Was Ro Khanna The Only Member Of Congress To Vote No On This Travesty? We'll Never Know

Ro Khanna voted NO but the bill passed Monday by voice vote (so unrecorded and unaccountable, using a fast-track procedure for "non-controversial" bills). The Senate will move as fast as they can-- even without committee hearings-- to pass it there as well. I kind of thought we just elected a Democratic House so that stuff like a ban on free electronic tax filings wouldn't be able to pass Congress. No? I had hoped that Justin Elliott's ProPublica piece, Congress Is About to Ban the Government From Offering Free Online Tax Filing. Thank TurboTax, would shame some corrupt Democrats into withdrawing their support for the misleadingly named Taxpayer First Act (H.R.1957), a bonanza for the for-profit tax preparation industry. In the name of cyber-security, the bill-- whose legitimate purpose is to prevent the use of predatory private debt collectors for late taxes-- permanently bars the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system.

"Companies like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block have lobbied for years to block the IRS from creating such a system," explained Elliott. "If the tax agency created its own program, which would be similar to programs other developed countries have, it would threaten the industry’s profits." Consumer rights advocates were up in arms-- but... it didn't work. It passed the House Ways and Means Committee and quickly got to the floor and passed.

“This could be a disaster. It could be the final nail in the coffin of the idea of the IRS ever being able to create its own program,” said Mandi Matlock, a tax attorney who does work for the National Consumer Law Center.

Experts have long argued that the IRS has failed to make filing taxes as easy and cheap as it could be. In addition to a free system of online tax preparation and filing, the agency could provide people with pre-filled tax forms containing the salary data the agency already has, as ProPublica first reported on in 2013.

The Free File Alliance, a private industry group, says 70% of American taxpayers are eligible to file for free. Those taxpayers, who must make less than $66,000, have access to free tax software provided by the companies. But just 3% of eligible U.S. taxpayers actually use the free program each year. Critics of the program say that companies use it as a cross-marketing tool to upsell paid products, that they have deliberately underpromoted the free option and that it leaves consumer data open to privacy breaches.

The congressional move would codify the status quo. Under an existing memorandum of understanding with the industry group, the IRS pledges not to create its own online filing system and, in exchange, the companies offer their free filing services to those below the income threshold.

One member of the Free File Alliance explicitly told shareholders that the IRS “developing software or other systems to facilitate tax return preparation … may present a continued competitive threat to our business for the foreseeable future.”

The IRS’ deal with the Free File Alliance is regularly renegotiated and there have been repeated, bipartisan efforts in Congress to put the deal into law.

Those efforts have been fueled by hefty lobbying spending and campaign contributions by the industry. Intuit and H&R Block last year poured a combined $6.6 million into lobbying related to the IRS filing deal and other issues. Neal, who became Ways and Means chair this year after Democrats took control of the House, received $16,000 in contributions from Intuit and H&R Block in the last two election cycles.

Last year Intuit hired 53 lobbyists (including the notoriously sleazy Greenberg Traurig LLP) and spent $2,600,000 on lobbying. They also spent just over a quarter million dollars on legalistic bribes (campaign contributions), the biggest iff them going to half a dozen conservative-leaning Democrats, Zoe Lofgren, Bob Casey, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, Beto O'Rourke and Jacky Rosen. The three biggest non-incumbents they backed were also conservative-Dems-- Doug Jones, Susie Lee and Ben McAdams.

H&R Block was another big spender. Last year their PAC raised $371,260 and spent $318,950, top recipients all being members known for selling their votes, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Kevin Yoder (R-KS), Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO), Jason Smith (R-MO), Mike Bishop (R-MI) and Lacy Clay (D-MO)-- as well as $4,500 to Ways and Means chairman Richard Neal, a co-sponsor of the bill. Their biggest single contribution was a $12,500 check to the New Dems PAC and their second biggest contribution was to Linda Sanchez's PAC. Sanchez was an original co-sponsor of the bill. They also spent $4,040,000 on lobbying last year.

The Trumpanzee Regime And ProPublica-- Like A Vampire To Sun Light

A couple days ago, Spicy Spice babbled gratuitously that "Just because a left-wing blog makes the point of something changing, doesn’t mean it actually happened." It was referring to some ethical questions about the Trumpanzee family-- ethical questions Trump's attorney, Alan Garten, has already admitted were being dealt with-- having been reported by ProPublica. I suppose Spicy doesn't want to admit he knows what ProPublica is, despite the fact that they've won 3 Pulitzers for journalism and that they're respected by all "sides," at least by anyone looking for objective reality in reportage.

