"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
TPP Is Dead, and People Power Killed It
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Is TPP "just stunned" too. Not likely.
by Gaius Publius
Perhaps you've been reading about the demise of TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership "trade" agreement. I put trade in quotes because that's what it's called, but that's not what it is. TPP is, in fact, a monopoly protection scheme (think pharmaceutical patents and intellectual property), since we already have few or no trade barriers with the largest nations that were going to sign it.
Rumors of the death of this agreement have been circulating since the election, and I've been watching them carefully, wondering if by magic the deal would re-emerge. I'm now certain it will not. Some people, like Wall Street banker, Obama cabinet selector, and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, prefer to think the deal's not dead, just sleeping — or in Froman's phrasing, in "purgatory" and not in hell.
It's not sleeping; it's dead. And contrary to rumor, Trump didn't kill it. You did.
Lori Wallach, who is as cautious about this treaty as anyone I know, and as knowledgeable, just sent this to her list (my emphasis):
TPP RIP
Statement of Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch on the Demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Lame-Duck Session of Congress
The news that the White House and Republican congressional leaders have given up on passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is welcome. That the TPP would be defeated by Congress if brought to a vote signals that Trojan-horse “trade” agreements that expand corporate power and shrink Americans’ wages are simply no longer politically viable. People power beat the united forces of a U.S. president, the Republican congressional leaders and the entire corporate lobby.
The unremitting push by the Obama administration for the TPP right through this election helped to elect Donald Trump, but Trump has not derailed the TPP – people power united across borders did that. Six years of relentless, strategic campaigning by an international movement of people from the TPP countries united across borders to fight against corporate power is why the TPP is all but dead.
Thanks to years of campaigning by people across this country, since its February 2016 signing, the TPP could not garner a majority of support in the U.S. House of Representatives. And it was clear that the TPP was in trouble in 2015, when Fast Track authority for the TPP barely squeaked through Congress.
The TPP’s signing was delayed for years by vibrant civil society movements in other TPP nations that pushed their governments to reject TPP terms expanding investor rights, monopolies for pharmaceutical firms, financial deregulation and other threats. That meant time to organize, organize, organize. Over those years, millions of Americans helped to educate and organize their friends, families, and colleagues to demand their representatives opposed the TPP.
That the TPP pushed by the most powerful forces in the world is not being implemented represents the American public’s resounding rejection of trade policies that not only failed to live up to its proponents’ promises over the past 20 years, but caused real damage to working people and the environment.
The only way forward is to create new rules of the road for globalization that put people and the planet first while harvesting the benefits of expanded trade. And we must roll back the existing “trade” deals and extreme investor-state dispute settlement regime that have caused people and the planet so much damage. The coalition that stopped the TPP is powerful and united and will fight forward to deliver that change. And, we will be ready to take on any attempt to revive the TPP or advance other corporate-friendly trade pacts based on the same failed and outdated model of trade.
Wallach makes several important points that should not be missed.
One, your opposition to corporate "trade" giveaways to TPP gave Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump an issue they could run and win on. You did that.
And two, Obama's completely understandable but relentless push for TPP in the face of this massive populist opposition helped sink the Clinton candidacy, absent her full-throated opposition to it. The full-throated version never came.
And third, the next job is to roll back NAFTA. Trump has already promised that, using the threat of the Withdrawal Clause, which his team seems to have discovered. From "Donald Trump's Contract with the American Voter" (pdf; my emphasis):
Seven actions to protect American workers:
★ FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205.
★ SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
[...]
Here's clause 2205 in full, in case you haven't discovered it yet yourself. From the NAFTA text:
Article 2205: Withdrawal
A Party may withdraw from this Agreement six months after it provides written notice of withdrawal to the other Parties. If a Party withdraws, the Agreement shall remain in force for the remaining Parties.
Did you know we could have withdrawn from NAFTA all along? Clinton and Obama both knew it. Then, somehow, that fact was never mentioned again.
But onward, and congratulations! Thanks to you, TPP is no longer resting. It has joined the choir invisible. RIP.
Revenue from fossil fuel extraction on federal lands by state, 2013. Note the offshore areas as well; the Gulf of Mexico is especially lucrative (source; click to enlarge).
by Gaius Publius
"The question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late."
