By William Fisher
As Barack Obama’s inauguration approaches, I suppose it was inevitable that inhabitants of the parallel universe that is the right-wing blogosphere would begin circulating dark reports that our new president will take his oath of office by placing his hand on a Koran.
Well, these wingnuts are entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts. Here’s the main fact, no doubt inconvenient: Obama will place his hand on the same Bible used by Abraham Lincoln, that other radical Muslim.
The one from Illinois.
And, while we’re on the subject of radical Muslims, it’s worth noting that the past few weeks have given us yet more evidence that our post-9/11 Islamophobia is still alive and well.
Should you have any doubt, just ask the members of the Irfan family. The Irfans are American-born Muslims of Indian descent. Last week, eight members of the family, plus a friend, were sitting on the tarmac at Washington’s Ronald Reagan airport in an AirTran plane and attempting to fly to Orlando, Fla. The men in the party wore beards; the women wore headscarves.
Two members of this family reportedly had a conversation about the safest place to sit in the event of an accident. Whereupon other passengers reported these “suspicious” remarks to a flight attendant, who passed them on to the pilot, who notified a couple of air marshals on the plane, who then called the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration.
All 104 passengers were ordered off the plane. The FBI questioned the “suspicious” family and cleared them of any wrongdoing.
Most of the passengers were then allowed to reboard the plane -- but the nine American Muslims weren’t. Nor were they allowed to buy tickets on any other AirTran flights. They had to buy tickets on U.S. Airways.
Initially, AirTran said it was not at fault. Later it said the incident was a “misunderstanding” and issued an apology.
“We regret that the issue escalated to the heightened security level it did,” the airline said, “but we trust everyone understands that the security and the safety of our passengers is paramount and cannot be compromised,” AirTran said.
Well, actually, no, many of us don’t understand. We don’t understand the relationship between passenger security and safety and the conversation these two passengers had. What we do understand is that if these passengers had been white and clean-shaven, and the women’s hair uncovered, this incident would never have happened.
But wouldn’t that be racial profiling? Sure sounds like it. Yet the FBI, the DHS, the TSA, and every other government agency you can name, will vehemently deny it practices racial profiling.
Atif Irfan, one of the passengers who is a lawyer from Alexandria, Virginia, has a more realistic view. “Whenever we get on a plane, because of the color of our skin, people tend to look at us with a wary eye anyway.”
Kashif Irfan, 34, Atif’s older brother and another of the detained passengers, is a medical doctor. Perhaps a tad too magnanimously, he said, “We are very grateful for the apology, and we’re impressed by the outpouring of respect that AirTran has demonstrated after the fact.”
He added, however, that the Irfan family has “not ruled out the possibility of legal action.”
Others aren’t waiting for the Irfans, however. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group, has already filed a complaint with the Transportation Department requesting an investigation.
The trouble with waiting for a TSA to finish an investigation and disclose the results is like trying to get your name off one of the government’s famous “no fly” lists. Conjures up images of Sisyphus.
Now, if you haven’t run out of patience yet, here’s another exciting chapter in the never-ending annals of “activist judges.”
This one takes place in Douglasville, Georgia (population about 20,000), considered a suburb of Atlanta. In the municipal courtroom of Judge Keith Rollins, a Douglasville woman was jailed recently for refusing to remove her hijab, the traditional Muslim head covering, in court.
Judge Rollins had Lisa Valentine, 40, arrested, and ordered her to serve ten days in jail for contempt of court. Police said that Valentine violated a court policy that prohibits people from wearing any headgear in court.
Ms. Valentine, who recently moved to Georgia from New Haven, Connecticut, said the incident reminded her of stories she'd heard of the civil rights-era South.
She said, "I just felt stripped of my civil, my human rights."
And she’s not alone. The same judge recently removed another woman and her 14-year-old daughter from the courtroom because they were wearing Muslim headscarves. And last year, a judge in Valdosta in southern Georgia barred a Muslim woman from entering a courtroom because she would not remove her headscarf. There have been similar cases in other states, including Michigan, where a Muslim woman in Detroit filed a federal lawsuit after a judge dismissed her small-claims court case when she refused to remove a head and face veil.
The hijab is worn by millions of Muslim women in accordance with their belief in Islam. There are many types of hijabs; in America, a majority of Muslim women who choose to cover only their hair, leaving the face visible for identification, as was the case with Ms. Valentine.
I wonder if the good Judge Rollins has somehow not noticed that followers of other religions regularly use headwear, apparently with impunity. Would he order a nun to remove her religious habit? Would he order a Jew to remove his yarmulke? Would he order a Sikh to remove his turban?
Maybe I’m missing something here.
Maybe, but what I’m not missing is the U.S. Constitution. I don’t know where Judge Rollins went to law school, but he somehow seems to have missed Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law says no one can be deprived of the equal protection of the laws on account of race, color, religion or national origin by being denied equal use of any public facility. Well, a courtroom certainly qualifies as a public facility. Our tax dollars built it.
Then there’s the U.S. Supreme Court, which has ruled that a state can only interfere with the free exercise of a citizen’s religious observance if there’s a compelling state interest.
Denial of access to a courtroom based on a religious observance seems to me an open-and-shut case of discrimination. And where is the “compelling state interest” here?
Well, this story may actually have a happier ending, sort of.
First, after a Muslim advocacy group threatened to take the case to court, Ms. Valentine was released from jail (though the cops would not explain why).
Then, the Douglasville Police Department announced that its officers – along with Judge Rollins -- would undergo a course of "sensitivity and cultural diversity training. "
Not a minute too soon! Let’s hope they’re fast learners!
But next time you hear your right-wing friends railing against those “activist judges who legislate from the bench,” how about reminding them of Mr. Justice Keith Rollins?
Monday, January 05, 2009
Friday, January 02, 2009
Rummie’s Gift to Obama
By William Fisher
Should we be surprised that Australia – once our staunchest ally in the “global war on terror” – has for the second time refused a request from the lame-duck Bush Administration to accept any of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners the U.S. Government has been trying to release?
As have most of the other countries in the world.
How come we’re having such a hard time? After all, are we not the leader of the free world? Are we not the world’s sole remaining superpower? And haven’t we been generous to a fault in providing arms and military advice and all manner of other economic and humanitarian aid to most of the countries now turning their backs on us?
These nations must be just plain ingrates.
Or maybe we’ve hoisted ourselves by our own petard.
Yep, one could make a pretty good case for the latter. Consider this:
Way back in 2002, our rock star Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld famously referred to Guantanamo prisoners as "the worst of the worst." The press loved it. Rummie’s line became one of period’s most iconic quotes.
Rummie must have loved the line too, because he kept using it. As recently as 2005, he was saying, "If you think of the people down there, these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, (Osama bin Laden's) bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker."
Well, Rummie, the rest of the world was listening too. Now, there are a host of reasons why countries are declining to provide homes for GITMO detainees – foreign governments have long memories when it comes to W’s cowboy unilateralism. But if we gave you the gift of a “worst of the worst” figleaf, why in the world would you be willing to accommodate the country that failed to consult you about Guantanamo, WMD, the invasion of Iraq, or much of anything else?
You wouldn’t. And they haven’t.
Rumsfeld kept delivering his favorite zinger – now joined by a veritable Greek chorus of sycophants including Richard Myers, then Chairman of Joint Chief of Staff -- despite massive and incontrovertible evidence that “the worst of the worst” riff was simply a lie.
For years now, we have all known that perhaps only five percent of those held at GITMO were even captured by the United States – more than 90 percent of them were picked up by the warlords of the Northern Alliance or by Pakistani forces in exchange for bounties. We have all known that only some eight percent of these prisoners were accused of being members of Al Qaeda, and that up to a third of them may have been imprisoned by mistake.
That information comes from Bush’s own CIA. But the White House has chosen to ignore it and continue to insist that all GITMO detainees are "enemy combatants" subject to indefinite incarceration. A top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed the CIA report and turned down proposals for a thorough review of the detainees' cases. “There will be no review," was the reported response of Cheney staff director David Addington, who added, "The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it."
Well, governments all over the world heard exactly the same information. So why would they want these “enemy combatants” free to stir up mischief in their country?
Now, if any of these countries needed a further excuse to say “no thanks,” there’s always this: “If these prisoners are so benign, how come the United States has refused to take in any of them?”
Tough question, that.
There have been ample opportunities for the U.S. to demonstrate the innocence of many GITMO prisoners by resettling them in America. At this very moment, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington is considering whether 17 Chinese Muslims should be allowed to enter our country.
These people are known as Uighurs. They are fierce opponents of the Chinese Government but have never harbored any hostility toward the U.S. The State Department says it can’t return them to China for fear they will be tortured or otherwise persecuted.
After a lower court Federal judge ordered the Uighurs released immediately and brought to his courtroom as their first step toward resettlement in the U.S., what did the government do? It sought to have the lower court ruling reversed by appealing it. NIMBY is alive and well. The appeals court decision is pending.
