanted us in because of Rwanda. But the deciding factor may have been the unexpected votes by the AU and the UN. They called our bluff and said go ahead and support the rebels.

Debt and Global Waming

Republicans want to cut debt so that their children will not be burdened. But then they are against doing anything to counter global warming, which means that their great-grandchildren probably won't survive anyway, at least not in a lifestyle that looks anything like ours today.

Thoughts on Reading "Obama's Wars"

People talk about how Afghanistan invaded the US, because bin Laden trained there. But that's like saying some empty building is responsible for a drug killing because the drug gang met there. The gang is the problem, not the building. 9/11 was really a criminal matter, not a military one. But Bush and Cheney were probably right that the American people wanted a big military response, especially since all the hijackers died,and there was no one to hold legally responsible except bin Laden.

Woodward's book emphasizes the importance the whole Obama administration placed on naming McChrystal as Afghanistan commander. When he had to be removed it must have been devastating.

Bush, after invading Afghanistan with a few special forces troops, sent in a few regular troops, and then basically abandoned the war to start a new one in Iraq. The one thing he needed to do in Afghanistan was find bin Laden, but he failed to do it. He left a rump American force there with insufficient guidance and resources. This was terrible for the military, essentially assigning them to a waste of.lives and money, with no possible desirable outcome. Obama gave the military the chance to make something out of Afghanistan, but it's questionable whether that is possible. In any case, so far the military has failed to make progress, even with more resources.

When Obama began to focus on Afghanistan, he and his advisers began to give Pakistan a higher priority as a threat to US interests. Thus, the strategy for Afghanistan was controlled by what effect it would have on Pakistan. Seen this way, US policy for the war was backhanded, sort of like pushing on a string. And Afghanistan once again was second fiddle to another country, this time Pakistan instead of Iraq.

Underlying the debate is the military's need for a war to justify it's existence. The military gets a lot more money, power and attention in wartime than peacetime. So, it's not surprising that it would encourage any war for any reason.

Letter to Veterans Committee

Is Veterans' Committee Chairman Miller a military veteran?

As a Vietnam veteran I ask, because press reports, including a recent email from the American Legion, indicate that this Congress wants to drastically cut veterans benefits.

It sounds like Chairman Miller is from the Pensacola area. When I was growing up, the Pensacola Naval Air Station was one of the most important things around Pensacola, but I find it is not mentioned in the Chairman's bio. I grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and my mother and I used to shop at the Naval commissary while my father was serving in the Army in Korea during that war.

It is terrible that this Congress is attacking veterans as dead and wounded veterans come home from two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and some kind of military action in

Elizabeth Warren Redux

I am very disappointed with President Obama's decision not to nominate Elizabeth Warren as head of the new consumer protection agency. She is one of the few people in Washington that I respect and trust. Obama's decision to pass over her for one of the deputies she hired shows cowardice in the face of Republican opposition. To me, coming simultaneously with the fight over the debt ceiling and budget deficit, it illustrates the failure of the two party system.

I have seen in the news that Elizabeth Warren is considering a run for the Massachusetts Senate seat held by Scott Brown. I can't imagine why a woman with her high moral character would want to join a corrupt, dysfunctional body like the US Senate, but she could only raise its standards. Nevertheless, she surely would have been more useful as head of the consumer agency.

The consensus seems to be that Congress will come up with some way to raise the debt ceiling, whether the minimalist Mitch McConnell approach to raise the ceiling but do nothing about the budget, or the gang of six maximalist approach to make huge modifications to the budget. Because I have no confidence in Congress, and because Congress has dithered until the last minute, I do not expect anything important to come out of this mess. I don't see how it can reform Medicare, Social Security and the tax code in less than two weeks.

I am hopeful that the ceiling will be raised somehow so that the US does not default on its debt at the same time that Europe is facing much more substantive debt problems. Europe has to deal with the future of the entire Euro zone, while the US is tied up in knots over a simple procedural issue. But the two together could bring down the world economy, or at least transfer world leadership from the West to China.

Swift Boat Vets Don't Love the Troops

I am not happy with all the talk by Republicans (and Democrats) about how much they love the troops. As a Vietnam veteran I did not get a particularly heartwarming welcome home. The main welcome I remember is that Continental Airlines offered me a free drink flying from Fort Lewis, Washington, where I separated from the Army, to New Orleans, on my way to Mobile.

The most anti-veteran thing I remember was Swift Boat veterans ads that the Republicans ran against John Kerry when he ran for President. Although it was directed at a fellow Swift Boat veteran, Kerry, it was really an attack on all veterans, particularly against Vietnam vets. It ironic that except for pilots and Seal teams, Swift Boat vets have been the only Navy vets who have actually fought the enemy since World War II. I think most Navy personnel killed or injured in Iraq or Afghanistan are medics assigned to Marine units.

In retrospect, I think the attitude of the general public toward Vietnam veterans coming home was that the Vietnamese should have killed the returning vets. They thought that would have been more just, because Vietnam vets were perverted baby killers. Those who didn't go -- Clinton, Bush, Cheney -- felt they had to condemn Vietnam vets, because otherwise the draft dodgers would have looked bad. They weren't necessarily cowards, but they were selfish, not willing to serve their country.

As a result, Vietnam vets have something in common with low ranking German Nazi vets, who fought in WW II because they had to, and they fought for the guy in the foxhole next to them, like the troops in Afghanistan, not for any Nazi ideals. But they will forever be branded as low grade war criminals. That's more or less how those who didn't fight see Vietnam vets. It was particularly hard on minorities and less educated vets, who were drafted or volunteered in disproportionately large numbers because the more advantaged youths refused to go.

Do Republicans Understand Debt Crissis?

Republicans don't seem to understand the difference between incurring debt and paying it off. The debt ceiling is about paying off existing debt. If we don't pay it, it is like not paying a credit card balance. The credit card company is going to charge you lots of fees and higher interest and will probably refuse to lend you any more money. What Republicans are worried about is continual charging on the card, running up a bigger and bigger balance. The answer is to stop charging, not to stop paying. Once you have a huge bill, it is hard to figure out how to pay it off. It is a much longer and tougher job than just making a payment each month. They need to keep paying the bill, and then work on a budget.

Republicans vs. Elizabeth Warren

The Huffington Post reports that the Republicans will keep both the House and the Senate in session. Basically, Obama asked for this yesterday. The question is whether they will do anything. Huff Post thinks somebody will just appear on the floor every few days and make some meaningless statement to keep the session active. If so, it will be meaningless for the debt crisis.

