More Steve Simon on Terror

Steve Simon now has an op-ed in the New York Times, following up on his op-ed in the Financial Times. He cranks out stuff for major papers faster than I can blog. Once again I basically agree with him that having the terror trials for Khalid Sheik Mohammad and others in New York is a good thing.

I am outraged that the Republicans are so opposed to these trials. Their opposition is based on fear, a poor starting point for a serious country. They have no confidence in the US military, the FBI, the CIA, and the New York police to protect the city during the trial. It's true that Bush and the Republicans failed to protect New York on 9/11. I don't think the Democrats will be as lazy as Bush and Cheney were pre-9/11.

Of course, the civil trials in New York are also a political rebuke to the Republicans, who wanted to hold some kind of kangaroo court in Cuba. The Republicans are now the leaders of what is basically a lynch mob, saying no trial, just shoot 'em. Of course, they'd say that the want military trials before they shoot 'em, but to the world those military trials would look a lot like kangaroo courts or Communist show trials.

So why are we still having military trials for some of the Guantanamo prisoners? I don't really know, but I'm happy that some of them will get real, legal trials.

The old Bush approach to combating terrorism reminds me of Argentina's way of handling its discontents, by "disappearing" them. The government picked them up and they were never seen again. KSM was snatched in Pakistan, and we've just had a number of CIA agents convicted of kidnapping a suspected terrorist in Milan. We grab 'em and stick 'em in Guantanamo or send them by extraordinary rendition some friendly country that will torture them for us. Not a very high class act! Thank goodness the Obama administration has more morals and character. The US should adhere to a higher standard than Argentina did.

Meanwhile the Republican Party displays absolute fear and panic. How can former Presidential candidate John McCain lead such a band of cowards?

Almost Time for Geithner to Go

It was a good decision to name Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary when Obama came in at the height of the banking crisis. He needed someone who knew what had happened, where the bodies were buried on Wall Street. Now the crisis has moved on. We need someone who is more an outsider, someone who is not an executive or director of Goldman Sachs. The Geithner move can wait until the health care debate is over, but should come as soon as the system can bear it. He's not the best man for the job.

I don't have a recommendation. The two financial people I trust at the moment are Elizabeth Warren and Paul Volker. People say Obama is ignoring Volker; he does so at his peril. It's understandable, because people say that Larry Summers is so in-your-face that it's hard to oppose him, but the time is coming to do that. Summers needs to be moved away from the center of power. He should continue to be an advisor, but not the advisor. Between Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers, Obama has his hands full of loud, brash, aggressive, pushy Jews. Volker, of course, is Jewish, but seems to be much nicer personally than his competitors; the same goes for Bernanke. Obama should recognize that and draw on Volker (and Bernanke) despite the tantrums of his other Jewish advisors.

Ideally, a new Treasury Secretary should come from outside of Wall Street, perhaps someone from Obama's old home of Chicago. An academic might be a possibility. Bernanke has done a good job at the Fed, despite coming from an academic background. A businessman or banker is not out of the question, as long as he is not a Wall Street insider.

Gambling on Wall Street

CNBC, which is on in the other room, is doing a story on some poker player in a Las Vegas tournament, who came from a very simply background and is winning tons of cash. First, why is this a financial network story? Because Wall Street is basically a big poker game; it's not about the economy or jobs or any of that stuff that they talk about.

As an example, John Paulson made billions betting against sub-prime mortgage paper, speculating that the housing market would self-destruct. He was right and made billions, but did that have a positive effect on the market? No. His insight, which arguably was important to help the US manage the biggest financial crisis is 80 years, had no effect, except to make him rich. If Wall Street really worked as the commentators want us to believe, his insight into the housing market should have helped avoid the crisis, but it didn't. It's just gambling, unrelated to the real world, except to the extent that if the Wall Street gamblers lose too many billions, the taxpayers will bail them out. Ironically, the WSJ article about Paulson says that he he has hired Alan Greenspan, who aided Paulson's strategy by keeping interest rates abnormally low for too long. That's more a criticism of Greenspan than Paulson. But they are clearly too cozy.

Buying Patriotism

Tom Friedman's Wednesday NYT column on government contractors was once again right on the money. The US government no longer performs the functions that it is charged with and used to do itself, such as fighting wars and negotiating with other countries. It now contracts those and other essential functions out to private business. Of course the main impetus is to avoid re instituting the draft to maintain armed force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, but secondarily is the Republican (and Democratic) impetus to give money to their campaign contributors.

To me, this represents a failure to support the American government. The government should perform essential functions such as war fighting and diplomacy. The Republicans claim that they love America but hate the government. They go back to Reagan's old claim that government is not the solution, it's the problem. I think that's wrong. In many cases government is not only the solution, it's the only solution. Private sector contractors are not subject to the same constraints that government employees are. Republicans like this because it means that they can resort to nepotism and other forms of favoritism. Democrats, too; look at John Murtha. But I think that if you dislike or hate the US government, you dislike or hate the United States. The government is the country, particularly when you're talking about the military or diplomacy.

As a former soldier and diplomat, I take strong exception to the Republican rejection of government. Granted, government may need a lot of reform, but it should be improved, not destroyed.

Kudos to Tom Friedman for pointing out the failures of government outsourcing and contracting. One of the ironic things is that the government is actually outsourcing a lot of functions to foreigners. It's doing what it criticizes American business for doing: taking American domestic jobs and outsourcing them to foreigners, such as the foreign mercenaries who do a lot of guard duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, in many cases working for American paymasters like Blackwater (or whatever their new name is), who just take the Congressional appropriation and pass it on to the foreigners who work for them, scraping a good chunk off the top for the Blackwater executives. Even when they employ Americans, they tend to take the cream of the crop of Army and Marine veterans by paying them much more than the government can afford to pay them as servicemen. It's a mess, created by people who are destroying America for their personal profit.