There are now some 60 GITMO detainees for whom the government is trying to find homes. It is extremely unlikely that this is going to happen in the waning weeks of the Bush Administration.
Leaving Barack Obama with yet another problem to solve. He has pledged to close Guantanamo Bay but, as of now, we don’t know what he will do with the prisoners we’d like to release, much less how he plans to handle those we still consider dangerous terrorists.
The takeaway from this mess is that we don’t have anything like the leverage we once thought we had. We are no longer trusted. Restoring that trust is going to be a long and difficult process. It promises to be one of President Obama’s toughest challenges.
Thanks a lot, Rummie!
Should we be surprised that Australia – once our staunchest ally in the “global war on terror” – has for the second time refused a request from the lame-duck Bush Administration to accept any of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners the U.S. Government has been trying to release?
As have most of the other countries in the world.
How come we’re having such a hard time? After all, are we not the leader of the free world? Are we not the world’s sole remaining superpower? And haven’t we been generous to a fault in providing arms and military advice and all manner of other economic and humanitarian aid to most of the countries now turning their backs on us?
These nations must be just plain ingrates.
Or maybe we’ve hoisted ourselves by our own petard.
Yep, one could make a pretty good case for the latter. Consider this:
Way back in 2002, our rock star Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld famously referred to Guantanamo prisoners as "the worst of the worst." The press loved it. Rummie’s line became one of period’s most iconic quotes.
Rummie must have loved the line too, because he kept using it. As recently as 2005, he was saying, "If you think of the people down there, these are people, all of whom were captured on a battlefield. They're terrorists, trainers, bomb makers, recruiters, financiers, (Osama bin Laden's) bodyguards, would-be suicide bombers, probably the 20th 9/11 hijacker."
Well, Rummie, the rest of the world was listening too. Now, there are a host of reasons why countries are declining to provide homes for GITMO detainees – foreign governments have long memories when it comes to W’s cowboy unilateralism. But if we gave you the gift of a “worst of the worst” figleaf, why in the world would you be willing to accommodate the country that failed to consult you about Guantanamo, WMD, the invasion of Iraq, or much of anything else?
You wouldn’t. And they haven’t.
Rumsfeld kept delivering his favorite zinger – now joined by a veritable Greek chorus of sycophants including Richard Myers, then Chairman of Joint Chief of Staff -- despite massive and incontrovertible evidence that “the worst of the worst” riff was simply a lie.
For years now, we have all known that perhaps only five percent of those held at GITMO were even captured by the United States – more than 90 percent of them were picked up by the warlords of the Northern Alliance or by Pakistani forces in exchange for bounties. We have all known that only some eight percent of these prisoners were accused of being members of Al Qaeda, and that up to a third of them may have been imprisoned by mistake.
That information comes from Bush’s own CIA. But the White House has chosen to ignore it and continue to insist that all GITMO detainees are "enemy combatants" subject to indefinite incarceration. A top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed the CIA report and turned down proposals for a thorough review of the detainees' cases. “There will be no review," was the reported response of Cheney staff director David Addington, who added, "The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it."
Well, governments all over the world heard exactly the same information. So why would they want these “enemy combatants” free to stir up mischief in their country?
Now, if any of these countries needed a further excuse to say “no thanks,” there’s always this: “If these prisoners are so benign, how come the United States has refused to take in any of them?”
Tough question, that.
There have been ample opportunities for the U.S. to demonstrate the innocence of many GITMO prisoners by resettling them in America. At this very moment, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington is considering whether 17 Chinese Muslims should be allowed to enter our country.
These people are known as Uighurs. They are fierce opponents of the Chinese Government but have never harbored any hostility toward the U.S. The State Department says it can’t return them to China for fear they will be tortured or otherwise persecuted.
After a lower court Federal judge ordered the Uighurs released immediately and brought to his courtroom as their first step toward resettlement in the U.S., what did the government do? It sought to have the lower court ruling reversed by appealing it. NIMBY is alive and well. The appeals court decision is pending.
There are now some 60 GITMO detainees for whom the government is trying to find homes. It is extremely unlikely that this is going to happen in the waning weeks of the Bush Administration.
Leaving Barack Obama with yet another problem to solve. He has pledged to close Guantanamo Bay but, as of now, we don’t know what he will do with the prisoners we’d like to release, much less how he plans to handle those we still consider dangerous terrorists.
The takeaway from this mess is that we don’t have anything like the leverage we once thought we had. We are no longer trusted. Restoring that trust is going to be a long and difficult process. It promises to be one of President Obama’s toughest challenges.
Thanks a lot, Rummie!
Saturday, December 27, 2008
The “Yes We Can” Multiplier
By William Fisher
The year was 1961. The venue was the spacious, deeply carpeted office of the secretary of a major cabinet department – one of the “best and brightest” recruited by the newly installed administration of President John F. Kennedy.
The audience assembled for this morning meeting consisted of the department’s fifty or so most senior officers – those civil servants we refer to as bureaucrats, the ones who stay at their desks regardless of which party wins the White House.
“Good morning,” began the secretary. “I asked you here this morning because I want to share with you – and get your feedback on – a new policy idea I have.” His idea, he said, “has the potential to make a substantial contribution to our economy.”
Then followed fifteen minutes of way-down-in-the-weeds detail. Finally, having laid out his idea, the secretary concluded his presentation with the question, “What do you think?”
After what seemed an endless silence, the most senior audience member rose, cleared his throat, and said:
“That’s a brilliant idea, Mr. Secretary. In fact, I thought it was brilliant when I heard it from Herbert Hoover when he was Secretary of Commerce.”
Next month, similarly unfortunate meetings could be taking place throughout the government. The presenters of the brilliant new ideas will be some of the 3,000-plus political appointees tapped by President Barack Obama to occupy the top leadership positions in our hundreds of Federal departments, agencies and commissions.
Some of them may indeed present truly new ideas. But the chances are good that many of the brainstorms proffered to these career public servants will have been heard before.
Because, in the heady environment of every new administration, it’s all too easy to persuade yourself that you and your fellow appointees have a monopoly on wisdom.
And that means you are about to miss a huge opportunity. Because the career civil service folks who now report to you are the aggregate repositories of centuries of experience. They know where the machinery is and where the skeletons are buried. They are the folks – the only folks -- who know how to turn good policy into good programs that actually work.
Now, aside from peddlers of sub-prime mortgages, contractors who rip off the government, and governors who demand a quid pro quo before funding a children’s hospital, there are probably few groups as savagely maligned as career public servants. We blame them for Katrina. For torture. For failing to police the greed of Wall Street. For disgracing the Justice Department. For invading Iraq. For cozying up to the world’s worst dictators. For giving Osama his get-out-of-jail card.
But our scorn is sadly misplaced. In the vast majority of cases, the failures we seem so ready to attribute to our civil servants are the failures of their leaders – those “best and brightest” appointed by the president.
Now, no administration in our history has ever been immune from appointing a few total disasters to senior posts. But not since George W. Bush won the White House in 2000 have we have witnessed the magnitude of incompetence, indifference, arrogance, cronyism – even criminality – we have suffered during the past eight years.
The clueless “Brownie” of FEMA infamy became emblematic of the failure of leadership – but only emblematic. The Bush Administration had hundreds of Brownies hard at work giving government a bad name. Arguably, that was the only job at which they were wildly successful.
To be fair, however, the staggering mediocrity of the Bushies was not solely the responsibility of the president. Many of W’s nominees were Senate-confirmable, so Congress shares the blame for confirming them, and also for failing to hold them accountable by exercising any meaningful oversight.
Hopefully, the emphasis the Obama transition team has put on the combination of experience, imagination, and solid track records will help to improve the performance of government – at least that part of it the Bushies haven’t outsourced to private contractors.
We should dare to hope that this combination will bring us political appointees who understand that sound policies and exciting programs are worse than useless without solid implementation.
That means leaning heavily on – and really listening to – those who staff those programs -- the implementers. Our career government cadre.
Max Stier of Bloomberg News reminds us of the way Bush 41 addressed this woefully neglected constituency. He wrote:
Just days after his inauguration 20 years ago, the first President Bush gathered hundreds of the government's senior career executives at DAR Constitution Hall to praise their dedication, extol public service and ask for their help in governing.
"I'm coming to you as president and offering my hand in partnership. I'm asking you to join me as full members of our team. I promise to lead and to listen, and I promise to serve beside you as we work together to carry out the will of the American people," Bush said. "Our principles are clear: that government service is a noble calling and a public trust."
Obama, Stier wrote, “has signaled his own strong commitment to fostering public service -- to "make government cool again." As he begins his presidency, it would be smart for him to follow George H.W. Bush's example, personally meeting with senior civil service executives to explain his priorities, set expectations, and let them know their expertise and hard work will be needed to meet the many daunting challenges ahead.”
I agree.