Another result, however, will be to prevent Obama from making recess appointments, in particular of Elizabeth Warren. I find it significant that the Republicans and big business are so afraid of her. I think she is just someone who supports the average American. It means to me that the Republicans and big business must really hate the average American. They succeed by following P.T. Barnum's saying that "There's a sucker born every minute."

Letter to Senators and Congressman

As you discuss tax reform, at the top of your list should be eliminating the capital gains tax. In general, capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income. It is the main reason that many wealthy people pay a lower tax rate than ordinary people. Warren Buffet often cites the example that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does. Basically the capital gains tax is welfare for billionaires.

Yesterday, former Reagan budget chief David Stockman called for reform of the capital gains tax on Fareed Zakaria's GPS program on CNN. He said that it made some sense when inflation was high, so that capital gains merely reflected inflation and not an increase in the real value of an asset. But today, there is virtually no inflation. The other justification is that it encourages new business. There is some basis for that. Perhaps, people who start their own businesses and true venture capitalists should get some kind of tax break to encourage them, although most venture capitalists are multi-millionaires. But someone who buys Apple stock at $200 and sells it a year later for $300 hasn't really encouraged entrepreneurship. A favorable view is that he made a good investment; a less favorable view is that he was just gambling and made a winning bet. Why should this country encourage gambling over doing a hard day's work as an engineer or waitress?

Earlier, I wrote you suggesting the gradual elimination of the home mortgage tax deduction, because it unreasonably favors homeowners over renters, especially if the homeowners paid no money down and have no equity in their homes. They are essentially renters, but get a homeowner's tax break. It might be fair to continue the deduction for people with substantial equity in their houses. Building up equity is the saving which the deduction was originally intended to encourage. But the subprime housing crisis illustrated the economic dislocation that the tax deduction helped create.

My Meeting with Kissinger

Kissinger's new book "On China" reminds me of the only time I met him. As a young Foreign Service officer on his second assignment, I was working in the State Department INR watch office, which monitored incoming intelligence reports. While he was Secretary of State during the Ford administration, Kissinger was holding Middle East peace talks. One quiet Sunday afternoon while Egypt's Sadat was in the US, we got a highly classified intelligence report that there was an assassination plot against him. We in the watch office and the operations center debated about whether we needed to tell Kissinger, who of course was in negotiations with Sadat. We decided we should tell him. He was in the State Department building, and his secretary said to come down and brief him.

Because the report was so highly classified, State Department rules were that you had to carry it in a locked briefcase, even if just walking a few yards from the Operations Center to the Secretary's office. So, I took my locked briefcase down to Kissinger's office. His secretary said he was meeting with Assistant Secretary Phil Habib in a small conference in the back of his office suite, where they were discussing the peace talks with each other. I went back and found them. I started unlocking my briefcase to show them report, and Kissinger said, "Just tell me what the report says." So, I said, "There is an assassination plot against Habib." Phil Habib looked up at me incredulously, and I said, "No, no, I mean against Sadat." And they said something like, "Okay, thanks." and that was it.

Sadat, of course, was not assassinated then and not for several years afterwards, but he lived under constant threats of assignation for all those years. As far as I know, Phil Habib only lived under an assassination threat for about ten seconds.

Raise the Debt Ceiling

I am aghast that the US government continues to threaten to quit paying interest on its debt. While it is mostly Republicans, the straight vote last week in the House on whether to increase the debt ceiling was defeated with many Democrats joining the Republicans. I thought this was terrible. The Republicans said it was just a joke for show and that Wall Street was in on the joke. Afterwards, bond prices rose and interest rates fell, indicating that Wall Street was not concerned. I don't get it.

This Reuters article says the Chinese are concerned. It would seem that we should be concerned, too, if only because the Chinese hold $1 trillion of our debt. In theory we have the Chinese over a barrel because of the old MAD theory (Mutually Assured Destruction). If the Chinese destroy the US dollar, they lose their trillion dollar investment. But in this case, the US is threatening to take the first MAD step by destroying the value of its own currency.

The Republicans say that maybe nothing bad will happen, that the US can stop paying interest for a few days or weeks and then, when the budget negotiations are finished, it can start paying again like nothing ever happened. Maybe. But the Chinese analogy to playing with fire is apt. We don't know for sure what will happen, and we might burn our own house down. Why would we want to even risk the possibility of that?


Another possibility is that Treasury would take the money to pay interest on the debt from Social Security and government pension funds. As a retiree this really ticks me off. As a Vietnam veteran, I support shared sacrifice, but this is like the draft during the Vietnam war and voluntary military service in Iraq and Afghanistan now. There is no shared sacrifice. Only the fools sacrifice because of some insincere patriotic appeal, like Sarah (Paul Revere) Palin's. Sarah Palin gets rich, while the redneck grunts in the Middle East die. In this case, the ordinary retirees will sacrifice so that we can pay interest to Chinese millionaires and American billionaires in New York who wouldn't lift a finger to defend the US, although they were the ones attacked on 9/11.

Coburn Withdrawal Bad Sign for Debt

Sen. Tom Coburn's withdrawal from the gang of six working on the budget/debt ceiling crisis is a bad sign. I was never convinced that he was committed to the process, but now he certainly is not. He probably came under heavy pressure from his fellow Republicans to drop out. They probably plan to push the debt ceiling issue to the limit. Pundits say it may not destroy the country, but there is a possibility that it might. As somebody said today, why would you want to test whether it will destroy the country, if there is even a slight possibility that it might, and if you could easily avoid doing so.

Yes, we need to bring down the deficit and start paying down the debt, but we shouldn't default on our debt payments and undermine our credit in the process.

Why Aren't We as Brave as the British?

I apologize for the disjointed letter posted previously.

I was prompted to write it by the movie "Mrs. Miniver," which I watched a while ago. It is about an upper middle class family in England from the period just before World War II until well into the war. The movie was made during the war, and on TCM, the "The End" screen said something like, "America needs your money. Buy bonds." In the movie, before the war the British husband and wife are somewhat extravagant, the wife buying a silly hat and the husband a fancy car. But once the war starts they get serious like real Brits. They make sacrifices while keeping a stiff upper lip.