When ProPublica was founded a decade ago, Paul Steiger of the Wall Street Journal was hired as editor in chief. Questioned about the fledgling organization's ability to stay unbiased, Steiger told Jim Lehrer on Newshour that "Coming into this, when I talked to Herb and Marion Sandler [the founders, who are Democrats], one of my concerns was precisely this question of independence and nonpartisanship... My history has been doing 'down the middle' reporting. And so when I talked to Herb and Marion I said 'Are you comfortable with that?' They said, 'Absolutely.' I said, 'Well, suppose we did an expose of some of the left leaning organizations that you have supported or that are friendly to what you've supported in the past.' They said, 'No problem.' And when we set up our organizational structure, the board of directors, on which I sit and which Herb is the chairman, does not know in advance what we're going to report on."

The organization is, simply put, an independent nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. They responded to Spicy's gratuitous insult with a tweet story:

Was Preet Bharara About To Charge Tom Price With Stock Swindling When Trump Fired Him?

There was a lot of mystery and a lot of speculation around Trump and Sessions going back on their word and firing U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara this week. A lot of speculation. What was he investigating that spooked Trump enough to fire him after asking him to stay on his job? Silly people postulated that it was because Bharara is close with Schumer and that Trump and Schumer had a falling out. That's so stupid it isn't worth spending the time I just spent the time writing it. But yesterday Robert Faturechi, writing for ProPublica, seems to have gotten to the bottom of the mess. And it was something that isn't all that surprising-- the well known crooked dealings of the Trump Regime's HHS Secretary, Tom Price.

The Price scandal is hardly new. The Senate questioned him-- ineffectively about it-- and there was a lot of press as well. The NY Times' David Leonhardt dubbed him Dr. Personal Enrichment, while ripping apart his nomination. He pointed out that statistics and surveys show that the most highly paid sector of medical doctors, orthopedists-- like Price-- "suffer from a professional culture that does not live up to medicine’s highest ideals. Too many orthopedists are rich and think it’s an injustice that they’re not richer. This culture helped shape Dr. Tom Price, the orthopedic surgeon and Georgia congressman who is Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services." Anyone who's followed Price's career well knows it's been entirely based on rapaciousness and unadulterated greed and selfishness. As rich as Price is-- over $10 million rich-- "he hasn’t been content to make money in the standard ways. He has also pushed, and crossed, ethical boundaries. Again and again, Price has mingled his power as a congressman with his desire to make money."

Last March, Price announced his opposition to a sensible Medicare proposal to limit the money doctors could make from drugs they prescribe their patients. The proposal was meant to reduce doctors’ financial incentives to prescribe expensive drugs. (And, yes, if you’re bothered that your doctor has any stake in choosing one drug over another, you should be.)

One week after Price came out against the proposal, he bought stocks in six pharmaceutical companies that would benefit from its defeat, as Time Magazine reported. At the time, those same companies were lobbying Congress to block the change. They succeeded.

It’s a pattern, too. Price has put the interests of drug companies above those of taxpayers and patients-- and invested in those drug companies on the side.

Last year, he also bought shares in Zimmer Biomet, a maker of hip and knee implants. Six days later, according to CNN, he introduced a bill that would that have directly helped Zimmer.

In his defense, a spokesman for Price has said that his broker bought the Zimmer stock and Price didn’t find out until later. That’s certainly possible, but still not acceptable. Members of Congress bear responsibility for their personal stock transactions, period.

A third episode may be the worst. Price accepted a special offer from an Australian drug company to buy discounted shares, as the Wall Street Journal and Kaiser Health News reported.

He told the Senate that the offer was open to all investors, although fewer than 20 Americans actually received an invitation to buy at the discounted price. The stock has since jumped in value, and Price underreported the worth of his investment in his nomination filings. It was a “clerical error,” he says.

Even without any larger context, his actions are disqualifying. He’s repeatedly placed personal enrichment above the credibility of Congress. The behavior is substantially worse than giving money to an illegal immigrant (which defeated a George W. Bush nominee) or failing to pay nanny taxes (which scuttled a Bill Clinton nominee).

But of course there is a larger context. Price has devoted much of his political career opposing expansion of health insurance. His preferred replacement of Obamacare would reduce health care benefits for sicker, poorer and older Americans.