Except that this job is too big for the president to tackle alone -- our government currently has about 1.8 million civilian employees. So this becomes a task for every one of Barack Obama’s political appointees -- and it can be a richly rewarding task.
Because the men and women of our career public service are weary of being the Bush Administration’s scapegoats. They are eager to be motivated, trained to perform to the highest standards, and ready to be held accountable.
Enlightened leadership can make “Yes We Can” their mantra too.
The year was 1961. The venue was the spacious, deeply carpeted office of the secretary of a major cabinet department – one of the “best and brightest” recruited by the newly installed administration of President John F. Kennedy.
The audience assembled for this morning meeting consisted of the department’s fifty or so most senior officers – those civil servants we refer to as bureaucrats, the ones who stay at their desks regardless of which party wins the White House.
“Good morning,” began the secretary. “I asked you here this morning because I want to share with you – and get your feedback on – a new policy idea I have.” His idea, he said, “has the potential to make a substantial contribution to our economy.”
Then followed fifteen minutes of way-down-in-the-weeds detail. Finally, having laid out his idea, the secretary concluded his presentation with the question, “What do you think?”
After what seemed an endless silence, the most senior audience member rose, cleared his throat, and said:
“That’s a brilliant idea, Mr. Secretary. In fact, I thought it was brilliant when I heard it from Herbert Hoover when he was Secretary of Commerce.”
Next month, similarly unfortunate meetings could be taking place throughout the government. The presenters of the brilliant new ideas will be some of the 3,000-plus political appointees tapped by President Barack Obama to occupy the top leadership positions in our hundreds of Federal departments, agencies and commissions.
Some of them may indeed present truly new ideas. But the chances are good that many of the brainstorms proffered to these career public servants will have been heard before.
Because, in the heady environment of every new administration, it’s all too easy to persuade yourself that you and your fellow appointees have a monopoly on wisdom.
And that means you are about to miss a huge opportunity. Because the career civil service folks who now report to you are the aggregate repositories of centuries of experience. They know where the machinery is and where the skeletons are buried. They are the folks – the only folks -- who know how to turn good policy into good programs that actually work.
Now, aside from peddlers of sub-prime mortgages, contractors who rip off the government, and governors who demand a quid pro quo before funding a children’s hospital, there are probably few groups as savagely maligned as career public servants. We blame them for Katrina. For torture. For failing to police the greed of Wall Street. For disgracing the Justice Department. For invading Iraq. For cozying up to the world’s worst dictators. For giving Osama his get-out-of-jail card.
But our scorn is sadly misplaced. In the vast majority of cases, the failures we seem so ready to attribute to our civil servants are the failures of their leaders – those “best and brightest” appointed by the president.
Now, no administration in our history has ever been immune from appointing a few total disasters to senior posts. But not since George W. Bush won the White House in 2000 have we have witnessed the magnitude of incompetence, indifference, arrogance, cronyism – even criminality – we have suffered during the past eight years.
The clueless “Brownie” of FEMA infamy became emblematic of the failure of leadership – but only emblematic. The Bush Administration had hundreds of Brownies hard at work giving government a bad name. Arguably, that was the only job at which they were wildly successful.
To be fair, however, the staggering mediocrity of the Bushies was not solely the responsibility of the president. Many of W’s nominees were Senate-confirmable, so Congress shares the blame for confirming them, and also for failing to hold them accountable by exercising any meaningful oversight.
Hopefully, the emphasis the Obama transition team has put on the combination of experience, imagination, and solid track records will help to improve the performance of government – at least that part of it the Bushies haven’t outsourced to private contractors.
We should dare to hope that this combination will bring us political appointees who understand that sound policies and exciting programs are worse than useless without solid implementation.
That means leaning heavily on – and really listening to – those who staff those programs -- the implementers. Our career government cadre.
Max Stier of Bloomberg News reminds us of the way Bush 41 addressed this woefully neglected constituency. He wrote:
Just days after his inauguration 20 years ago, the first President Bush gathered hundreds of the government's senior career executives at DAR Constitution Hall to praise their dedication, extol public service and ask for their help in governing.
"I'm coming to you as president and offering my hand in partnership. I'm asking you to join me as full members of our team. I promise to lead and to listen, and I promise to serve beside you as we work together to carry out the will of the American people," Bush said. "Our principles are clear: that government service is a noble calling and a public trust."
Obama, Stier wrote, “has signaled his own strong commitment to fostering public service -- to "make government cool again." As he begins his presidency, it would be smart for him to follow George H.W. Bush's example, personally meeting with senior civil service executives to explain his priorities, set expectations, and let them know their expertise and hard work will be needed to meet the many daunting challenges ahead.”
I agree.
Except that this job is too big for the president to tackle alone -- our government currently has about 1.8 million civilian employees. So this becomes a task for every one of Barack Obama’s political appointees -- and it can be a richly rewarding task.
Because the men and women of our career public service are weary of being the Bush Administration’s scapegoats. They are eager to be motivated, trained to perform to the highest standards, and ready to be held accountable.
Enlightened leadership can make “Yes We Can” their mantra too.
Monday, December 22, 2008
OBAMA’s 180 DEGREE TURNABOUT
By William Fisher
Key appointments announced by president-elect Barack Obama suggest that science will soon make a major comeback in the U.S. Government.
The outgoing administration of President George W. Bush has been harshly criticized by many members of the American scientific community for allowing ideology to distort or eliminate findings on such critical subjects as reproductive health, stem cell research, climate change, and a host of other environmental issues.
But Obama’s choices indicate that a hundred-and-eighty degree turn is in the offing. The change can already be seen in the president-elect’s first choices for scientific posts.
These include Steven Chu, head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Nobel laureate in physics, nominated to be energy secretary; John P. Holdren, a physicist and Harvard professor of environmental policy, who will serve as the president’s science adviser and as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology; Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist from Oregon State University, who will lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which carries out much of the government’s research on global warming; Eric S. Lander, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), who helped lead the effort to sequence the human genome; Dr. Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize-winning cancer researcher, former director of the National Institutes of Health, and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York; Lisa Jackson, tapped to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who is a former commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and who played a major role in implementing the state's program to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce emissions to 80 percent below 2006 levels by 2050; and Nancy Sutley, formerly deputy secretary for policy and intergovernmental relations with the California Environmental Protection Agency, to chair the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Dr. Varmus will also co-chair the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology along with Dr. Holdren.
Numerous other appointments are yet to come for science-based agencies including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the U.S. Public Health Service.
In a radio address in which he announced the appointments last week, Obama said, “It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.”
“Whether it’s the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create 21st century jobs — today more than ever, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation,” Obama said.
Most of the American scientific community has been at odds with the Bush Administration since it won the White House in 2000. In its 2008 statement, one of the most prominent of scientific organizations, the Union of Concerned Scientists, demanded that the U.S. government return to “high standards of scientific integrity in forming and implementing its policies. Breaches of this principle have damaged the public good and the international leadership of the United States.”
“To meet its obligation to serve the public interest, the government must have reliable scientific work and advice at its disposal, and provide the public with reliable scientific information. This requires the government to provide federal scientists with the resources and the professional environment necessary to carry out their missions effectively and honestly,” the organization said.
Among the most controversial scientific issues to confront the Bush Administration is its promotion of abstinence-until-marriage education programs. These programs receive about $158 million annually from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
But an investigation covering ten states by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that these programs are not reviewed for scientific accuracy before they are granted funding. The report found that only half reviewed the programs for scientifically accurate data on contraception, sexually transmitted infections and other information. It concluded that most state and federal efforts to assess the effectiveness of abstinence-until-marriage education programs "do not meet the minimum scientific standards" that experts say are necessary to be scientifically valid.
Commenting on that report, Dr. Michael Stebbins, Director of Biology for the Federation of American Scientists, told us, “Time after time, ideology has trumped science in a very ugly way during the Bush Administration. It is no surprise that the GAO finds major shortcomings in the abstinence only approach of the government. There are very real questions about whether this approach works. The evidence so far is that it does not, and this has an effect on, for example, whether we are fighting the spread of HIV-AIDS in the most effective way. But the White House – and members of Congress under its control – have move in lockstep to block science-based lawmaking.”
The GAO report is part of a multi-year series of findings that the Bush administration has often appointed poorly qualified people to head science-based agencies and has systematically manipulated science to comply with ideology.
For example, in banning federal funding for research on new stem cell lines, President Bush stated that “more than 60 genetically diverse" lines were available for potential research. Soon thereafter, then-HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson acknowledged that the correct number was 24 to 25. Still later, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni told Congress that only 11 stem cell lines were widely available to researchers.
Global Warming reports by the Environmental Protection Agency on the risks of climate change have also been suppressed. The White House added so many hedges to the climate change section of the EPA's report card on the environment that the then-administrator Christie Todd Whitman deleted the section rather than publish one she felt was scientifically inaccurate.