I thought that same attitude was somewhat illustrated during William and Kate's wedding. Queen Elizabeth is a living link to the sacrifices made by Brits during World War II and the London Blitz. Today Britain and the United States both face financial turmoil due to the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. The Brits under PM Cameron have elected to pursue a course requiring more sacrifice that the US has. That's more in the British character than in America's.

In Ben Bernanke's press conference, we saw the competing themes of fighting inflation versus reducing unemployment. The Brits are more willing to endure the hardship of unemployment in order to get their financial house in order than the US is. We see Americans unwilling to sacrifice anything, even small cuts to Medicare benefits on the one hand, or higher taxes on the other. We need spending cuts and higher taxes, but nobody is willing to make the hard choices that calls for.

I like Ben Bernanke because he is one of the few people in Washington facing these hard choices and doing something. People say he is just following in Greenspan's "easy money" footsteps, but I don't think so. He is facing a very different situation. I like Elizabeth Warren because she also seems to have the moral character, so lacking in Washington, necessary to face these hard choices. She has staked out a little issue, making businesses deal fairly with consumers, and has been met with a buzz saw of opposition from big business.

After I watched "Mrs. Miniver," I thought, "Well, I could buy some bonds." The Japanese do it. Their indebtedness is one of the highest of any major nation, but it is not like our debt to China, because the Japanese owe it to themselves. They buy their own bonds. So, why don't we? First, I found that it is hard to buy US savings bonds. You can't buy paper bonds anymore. You can only buy them electronically and store them on some Treasury web site. With changing email addresses, lost passwords, etc., that is a recipe for disaster for me. I don't mind electronic banking, as long as there is a real, brick bank somewhere that can send me a paper statement if I want one.

While it has gotten harder to buy savings bonds, it has gotten easier to buy Treasury bonds through a broker. That change illustrates how our economy favors the rich over average citizens. You can put thousands in your 401(k), but you can't buy a $25 savings bond for your kid's birthday. But, why not buy bonds anyway? Right now the problem is that the US Congress refuses to put the full faith and credit of the United States behind the bonds. They are going to bicker over raising the debt ceiling, and leave open the possibility that they will default on US bonds. If they were serious about solving the debt crisis, they would immediately raise the debt ceiling, if only by a little bit, so that there is no risk of default, and then begin the process of cutting spending and raising taxes. But some groups want to use the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip. It is sort of like saying, "If you don't agree to my terms, I will blow my brains out." The terms may be stupid, but no one wants to see someone else blow his brains out, especially if "he" is the country we live in. In Vietnam the old saying was, "We had to destroy the village to save it." Are we now going to say this about America?

Raise the Debt Ceiling Now

Letter to Congressman and Senators:

Right now I feel that there are only two people in Washington who have my best interests at heart, as a middle class citizen -- Elizabeth Warren and Ben Bernanke.

The fact that big business is so opposed to Elizabeth Warren indicates to me that she must be doing something right for average citizens. Normally, Ben Bernanke, as the head of the Fed would be the tool of big business interests, but I think he is genuinely concerned about average people, too. His low interest rates and QE2 are boons to big business, especially big banks, but they are the only tool he has. I think he really is trying to pursue policies that trickle down to ordinary people, even if most of the benefits go to big banks and industries.

If Congress were serious, it would raise the debt ceiling now, if only by a small amount. The fact that it is playing chicken with the debt ceiling indicates that it does not have the best interests of the United States at heart. Failure to put the full faith and credit of the United States behind our bonds will mean higher interest rates for everybody and probably a return to a deep recession. Conservatives, playing the hand of big business and big banks, will use the crisis to get spending cuts without tax increases, generally hurting average people, and particularly benefiting the very rich.

To reduce the problem with the national debt and the fiscal deficit, I would propose to cut all Federal salaries by 10 percent (including yours) and all Federal pensions (including mine) by 10 percent. Perhaps you could cut all Social Security pensions by 10% above a certain level, say $1,500 per month. For Medicare and Medicaid, perhaps you could cut payments by 10% for all procedures that cost more than $1,500.

I would propose removing the mortgage interest deduction as a start for raising tax revenues. This deduction had a very perverse effect during the housing crisis. Before sub-prime mortgages, when people still had to make a large down payment, the deduction was not so bad. But with no down payment and mortgages allowing interest-only payments for the first few years, buyers basically became renters, who are now walking away from their homes. Real renters got no deduction, but sub-prime buyers had a big Federal subsidy. It was not fair, and it encouraged an unsustainable housing bubble. It's bad policy which creates economic dislocation. Get rid of it. You could start off limiting the deduction to $10,000, and then reduce it $1,000 per year.

I don't really expect anything to happen. This government is dysfunctional. I lived in Brazil for several years as an American diplomat during its bad years, and saw people who wallpapered some rooms with the old Cruzeiro currency. That's where the dollar is heading. Brazil shows that you can recover from that, but only if you get serious. The US is not serious, yet. People used to say that Brazil was not a serious country. Now that epithet applies to the United States. After the game of chicken we just played on shutting the government down, the new game of chicken on the debt ceiling, and the decision during the Congressional lame-duck session not to raise taxes on anyone, especially the very rich, I have become one of those in the recent poll who has a very dark view of the American economy and even of America in general. As a Vietnam veteran, a retired Foreign Service officer, and a former attorney for the Veterans Administration, totalling nearly 30 years of government service, I am very disappointed in where the US is heading.

People Who Walk Away from Their Houses

The Washington Post reports a new trend of people walking away from houses that they own. It misses the whole point, however. The problem is that these people paid little or no money down. Their mortgage payments were just rent payments, and unlike real rent payments, these were subsidized by the US government in the form of the mortgage interest tax deduction. People didn't do this years ago because they had skin in the game, starting out with about a $30,000 loss for walking away from a $150,000 home. Now they have nothing to lose except their credit rating for a year or two. They'll go from owning a four bedroom single family house to renting a two bedroom apartment that they can afford. No big deal, except for the banks that made these stupid mortgages and the investors who bought them. The heads of these banks, like Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan-Chase, are either very stupid or crooks. I don't think they are very stupid. But it's good when you can bribe (lobby) the lawmakers to make your immoral shenanigans legal.

I still think Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson and company deserve a lot of credit for avoiding another Depression, but now I think Geithner, who was head of the New York Fed, is too close to his old buddies whom he bailed out. Wall Street is evil. It almost destroyed America and much of the rest of the world with it. Somebody needs to pay for what they did.