His views have a long history within the medical profession. For decades, doctors used their political clout to help block universal health insurance. They offered many rationales, but money was the main reason. Many doctors feared that a less laissez-faire health care system would reduce their pay.

It’s to the great credit of today’s doctors that they have moved their lobbying groups away from that position and helped extend insurance to some 20 million people. They understand that some principles matter more than a paycheck.

Or at least many of them do.

Yes, some-- but not ole Tom Price. And Bharara had launched an investigation in Price's shady stock transactions. Bharara was following up on a law that prohibits members of Congress using nonpublic information for personal profit. A ProPublica source says that "the investigation of Price’s trades was underway when Trump fired Bharara.

In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Price traded more than $300,000 worth of shares in health companies over a recent four-year period, while taking actions that could have affected those companies. Price, an orthopedic surgeon, chaired the powerful House Budget Committee and sat on the Ways and Means Committee’s health panel.

In one case, Price was one of just a handful of American investors allowed to buy discounted stock in Innate Immunotherapeutics-- a tiny Australian company working on an experimental multiple sclerosis drug. The company hoped to be granted “investigational new drug” status from the Food and Drug Administration, a designation that expedites the approval process.

Members of congress often try to apply pressure on the FDA. As ProPublica has reported, Price’s office has taken up the causes of health care companies, and in one case urged a government agency to remove a damaging drug study on behalf of a pharmaceutical company whose CEO donated to Price’s campaign.

Innate Immunotherapeutics’ CEO Simon Wilkinson told ProPublica that he and his company have not had any contact with American law enforcement agencies and have no knowledge of authorities looking at Price’s stock trades.

Another transaction that drew scrutiny was a 2016 purchase of between $1,001 and $15,000 in shares of medical device manufacturer Zimmer Biomet. CNN reported that days after Price bought the stock, he introduced legislation to delay a regulation that would have hurt Zimmer Biomet.

Price has said that trade was made without his knowledge by his broker.

In a third case, reported by Time magazine, Price invested thousands of dollars in six pharmaceutical companies before leading a legislative and public relations effort that eventually killed proposed regulations that would have harmed those companies.

Louise Slaughter, a Democratic congress member from New York who sponsored the STOCK Act, wrote in January to the SEC asking that the agency investigate Price’s stock trades. “The fact that these trades were made and in many cases timed to achieve significant earnings or avoid losses would lead a reasonable person to question whether the transactions were triggered by insider knowledge,” she wrote.

What federal authorities are looking at, including whether they are examining any of those transactions, is not known.

Along with the Price matter, Bharara’s former office is investigating allegations relating to Fox News, and has been urged by watchdog groups to look into payments Trump has received from foreign governments through his Manhattan-based business. Bharara’s former deputy, Joon Kim, is now in charge of the office, but Trump is expected to nominate his replacement within weeks.

California Drought, the "Bigger Water Crisis" & the Consumer Economy

Current drought status in the U.S. Note the color-coded legend in the lower-right portion of the graphic (source; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

I started to write a piece about a nice BillMoyers.com write-up of a good set of feature (and media-interactive) reports at ProPublica. The BillMoyers.com write-up is this:

California’s Drought Is Part of a Much Bigger Water Crisis. Here’s What You Need to Know.

It has an easy-to-follow question-and-answer format. The underlying ProPublica report is this:

Killing the Colorado

Both are worth your reading. Note that ProPublica report is actually a series of reports and interactive media explorations. Also, that the Moyers piece is also the next-to-last report in the ProPublica series.

The Moyers-ProPublica write-up makes a nice set of points, many of which are bulleted below, and many of which you know. Where the piece falls short is what this adds up to. Some of the details:

■ California is in a severe multi-year drought:

Most of California is experiencing “extreme to exceptional drought,” and the crisis has now entered its fourth year. In June, signaling how serious the current situation is, state officials announced the first cutback to farmers’ water rights since 1977, and ordered cities and towns to cut water use by as much as 36 percent. Those who don’t comply with the cuts will face fines, but some farmers are already ignoring the new rules, or challenging them in court.

The drought shows no sign of letting up any time soon, and the state’s agricultural industry is suffering. A recent study by UC Davis researchers projected that the drought would cost California’s economy $2.7 billion in 2015 alone. ...

And a little bit of rain won’t help. NOAA scientists say it could take several years of average or above-average rainfall before California’s water supply can return to anything close to normal.

■ It will take a lot of rain to make things "normal" again: "A half-decade of torrential rains might bail California out of its crisis..."