Defense Department officials presented misleading information on whether a functional Missile Defense System could be quickly deployed. A senior Pentagon official told a Senate panel that by the end of 2004, the system would be 90% effective in intercepting missiles from the Korean peninsula. But a year earlier, in April 2003, the GAO found the President’s plan unworkable and even dangerous. The Pentagon’s claim of 90% effectiveness “is not supported by any publicly available evidence, and it appears not to comport with the Pentagon’s own classified estimates,” the GAO reported.
Comments on Wetlands Policy from scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service on the destructive impacts of proposed regulatory changes have been withheld. Scientists at the agency, which is part of the Interior Department, prepared an analysis showing that a new proposal from the Army Corps of Engineers would “encourage the destruction of stream channels and lead to increased loss of aquatic functions.” But the then-Interior Secretary failed to submit the scientists’ comments to the Corps. The Corps subsequently issued rules that weakened key wetland protections.
After social conservatives campaigned to require women to be “counseled” about an alleged risk of breast cancer from abortions, the National Cancer Institute revised its web site to suggest that studies of equal weight conflicted on the question, despite the fact that the scientific consensus is that no such link exists.
A report commissioned by Congressman Henry Waxman of California charged that the Bush Administration manipulated many of the government’s numerous Scientific Advisory Committees to advance its political and ideological agenda. Examples include appointing unqualified persons with industry ties, opposing qualified experts, and stacking advisory committees.
The Bush Administration contends that these examples are isolated coincidences.
Key appointments announced by president-elect Barack Obama suggest that science will soon make a major comeback in the U.S. Government.
The outgoing administration of President George W. Bush has been harshly criticized by many members of the American scientific community for allowing ideology to distort or eliminate findings on such critical subjects as reproductive health, stem cell research, climate change, and a host of other environmental issues.
But Obama’s choices indicate that a hundred-and-eighty degree turn is in the offing. The change can already be seen in the president-elect’s first choices for scientific posts.
These include Steven Chu, head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Nobel laureate in physics, nominated to be energy secretary; John P. Holdren, a physicist and Harvard professor of environmental policy, who will serve as the president’s science adviser and as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology; Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist from Oregon State University, who will lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, which carries out much of the government’s research on global warming; Eric S. Lander, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), who helped lead the effort to sequence the human genome; Dr. Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize-winning cancer researcher, former director of the National Institutes of Health, and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York; Lisa Jackson, tapped to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who is a former commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and who played a major role in implementing the state's program to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce emissions to 80 percent below 2006 levels by 2050; and Nancy Sutley, formerly deputy secretary for policy and intergovernmental relations with the California Environmental Protection Agency, to chair the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Dr. Varmus will also co-chair the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology along with Dr. Holdren.
Numerous other appointments are yet to come for science-based agencies including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the U.S. Public Health Service.
In a radio address in which he announced the appointments last week, Obama said, “It’s time we once again put science at the top of our agenda and worked to restore America’s place as the world leader in science and technology.”
“Whether it’s the science to slow global warming; the technology to protect our troops and confront bioterror and weapons of mass destruction; the research to find life-saving cures; or the innovations to remake our industries and create 21st century jobs — today more than ever, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation,” Obama said.
Most of the American scientific community has been at odds with the Bush Administration since it won the White House in 2000. In its 2008 statement, one of the most prominent of scientific organizations, the Union of Concerned Scientists, demanded that the U.S. government return to “high standards of scientific integrity in forming and implementing its policies. Breaches of this principle have damaged the public good and the international leadership of the United States.”
“To meet its obligation to serve the public interest, the government must have reliable scientific work and advice at its disposal, and provide the public with reliable scientific information. This requires the government to provide federal scientists with the resources and the professional environment necessary to carry out their missions effectively and honestly,” the organization said.
Among the most controversial scientific issues to confront the Bush Administration is its promotion of abstinence-until-marriage education programs. These programs receive about $158 million annually from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
But an investigation covering ten states by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that these programs are not reviewed for scientific accuracy before they are granted funding. The report found that only half reviewed the programs for scientifically accurate data on contraception, sexually transmitted infections and other information. It concluded that most state and federal efforts to assess the effectiveness of abstinence-until-marriage education programs "do not meet the minimum scientific standards" that experts say are necessary to be scientifically valid.
Commenting on that report, Dr. Michael Stebbins, Director of Biology for the Federation of American Scientists, told us, “Time after time, ideology has trumped science in a very ugly way during the Bush Administration. It is no surprise that the GAO finds major shortcomings in the abstinence only approach of the government. There are very real questions about whether this approach works. The evidence so far is that it does not, and this has an effect on, for example, whether we are fighting the spread of HIV-AIDS in the most effective way. But the White House – and members of Congress under its control – have move in lockstep to block science-based lawmaking.”
The GAO report is part of a multi-year series of findings that the Bush administration has often appointed poorly qualified people to head science-based agencies and has systematically manipulated science to comply with ideology.
For example, in banning federal funding for research on new stem cell lines, President Bush stated that “more than 60 genetically diverse" lines were available for potential research. Soon thereafter, then-HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson acknowledged that the correct number was 24 to 25. Still later, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni told Congress that only 11 stem cell lines were widely available to researchers.
Global Warming reports by the Environmental Protection Agency on the risks of climate change have also been suppressed. The White House added so many hedges to the climate change section of the EPA's report card on the environment that the then-administrator Christie Todd Whitman deleted the section rather than publish one she felt was scientifically inaccurate.
Defense Department officials presented misleading information on whether a functional Missile Defense System could be quickly deployed. A senior Pentagon official told a Senate panel that by the end of 2004, the system would be 90% effective in intercepting missiles from the Korean peninsula. But a year earlier, in April 2003, the GAO found the President’s plan unworkable and even dangerous. The Pentagon’s claim of 90% effectiveness “is not supported by any publicly available evidence, and it appears not to comport with the Pentagon’s own classified estimates,” the GAO reported.
Comments on Wetlands Policy from scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service on the destructive impacts of proposed regulatory changes have been withheld. Scientists at the agency, which is part of the Interior Department, prepared an analysis showing that a new proposal from the Army Corps of Engineers would “encourage the destruction of stream channels and lead to increased loss of aquatic functions.” But the then-Interior Secretary failed to submit the scientists’ comments to the Corps. The Corps subsequently issued rules that weakened key wetland protections.
After social conservatives campaigned to require women to be “counseled” about an alleged risk of breast cancer from abortions, the National Cancer Institute revised its web site to suggest that studies of equal weight conflicted on the question, despite the fact that the scientific consensus is that no such link exists.
A report commissioned by Congressman Henry Waxman of California charged that the Bush Administration manipulated many of the government’s numerous Scientific Advisory Committees to advance its political and ideological agenda. Examples include appointing unqualified persons with industry ties, opposing qualified experts, and stacking advisory committees.
The Bush Administration contends that these examples are isolated coincidences.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
RICK WARREN: WHAT WAS OBAMA THINKING?
By William Fisher
Barack Obama’s choice of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the inauguration invocation was either the most cynical or the most naïve move the president-elect has yet made.
To begin with, this strikes me as a strange move for a careful guy like Obama to make. He didn’t have to make it. If he felt his swearing-in had to have some religious flavor to it, he could have chosen from a field of hundreds of respected clergyman. Like, say, Jim Wallis, or any number of African-American preachers who aren’t Rev. Wright.
So why this choice?
Here’s what the cynics would tell you, as posited by Hillary Rosen in Huffington Post:
“There is a new political reality for LGBT people to deal with and how it works will be a measure of the sophistication and capability of the community. It was never a community that represented more than 6 or 7% of the vote in most campaigns, and it seems the biggest numbers are achieved in districts that are already reliably Democratic. Raising and giving political money always helped the community to play a larger role at the table than its numbers would seemingly offer and yet in this new era of online fundraising, constituent fundraising has diminishing importance. So we saw lots of mollifying and calculating when it came to new Obama Administration appointees for other constituencies but to date not much more than a little handwringing when it came to LGBT appointees”
So the LGBT constituency is not all that important to Obama. It can be thrown under the bus and “change we can believe in” will survive. Where else does this group have to go?
Then there’s the Obama camp’s Cumbaya approach. We may each have fiercely different opinions about issues but we can all come together as Americans. We can, as they say, dialogue.
Now, I’m all for dialogue. It helps us understand where the other fellow stands, and how he/she feels and why.
But then what? Do I change my mind? Does the other fellow? Sometimes, on issues that are highly technical, or those we consider clearly peripheral, maybe. But not about any viewpoint or conviction we consider fundamental to who we are. If I meet a rabid racist who does a great job of explaining to me how he is just a product of his racist parents, I may understand how he got where he is, but would that persuade me to become a racist? Never. There’s a difference between sociology and conviction.
At that level, dialogue is not only irrelevant; it can be damaging. The struggle for civility and understanding can take political correctness to a whole new low. It can have the effect of homogenizing us.
Wouldn’t it be more honest if we just recognized that, on some issues, “getting to yes” just won’t work?