MTCR 2011 Meeting

I look at the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) as sort of my legacy from my days at the State Department. I was one of the main links between the idea to create a missile non-proliferation regime during the Carter presidency, and its actually coming into existence under Reagan.

So, I'm happy to see that it still exists and is functioning, as reported by this press release from its 2011 meeting.

Libya and Israel

The New York Times reported that Bernard-Henri Levy takes credit for persuading French President Sarkozy to enter the Libyan civil war on the side of the rebels. So how did that happen?

Part of the answer is what has been discussed in the press: The West -- particularly Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Smantha Power -- felt guilty about how long it took for the US to interview in the genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda. They didn't want more genocide on their watch. Sarkozy is politically weak at home in France; some saber rattling would probably increase his favorability rating. I'm guessing Britain just went along with the US and France, and probably had some concerns of its own about genocide.

But I think there is more.

Levy is Jewish and proud of it. Sarkozy is something like one-quarter Jewish. The US is always under heavy pressure from Jewish lobbying. Israel would like to see instability in the Middle East countries that give it a hard time. Leading this category are Syria and Iran. Egypt and Mubarek, whom Israel liked, had already gone down the tubes. When Libya and Bahrain stood up to their protesters, it looked like the Middle Eastern spring opening might be in danger of being stopped before it could spread to countries where Israel wanted to see it overthrow the rulers, like Syria. So Israel encouraged the West through people like Levy and Sarkozy to stop Libya from putting down the protests there.

The NYT says that Levy was visiting Egypt and decided to go to Libya. Why? I think it's likely that the Mossad suggested he go, and set up the trip for him, which ultimately led to his meeting with Sarkozy, which led to the NATO/UN/West decision to support the rebels.

It's working. Protests are going strong in Syria, although the government continues to try to stop them. Assad may or may not survive. Not much has happened in Iran, but the protests throughout the Middle East put some pressure on it. It's not clear what effect the continuing civil war in Libya will have on Jordan and Bahrain, but they are lower priorities for Israel. Thus, to some extent, I think we are fighting (or giving air cover or whatever we're doing in Libya) for Israel. I think to a similar extent we partially fought the war in Iraq for Israel. Iraq with Scud missiles and possible WMDs was much more of a threat to Israel than to the US.

What About the Budget Deficit and the National Debt?

Anybody serious about solving the national debt/budget deficit problem has to consider both expenditure cuts and revenue increases. We should cut back some government programs, and we should increase some taxes. Until there is a serious debate about what to cut and what to tax, there is no serious effort to reduce the deficit/debt. S&P is right; the US is on a slippery slope towards bankruptcy.

On the expense side, people talk about Medicare and Medicaid, but they never mention doctors themselves. Many doctors are basically government employees with fees set by Medicare, but they earn much more than the average government employee, around $200,000 annually for doctors, compared with about $75,000 for federal government employees and about $50,000 for state government employees. Doctors who specialize in hot areas like cardiology or neurosurgery earn much more, often more than $500,000 annually. As a result, it is hard to attract doctors to lower paying, but more important areas like family practice. Somebody needs to come up with some original ideas for dealing with that, for example, using more nurse-practitioners to do triage, take care of simple things, and refer more difficult cases to specialists. Part of the problem is the cost of medical school. You can't ask students to incur thousands of dollars of debt for lengthy, expensive education and then take lower paying jobs. Government programs could subsidize medical education in return for an obligation to be a family practitioner, see "Northern Exposure." Also, one of the most expensive programs is the new drug assistance program under Medicare part D, passed under Bush. It is basically just a subsidy for the giant drug companies.

It's true that there is some unfairness about taxation. Some things are unquestioned duties of government: national defense, police, firemen, etc. Some are generally accepted and have been for a long time: public school teachers. Others are relatively new: extensive welfare programs. However, a legitimate comparison is how much people used to pay for these services and how much they pay today. Today, in general, federal taxes are much lower than they were fifty years ago, although they are higher than they were 100 years ago. A hundred years ago, people were still drinking milk with formaldehyde in it, starving to death if they fell on hard times unless some neighbor helped. If we are not rich enough to provide these services anymore, we need to have a debate what the most important services are and how we can maintain them. One area that has taken an enormous hit in recent years is education, particularly higher education, which has become more and more expensive. By cutting off universal access to higher education we are dooming ourselves to second class status among the nations of the world.

Wealth Distribution in America

This study on "Wealth, Income and Power" by University of Santa Cruz sociology professor William Domhoff contains much of the data that I was looking for regarding how wealth distribution has changed historically in the US. It has a political viewpoint, because in another study Professor Domhoff says UC Santa Cruz is "the most liberal public university in the country." My kind of place! He even uses the word "liberal," although in other places he uses the less lovely "progressive." I prefer a "liberal arts" education to a "progressive" education. Anyway....

The shift in wealth and income in America is not as great as I had thought, but it's significant. I like graphs, so here's one from the study:

It shows the current distribution of wealth between the top 1% and the lower 99% as about the same as 1920. It got worse in 1930, probably as a result of the Depression, and then went up considerably to 1950, probably as a result of recovery from the Depression and World War II. One effect of both factors was that the government virtually took control of the economy during that period -- first to help prevent poor people from starving and going homeless, and later to devote all productive resources to the war effort. Then there was a big surge in the 1960s and 70s, probably as a result of the government's war on poverty and civil rights efforts. The distribution started getting worse again in the 1980s when Reagan was elected. Reagan changed government policies and tax rates to favor the rich.

Government policies are very important. Both Republicans and Democrats understand this. Republicans like the general slope of the curve since Reagan began favoring the rich. They plan to fight to keep it moving in a direction that favors the rich. I don't think this is good for America. It makes America different from the country that I grew up in during the 1960s and 70s. I still believe that part of the goodness of America during that period was that all members of the "Greatest Generation," rich and poor, had fought together in World War II, which had imposed some self-restraint on the greed of the leaders of the country, a restraint that does not exist today. Significantly, Reagan, although he served in the military during WW II, did not fight; he just continued to make movies in California, albeit for the military while in uniform. George H.W. Bush was a much better representative of the Greatest Generation than Reagan was.

The fight over where we go from here may lead to a government shutdown. But from the looks of this graph, the last shutdown did not have much effect.

Goldstone's Reversal on Israel's War Crimes

Richard Goldstone has reversed himself on whether Israel committed war crimes. In an op-ed in the Washington Post, he says that investigations by the Israeli military "indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy." He blames his now-recanted criticisms of Israel on Israel's failure to cooperate with his investigation.