■ But the problem has huge structural components:

[T]he larger West’s problems are more structural and systemic. “Killing the Colorado” has shown that people are entitled to more water from the Colorado than has flowed through it, on average, over the last 110 years. Meanwhile much of the water is lost, overused or wasted, stressing both the Colorado system, and trickling down to California, which depends on the Colorado for a big chunk of its own supply. Explosive urban growth matched with the steady planting of water-thirsty crops – which use the majority of the water – don’t help. Arcane laws actually encourage farmers to take even more water from the Colorado River and from California’s rivers than they actually need, and federal subsidies encourage farmers to plant some of the crops that use the most water. And, as ProPublica has reported, it seems that “the engineering that made settling the West possible may have reached the bounds of its potential” — meaning that even the big dams and canals we built to ferry all this water may now be causing more harm than good.

■ According to the government agency NOAA, the drought is not the fault of global warming:

While there are mixed views on whether climate change can be blamed for California’s drought, a recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report found climate change was not the cause. Global warming has caused excessive heat that may have worsened the drought’s effects, but it isn’t necessarily to blame for the lack of rain. It’s true that recent years have yielded much less rain and snow than previous times in history, the NOAA report explains, but that’s just a result of “natural variance” and not necessarily because of man-made pollution. But in both California and the larger Colorado River basin, mismanagement of the water supply has left the West more vulnerable to both short and long-term changes in climate.

■ There are levels of "water rights," and depending on who you are, you have a higher or lower level of right to the water. The highest level of water rights are called "senior rights."

But the underlying rule of water in the West is that the first people to show up and claim it were the first people to get it, and everyone who came after took a place further back in line. Called “prior appropriation,” this remains the dominant thread in Western water issues, more than 100 years later.

For an example of the use of the term "senior rights," note this from the Wikipedia page on the Colorado River (my emphasis everywhere):

Rapid development and economic growth further complicate the issue of a secure water supply, particularly in the case of California's senior water rights over those of Nevada and Arizona: in case of a reduction in water supply, Nevada and Arizona would have to endure severe cuts before any reduction in the California allocation, which is also larger than the other two combined.

As another example, the water rights of many farmers are "senior" to the rights of many urban entities.

I'd like to comment on the third, fourth and fifth bullets above. Then I'll add this up (click to jump there).

The Structural Components to the California Drought

Before I deal with the climate change / global warming aspect, I'd like to draw your attention to the other structural components — yes, I disagree with NOAA — which are indeed real. Let's start with the river itself. The Wikipedia page dealing with the Colorado has a lot of great information in it. For our purposes, I suggest starting with this section, on Engineering and Development.

The Colorado River watershed. Note that it flows into Mexico, which also has rights to the water (source; click to enlarge).

In 1922, water from the Colorado was allocated by agreement. A later agreement added Mexico. A midway point was chosen (Lee's Ferry) and water measurements were taken. Those above Lee's Ferry were allocated half of what was calculated as the flow according to the measurement. Those below Lee's Ferry were allocated the other half.

In 1922, six U.S. states in the Colorado River basin signed the Colorado River Compact, which divided half of the river's flow to both the Upper Basin (the drainage area above Lee's Ferry, comprising parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming and a small portion of Arizona) and the Lower Basin (Arizona, California, Nevada, and parts of New Mexico and Utah). Each was given rights to 7.5 million acre feet (9.3 km³) of water per year, a figure believed to represent half of the river's minimum flow at Lee's Ferry. This was followed by a U.S.–Mexico treaty in 1944, allocating 1.5 million acre feet (1.9 km³) of Colorado River water to the latter country per annum. Arizona refused to ratify the Colorado River Compact in 1922 because it feared that California would take too much of the lower basin allotment; in 1944 a compromise was reached in which Arizona would get a firm allocation of 2.8 million acre feet (3.5 km³), but only if California's 4.4-million-acre-foot (5.4 km³) allocation was prioritized during drought years. These and nine other decisions, compacts, federal acts and agreements made between 1922 and 1973 form what is now known as the Law of the River.