This is another piece with not many pieces to remember. Unfortunately, though, the connections between the pieces I want to show you are actively obscured. My goals is to put all three pieces in front of you and let you see what they add to. It 's not pretty.
My take-off point is something written by Farron Cousins at the excellent DeSmogBlog. But I want to use the version published at Naked Capitalism, including Jerri-Lynn Scofield's brief introduction. Please click through for the whole thing. I'm going to be selective so you can see what matters most with one glance.
Scofield's intro makes three points in succession:
[T]he US rise to the position of the world’s third largest fossil fuel producer, [is] in part as a result of the fracking boom. While Obama and company have squawked about climate change, administration policy has actually fuelled that particular trend in fossil fuel extraction.
The underlying New York Times article that sparked the author’s post ... comprise part of the ceaseless drumbeat of legacy journalism as the Obama administration stumbles toward its finish line. Am I alone in being absolutely sick of these assessments, which serve to whitewash what has been a very sorry presidency for progressives, featuring a long litany of disappointments?
That section contains the gist, the three pieces that I mentioned at the start.
Under Obama, the U.S. has become a fossil fuel-producing giant.
Obama is making pro-climate noise and doing anti-climate deeds.
Obama current legacy quest requires he do both — make the noise while doing the deeds.
What you see coupled in public are the legacy quest and the legacy words. What you see separately — never connected to the others — is the first point, fast-growing U.S. fossil fuel production, always touted as a plus. For example, Hillary Clinton put it this way in 2013, before she declared her candidacy, but after she left the State Department (emphasis added):
In Oneida County, Hillary Clinton touts U.S. oil-and-gas production
... Late into the lecture portion of Clinton’s Oneida County appearance, she referenced a report that the U.S. in on track to surpass Russia in domestic oil-and-gas production.
That’s good news, Clinton said.
“What that means for viable manufacturing and industrialization in this country is enormous,” she said to the crowd of 5,800 in Hamilton’s athletic field house.
The sellers of oil and gas, companies richer than god, usually sell increased U.S. fracking and oil production as providing "energy independence," an appeal to patriotism bereft of real love of country (similar to the way Budweiser beer, owned by a Belgian company, is now marketed as "American").
"American" Budweiser beer is owned and produced by InBev through an intermediary company, AB InBev, which is primarily owned by the Belgian company that makes Stella Artois ("the Budweiser of Europe").
In the same sense that Budweiser is "American," support for increased U.S. carbon extraction is "patriotic." Budweiser is Belgian, and fossil fuel extraction will destroy us.
Obama's Legacy Billionaires
President Obama is now on his "quest for legacy" tour. He's saying things that will burnish his legacy, like expressing support for opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) which has sparked all the protests, including those led by native American tribes. At the same time, he's doing things, like pushing hard for TPP, the top item on every mega-corporation's wish list, so that he can finance that legacy.
Interesting two-step, burnishing the legacy with words that finance-the-legacy deeds erase. Think I'm wrong? Let's look at who finances presidential legacy libraries, and at what price. According to the New York Times (emphasis mine):
With High-Profile Help, Obama Plots Life After Presidency
...The dinner in the private upstairs dining room of the White House went so late that Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn billionaire, finally suggested around midnight that President Obama might like to go to bed.
“Feel free to kick us out,” Mr. Hoffman recalled telling the president.
But Mr. Obama was just getting started. “I’ll kick you out when it’s time,” he replied. He then lingered with his wife, Michelle, and their 13 guests — among them the novelist Toni Morrison, the hedge fund manager Marc Lasry and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr — well past 2 a.m.
Mr. Obama “seemed incredibly relaxed,” said another guest, the writer Malcolm Gladwell. He recalled how the group, which also included the actress Eva Longoria and Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun Microsystems, tossed out ideas about what Mr. Obama should do after he leaves the White House.
Publicly, Mr. Obama betrays little urgency about his future. Privately, he is preparing for his postpresidency with the same fierce discipline and fund-raising ambition that characterized the 2008 campaign that got him to the White House.
The long-running dinner this past February is part of a methodical effort taking place inside and outside the White House as the president, first lady and a cadre of top aides map out a postpresidential infrastructure and endowment they estimate could cost as much as $1 billion. The president’s aides did not ask any of the guests for library contributions after the dinner, but a number of those at the table could be donors in the future.
The $1 billion — double what George W. Bush raised for his library and its various programs — would be used for what one adviser called a “digital-first” presidential library loaded with modern technologies, and to establish a foundation with a worldwide reach. ...