He seems to say that since Israel would not cooperate with him, he just made up accusations of war crimes. Now that Israel has begun to investigate them, according to a new report by Mary McGowan Davis, everything is okay. If Goldstone just made up the accusations and lied to the UN to start with, why should we believe anything he has to say now? He is totally discredited.

This is of course what Israel wants. Israelis hate Goldstone with a passion seldom seen elsewhere, even in Israel, a country founded on, and consumed by, hatred. I don't know her background, but I suspect that Mary McGowan Davis was chosen because the Israelis were confident that she would issue a report in their favor. Why is there even a follow-up report? Why did the Israelis cooperate with her and not with Goldstone? Apparently she accepted Israeli assurances unquestioningly, although the investigations that she accepted at face value are not finished and have not resulted in any punishment or changes in Israeli policy. She was much more of a patsy for the Israelis than Goldstone was, but she now provides a means for Goldstone to try to appease the Israelis and decrease the Jewish threats against himself and his family.

Fortunately, we don't need Goldstone to tell us that Israel is a corrupt nation of hate-filled racists. It's disgraceful that American Jews (and many evangelical Christians) defend and support such a vile, godless, despicable country. They sully their own image.

Government Shutdown

I am very unhappy with the threat of a government shutdown. The last shutdown is one of the main reasons that I retired and left the Foreign Service. It is irresponsible for the government to abandon people it has sent to foreign countries and tell them that they now have to fend for themselves when they wouldn't be there unless the government had sent them there.

As part of the then Republican retrenchment, the government cut off funding for two programs I was working on. One, the Maria Sklodowska Curie science cooperation fund, would have provided income for Polish scientists who lost their Polish government funding when Communism fell. Cutting of their funding was sort of an anti-Marshall Plan. The Poles took Reagan's advice to overthrow Communism, and Gingrich and the Republicans turned their backs on them.

I didn't like it then, and I don't like the shutdown now, but at least now I'm not representing the dishonest, unreliable US government.

Old Prophecies Regarding Israel

Thousands of years ago, Jeremiah prophesied the following regarding Israel (Jeremiah chapter 2):

Thus saith the Lord, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?

Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit.

Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts.

As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed; they, their kings, their princes, and their priests, and their prophets,

Saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth: for they have turned their back unto me, and not their face: but in the time of their trouble they will say, Arise, and save us.

This prophecy could just as well apply to the country named Israel today.

Jews Attack Jew for Attacking Jews

The BBC reported that Sir Gerald Kaufman, a Jew, had to apologize for a "Jews" remark in Parliament. The remark came while Parliament was debating its war crimes law. A Jewish MP, Louise Ellman, was trying to water down the law so that it would be harder to accuse Israelis of war crimes, prompting Sir Gerald to say, "Here we are, the Jews again."

We should be grateful that Jews are not a unified bunch, but there is a strong contingent of Zionist Jews who are very pro-Israel, often being more concerned about Israel than their home country, whether Great Britain or the United States.

It's typical of Israel, a morally bankrupt state, that its citizens would be in jeopardy of being tried for war crimes in Great Britain. And its typical of Jews that they would attack their home country for allowing that possibility.

Joe Lieberman, are you listening?

UN Chief Criticizes Israel

UN Chief Ban Ki-moon criticized Israel's occupation of Palestinian land as morally and politically unsustainable. For me the key word is "morally." The Israelis, as the expounders of the Ten Commandments and as the victims of the Holocaust, should be moral in their dealings with others, including the Palestinians. Instead they spit on the Bible or Torah, or whatever they call their holy scriptures, and they curse God. Many, maybe most, Jews in Israel are non-believers. They are ethnic Jews, but not religious Jews. They are like the Jews who left Egypt with Moses, and as soon as he went up into the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, the Jews returned to the pagan idols they had worshiped in Egypt, melting down their gold jewelry to make a golden calf. Today, Jews have exchanged God for the new golden idol of materialistic wealth. Perhaps Jews are cursed by being so good at making money; it makes them forget their God. They should remember their own first commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." For their sins against God, the Israelites who left Egypt were condemned to wander in the wilderness for forty years, so that those who rebelled against Moses could not enter into the promised land. Today's Jews may suffer a similar fate. They may live in a country called Israel, but it is not the promised land. They have not proved themselves worthy of the promised land.

Fox News vs. Public Broadcasting

Fox News has become the dominant cable news channel. Its main rival is Public Broadcasting. The major networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- have basically given up on news. They have almost no overseas bureaus. Richard Engel seems to be covering three wars single-handedly now. Their half-hour national news program focus disproportionately on "happy" news, even when something terrible like the Japanese earthquake or the Libyan civil war takes place. The New York Times -- and to a lesser extent the Washington Post and the LA Times -- are about the only other counterpoint to Fox News. If Fox News can destroy PBS, it will rule the airwaves.

Fox News of course is not "fair and balanced." It's a propaganda mouthpiece for Republican right wing views. Stalin would be pleased that the Reagan Republicans who criticized the old Soviet Union so severely now have emulated the Soviet propaganda machine; Fox News is the American Pravda. Thus, it's not surprising that the Republicans are introducing bills to cut off funding for NPR. It would eliminate Fox's main competition. It's a two-fer. Fox makes more money because it becomes more prominent, and the Republican viewpoint has less competition.

Yogi Berra, World War II, and Unemployment

It's great that Yogi Berra interrupted his baseball career to serve in World War II, including participating in the D-Day invasion. It was pretty common then; Ted Williams, who served as a pilot in both World War II and Korea, is another example. It's unlikely to happen today. The only example that comes to mind is Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals football player who died in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan.

In World War II almost everybody served -- rich, poor, athletes, bookworms -- maybe not so much black or white, Japanese or Anglo. But most everybody served. I think that because so many served together it unified the country after World War II. The country was booming because it was almost untouched while much of Europe and Asia was decimated. Business executives had the same chance then that they have now to pay themselves huge salaries in comparison with their employees, but they didn't. Part of the reason was that unions were stronger, so that CEOs were in a relatively weaker position viz-a-viz their employees. And the top tax bracket was around 90%; so, it hardly made sense to pay yourself millions if you only got to keep ten cents on the dollar.

But I think that the universal service in World War II built a sense of national camaraderie. Many times, the workers had served under someone like their bosses in the Army. And the bosses, if they had been officers in the military, would have come to know and respect the men who served under them in much more intimate and trying conditions than they would ever confront in industry.