The sum of the water rights by state are expressed in the table next to the paragraph that starts "The Lower Basin states also sought". Note that these are absolute volume numbers, expressed in "million acre-feet" of water. The problem is that the measurement was taken during a very wet set of years:

When the Colorado River Compact was drafted in the 1920s, it was based on barely 30 years of streamflow records that suggested an average annual flow of 17.5 million acre feet (21.6 km³) past Lee's Ferry. Modern studies of tree rings revealed that those three decades were probably the wettest in the past 500 to 1,200 years and that the natural long-term annual flow past Lee's Ferry is probably closer to 13.5 million acre feet (16.7 km³), as compared to the natural flow at the mouth of 16.3 million acre feet (20.1 km³). This has resulted in more water being allocated to river users than actually flows through the Colorado. Droughts have exacerbated the issue of water over-allocation, including one in the 1950s, which saw several consecutive years of notably low water and has often been used in planning for "a worst-case scenario".

Bottom line: Given the fact of increasing climate change, there will never be as much water in the Colorado River watershed as there was in 1922.

Other structural elements to the drought problem include:

• Colorado River water is overused, lost and wasted (click to see numbers).
• Urban growth in California and the Southwest generally has been strong.
• "Use it or lose it" water laws encourage farmers to overwater their fields.
• The U.S. government subsidizes the planting of very "thirsty" crops.
• California farmers have "senior water rights" and use much more than half of the water from the watershed.

All of these elements are discussed in the ProPublica report. There is a terrific set of info-graphics here with easy to scan data. Click the "See more" links for interesting added information.

Taking Issue with NOAA on the "Not Global Warming" Explanation

I'll keep this brief. The NOAA analysis that global warming isn't "the cause" is written up in this Mother Jones article:

Climate scientists have warned for years that rising greenhouse gas concentrations will lead to more frequent and severe droughts in many parts of the world. Although it's generally very difficult to attribute any one weather event to the broader global warming trend, over the last couple of years a body of research has emerged to assess the link between man-made climate change and the current California drought. There are signs that rising temperatures (so far, 2014 is the hottest year on record both for California and globally) and long-term declines in soil moisture, both linked to greenhouse gas emissions, may have made the impact of the drought worse.

But according to new research by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California's drought was primarily produced by a lack of precipitation driven by natural atmospheric cycles that are unrelated to man-made climate change. In other words, climate change may have worsened the impacts of the drought, but it isn't the underlying cause.

Even Mother Jones, in the first paragraph, does a yes-but on that analysis. Much of what NOAA says in its report is correct. But note this (Mother Jones again; my emphasis):

Over the last three years, Seager said, unpredictable atmospheric circulation patterns, combined with La Niña, formed high-pressure systems in winter over the West Coast, blocking storms from the Pacific that would have brought rain to California. The result has been the second-lowest three-year winter precipitation total since record-keeping began in 1895. But that pattern doesn't match what models predict as an outcome of climate change, said Seager. In fact, the study's models indicate that as global warming proceeds, winter precipitation in California is actually predicted to increase, thanks to an increased likelihood of low-pressure systems that allow winter storms to pass from the ocean to the mainland.

Maybe. Or maybe the models could be wrong, less sophisticated than they need to be, as all of these IPCC models were in predicting collapse of Arctic ice:

Collapse of Arctic sea ice extent. The blue area shows the range of data predicted by 13 IPCC models. The black line shows the mean of the model predictions. The red line shows observations through 2009. Data for 2012 fell below the 2009 mark (source; click to enlarge).

With climate, things are never as good as cautious people say they are. Scientists are inherently cautious by nature, and climate scientists are a battered bunch, so they tend toward extra caution. Common sense says climate, dryness of the entire Southwest via heat and lack of rainfall, is a consequence of global warming.

So me, I go with common sense. The drought in the American Southwest is a confluence of bad things, one of which is climate change, global warming — and that's the one that won't go away, that will constantly tighten the screw, until we deal with it directly. There will be upticks in rain and downticks in heat. But the trend? I think you'd have to be prepared to eat your words if you say the ravages of climate change weren't a deciding factor going forward.

Which leads to our final point...

Those "Senior Water Rights" Are the Tip of the Social Contract War

Consider — the population of the American Southwest, not just California, continues to grow. Water continues to be less and less available. Competing interests — some very very wealthy, like the big farmers and the big oil companies doing the fracking — are in a classic neo-liberal struggle for resources (and the source of their wealth) with ordinary people, like the urban dwellers of Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Las Vegas.

Urban people need water to live, and by and large, they're willing to share the sacrifice with others in the state. The entitled wealthy, however, the major corporations, the mega-rich farmers, some of which are hedge funds, by and large aren't.