More — Obama wants to raise most of the billion dollars upfront so he doesn't have to do what Clinton did, engage in "endless fundraising":
Supporters have urged Mr. Obama to avoid the mistake made by Bill Clinton, whose associates raised just enough money to build his library in Little Rock, Ark., forcing Mr. Clinton to pursue high-dollar donors for years to come. Including construction costs, Mr. Obama’s associates set a goal of raising at least $800 million — enough money, they say, to avoid never-ending fund-raising. One top adviser said that $800 million was a floor rather than a ceiling.
A few more names:
So far, Mr. Obama has raised just over $5.4 million from 12 donors, with gifts ranging from $100,000 to $1 million. Michael J. Sacks, a Chicago businessman, gave $666,666. Fred Eychaner, the founder of Chicago-based Newsweb Corp., which owns community newspapers and radio stations, donated $1 million. Mark T. Gallogly, a private equity executive, and James H. Simons, a technology entrepreneur, each contributed $340,000 to a foundation set up to oversee development of the library.
And finally: "The real push for donations, foundation officials said, will come after Mr. Obama leaves the White House." How can you read that and not think, "When he presents the bill — the big ask — for what he did to please them."
But you can't appear to be craven, money-driven, and go on a world-wide fundraising and legacy tour. You have to appear to care about the people. Nor can you launch a foundation if it looks like you promoted billionaire-friendly policies so billionaires will finance it. Thus his many "burnishing populist cred" speeches, backed by mainly ineffective, but headline-grabbing, actions. Thanks to a compliant media, the speeches outshine the deeds, or are never connected together.
Which brings us to Obama and climate change. To take one example, in 2013 Obama gave what was billed as a major climate speech in which he said things that suggest he really does get it about climate. Just a few brief snips, but do read it all. It's a very good speech (again, my emphasis):
[I]n the late 1950s, the National Weather Service began measuring the levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, with the worry that rising levels might someday disrupt the fragile balance that makes our planet so hospitable. And what they’ve found, year after year, is that the levels of carbon pollution in our atmosphere have increased dramatically.
That science, accumulated and reviewed over decades, tells us that our planet is changing in ways that will have profound impacts on all of humankind.
The 12 warmest years in recorded history have all come in the last 15 years. Last year, temperatures in some areas of the ocean reached record highs, and ice in the Arctic shrank to its smallest size on record -- faster than most models had predicted it would. These are facts.
And:
So the question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science -- of chemistry and physics and millions of measurements -- has put all that to rest. ...
So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. And how we answer will have a profound impact on the world that we leave behind not just to you, but to your children and to your grandchildren.
As a President, as a father, and as an American, I’m here to say we need to act.
Sounds like he gets it, right? It's entirely possible he does. Yet this is the man whose "Clean Power Plan" relies heavily on transitioning to methane, another greenhouse gas, that when burned, becomes atmospheric CO2. And it probably doesn't hurt that Exxon is the "largest natural gas producer in the U.S." Are you remembering the "legacy billionaires"? I don't think Obama has forgotten them.
Obama and the Dakota Access Pipeline
Keep Obama's excellent words in mind when you read the DAPL news as it evolves. If the DAPL pipeline is completed, the money giants financing it are "banking on being able to drill and
frack for the oil ... over the coming decades," according to Hugh MacMillan, a senior researcher with Food & Water Watch (quoted here).
Remember that — supplying oil and gas, all to be burned, for "decades."
That's both dangerous (toxic, really) and lucrative. So, which banks are involved? MacMillan again:
Citibank is the bank that’s been running the books on the project, and that’s the bank that beat the bushes and got other banks to join in. So, we have Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, SunTrust, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Mizuho Bank, TD Securities, ABN AMRO Capital, DNB First Bank—and that’s actually a bank based in Philly; it’s not the DNB Bank based in Norway, which is actually provided several hundred million to the Energy Transfer family separately—and ICBC London, SMBC Nikko Securities and Société Générale.
All of these names are candidates for the Obama legacy fund donor list, donors to the fund from which the Obama library and Obama foundation will spring. There has emerged some reasonably good (and headline-grabbing) news from the administration lately, but many are calling this news just posturing.