While there are still rags to riches stories today of CEOs who come from humble beginnings, it's the exception rather than the rule. Often those who make it to the top from the bottom do it by stepping on their poorer colleagues. The more usual route is for CEOs to come from relatively well off families, go to good schools (often Ivy League), and then parlay those connections into a good job. As a result, the CEOs have little connection with or feeling for their employees. The CEO sees himself as working for the "stockholders," which really means himself, because he pays himself richly in stock options.

Thus, it makes no difference to the CEO whether his employees are in China, India, Vietnam, or America. He just wants to put his product out for the lowest possible cost, and if his employees have no health insurance, that's tough. It was the World War II generation that made health insurance possible for average workers, maybe because executives thought it was the right thing to do. Maybe they went a little overboard because of union pressure. But I think that in general, they cared much more for their works as human beings than CEOs and other executives do today.

Today there is no more military draft. In general, children from nice families do not go into the military. And we have the growing rift in America between the rich and poor, making it extremely unlikely that the conditions of World War II will be repeated. It may be a good deal for the rich, but it is the country's loss. We read it everyday in casualty reports from Afghanistan and Iraq, in the unemployment statistics, and in the degrading quality of life in America -- politically, intellectually, culturally, and financially.

Progressive Democratic Gentleman

Listening to the political news, the use of three words bothers me: gentleman, democratic, and progressive.

My complaint about "gentleman" is not so much political, but general usage. Gentleman used to mean a man who was polite, educated, well-dressed, and generally a decent sort of chap. Today it seems to be used like the word "alleged" to give the benefit of the doubt to criminals, and to avoid libel suits against the news media. So, we hear them talk about a serial murderer, saying that the "gentleman" might be moved to a new prison. Part of the misuse is intentional because "gentleman" conjures up an image of a past time in which most people were much kinder and more thoughtful than they are today, So, they undermine that image by associating "gentleman" with the worst kind of things today.

A year or two ago the Republicans started referring to the Democratic Party as the Democrat Party, presumably because it has a coarser, more grating sound, but also perhaps because "Democratic" called up better images of democratic government in the Athenian tradition, than "Democrat" which in the US generally means a person who is Democratic politician or supporter. However, "Democrat" is a noun, while "Democratic" is an adjective. So, it's grammatically incorrect, but the main appeal for the Republicans is probably that it sounds harsher and thus it's easier to make "Democrat Party" sound insulting.

Finally, I don't like the term Progressive. To me the Progressive movement is something that happened in the first half of the twentieth century, limited to unions, social reform, etc. On the other hand, "liberal" is a term that again goes back to the ancient Greeks. It speaks of freedom; we have (or used to have) "liberal" education. Liberal speaks of freedom, of issues that are important to every civilization, while progressive is more economic and limited to certain mundale issues, times and places. I much prefer being a Liberal than a Progressive.

To the extent that the Democratic Party tries to make me a Progressive, rather than a Liberal, I feel less like a gentleman.

Government Fails in Banking Crisis

One of government's main functions is to provide security for its citizens in the form of police, courts, military defense, etc. It has failed to do this in the banking crisis. Government did ameliorate the crisis by preventing a depression era scenario where many major banks fail. The banks not only did not fail, they recovered quickly and their chieftains are making millions. On the financial side, government worked.

On the police side, government failed. Not one of the culprits responsible for bringing America to its knees has suffered any criminal prosecution. Just recently the criminal case was dropped against Angelo Mozillo, the head of Countrywide, and one of the worst offenders in the sub-prime mortgage banking meltdown. Apparently his old company, now part of bank of America, is still the object of a civil suit by some of the people who lost millions because of his actions, but the government says everything he did is okay.

This partly due to government corruption. The banks lobbied heavily for little or no regulation, and continue to do so. The main policing organization, the SEC, failed miserably under its chairman Christopher Cox, who should be criminally libel for his failure, but of course is not. The public seems more upset about his failure to catch Bernie Madoff than about his failure to prevent the worst financial crisis since the Depression. Of course, Congress got paid well by the banks' lobbyists to keep any laws from interfering with the banks evil deeds.

I like the book All the Devils Are Here because it criticizes many of the major players in the financial crisis for doing bad things. It doesn't take the position that "bad things happened," but nobody was responsible. People were responsible, and many of them continue to hold positions of power, including Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs and Jamie Dimon at J.P. Morgan Chase. The Morgans and the Rockefellers must be saddened that someone of Dimon's low moral integrity has dragged the names of their institutions through the mud.

Fiscal Policy A Shambles

American fiscal policy is in total disarray. Taxes are too low; spending is too high. Spending should be more stimulative and less for old people. Social Security and Medicare need to be reformed, in particular to be more to incomes, both on the taxing and paying ends. Rich people pay a much smaller amount of their earnings into Social Security and end up getting too much when they retire. Medicare takes care of the elderly, but until the recent health care reform, there was no general program to take care of workers. Congress is totally ignoring this problem. They pat themselves on the back if they cut a million dollars from education or the Pentagon budget.

Meanwhile, the Fed is pursuing a serious monetary policy with no help from Congress. Congress just criticizes the Fed's quantitative easing program (QE2), while doing nothing itself. If we get out of this recession it will be largely thanks to the Fed. Ironically, the Fed, which is usually seen to be the friend of the big banks, has turned out to be much more of a friend to ordinary people than Congress has.

Companies, Not Fed to Blame

On Bloomberg, David Malpass says the Fed is failing because the Fed in giving money to US business by keeping interest rates low, but US business is investing in Asia. So, the Fed is just giving American money to Asia. Although there is truth in this, I would say the problem is American business that doesn't support America. CEOs and other senior executives of “American” companies outsource American jobs to China and India. The CEOs get rich by destroying American workers.

Impolite Politicians

Political discourse has become so bitter, it's hard to see how anyone can remain civil.

Last night I was shocked at how impolite Sen. Orrin Hatch was to Judy Woodruff on PBS' Newshour. He insulted HHS Secretary Sebelius, saying, "She just doesn't know what she's talking about." He was sarcastic, responding to one of Judy Woodruff's questions with, "Oh, isn't that wonderful?" And, "That's what I call bull corn." And later, "I see a middle ground.... They ought to trash the bill and get rid of it."

Interestingly, the New York Times had a tongue-in-cheek op-ed today on a civility course on Arizona. If there were such a thing, Sen. Hatch and his colleagues should enroll in it.