First, anecdotally, from the Moyers-ProPublica article:

Well, if you believe Steve Yuhas, a resident of affluent Rancho Santa Fe, California, “we’re not all equal when it comes to water.” (Yuhas made the unfortunate mistake of complaining on social media that he and his neighbors deserve more water because they pay more property taxes, and “should not be forced to golf on brown lawns,” and was pilloried by readers of the Washington Post article that drew attention to his comments.)

The "shouldn't have to golf on brown lawns" comment says it all. Less anecdotally:

California Water Districts Just Sued the State Over Cuts to Farmers

Drama on the California drought front: On Friday, a group of water districts sued the State Water Resources Control Board in response to an order prohibiting some holders of senior water rights from pumping out of some lakes and rivers.

"This is our water," said Steve Knell, general manager of Oakdale Irrigation District, to KQED's Lauren Sommer. "We believe firmly in that fact and we are very vested in protecting that right."

Water allotments in the Golden State are based on a byzantine system of water rights that prioritizes senior water rights holders, defined as individuals, companies, and water districts that laid claim to the water before 1914. Typically, those with the oldest permits are the first to get water and the last to see it curtailed.

But on June 12, the state ordered the 114 senior water rights holders with permits dating back to 1903 to stop pumping water from the San Joaquin and Sacramento watersheds, a normally fertile area encompassing most of northern California. "There are some that have no alternative supplies and will have to stop irrigating crops," admitted Tom Howard, executive director of the State Water Resources Control Board. "There are others that have stored water or have wells that they can fall back on. It's going to be a different story for each one and a struggle for all of them." This is the first time since 1977 that the state has enacted curtailments on senior holders.

In response, an umbrella group called the San Joaquin Tributaries Authority (which includes the Oakdale Irrigation District) has sued the state.

It's all on display in that story, the song of the very very rich — "I, me, me, mine." The social war has started.

The Bottom Lines, and The Bottom Line

I have bottom lines for you, and a bottom line below that. This ProPublica piece has a modest set of solutions to a problem the authors think in time might go away, maybe. These include:

• Farmers could be more efficient, plant less water-hogging crops.
• Consumers could eat less meat (consider the water that's poured into feed).
• Public officials could reconsider "use it or lose it" water laws.
• The government could create a "competitive water market."
• Government at all levels could invest in "conservation technologies."

Keep your eye on that "competitive water market." It's the preferred solution of people with most of the money. It's also a trap, a way to delay real solutions.

If you think climate change will constantly turn the screw until the social contract breaks in the Southwest, do you see these as actual solutions, as more than just good things to do? I don't. They are good things, but as "solutions" they are very modest.

Here's what's more likely to happen, and more likely to work. These are the "bottom lines" mentioned above:

▪ The social contract will break in California and the rest of the Southwest (and don't forget Mexico, which also has water rights from the Colorado and a reason to contest them). This will occur even if the fastest, man-on-the-moon–style conversion to renewables is attempted starting tomorrow.

This means, the very very rich will take the best for themselves and leave the rest of us to marinate in the consequences — to hang, in other words. (For a French-Saudi example of that, read this. Typical "the rich are always entitled" behavior.) This means war between the industries, regions, classes. The rich didn't get where they are, don't stay where they are, by surrender.

▪ Government will have to decide between the wealthy and the citizenry. How do you expect that to go?

▪ Government dithering and the increase in social conflict will delay real solutions until a wake-up moment. Then the real market will kick in — the market for agricultural land and the market for urban property. Both will start to decline in absolute value. If there's a mass awareness moment when all of a sudden people in and out of the Southwest "get it," those markets will collapse. Hedge funds will sell their interests in California agriculture as bad investments; urban populations will level, then shrink; the fountains in Las Vagas and the golf courses in Scottsdale will go brown and dry, collapsing those populations and economies as well.

Ask yourself — If you were thirty with a small family, would you move to Phoenix or Los Angeles County if the "no water" writing were on the wall and the population declining? Answer: Only if you had to, because land and housing would be suddenly affordable.

All of which means that the American Southwest has most likely passed a tipping point — over the cliff, but with a long way to the bottom to go. I wish the ProPublica piece, for all its virtues, had at least considered that set of outcomes. After all, their title is pretty drastic — "Killing the Colorado."

Now the real bottom line.

If We Try to Have Both "Growth" and Climate Solutions, We'll Have Neither

The real bottom line — the most far-reaching — is philosophical, but it gets to the heart of a huge debate in the climate war. Which means I'm going to have to expand on this point later. In basic terms, though, it's this.