How will you know whether the administration is serious or not about standing with native Americans, and all Americans, in ending this project? When it ends the project using the authority it has without mass civil disobedience forcing them to do it. Or when the money a completed pipeline generates flows to its financers — Citibank, Wells Fargo, et al. Keep watching.
Despite His Words, Obama Won't End Extraction on Federal Lands
Which brings us to the end of Farron Cousin's piece. He rightly takes the president to task for saying good words and doing the worst of bad deeds when it comes to fossil fuel extraction on federal lands. Obama not only enables the carbon industry, he acts as one of their primary suppliers:
President Obama’s shortcomings on climate change action could be forgiven or even dismissed, if it weren’t for his administration’s willingness to open up federal lands and waters to fossil fuel industry exploitation. ...
Looking at some of the numbers on this issue reveals a pro-industry approach toward energy production. When President Obama took office in 2009, domestic oil production was at about 5.1 million barrels a day. By April of 2016, that number had climbed to 8.9 million barrels a day, which CNN notes is a 74 percent increase in just 7 years.
Meanwhile, the government is still auctioning offshore oil and gas leases, even after President Obama presided over the largest ever oil spill in U.S. waters. Fracking continues its incredible boom, despite reports showing a rise in human-caused earthquakes related to fracking wastewater injections.
Yet fossil fuel extraction from federal landand water, overseen by the Department of the Interior, accounts for more than 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. From a study (pdf) commissioned by the Center for American Progress and The Wilderness Society:
Today, taxpayer-owned gas, oil, and coal extracted from federal lands and waters by private companies are one of the nation’s most significant sources of GHG emissions, accounting for more than one-fifth of all U.S. GHG emissions.[2] The U.S. Department of the Interior, or DOI, which has jurisdiction over the nation’s public lands, has no comprehensive plan to measure, monitor, and reduce the total volume of GHG emissions that result from the leasing and development of federal energy resources.
The study also notes:
• Federal lands and waters could have accounted for 24 percent of all energy-related GHG emissions in the United States in 2012.
• Combustion of coal from federal lands accounts for more than 57 percent of all emissions from fossil-fuel production on federal lands.
• Methane pollution from venting and flaring from onshore federal leases rose more than 51 percent between 2008 and 2013, according to government data.
So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. ... As a President, as a father, and as an American, I’m here to say we need to act.
In light of Obama's deeds, what else can you see in his words, but a quest for an undeserved pro-climate legacy, financed in future years by anti-climate billionaires and their friends.
Obama's Real Legacy
Farron Cousins notes several ways in which Obama has been a "disappointment." There are many more, including the constant attempts to cut Social Security before he folded that tent. After all, just as it took Nixon to go to China; it takes a Democrat to cut Social Security, and Obama gave it a very good try for years.
So how will he be remembered? Will Barack Obama be remembered by his words and the twin ad campaigns that bookmark his presidency, the one that launched it, for example here...
I don't think Will.I.Am had any idea that Obama would follow his campaign's frequent "Yes, we can" with a frequent presidential "But no, I won't."
...and the one that will end it, the legacy quest you're now reading about?
Or will he be remembered for what he really did, and not what he appeared to do? Here's James Galbraith's bleak assessment (my emphasis):
And the President too is a young man. Unlike say Lyndon B. Johnson or Jimmy Carter, when his term ends he won't be able simply to go home. He'll need a big house in a gated suburb, with high walls and rich friends. And a good income, too, from book deals and lecture fees. He may be thinking about that now. ... [But] it won't save him. For if and when he ventures out, for the rest of his life, the eyes of all those, whose hopes he once raised will follow him. The old, the poor, the jobless, the homeless: their eyes will follow him wherever he goes.
Galbraith was writing about Obama when he faces those he wanted to deprive of Social Security benefits. But he could also be writing about facing the climate-ravaged too.
Will Galbraith prove right? I guess, as with all legacies, only time will tell.
Obama Could End the Hedge Fund Tax Loophole By Himself ... If He Wanted To
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One proposal for Obama's Legacy Library, a building that won't build itself (view 1, discussed here).
by Gaius Publius
Turns out that the president, currently Obama, acting alone, could personally end the egregious "hedge fund tax loophole," the one only a certain class of wealthy person qualifies for. Most people think it would take an act of Congress. Not according to an excellent piece by the excellent Gretchen Morgenson, writing in the New York Times:
Ending Tax Break for Ultrawealthy May Not Take Act of Congress
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON MAY 6, 2016
... There is a lot about [the] problem of income inequality — and about the economy over all — that Mr. Obama cannot control. Still, there is something he could do right now to help narrow the widening gulf between rich and poor.