Government Shutdown Coming?

The NYT reports that talk on Capitol Hill is increasing the odds of a government shutdown. This brings back some bad memories of my experience in Poland, when the Republicans shut down the government on the day I was being transferred to Italy, leaving me stranded with no place to live and no income.

I wonder what the reaction will be to a government shutdown. Perhaps people will welcome it. I won't because I think there is a better way to resolve these problems of the deficit and the debt. The Congress and the administration should work out some sort of a compromise, either temporary or permanent, without shutting down the government.

Angry Letter to Congressional Delegation

I am disappointed that President Obama and the Democrats have apparently decided to take small steps towards balancing the budget by crushing the middle class, transferring the middle class' money to the super rich.

We see middle and lower class programs proposed for cuts, while taxes are reduced on the super rich. A recent report by ABC News on hedge fund manager John Paulson's multi-billion dollar payday last year indicated that most of his taxes will be at the capital gains rate; so, all the debate about the top tax rate is irrelevant. Rich people don't pay "income tax" (35%) for most of their income; they pay the much lower (15%) "capital gains" tax rate. John Paulson reportedly made most of his billions last year by betting on gold, i.e., against the US dollar. He made his first billions betting against the sub-prime housing market. Are these really socially valuable activities that deserve to be taxed at half the rate that working people pay?

Last night on PBS' Newshour, Sen. Bernie Sanders said that ExxonMobil paid no income tax last year, although it made $19 billion. If the Republicans succeed in cutting off funding for PBS, I won't see that anymore.

The Republicans always argue for a simpler tax code, but that's because they want to avoid paying taxes. Under a simpler tax code, every lunch will be a business lunch; every country club membership will be for business purposes, and every trip to Hawaii will be a business trip. Republicans want bigger swimming pools; they don't want to buy helmets for troops in Afghanistan. I guess Democrats are hoping that the Republicans will invite them over to enjoy the new, bigger swimming pools.

The Tea Party is angry. Well, now I'm angry, too. Unfortunately, I don't have billions to pay a lobbyist to bribe you. I understand that as a politician you have to prostitute yourself to the big money, but remember that even some whores have standards. See Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman."

Revolution

The revolution in Egypt makes me think about revolutions in the US. It seems to me that it came surprisingly easily and quickly. Maybe that is a sign of just how corrupt and weak Mubarak's regime had become.

The first American revolution, of course, was the revolution against Britain, led by George Washington and other elites, but supported my most of the common men, although there were some loyalists to the British crown. Although the American revolution was much longer and bloodier than Egypt's, most opinion leaders then were probably equally surprised that the little colonies defeated one of the greatest world powers at that time. Unlike what we know about Egypt at this time, there was a critical mass of intellectual, political and military leaders to take over the government of the newly independent nation. Even then, it was years before we had a Constitution and a fully functioning central government.

Then there was the Civil War. Arguably the Southern states were not trying to overthrow the central government; they just wanted out. But basically that's what the colonies wanted during the Revolutionary War. The Federal Government under Lincoln would not let them go; so, we had an unsuccessful revolution. However, the cost in terms of lives, property, and hardship was astronomical, especially to the South.

One of the closest parallels to the Egyptian demonstration that comes to mind, was the "Bonus Army" march and camp in Washington in 1932 by about 43,000 people, demanding bonuses to help many of the unemployed World War I veterans during the Depression. President Hoover dispersed them by ordering Army units against them. Three of the leaders of the Army units that attacked them were General Douglas McArthur, George Patton, and Dwight Eisenhower, all of who went on to play important roles in World War II. It doesn't sound as if any of the demonstrators was killed in the confrontation, and the protest was broken up.

In my lifetime, several incidents come to mind. One was the assassination of President Kennedy. Although it is probably not true, there will always be some suspicion in my mind that Vice President Lyndon Johnson was responsible for the assassination. If so, the huge Warren Commission investigation was just a cover up, because the idea that there had been a coup in the US would have been too much for the public to bear. But there are tons of conspiracy theories, many of which don't involve Lyndon Johnson, and which are probably more credible, although equally false.

Another possible example was the resignation of President Richard Nixon. In that case, there was not a popular uprising, but he was forced out by a coalition of political elites, provided fuel by the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein. Fortunately his corrupt, worthless Vice President, Spiro Agnew, had been forced out before Nixon was, and solid leader Jerry Ford took over the government. But it was an unorthodox transfer of power for the US. Nixon was not impeached; so, he was not legally forced out of office. Like Mubarak, he left as a result of his own personal decision, albeit under great pressure.

Finally, it can be argued that George W. Bush was not elected in a "free and fair election," but rather was put in office in an extra-Constitutional move by the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court stopped the legal proceedings about the Florida vote recount and the actual, physical recount. Basically the Supreme Court named Bush the President regardless of what actually happened in the election. It's possible that Bush actually won, but we'll never know for sure.

Thus, the US has had some experiences roughly comparable to what has taken place in Egypt. In every case, however, we had someone ready to assume power. It's not clear to me yet that Egypt has new leadership in place. I guess you could argue that Washington's becoming President after the Revolution was similar to the Egyptian military taking power today, but there were a lot more civilian leaders around Washington -- Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and the other "founding fathers."

Will Republicans Maintain America's Honor?

The current political situation is bringing back some bad memories from my days in the Foreign Service.

The last time the Republicans took over Congress, with Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990’s, they cut off funding for one of the main scientific cooperation projects I was working on in Warsaw, Poland, although the US had signed an agreement to fund it for five years just before I got there a year or two earlier. A senior official in the Polish foreign ministry used to call me in periodically and berate me because the US had failed to honor its promise. As a Southerner who grew up with a strong dose of the importance of “honor,” I really didn’t like it.

Then the State Department asked me to go to Rome, and the Republicans shut down the government on the very day my wife and I were leaving. We had moved out of our house in Warsaw, had everything in the car ready to drive to Rome, when the Embassy in Rome called at about 4:30 pm and said, “Don’t leave; we don’t have money to pay for the trip.” That left us on the street in Warsaw with no place to live. It turned out that the DCM (deputy chief of mission, the Ambassador’s deputy) in Rome was a friend from a prior tour in Brasilia. When I spoke to him, he said, “Come on, we’ll work it out.” But the whole thing left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Then when we got to Rome, one of my responsibilities was the nuclear agreement with North Korea. Again, the Republicans refused to fund all of the American obligations under the agreement; so, one of my jobs was to go hat in hand to the Italian government, who at that time held the Presidency of the European Union, and ask them to fund some of the things that we wouldn’t, so that the US would not be in violation of its agreement with North Korea.