The meme of the wealthy is that (a) climate proposals are a threat to "growth" — by which they mean literally GDP, but also by implication they mean "your big-screen, smart-phone lifestyle." And (b) losing "growth" is a line no consumer will want to cross; not the rich, not the poor, no one. This means that the wealthy think they have a trump card, and you see it played, for example, in those Exxon and oil industry commercials hosted by "Lying Pantsuit Lady" — as in, "Like that television you're watching? Know where its energy comes from? Yep, oil is right there in the mix."

Can you hear the threat? "Fix the climate and you'll have to sacrifice your lifestyle. Can't have that ... there's a big game on this weekend."

In response, climate solution advocates counter with an argument that says, in effect, "But wait ... we've got a way to keep 'growth' and also fix the climate problem."

To which I say, "Not a good answer" (if you click, start at 4:25 for the quote). Accepting the anti-climate-solution assumption means offering only a subset of solutions available. What do I mean by that? Saying "we can have (consumer) growth and a climate solution" is only true ... if it's actually true. What if it's not true at all? Then what's the solution on offer? (Hint: There is none.)

Here's what's more likely, using the example of the case we've been examining, the case of California and the American Southwest:

▪ Any attempt to have (consumer) "growth" and a climate solution means we'll have neither. Put differently, all fast, effective climate solutions will involve some sacrifice of the consumer economy. The only way to guarantee "growth" in the consumer economy is to have a slow and ineffective solution — until it all comes apart.

Note that the "consumer economy" is not the whole economy, meaning aggregate GDP. Did the World War II economy involve "growth" in a consumer goods sense? Obviously not, yet we survived and even thrived. The country cleared all the debris of the Great Depression in one swoop. All it took was willingness to sacrifice, something the American people were happy to do, given the alternative.

So too with the climate solutions war. To win that will take sacrifice. Something people will be willing to do once climate awareness reaches critical mass. We just have to stop listening to people who sing this song:

Thank you, George Harrison.

They don't have our interests at heart in any case.

GP

"In Gitmo Opinion, Two Versions of Reality": The Obama DoJ screws up (and I heard about it on public radio)

Ideological hack Juan Williams has no reason to complain about his sacking by NPR. Now he's got his cushy $2 million from the Fox Noise propaganda shop, where he fits right in.

by Ken

Isn't it amazing that the Right-Wing Noise Machine can literally make a federal case of NPR's firing of ideologicay whackjob and nitwit Juan Williams? Now NPR is under fire from the usual suspects, spearheaded as always by Fox Noise, in its never-ending crusade to masquerade unmitigated right-wing propaganda as "fair and balanced." (ThinkProgress's Progress Report did a fine recap today, "Beneath Juan Williams' Reality.")

The real complaint to be made about NPR is how centristically milquetoast-y it tends to be. The thing to remember about Juan Williams is that the network had to force him to relinquish his wildly inappropriate "senior national correspondent" status in favor of "analyst" status, though the newer moniker isn't any more accurate. He doesn't "analyze" anything; he just upchucks his cretinous prejudices. Now, of course, he was able to leap into the $2 million embrace of Fox Noise, where his puke is regarded as fancy eatin'. Meanwhile the political arm of the movement beats up on NPR, and while public radio isn't in immediate jeopardy, don't kid yourself, this will hurt, not just at the national level but, perhaps more ominously, at the local fund-raising level.

Or maybe it will inspire more local listeners who are in favor of actual use of the human brain to rally to their stations' support. For once I can breathe easy, having only recently done my renewal -- after the first notification! -- to my local public radio station, WNYC, New York, just ahead of the fall pledge drive, so for once I haven't had to sweat that either.

I mention this because for a week and a half now I've been pushing back from day to day writing about story I happened to hear one day while I was home with the radio on, and WNYC's Brian Lehrer had ProPublica reporter Dafna Linzer as a guest to talk about her new piece, "In Gitmo Opinion, Two Versions of Reality, describing an apparently unprecedented redaction of a federal District Court judge's decision, under pressure from the Obama Justice Department, without any trace left of the original decision by Judge Harry Kennedy Jr. of the D.C. District, leaving a final version that in significant ways substantially misrepresents the facts -- and without any indication that there was an earlier decision, or any indication (contrary to standard practice) of where redactions for national-security purposes occurred.

Former Washington Post national security reporter Dafna Linzer, now a senior reporter for ProPublica, talks to WNYC's Brian Lehrer on Oct. 8 about two startlingly different versions of a judicial decision that ordered the release of a Gitmo detainee.