In one deft move, Mr. Obama could instruct officials at his Treasury Department to close the so-called carried interest tax loophole that allows managers of private equity and hedge funds to pay a substantially lower federal tax rate on much of their income.
And that's all you need to know. With an order, Barack Obama could end the carried interest loophole that allows private equity and hedge fund managers to cap the nominal tax paid on earnings at 15%, before deductions and any other avoidance is applied.
What Is the "Carried Interest Loophole"?
A brief explanation from the piece, so you have an idea how this income is treated by the IRS and ultimately, by the Treasury Department. Morgensen again:
Managers of hedge funds and private equity funds receive two types of payments. One, paid annually, represents a percentage of assets under management, usually around 2 percent. Those earnings are taxed as ordinary income.
But these managers also receive 20 percent of gains that their funds generate over time, known as carried interest. These profits are taxed at the lower capital gains rate, thanks to a 1993 ruling by the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service.
Closing the loophole, tax experts say, would involve characterizing both the 20 percent and the 2 percent as income from services rendered.
In a 2008 paper, “Two and Twenty: Taxing Partnership Profits in Private Equity Funds,” and in a follow-up paper published last year, Mr. Fleischer described the current carried interest tax treatment as a conversion of labor income into capital gain, an “anomaly that was contrary to some generally accepted principles of tax policy.”
Converting labor into salary gain is what most of us do when we work, but we don't earn the billions it takes to buy an exception. And yes, we are looking a billion-dollar incomes here. (Before we move on, keep this in mind, that this generosity is "thanks to a 1993 ruling by the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service" and not thanks to some law that Congress would need to unwind. Wonder who was president in 1993...)
Billion-Dollar Salaries
Two items to note. First, "private equity" firms used to be called "leveraged buyout" firms until the name "leveraged buyout" became too toxic. (It still should be toxic.) LBO firms rebranded themselves so that they'd be grouped with the much more likeable "venture capital" firms.
Second, we're talking about real money in this world, seriously real money. Here's an estimate of the salaries of the top five hedge fund managers, according to Barry Ritholtz:
David Tepper, Appaloosa Management — $4 billion
George Soros, Soros Fund Management — $3.3 billion
James Simons, Renaissance Technologies — 2.5 billion
John Paulson, Paulson & Company — $2.3 billion
Steve Cohen, SAC Capital Advisors — $1.4 billion
I hope you're seeing the "b" as in "billion" next to the numbers. These are "salaries" according to Ritholtz, and yet they are treated as "carried interest" by current tax regulation — again, not law, regulation — and taxed at no higher than 15%. This is what Warren Buffet means when he says that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does.
Can you imagine earning $4 billion dollars in a year, personally earning it? (Here's what that looks like in numbers — $4,000,000,000 per year.) Now can you see them twisting the arms of the Executive Branch whose presidents they put in office for the express purpose of keeping their taxes lower than their secretary's, all in the hunt for even more money than the $1 to $4 billion they just earned? Seems a little ... monomaniacal, a little pathological ... to me. ("Pathological" is Jeffrey Sachs' term.)
Which brings me to the next point.
If Obama Could Do This On His Own, Why Doesn't He?
Morgensen, a first-rate reporter, has surveyed a number of experts, most of whom are certain that since this is a "regulation" and not a law, it can be rewritten within the Executive Branch:
But doesn’t changing the carried interest loophole require an act of Congress? Not according to an array of tax experts. Just as Mr. Obama’s Treasury Department recently changed the rules to curb corporate inversions, in which companies shift their official headquarters to another country to lower their tax bills, the Treasury secretary, Jacob J. Lew, and his colleagues could jettison the carried interest loophole.
Alan J. Wilensky is among those urging such a change. He was a deputy assistant Treasury secretary in charge of tax policy in the early 1990s when the carried interest loophole came about.
“This is something President Obama can do and should do,” Mr. Wilensky said in an interview. “This is not an impossible thing to get done.”
Now a lawyer in Minneapolis, Mr. Wilensky recently wrote an article on this topic for Tax Notes, the definitive publication on national and global tax issues.
Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of San Diego, is another who has recommended that the Treasury get rid of the unjust tax treatment on carried interest. Mr. Fleischer, a contributor to The New York Times, has also estimated how much money such a change would bring to the Treasury.
“It’s something that Obama could accomplish and, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure why the Treasury hasn’t taken an interest in it,” Mr. Fleischer said in an interview. “In fact, there is quite a bit of revenue at stake. And doing this on carried interest would cement Obama’s legacy in substance as well as symbolically.”
There's a lot of opinion that this 1993 IRS ruling could be reversed by Obama alone. Yet he keeps trying to go to Congress to get it changed, instead of just changing it himself. Morgensen quotes Treasury Dept. spokesperson Rachel McCleery:
“The president’s first budget in 2009 — and every one since — has included a proposal to close this unfair loophole and we’ve been pushing Congress to get it done,” she added. “No one should be able to play by a different set of rules, so it’s time for Congress to act to close the carried interest loophole once and for all.”
The only piece of disingenuity in the entire article is around this point. In her introduction (not quoted here), Morgensen attributes to Obama genuine concern about income inequality. Reversing income inequality require wealth redistribution, and that involves the tax system. There's no way around it.
So why would Obama ask Congress to change what he could change himself? Perhaps because Congress is a great place to send things you never want to happen. Congress is where bills that make the one-percent of the One Percent unhappy ... go to die.
And why might Obama want the proposal to die? Because, as Morgensen correctly says, he really does have his eye on his legacy and his post-presidential future. Part of that future is pictured above, and legacy libraries don't come cheap. I suspect you'll see an Obama Legacy Foundation at some point, and foundation donations don't come from people with no money to donate. I'll leave you to suss out the rest.
What Would Sanders Do?
A thought: That the danger represented by Bernie Sanders — to DC Democrats and Republicans alike, the bipartisan consensus — is not what he couldn't do, but what he could do. Just as a President Sanders not only couldbreak up the big banks, but would do it — a President Sanders would direct his Treasury Secretary to end this loophole immediately, or whatever "immediately" means in regulation-speak.
As Morgensen points out:
During the current presidential campaign, all three remaining candidates — Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — have called for eliminating [this loophole].
When one of these people is elected, we'll find out if that new president is sincere in eliminating this loophole, or just blowing campaign smoke.
Why Does Obama Always Endorse The Worst Candidates In Democratic Primaries?
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When notorious drama queen #DebtTrapDebbie Wasserman Schultz set her hair on fire and went screeching to the White House that Bernie's political revolution was coming for her, Obama shut her up with a cynical endorsement of her reelection. It's no secret he wishes she would just disappear off the face of the earth already. In fact, I was on a top secret call recently (ssshhhhh...), discussing a major Beltway group's congressional endorsements, when I decided to throw the Wasserman Schultz/Canova race into the discussion. Everyone on the call-- no one more than myself-- was shocked when the White House representative backed my proposal for a Canova endorsement. They hate her; but Obama endorsed her anyway. She is, after all, his DNC chair. She's become the symbol of Democratic Party disunity but she's his symbol of Democratic Party disunity. Besides, party hacks stick together. And, no matter if you think Obama is the greatest president since FDR or the worst president since Ronald Reagan, no one can accuse him of not being a party loyalist (whether you want to think of that as a "hack" or not). So, yes, Obama endorsed one of the most reviled and detested Democrats in the country, one even he reviles and detests. And he's been on a roll of truly terrible primary endorsements. He allowed Schumer and Reid to dictate endorsements for the weak Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania and the incredibly corrupt and incredibly Republican Florida candidate, Patrick Murphy, presumably to help him with funding for his overly costly presidential library. I mean, Murphy, who not only voted for the Keystone XL Pipeline every time it came up but who was one of the only "Democrats"-- and I use the term lightly-- to back a Republican scheme to remove Obama from the Keystone XL decision-making process!?!?! Murphy, the so-called Democrat to back the Republican witch-hunt against Hillary Clinton by voting for the Benghazi Committee? That Murphy?!?!? Oh, yes-- the Murphy who has been gung-ho on rolling back the Wall Street regulations Obama beats the GOP up over and the Murphy who came into Congress braying like an idiot that cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits had to be on the table. That Murphy.