The Rick Warren issue is one of these. He may be doing lots of good works in areas like HIV/AIDS, alleviating poverty, advocating for action on climate change, et cetera. And we should be grateful to him for that. But similar work is being done by hundreds of other bona fide clergymen (and women) who just don’t happen to preach at megachurches.
What Rev. Rick chooses to say on January 20th is irrelevant. It’s all the other stuff we already know about – but won’t hear a peep about on inauguration day – that we’ll remember. It’s Warren’s views on issues like same-sex marriage and a woman’s right to choose that frame this mega-preacher in many minds. To millions who don’t agree with him, he’s little more than Jerry Falwell in a Hawaiian shirt.
Nothing he says is going to change that. And nothing we say is going to change him. Evangelicals will be happy; LBGT-ers will feel the stick in their eye.
Is this important? As Hillary Rosen points out, the LBGT community not an existential constituency for our new president. Moreover, inauguration preachers don’t make public policy; what they say on January 20th is usually forgotten by January 21st, if not sooner.
But symbolism is important, and it’s especially important for this particular inauguration. Regardless of how he may try to nuance it, Rick Warren is part of the constituency that was courted and won over by George W. Bush. And it was the enthusiastic support of this constituency that played such a major role in W’s journey to the White House. We can dialogue with them from now till The Rapture, but many of their ideas will still be anathema to most of those who elected Barack Obama.
So this is not change we can believe in. In fact, it’s not change at all. It’s more of the same. And that’s not what we voted for.
Obama’s choice of Rick Warren is a totally avoidable mistake of considerable proportion. The clergyman or woman who delivers the invocation next month could have been – should have been – a symbol of the values Obama believes in most deeply – the ones that won our support.
Rick Warrren is not that person.
Barack Obama’s choice of Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the inauguration invocation was either the most cynical or the most naïve move the president-elect has yet made.
To begin with, this strikes me as a strange move for a careful guy like Obama to make. He didn’t have to make it. If he felt his swearing-in had to have some religious flavor to it, he could have chosen from a field of hundreds of respected clergyman. Like, say, Jim Wallis, or any number of African-American preachers who aren’t Rev. Wright.
So why this choice?
Here’s what the cynics would tell you, as posited by Hillary Rosen in Huffington Post:
“There is a new political reality for LGBT people to deal with and how it works will be a measure of the sophistication and capability of the community. It was never a community that represented more than 6 or 7% of the vote in most campaigns, and it seems the biggest numbers are achieved in districts that are already reliably Democratic. Raising and giving political money always helped the community to play a larger role at the table than its numbers would seemingly offer and yet in this new era of online fundraising, constituent fundraising has diminishing importance. So we saw lots of mollifying and calculating when it came to new Obama Administration appointees for other constituencies but to date not much more than a little handwringing when it came to LGBT appointees”
So the LGBT constituency is not all that important to Obama. It can be thrown under the bus and “change we can believe in” will survive. Where else does this group have to go?
Then there’s the Obama camp’s Cumbaya approach. We may each have fiercely different opinions about issues but we can all come together as Americans. We can, as they say, dialogue.
Now, I’m all for dialogue. It helps us understand where the other fellow stands, and how he/she feels and why.
But then what? Do I change my mind? Does the other fellow? Sometimes, on issues that are highly technical, or those we consider clearly peripheral, maybe. But not about any viewpoint or conviction we consider fundamental to who we are. If I meet a rabid racist who does a great job of explaining to me how he is just a product of his racist parents, I may understand how he got where he is, but would that persuade me to become a racist? Never. There’s a difference between sociology and conviction.
At that level, dialogue is not only irrelevant; it can be damaging. The struggle for civility and understanding can take political correctness to a whole new low. It can have the effect of homogenizing us.
Wouldn’t it be more honest if we just recognized that, on some issues, “getting to yes” just won’t work?
The Rick Warren issue is one of these. He may be doing lots of good works in areas like HIV/AIDS, alleviating poverty, advocating for action on climate change, et cetera. And we should be grateful to him for that. But similar work is being done by hundreds of other bona fide clergymen (and women) who just don’t happen to preach at megachurches.
What Rev. Rick chooses to say on January 20th is irrelevant. It’s all the other stuff we already know about – but won’t hear a peep about on inauguration day – that we’ll remember. It’s Warren’s views on issues like same-sex marriage and a woman’s right to choose that frame this mega-preacher in many minds. To millions who don’t agree with him, he’s little more than Jerry Falwell in a Hawaiian shirt.
Nothing he says is going to change that. And nothing we say is going to change him. Evangelicals will be happy; LBGT-ers will feel the stick in their eye.
Is this important? As Hillary Rosen points out, the LBGT community not an existential constituency for our new president. Moreover, inauguration preachers don’t make public policy; what they say on January 20th is usually forgotten by January 21st, if not sooner.
But symbolism is important, and it’s especially important for this particular inauguration. Regardless of how he may try to nuance it, Rick Warren is part of the constituency that was courted and won over by George W. Bush. And it was the enthusiastic support of this constituency that played such a major role in W’s journey to the White House. We can dialogue with them from now till The Rapture, but many of their ideas will still be anathema to most of those who elected Barack Obama.
So this is not change we can believe in. In fact, it’s not change at all. It’s more of the same. And that’s not what we voted for.
Obama’s choice of Rick Warren is a totally avoidable mistake of considerable proportion. The clergyman or woman who delivers the invocation next month could have been – should have been – a symbol of the values Obama believes in most deeply – the ones that won our support.
Rick Warrren is not that person.
Friday, December 19, 2008
THAT PESKY TORTURE THING -- STILL
By William Fisher
On the heels of a bipartisan Congressional report blaming high-level officials of the Bush Administration for employing harsh interrogation techniques on detainees captured in the “global war on terror,” many of the world’s most respected civil libertarians called for the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the alleged abuses, and one of them, Amnesty International, released a detailed plan to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Amnesty’s four-part plan sets out recommendations for actions the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama should take during the current transition period, others immediately upon taking office, and still others to be taken during the first 100 days and in the first eighteen months of the new government.
Among the most problematic questions surrounding the issue is which U.S. courts will have jurisdiction to try alleged terrorists. The military tribunals set up by the Bush Administration are widely considered to be unfair and ineffective. Another thorny issue is where to send prisoners the U.S. government admits were mistakenly taken into custody and those it no longer considers to be national security threats.
Among the latter is a group of Chinese Muslims who have been held at Guantanamo for seven years. A Federal judge recently ordered them immediately released into the U.S. after the government said it could not return them to China for fear they would be tortured and could find no other country willing to accept them. The government is currently appealing that court decision.
Amnesty’s recommendations came as it was revealed that Bush Administration Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates – who has been nominated by President-elect Obama to remain in office – has also ordered the Pentagon to begin drawing up a plan to close the notorious Caribbean prison. During his presidential campaign, Obama said repeatedly that closing Guantanamo Bay would be a top priority of his administration.
In an interview with the television program “60 Minutes” last month, Obama declared “that America doesn’t torture and I’m going to make sure we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.”
The Congressional report, issued last week by the Senate Armed Services Committee, concluded that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking Bush administration officials were responsible for the harsh interrogations against captured terrorist suspects that took place at Guantanamo Bay and at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Rumsfeld had attributed such abuses to “a few bad apples” -- lower-level members of the military acting on their own. But the Senate report charged that Rumsfeld bears principal
responsibility for the prisoner abuses. Most civil libertarians regard these abuses as torture.
“Attempts by senior officials to pass the buck to low ranking soldiers while avoiding any responsibility for abuses are unconscionable,” committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said in a statement. The committee’s most senior Republican member is this year’s candidate for the presidency, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who concurred in the committee’s findings.
The committee concluded that the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib were “not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own.” Most of those low-ranking soldiers were found guilty by military courts and are currently serving prison sentences.
Rumsfeld’s “authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody," the report said. "What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely.”
“The message from top officials was clear; it was acceptable to use degrading and abusive techniques against detainees,” Levin said.
The report added that Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there.”
Following release of the Senate report, Amnesty International joined many other human rights advocates in recommending a thorough investigation of prisoner abuses by a 9/11-type independent commission. Sentiment for such a body appeared to be growing, partly because many in Congress fear that an investigation by Congress could become mired in partisan politics and because some members appear reluctant to risk their political careers by becoming involved in such a divisive and controversial issue.
Amnesty’s recommendations provide a timeline and conditions necessary to best attain truth and accountability.
“Closing Guantanamo, as President-elect Obama has pledged, is just the first step. For real change, the incoming administration and Congress must work together to fully expose the Bush administration policies as a step toward ensuring that the same abuses committed in the name of national security are not repeated,” said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. “Ending these shameful practices is not enough. To demonstrate that the United States is genuinely committed to human rights and to the rule of law, the new administration and Congress must end the secrecy that has obscured human rights abuses from public scrutiny and shielded those responsible from accountability. It is beyond time to finally shut down Guantanamo Bay and push the door open to truth.”