The case involved the habeas corpus application of Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, "a Yemeni held without charges for nearly eight years," "accused by two U.S. administrations of being an al-Qaida fighter and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden." Uthman "is among 48 detainees the Obama administration has deemed too dangerous to release but 'not feasible for prosecution.'"

A day after his March 16 order was filed on the court's electronic docket, Kennedy's opinion vanished. Weeks later, a new ruling appeared in its place. While it reached the same conclusion, eight pages of material had been removed, including key passages in which Kennedy dismantled the government's case against Uthman.

In his first opinion, Kennedy wrote that one government witness against Uthman had been diagnosed by military doctors as "psychotic" with a mental condition that made his allegations against other detainees "unreliable." But the opinion the public sees makes no mention of the man's health and discounts his testimony only because of its inconsistencies.

The alterations are extensive. Sentences were rewritten. Footnotes that described disputes and discrepancies in the government's case were deleted. Even the date and circumstances of Uthman's arrest were changed. In the first version, the judge said Uthman was detained on Dec. 15, 2001, in Pakistan by Pakistani authorities. Rewritten, Kennedy said in the public opinion that Uthman admitted being captured "in late 2001 in the general vicinity of Tora Bora," the cave complex where bin Laden was thought to be hiding at that time.

As Linzer subsequently explains, the geographical and chronological blurring seems clearly designed to make it seem as if it's possible that Uthman could have been involved in the Tora Bora fighting, whereas the actual facts make it essentially impossible, meaning that the government never had any kind of case, and knew it essentially from the beginning.

There seems general disagreement that DoJ screwed up the clearance of the original decision, which was submitted by the judge in accordance with normal procedure and held for three weeks, then returned with hardly any redaction. But then, as Linzer points out, "The judges themselves have very little insight into the process and no sway over what is redacted." Once Judge Kennedy's clerk received the processed decision, he added it to the court's electronic file, again in accordance with normal procedure.

Twenty-five hours later, the security office sent out urgent notices to attorneys and the judge that the opinion had not been ready for release and needed additional deletions. The decision was promptly removed from the public docket.

In a closed hearing in his courtroom four days later, Kennedy lashed out at the government for releasing classified information. He and Justice Department attorneys then argued over what to do, according to three sources familiar with the discussion.

Kennedy insisted that the reasoning behind his first habeas ruling be made public. But the Justice Department resisted releasing it in redacted form, arguing that blacked out portions would call attention to the exact material the government wanted to conceal.

Nobody disputes the government's right to withhold information on legitimate national-security grounds, the evidence of careful comparison of the two documents (ProPublica had a copy of the briefly posted but since disappeared first version) as well as the combined evidence of Linzer's sources (four, apparently) seem pretty conclusive that national security had little or nothing to do with what happened in this case. There seems rather to have been a whole lot of butt-covering.

The butts being covered were primarily from the previous administration's bungling, but the legal (or illegal) obfuscation was almost entirely the work of the Obama DoJ, for the simple reason that it wasn't until the Supreme Court's June 2008 ruling that the Gitmo detainees's right to habeas corpus was established. Then-candidate Barack Obama --

issued a statement calling the ruling "an important step toward re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus. Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy."

Even the seemingly simple and perhaps justifiable expedient of deleting witness's names can have a seriously falsifying effect.

To justify Uthman's incarceration, the government relied on statements from five current or former detainees who were previously discredited by judges in other cases, questioned by internal Obama administration assessments or found unreliable by military psychiatrists because they were mendacious, mentally ill or subjected to torture.

Kennedy's first opinion reveals that some of the government's evidence came from a detainee who committed suicide at Guantánamo three years ago after months of hunger strikes. In the second opinion, the detainee's name is concealed, making it impossible for the public to know he is dead.

I can't begin to do justice to the ins and outs of the case, which of course at every step is shrouded in a secrecy that Linzer reports is sometimes is applied as randomly as it is obsessively. The judicial experts she consulted seem pretty appalled by the government's behavior. For example:

Classification experts could not recall another case in which a second decision was secretly created.

"Reconstituting and replacing a judicial opinion without public notice is active deception," said Steven Aftergood, a classification expert with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. "There is a role for classification and there are things that need to be redacted, but there is never a justification for deception in the judicial process and that's what this is," Aftergood said, after reviewing both versions of Kennedy's ruling in the Uthman case.

It's a nasty story. I heard about it on public radio. I wonder whether Fox Noise has covered it.

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