And the latest inferior candidate to go running to Obama for a rescue endorsement is the little brother of South Jersey machine boss, George Norcross-- dirty li'l Donald, a Democrat literally financed by the Trump family!! Alex Law and candidates like him are the future of a vibrant, progressive Democratic Party. But Obama went for the gutter garbage. Thanks, Barack. In fact, his endorsement statement was a laughably ironic lie. "Donald has been there with me on critical issues before Congress in the last two years-- and has always stood up for what's right." Donald's very first vote in Congress was for the Keystone XL Pipeline-- and that was just the beginning. Norcross opposed Obama on 39 key votes in the short time he's been in Congress. He has the most Republican voting record of any New Jersey Democrat. He also opposed-- and voted against-- Obama's nuclear treaty with Iran, which Obama said at the time was a big deal. And when Obama opposed the GOP's SAFE Act to reject Obama's plans to take in a small number of Syrian refugees, Norcross voted with the Republicans and against Obama. I wonder how much brother George is getting Obama for his library fund. I know Patrick Murphy's biggest and sleaziest fundraiser, Saudi billionaire Ibrahim Al-Rashid, has a pappy back in Riyadh, ole Nasser Al-Rashid, who gave between one and five million dollars to the Clinton presidential library. That was nice of one of the top 3 advisors to the Saudi royal family, a family that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to make sure dumbbell Patrick Murphy was on the House Intelligence Committee. Now why would they want their guy on the House Intelligence Committee? (And today Obama will be helping Privileged Patrick raise money in Miami and then golfing up in Murphy's congressional district tomorrow.) If you don't have $5 million to help Obama with his library, contribute what you can to help him accomplish his new goal of expanding Social Security by electing Alex Law, Alan Grayson and Tim Canova (at the thermometer):
The Corruption Around Presidential Libraries Is A Bigger Deal Than You Probably Think It Is
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I don't know if Anthony Clark reads DWT or not. He's an author and the former legislative assistant for Congressman Lacy Clay (D-MO). He responded to a tweet of mine yesterday implying that Obama's coddling of the Saudi murderers may have something to do with a quest for funds for his presidential library.
I don't know if that's actually something Obama is doing. But I do know that he's been endorsing conservative candidates in Senate races tied to funds for his library. How do I know? A top Biden staffer was dismayed enough to mention it. I was dismayed enough myself to have mentioned it several times since early March here at DWT. Clark's tweet included a link to a late January History News Network story he wrote about the inherently corrupt nature that surrounds presidential libraries.
Last week the House of Representatives passed the Presidential Library Donation Reform Act, which sponsor Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-TN-2) has introduced in almost every Congress since 1999. Those few good-government groups that were paying attention hailed passage of the bill. The legislation would require that presidential library support organizations-- the private foundations that presidents set up to raise money for and build their libraries-- disclose all donations of more than $200. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the federal agency that administers the libraries, would be charged with publishing those donations in a timely manner. Supporters tout the disclosure requirement as a major leap forward in reforming the largely unregulated system that commemorates former presidents and their families. It is not. Disclosing donations-- which, under current law, are secret, as well as unlimited, even while a president is in office-- is, at best, a minor step, though one in the right direction. Of course we should know who is donating, and how much they give, whether the money is ostensibly for a re-election campaign or for a presidential shrine. But simply forcing disclosure of donations isn’t nearly enough. No matter how large the sum, no matter how direct the connection to a presidential action on behalf of the donor (or someone close to the donor), disclosure alone will have little to no effect. When it comes to learning just how brazen, shameless, or corrupt our leaders are, the American public has shown a great ability to, at the one extreme, pretend to be shocked (for a shockingly limited period of time), and, at the other, yawn in complete indifference. For those opposed to a given president, such “scandalous” discoveries only add fuel to their already-raging fire (“Told you them foreigners was givin’ him millions!”); for supporters, they’re just more opportunities to rationalize and excuse (“Well, do you know how much money it takes to build one of those things?”). Our concern should not be on who or how much, but on why. What is a one, or ten, or twenty-five million dollar donor after, exactly? Hometown civic pride? From the limited information that has come out about earlier presidential libraries, many of the megadonors don’t even live in the United States, much less the city in which the library was built. Bragging rights? How could that be, when the donations are secret? That warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from helping the less-fortunate soon-to-be-former presidents among us? What many assume to be a nefarious quid pro quo will not be eliminated or even reduced by donation disclosures. What we need is not just the revelation of donations to presidential library foundations, but a