The Amnesty plan urged that, in the transition period and before taking the oath of office, President-elect Obama and his team should examine the options for establishing a comprehensive, independent commission to investigate U.S. detention policies and practices in the war on terror and. consider either establishing a task force in the Attorney General’s office or appointing an independent prosecutor to take action on pressing individual cases. These tasks should be completed during Obama’s first 100 days in office, Amnesty says.
The commission’s investigation should include activities conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other agencies, as well as the secret transfer of detainees – known as rendition -- between the United States and other countries. It should have access to classified material, subpoena power to compel the appearance of witnesses, and a mandate to make recommendations as to criminal investigations.
The Amnesty plan calls on the president to present a progress report to the nation within 18 months of taking office, and to provide a full report of the commission’s findings and recommendations by 2010.
In introducing its plan, Amnesty president Larry Cox said, “As the nation moves in a new direction, we must not forget the shameful actions of the past. Instead to fully learn from them we must know the extent of the illegality and vow to never repeat mistakes. President-elect Obama has a mandate from the American people for change and that begins with restoring the United States’ reputation as a country guided by the rule of law and human rights.”
The first installment of the Armed Services Committee report was issued last June, but the then-Republican majority on the committee effectively blocked release of the report’s concluding section. But even the first part of the report described a pattern of humiliation, abuse and even torture inflicted on detainees, and charged that these practices were a deliberate policy of the Bush administration – debated by mid-level lawyers at the CIA and the Pentagon, given legal cover at the Justice Department and approved at the highest levels of government.
“The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees," the Senate report said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted for the first time in September that she led high-level discussions beginning in 2002 with other senior Bush administration officials about subjecting suspected al-Qaeda terrorists detained at military prisons to the harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, according to documents released by Levin.
"Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority,” the Senate report said.
The panel’s investigation also suggested that the harsh interrogations methods used against detainees preceded a Department of Justice legal memorandum issued on Aug. 1, 2002 authorizing the CIA to use long outlawed tactics, such as the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, against prisoners in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions.
The committee’s report said an action memorandum signed by President George W. Bush on Feb. 7, 2002 opened the door to “considering aggressive techniques” by signing a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention did not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda and concluding that Taliban detainees were not entitled to prisoner of war status or the legal protections afforded by the Third Geneva Convention,” the report said.
Last April, President George W. Bush told an ABC News reporter that he had approved of meetings of a National Security Council's Principals Committee, whose advisers included Vice President Dick Cheney, then National Security Adviser Rice, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, former CIA Director George Tenet and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, where these officials discussed specific interrogation techniques the CIA could use against detainees.
Civil libertarians are pressing President-elect Obama to make good on his pledge to close Guantanamo Bay and investigate the prisoner abuses that occurred there, at Abu Ghraib and at other locations, including the CIA’s “black sites” – secret prisons believed to have been located in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
One such advocacy organization, Human Rights First (HRF), prepared a plan to close Guantanamo some months ago. Many other groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Human Rights Watch have long advocated the closing of Guantanamo.
Along with Amnesty, these organizations have urged President-elect Obama to implement “an unqualified return to America’s established system of justice for detaining and prosecuting suspects” when he fulfills his pledge to shut down the Guantánamo Bay prison camp and military commissions.”
In a letter delivered to the presidential transition team, the organizations state that they “categorically oppose the creation of any other ad-hoc illegal detention system or ‘third way’ that permits the executive branch to suspend due process and hold suspected terrorists without charge or trial, essentially moving Guantánamo on-shore.”
Prominent Constitutional scholars have voiced similar views. An example is Peter Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University law school. He told IPS, “I think it is critical to the health of American democracy that the historical record of 2001-2009 be set forth accurately and comprehensively with regard to the use and abuse of executive power by the Bush Administration. A congressionally authorized investigation, whether conducted within Congress or by an independent commission with subpoena power and adequate investigative resources is essential.”
Retired military leaders have been among those leading efforts to close controversial prisons and conduct detailed investigations of prisoner abuses. Among them is Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the first investigation of abuses at Abu Ghraib. Taguba said “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
On the heels of a bipartisan Congressional report blaming high-level officials of the Bush Administration for employing harsh interrogation techniques on detainees captured in the “global war on terror,” many of the world’s most respected civil libertarians called for the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the alleged abuses, and one of them, Amnesty International, released a detailed plan to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Amnesty’s four-part plan sets out recommendations for actions the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama should take during the current transition period, others immediately upon taking office, and still others to be taken during the first 100 days and in the first eighteen months of the new government.
Among the most problematic questions surrounding the issue is which U.S. courts will have jurisdiction to try alleged terrorists. The military tribunals set up by the Bush Administration are widely considered to be unfair and ineffective. Another thorny issue is where to send prisoners the U.S. government admits were mistakenly taken into custody and those it no longer considers to be national security threats.
Among the latter is a group of Chinese Muslims who have been held at Guantanamo for seven years. A Federal judge recently ordered them immediately released into the U.S. after the government said it could not return them to China for fear they would be tortured and could find no other country willing to accept them. The government is currently appealing that court decision.
Amnesty’s recommendations came as it was revealed that Bush Administration Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates – who has been nominated by President-elect Obama to remain in office – has also ordered the Pentagon to begin drawing up a plan to close the notorious Caribbean prison. During his presidential campaign, Obama said repeatedly that closing Guantanamo Bay would be a top priority of his administration.
In an interview with the television program “60 Minutes” last month, Obama declared “that America doesn’t torture and I’m going to make sure we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.”
The Congressional report, issued last week by the Senate Armed Services Committee, concluded that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking Bush administration officials were responsible for the harsh interrogations against captured terrorist suspects that took place at Guantanamo Bay and at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Rumsfeld had attributed such abuses to “a few bad apples” -- lower-level members of the military acting on their own. But the Senate report charged that Rumsfeld bears principal
responsibility for the prisoner abuses. Most civil libertarians regard these abuses as torture.
“Attempts by senior officials to pass the buck to low ranking soldiers while avoiding any responsibility for abuses are unconscionable,” committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said in a statement. The committee’s most senior Republican member is this year’s candidate for the presidency, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who concurred in the committee’s findings.
The committee concluded that the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib were “not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own.” Most of those low-ranking soldiers were found guilty by military courts and are currently serving prison sentences.
Rumsfeld’s “authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody," the report said. "What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely.”
“The message from top officials was clear; it was acceptable to use degrading and abusive techniques against detainees,” Levin said.
The report added that Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there.”
Following release of the Senate report, Amnesty International joined many other human rights advocates in recommending a thorough investigation of prisoner abuses by a 9/11-type independent commission. Sentiment for such a body appeared to be growing, partly because many in Congress fear that an investigation by Congress could become mired in partisan politics and because some members appear reluctant to risk their political careers by becoming involved in such a divisive and controversial issue.
Amnesty’s recommendations provide a timeline and conditions necessary to best attain truth and accountability.
“Closing Guantanamo, as President-elect Obama has pledged, is just the first step. For real change, the incoming administration and Congress must work together to fully expose the Bush administration policies as a step toward ensuring that the same abuses committed in the name of national security are not repeated,” said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. “Ending these shameful practices is not enough. To demonstrate that the United States is genuinely committed to human rights and to the rule of law, the new administration and Congress must end the secrecy that has obscured human rights abuses from public scrutiny and shielded those responsible from accountability. It is beyond time to finally shut down Guantanamo Bay and push the door open to truth.”
The Amnesty plan urged that, in the transition period and before taking the oath of office, President-elect Obama and his team should examine the options for establishing a comprehensive, independent commission to investigate U.S. detention policies and practices in the war on terror and. consider either establishing a task force in the Attorney General’s office or appointing an independent prosecutor to take action on pressing individual cases. These tasks should be completed during Obama’s first 100 days in office, Amnesty says.
The commission’s investigation should include activities conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other agencies, as well as the secret transfer of detainees – known as rendition -- between the United States and other countries. It should have access to classified material, subpoena power to compel the appearance of witnesses, and a mandate to make recommendations as to criminal investigations.
The Amnesty plan calls on the president to present a progress report to the nation within 18 months of taking office, and to provide a full report of the commission’s findings and recommendations by 2010.
In introducing its plan, Amnesty president Larry Cox said, “As the nation moves in a new direction, we must not forget the shameful actions of the past. Instead to fully learn from them we must know the extent of the illegality and vow to never repeat mistakes. President-elect Obama has a mandate from the American people for change and that begins with restoring the United States’ reputation as a country guided by the rule of law and human rights.”
The first installment of the Armed Services Committee report was issued last June, but the then-Republican majority on the committee effectively blocked release of the report’s concluding section. But even the first part of the report described a pattern of humiliation, abuse and even torture inflicted on detainees, and charged that these practices were a deliberate policy of the Bush administration – debated by mid-level lawyers at the CIA and the Pentagon, given legal cover at the Justice Department and approved at the highest levels of government.