That’s one of the reasons I retired. I didn’t want to represent a government that would not honor its promises.

Does the current batch of Republicans in the House have any concept of honor? We'll see. Back in the 1990's one of the Republican complaints about the Democrats was that because they had no business experience, the Democrats did not know how to "meet a payroll." Then, it turned out that it was the Republicans who didn't know how to meet a payroll, or honor their legal, treaty obligations.

Glenn Beck and Elites

Glenn Beck talks about Jimmy Stewart & Bedford Falls, and elites, saying that George Soros represents the elites.  But in fact Fox is the spokesman for the elites, which are big corporations and banks.  George Soros is part of it, but the rich Republican establishment, represented today particularly by the Chamber of Commerce, is an even larger part of it.  Beck doesn't mention them, the Koch brothers, for example.

His participation in the Fox News disinformation campaign to claim that Obama's Indiq trip will cost $200 million per day is also despicable. The claim is based on an incorrect statement by some low ranking Indian local official. It's just the Communist big lie.  

The Economist on the Elections

The Economist magazine has some good points about the Republican landslide, the best being:

Only four years after the voters sent them packing, handing both chambers of Congress to the Democrats at the 2006 mid-terms, the Republicans are back. Voters then (and again in 2008) decided that Republican policies had blown up the deficit with unaffordable tax cuts, let the banks run wild, dragged America into two costly wars and produced a wretched harvest of stagnant wages, rising job insecurity and soaring health-care costs. Now they seem to have decided that they like Barack Obama and the Democrats even less.

I don't get it. The Republicans created huge deficits, a financial crisis, two worthless but expensive wars, destroyed the middle class, and seriously damaged the our system of medical care by giving the health insurance companies huge profits and greater control over patients. Then, since Obama didn't solve all these problems in two years, America voted the Republicans back in.

Obama's image of the Republicans as the people who drove the car into the ditch, seems perfectly logical to me. Why would America ask them to drive again? But people laughed at that simple comparison.

The first test will probably be the vote to raise the debt ceiling. Will the Republicans shut down the government again as they did under Newt Gingrich? The next will probably be what to do about the Bush tax cuts. The safest thing is probably to extend all the cuts for a year or two, although that is a defeat for the Democrats. Unfortunately, the Republicans are like a crazy man with gun; you can't risk trying to reason with them. It doesn't bother them if thousands of people go hungry, are cold, get poor medical care, but it bothers Democrats.

US Stimulus Goes Overseas

The other morning, Erin Burnett of CNBC said on "Morning Joe" that Bernanke and the Fed had generated about 20% of additional cash, but the economy had grown only about 2%. The implication is that the quantitative easing is not working. So where did the money go?

Businessweek last week said:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has tried everything to feed the U.S. economy the liquidity it needs to revive. In the process, he has conjured up more than $1 trillion of fresh monetary stimulus out of thin air. Inevitably, much of it has ventured overseas in search of yield. The big beneficiaries have been the stock markets of the emerging-market economies.

So while Bernanke is pumping out cash, the main beneficiaries are sending that cash overseas to emerging markets. That is a problem with a concentration of wealth. The very rich, who are the main recipients of the cash, are not investing or spending in America. They are investing overseas. This tends to drive down the dollar, which offends the other countries, whose currencies are driven up, thus making their exports more expensive and harder to sell, etc. It will be an issue at the upcoming G-20 meeting.

If the rich were loyal Americans, like those running corporations for a generation after World War II, Bernanke's largess would stay in the US and benefit Americans, not Chinese, Indians and Brazilians.

Deja Vu

This 1994 Republican Congress redux is hard for me to take.

In 1994 or 1995 I was at the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, supposedly running a science cooperation program between Polish and American scientists. The Republicans cut off the funding although the United States had signed an agreement promising to participate for two or three more years. I was accused of being dishonest by the Polish foreign ministry. Polish scientists who lost their government funding because of the overthrow of Communism got no help from the US. Poland is now doing well, but thanks to the EU, not the US. The people who took Reagan's advice to "tear down this wall" got punched in the nose by his hard-hearted, mean-spirited Republican successors.

Then the State Department asked me to go to the embassy in Rome. As my wife and I were about to leave Warsaw, with our car packed, including two dogs, the Republicans shut down the government. Rome called and said, "Don't come." But we had nowhere to live in Warsaw, and it was cold. Eventually got Rome to agree that I could come, but I will never forgive the United States for putting me and my wife out on the street in Warsaw when I was moving because the government had reassigned me. Clearly the Republicans have no idea of what it is like to run a business and meet a payroll.

Then, when I got t9 Rome, where I had been assigned because Italy had just assumed the presidency of the European Union, one of my main jobs was to beg the Europeans for more money to meet the terms of the nuclear agreement that we had signed with North Korea, because the Republican Congress would not appropriate the funds for the agreement. The Republicans apparently decided that the North Koreans were going to violate the terms of the agreement, so the Republicans wanted to violate it first.

Republicans have no honor. Their promise means nothing. To them the word of the United States is garbage. They will sell America's honor for filthy lucre.

Swift Boaters Still Around

As a Vietnam veteran, the most unpatriotic group I know of is the group that sponsored the Swift boat ads against John Kerry. Whether Kerry was a hero or not, he went to Vietnam, and he should not have been attacked for serving his country.

The people who funded the Swift boat ads are scurrilous cowards who represent the very worst of America. While they had front men who actually served in Vietnam, I think the front men were used by the cowardly millionaires. I doubt the people funding the ad actually served, or if they did, they served in some very safe capacity.

The idea that they are now behind the flood of attack ads for the 2010 election is almost more than I can stand. The worst is that it worked. Now we will have a bunch of mean-spirited morons trying to govern the country, while it is fighting two worthless wars that they started and dealing with an economic and financial crisis that they created through their greed and incompetence. This is clearly not the greatest generation; this is a generation of draft dodgers and people who have no conception of what it means to serve their country and their fellowman. Steven Pearlstein has an excellent article in the Washington Post about what it means to serve in Congress, but I don't think they will pay any attention to it. They are too stupid and selfish, but for sure Big Brother (Fox and American Crossroads) will make sure that their friends get rich at Ameica's expense.