limit on their amount – for at least the same time period as the bill requires of disclosures (either a president’s last day in office or the date on which the Archivist of the United States accepts the library). Limits would not only help reduce the likelihood of purchased pardons, or pay-to-play solicitations, but might also fix a major problem of the system: that the libraries are getting bigger and bigger, in both dimension and ambition. Some claim that donation limits might restrict the size of new presidential libraries, by starving foundations of those gigantic donations. If so, good. For decades after Franklin Roosevelt dedicated his decidedly modest fieldstone archive, these institutions increasingly became monumental…well, monuments. They are increasingly expensive for the government to operate. And they increasingly have allotted more and more space to the private foundations to continue conducting ever-widening business, far past their original goal of building and handing over the library to NARA. In 1986, Congress tried to rein in these excesses by strictly limiting their size and requiring an endowment from the foundation to offset the cost of maintenance and operation. (Originally set at 20 percent of the total cost to build and equip a library, Congress increased the endowment during George W. Bush’s term, to 60 percent; that new amount first applies to President Obama.) In the 1990s, foundations began to skirt this new law’s letter and spirit – with the active participation of NARA officials-- by no longer donating the entire building to the government. George H.W. Bush, the first president from whom an endowment was required, built a library far exceeding the 70,000 square-foot limit established by Congress, then donated only 69,999 square feet to the government. And we’re not talking about just office space for the foundation in some back corner of the building; integral parts of the Bush Library, including the enormous entrance rotunda, gift shop, meeting space, offices, and orientation theater, were not donated, and are-- for now-- controlled by the foundation. Bush also found creative ways to avoid actually paying 20 percent of the $83 million it took to build the library (he ended up paying only $4 million; it helped to have Archivist of the United States Don Wilson, who had resigned while under investigation for misconduct, jump from running NARA to running Bush's presidential library foundation). As the years pass and fundraising slows, and presidents and their most ardent supporters pass away, foundations struggle to raise enough money to maintain and operate the curiously-carved-out areas of the libraries that are “theirs.” In a few decades (or, in some cases, alarmingly sooner), the libraries that are now flush with post-presidency cash will become mostly-empty tombs (as have their predecessor libraries), depleting both the government and the ever-dwindling foundations of their resources. Sooner than we think, taxpayers will have to take responsibility for operating those “extra” areas of presidential libraries, including the boyhood home, and larger-than-full-size East Room replica, at the Nixon Library; the George W. Bush Institute at the George W. Bush Library; and the 90,000 square-foot Air Force One Pavilion at the Reagan Library. In addition to the drain on our budgets that bigger and bigger libraries represent, the foundations themselves pose great risks. These hyper-partisan organizations are controlled by presidents and their families, billionaire donors, high-ranking former government officials, and, in the case of the Reagan Library, the publisher and CEO of the Washington Post, Fred Ryan. They regularly hold political events at the libraries, promoting the agenda not only of their president, but of candidates and their respective national parties as well. And they use their substantial influence to pressure the National Archives to do what is in the best interests of the foundations, not what is right. In just the last decade, the presidential library foundations have used their considerable political power to cancel congressional hearings about their role; set (extremely favorable) terms for a Republican presidential primary debate; place a Senate hold on President Obama’s nominee for Archivist; force out qualified federal employees who direct libraries; redesign exhibits to make them considerably more flattering to (and considerably less accurate about) their presidents; veto personnel decisions made by the Archivist; threaten to withhold (and actually withhold) promised funding from NARA for joint projects; and delay public access to tens of millions of presidential records. Simply disclosing donations is not enough; the law must seek to protect against the dangers that are endemic to other parts of the political process-- of which, sadly, the presidential libraries are now a major part. And trusting the federal agency that is financially and politically beholden to the foundations with the responsibility to promptly and accurately publish those donations is plainly wrong. Reform of our broken presidential library system must be comprehensive, and include stronger oversight of NARA to insure that the long-troubled agency is properly administering the law, and no longer under the control of these powerful, secretive, private foundations.
So what does this have to do with Patrick Murphy's parents giving money to the Obama Foundation for his library endowment (which is, by law, required to be three times more than any previous president's)? I asked Anthony Clark if he thought these accusations about Obama sound like they could be true. "Presidents who are raising money for their libraries," Anthony Clark told us yesterday, "don't see red or blue. They see green."