“The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees," the Senate report said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted for the first time in September that she led high-level discussions beginning in 2002 with other senior Bush administration officials about subjecting suspected al-Qaeda terrorists detained at military prisons to the harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, according to documents released by Levin.
"Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority,” the Senate report said.
The panel’s investigation also suggested that the harsh interrogations methods used against detainees preceded a Department of Justice legal memorandum issued on Aug. 1, 2002 authorizing the CIA to use long outlawed tactics, such as the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, against prisoners in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions.
The committee’s report said an action memorandum signed by President George W. Bush on Feb. 7, 2002 opened the door to “considering aggressive techniques” by signing a memorandum stating that the Third Geneva Convention did not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda and concluding that Taliban detainees were not entitled to prisoner of war status or the legal protections afforded by the Third Geneva Convention,” the report said.
Last April, President George W. Bush told an ABC News reporter that he had approved of meetings of a National Security Council's Principals Committee, whose advisers included Vice President Dick Cheney, then National Security Adviser Rice, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, former CIA Director George Tenet and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, where these officials discussed specific interrogation techniques the CIA could use against detainees.
Civil libertarians are pressing President-elect Obama to make good on his pledge to close Guantanamo Bay and investigate the prisoner abuses that occurred there, at Abu Ghraib and at other locations, including the CIA’s “black sites” – secret prisons believed to have been located in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
One such advocacy organization, Human Rights First (HRF), prepared a plan to close Guantanamo some months ago. Many other groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Human Rights Watch have long advocated the closing of Guantanamo.
Along with Amnesty, these organizations have urged President-elect Obama to implement “an unqualified return to America’s established system of justice for detaining and prosecuting suspects” when he fulfills his pledge to shut down the Guantánamo Bay prison camp and military commissions.”
In a letter delivered to the presidential transition team, the organizations state that they “categorically oppose the creation of any other ad-hoc illegal detention system or ‘third way’ that permits the executive branch to suspend due process and hold suspected terrorists without charge or trial, essentially moving Guantánamo on-shore.”
Prominent Constitutional scholars have voiced similar views. An example is Peter Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University law school. He told IPS, “I think it is critical to the health of American democracy that the historical record of 2001-2009 be set forth accurately and comprehensively with regard to the use and abuse of executive power by the Bush Administration. A congressionally authorized investigation, whether conducted within Congress or by an independent commission with subpoena power and adequate investigative resources is essential.”
Retired military leaders have been among those leading efforts to close controversial prisons and conduct detailed investigations of prisoner abuses. Among them is Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the first investigation of abuses at Abu Ghraib. Taguba said “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
Monday, December 08, 2008
Hope For Homeowners? Not So Much.
By William Fisher
Amid the Bush Administration’s so-far faltering response to the current financial meltdown, the cause of this catastrophe has been all but forgotten.
In case you’ve lost it in the clouds of smoke and the avalanche of opaque financial jargon emanating from President Bush’s Treasury Department, the root cause was mortgages. Home loans marketed by deception by unregulated cowboy lenders. Loans to people who were encouraged not to understand what they were getting into. Bait-and-switch loans with low introductory interest rates set to balloon into the ionosphere a couple of years later. Loans many should never have had received and predictably were unable to repay.
But not to worry. Didn’t we all know that the credit cup would always runneth over and that the housing market could never go down, only up? Well, that’s the way we behaved and that underlying assumption finally resulted in what we now call the housing bubble.
The busted one!
Most of these toxic mortgage loans were not made by banks. They came from mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers. These entities were not regulated by any government oversight body. They were operating in the wild wild West of the housing industry. Many didn’t even require proof of the borrower’s income; in some cases, the sales pitch included lending you the down payment.
Once these guys sold a bunch of mortgages, they sold them to investors, including the big commercial and investment banks all over the world, which bundled them up and sold them again. It was the unabated greed of these big financial institutions and their advisors that ultimately made them victims as well as perpetrators of the disaster. When their investments turned out to be worthless – or of unknown value – they started worrying about the accuracy of their balance sheets, stopped lending money to anyone, and turned to the government for help.
The government obliged with the most massive bailouts in U.S. history. You still with me? The bankers were a big part of the gang that caused the housing bubble in the first place, yet were the first ones to be rescued with our tax dollars. Seven-hundred-billion of them.
All but forgotten in the Treasury Department’s frenzy to save Wall Street were those millions of homeowners who couldn’t make their mortgage payments and whose homes were being seized in foreclosure at a pace not seen since the Great Depression of 1929.
Treasury’s rationale for pouring its billions into the nation’s largest banks was to end the acute constipation in the credit markets. That bit of government largesse cost $350 billion. It came with no strings attached -- and no results either, unless you count using our tax dollars to acquire other banks and pay out dividends to shareholders. Meantime, these banks are still not lending – even to one another. Many are said to be “hoarding” money while waiting for another shoe to drop, and there is no indication that the flow of credit is likely to restart any time soon.
But there is at least one person who didn’t forget where this mess started. And, for her trouble, she is being quietly dissed by the Bush Administration.
She is Sheila Bair and her job is Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The FDIC, started by Franklin Roosevelt as one of his recovery weapons after massive bank failures in the Great Depression, is the agency that provides Federal guarantees to depositors of banks that fail. When Washington woke up facing a protracted recession or worse, Bair’s outfit quickly increased that insurance from $100,000 to $250,000 for each bank account. That’s one of the very few positive and successful moves yet made.
Ironically, Sheila Bair was appointed by George W. Bush. The term of this self-described moderate Republican runs through 2011, meaning that W. can’t fire her – though it appears he would if he could. She is currently far more popular with Democrats than she is with her own party’s leaders. Or with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
The reason: Bair has focused like a laser not on propping up banks but on rescuing homeowners. Her objective is to help stem the tsunami of foreclosures now putting people out of their homes and decimating entire neighborhoods as house values continue to drop like stones.
Bair has put forward a proposal to use $24 billion of the government bailout funds to help 1.5 million borrowers avoid foreclosure by guaranteeing modified home loans through the end of next year. This move is being opposed by Paulson and the Bush administration. So now Bair finds herself locked in a so far mild-mannered but potentially ugly duel.
There are two key elements to the Bair proposal.
First, delinquent borrowers who are two months or more late can arrange to have their monthly payments reduced to 31 per cent of their gross monthly income. To achieve that result, mortgage rates could be set as low as 3 per cent for five years. The rate would increase annually by one percentage point until it reached the prevailing market rate. Loan terms could be extended for as long as 40 years.
Second, as an incentive to servicers and investors to get with the program, the government would share up to 50 per cent of losses in the case of a default by a borrower who had been helped by the program. The FDIC would also pay servicers – the people who process mortgages -- $1,000 for each loan they re-worked.
Bair says her plan would initially help some 2.2 million borrowers to get new loans. The FDIC estimates that, after making allowances for re-defaults, 1.5 million borrowers would ultimately be able to keep their homes.
The plan would cost an estimated $24.4 billion, which Bair has proposed to fund with part of the $700 billion bailout fund approved by Congress.
Observers say there is already evidence that the Bair plan works. At IndyMac, a large California federal savings bank that failed last July, a total of 65,000 borrowers, or 10% of IndyMac's loan portfolio, were delinquent when the government took over. The FDIC has already modified 5,000 of these troubled mortgages, and incomes are currently being verified for another 20,000 delinquent borrowers.
Payments on the modified IndyMac loans have been lowered an average of $380 a month, Bair told Congress. In 70 per cent of these cases, affordable payments were achieved through interest rate modifications.
Bair says she is “hopeful that the current or future administration, or perhaps some combination of both" will be able to adopt her plan in hopes of preventing additional foreclosure distress.
President-elect Obama said on Meet the Press last weekend that he would address the foreclosure issue promptly if the Bush Administration failed to act by the date of his inauguration, January 20.
The FDIC has briefed the Obama transition team, but Bair says "We continue to have discussions" with the Treasury Department on the issue. However, her frustration has been barely hidden during various recent public appearances.
Bair’s is not the only plan to address foreclosures. Another is Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd's “Hope for Homeowners” plan, part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. Under that plan, troubled borrowers would be able to refinance into an FHA-insured, fixed-rate loan at 90 per cent of newly appraised home values, or what the borrower can comfortably afford. The government would be compensated with three per cent of the new loan amount for taking on the added risk and borrowers would pay annual insurance premiums of up to one per cent of the loan. Lenders would have to waive all prepayment penalties and late fees.
The Dodd plan, similar to one introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, has generally been rated favorably by consumer protection groups and by lawmakers on both left and right. The Dodd-Frank approach could operate effectively alongside the Bair plan.
Then there’s the “Hope Now” program -- an attempt to streamline and consolidate workout and mitigation procedures used by individual servicers. This initiative was launched last October by a private sector alliance of mortgage servicers, counselors, and investors. The alliance claims that its mortgage industry members prevented 225,000 foreclosures during last October alone, 13,000 more than the record the group says it set in September.
Hope Now claims it assisted approximately 1.7 million homeowners during the first ten months of this year and anticipates that the total by the end of the year will be 2.2 million, 45 per cent more than it says it helped during 2007.
However, considerable doubt has been expressed about the accuracy of these numbers and the overall effectiveness of the program. In a speech in San Francisco last week, the chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Ben Bernanke, characterized private sector initiatives such as Hope Now as “not very successful.”
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, some 1.2 million homes were in foreclosure during the second quarter of 2008, and that number is expected to increase, with another two million families possibly losing their homes to foreclosure in the next two years. These foreclosures hurt not only the families who lose their homes, but the national economy as well by depressing home values and consumer spending.
Sen. Dodd insists that both the government and the mortgage servicers need to do more to help distressed homeowners. "All of these measures frankly have not produced anywhere near the results we hoped they would," says Dodd, adding it's "terribly regrettable" that the Paulson is not behind the Bair plan.
Consumer advocates as well as most of the nation’s largest banks have also endorsed the Bair plan. Her proposal “is just an absolute no-brainer," said Martin Eakes, head of the Center for Responsible Lending. "There's just no reason why we shouldn't get it done.…”
But without Hank Paulson’s blessing, it’s likely that it will be an Obama Administration that does the doing.
Amid the Bush Administration’s so-far faltering response to the current financial meltdown, the cause of this catastrophe has been all but forgotten.
In case you’ve lost it in the clouds of smoke and the avalanche of opaque financial jargon emanating from President Bush’s Treasury Department, the root cause was mortgages. Home loans marketed by deception by unregulated cowboy lenders. Loans to people who were encouraged not to understand what they were getting into. Bait-and-switch loans with low introductory interest rates set to balloon into the ionosphere a couple of years later. Loans many should never have had received and predictably were unable to repay.
But not to worry. Didn’t we all know that the credit cup would always runneth over and that the housing market could never go down, only up? Well, that’s the way we behaved and that underlying assumption finally resulted in what we now call the housing bubble.
The busted one!
Most of these toxic mortgage loans were not made by banks. They came from mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers. These entities were not regulated by any government oversight body. They were operating in the wild wild West of the housing industry. Many didn’t even require proof of the borrower’s income; in some cases, the sales pitch included lending you the down payment.
Once these guys sold a bunch of mortgages, they sold them to investors, including the big commercial and investment banks all over the world, which bundled them up and sold them again. It was the unabated greed of these big financial institutions and their advisors that ultimately made them victims as well as perpetrators of the disaster. When their investments turned out to be worthless – or of unknown value – they started worrying about the accuracy of their balance sheets, stopped lending money to anyone, and turned to the government for help.
The government obliged with the most massive bailouts in U.S. history. You still with me? The bankers were a big part of the gang that caused the housing bubble in the first place, yet were the first ones to be rescued with our tax dollars. Seven-hundred-billion of them.
All but forgotten in the Treasury Department’s frenzy to save Wall Street were those millions of homeowners who couldn’t make their mortgage payments and whose homes were being seized in foreclosure at a pace not seen since the Great Depression of 1929.
Treasury’s rationale for pouring its billions into the nation’s largest banks was to end the acute constipation in the credit markets. That bit of government largesse cost $350 billion. It came with no strings attached -- and no results either, unless you count using our tax dollars to acquire other banks and pay out dividends to shareholders. Meantime, these banks are still not lending – even to one another. Many are said to be “hoarding” money while waiting for another shoe to drop, and there is no indication that the flow of credit is likely to restart any time soon.
But there is at least one person who didn’t forget where this mess started. And, for her trouble, she is being quietly dissed by the Bush Administration.
She is Sheila Bair and her job is Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The FDIC, started by Franklin Roosevelt as one of his recovery weapons after massive bank failures in the Great Depression, is the agency that provides Federal guarantees to depositors of banks that fail. When Washington woke up facing a protracted recession or worse, Bair’s outfit quickly increased that insurance from $100,000 to $250,000 for each bank account. That’s one of the very few positive and successful moves yet made.
Ironically, Sheila Bair was appointed by George W. Bush. The term of this self-described moderate Republican runs through 2011, meaning that W. can’t fire her – though it appears he would if he could. She is currently far more popular with Democrats than she is with her own party’s leaders. Or with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
The reason: Bair has focused like a laser not on propping up banks but on rescuing homeowners. Her objective is to help stem the tsunami of foreclosures now putting people out of their homes and decimating entire neighborhoods as house values continue to drop like stones.
Bair has put forward a proposal to use $24 billion of the government bailout funds to help 1.5 million borrowers avoid foreclosure by guaranteeing modified home loans through the end of next year. This move is being opposed by Paulson and the Bush administration. So now Bair finds herself locked in a so far mild-mannered but potentially ugly duel.
There are two key elements to the Bair proposal.
First, delinquent borrowers who are two months or more late can arrange to have their monthly payments reduced to 31 per cent of their gross monthly income. To achieve that result, mortgage rates could be set as low as 3 per cent for five years. The rate would increase annually by one percentage point until it reached the prevailing market rate. Loan terms could be extended for as long as 40 years.
Second, as an incentive to servicers and investors to get with the program, the government would share up to 50 per cent of losses in the case of a default by a borrower who had been helped by the program. The FDIC would also pay servicers – the people who process mortgages -- $1,000 for each loan they re-worked.
Bair says her plan would initially help some 2.2 million borrowers to get new loans. The FDIC estimates that, after making allowances for re-defaults, 1.5 million borrowers would ultimately be able to keep their homes.
The plan would cost an estimated $24.4 billion, which Bair has proposed to fund with part of the $700 billion bailout fund approved by Congress.
Observers say there is already evidence that the Bair plan works. At IndyMac, a large California federal savings bank that failed last July, a total of 65,000 borrowers, or 10% of IndyMac's loan portfolio, were delinquent when the government took over. The FDIC has already modified 5,000 of these troubled mortgages, and incomes are currently being verified for another 20,000 delinquent borrowers.
Payments on the modified IndyMac loans have been lowered an average of $380 a month, Bair told Congress. In 70 per cent of these cases, affordable payments were achieved through interest rate modifications.
Bair says she is “hopeful that the current or future administration, or perhaps some combination of both" will be able to adopt her plan in hopes of preventing additional foreclosure distress.
President-elect Obama said on Meet the Press last weekend that he would address the foreclosure issue promptly if the Bush Administration failed to act by the date of his inauguration, January 20.
The FDIC has briefed the Obama transition team, but Bair says "We continue to have discussions" with the Treasury Department on the issue. However, her frustration has been barely hidden during various recent public appearances.
Bair’s is not the only plan to address foreclosures. Another is Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd's “Hope for Homeowners” plan, part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. Under that plan, troubled borrowers would be able to refinance into an FHA-insured, fixed-rate loan at 90 per cent of newly appraised home values, or what the borrower can comfortably afford. The government would be compensated with three per cent of the new loan amount for taking on the added risk and borrowers would pay annual insurance premiums of up to one per cent of the loan. Lenders would have to waive all prepayment penalties and late fees.
The Dodd plan, similar to one introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, has generally been rated favorably by consumer protection groups and by lawmakers on both left and right. The Dodd-Frank approach could operate effectively alongside the Bair plan.
Then there’s the “Hope Now” program -- an attempt to streamline and consolidate workout and mitigation procedures used by individual servicers. This initiative was launched last October by a private sector alliance of mortgage servicers, counselors, and investors. The alliance claims that its mortgage industry members prevented 225,000 foreclosures during last October alone, 13,000 more than the record the group says it set in September.
Hope Now claims it assisted approximately 1.7 million homeowners during the first ten months of this year and anticipates that the total by the end of the year will be 2.2 million, 45 per cent more than it says it helped during 2007.
However, considerable doubt has been expressed about the accuracy of these numbers and the overall effectiveness of the program. In a speech in San Francisco last week, the chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Ben Bernanke, characterized private sector initiatives such as Hope Now as “not very successful.”
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, some 1.2 million homes were in foreclosure during the second quarter of 2008, and that number is expected to increase, with another two million families possibly losing their homes to foreclosure in the next two years. These foreclosures hurt not only the families who lose their homes, but the national economy as well by depressing home values and consumer spending.
Sen. Dodd insists that both the government and the mortgage servicers need to do more to help distressed homeowners. "All of these measures frankly have not produced anywhere near the results we hoped they would," says Dodd, adding it's "terribly regrettable" that the Paulson is not behind the Bair plan.
Consumer advocates as well as most of the nation’s largest banks have also endorsed the Bair plan. Her proposal “is just an absolute no-brainer," said Martin Eakes, head of the Center for Responsible Lending. "There's just no reason why we shouldn't get it done.…”
But without Hank Paulson’s blessing, it’s likely that it will be an Obama Administration that does the doing.
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