So you don't normally expect a lot of snark about financial regulatory reform, but today is different, because House Financial Services Committee Spokesman Steve Adamske just sent out his fisking of a recent National Journal article on regulatory reform, which I've posted in full after the jump. Here's a sampling:

National Journal: What's going on with financial regulatory reform? I know that Dodd has a new plan and that Frank is expected to move his plan out of committee soon, but I still can't tell what the administration's plan is. Why so many plans? Well, for starters, this re-regulation of finance is huge, so it is natural that everyone would want to drive the train. Primarily, though, the many approaches reflect a strategic decision by the Obama administration. Rather than come out with a fully formed plan and guide the negotiations, the president's advisers decided to let Congress work out the details.

HFSC: This is 100% false. President Obama’s team did indeed produce a plan. They delivered to the House Financial Services Committee and to the Senate Banking Committee a 13 title bill totaling several hundred pages, complete with legislative language, and that language is serving as the base text for our deliberations.

...National Journal: It sounds like I should bet on this taking a lot more time. With big reforms, that's usually a good bet.

HFSC: We certainly wish the National Journal would take its time to do some quality reporting.

I can't link to the original article because it is subscription only, but you get a pretty good flavor from the excerpts in the release. This kind of response to a piece from a communications shop isn't the norm outside of campaigns, but National Journal represents a kind of distillation of bland conventional wisdom and is thus quite influential among members of Congress and staff, which no doubt motivated Adamske's to go after the article head on. National Journal does occasionally do in-depth reported pieces on esoteric issues like financial regulatory reform, but this isn't one of those pieces. The article entirely predicated on procedural nonsense -- Adamske's fact-checks are, on the whole, correct -- while ignoring the many substantial critiques of the bill. It's ultimate conclusion that Congress should take more time on the bill is just a silly regurgitation of Republican talking points. The problems faced by the committee can't be solved with more time, they'll be solved with negotiations and votes.

-- Tim Fernholz

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Terence Samuel explains why Democrats need to focus on jobs:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will win his motion to proceed on a health-care reform package that should shave $127 billion off the federal budget deficit over the next decade -- the legislation will come to the floor of the Senate before Thanksgiving. In practical terms, that means the Obama administration will likely get to mark its first year in office with a remarkable set of legislative triumphs that, in addition to health care, could include some kind of financial reform legislation and maybe even a climate change bill.

These are big wins that will change our way of life significantly and constitute an admirable record of campaign promises kept. So it is no small irony that all this success may be of limited political value to Democrats as they go into the next election season: 2010 could be the year of the American job.

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Matt Yglesias asks what, exactly, China is going to do to our economy if the U.S. government steps up its criticisms of their various human rights violations or lack of cooperation on issues like Iran or Afghanistan. The correct answer is, he notes, that they can do very little. I wrote about this in the spring when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner made his own voyage to China:

But outside of the political sideshow, the much-hyped Chinese ownership of U.S. debt and the controversy over exchange rates (which has led some Americans to accuse the Chinese of currency manipulation) isn't likely to change in the near future.

"The truth is … China really has no choice," Michael Pettis, a professor at the Guanghua School of Management in Beijing, says in an e-mail. "China does not want to hurt its export sector (on the contrary, it is trying to prop it up), and since no one else besides the United States can run such large trade deficits, China has no choice but to keep buying dollars."

What's more interesting about the fuss isn't what China could do to the U.S. economy, but what they're doing about their own -- the current Chinese economic policy greatly advantages coastal elites over rural interests, and economic inequality is a big issue. Pettis, whose blog, "China Financial Markets," is really a must-read on these issues, thinks the larger concern is that the Chinese won't heed international advice to about balancing global trade (now, China is saving/investing too much, and the U.S. is overconsuming) because that would require greater household income growth in China, which obviously involves redistribution of income and probably increasingly broad political awareness.

But the insistence of the Chinese government that exports and investment are the way out of the global recession means that China's recovery is weaker than many realize, and could lead to more trade disputes as the Chinese continue to pursue their pro-export policy at the expense of the rest of the world. Ironically, the rebalancing policy that the Obama administration supports -- which would lead to less reliance on U.S. consumption -- is more broadly in the interest of the Chinese people than what Chinese leaders want, which is maintaining the current status quo between the two economies.

-- Tim Fernholz

With the unemployment rate the highest it's been in 25 years, The Roosevelt Institute asked historians, economists and other public thinkers to reflect on the lessons of the New Deal and explore new, big ideas for how to get America back to work. TAPPED will be cross-posting the 10-part series with the New Deal 2.0 blog. In this installment, James Carr argues for targeting hardest-hit communities with job training and access.

As this month’s unemployment numbers confirm, the nation’s economy continues to suffer despite recent positive and relatively impressive productivity numbers. Unemployment now exceeds 10 percent for the general population. Unemployment for African Americans and Latinos exceeds 15.5 percent and 13 percent respectively. For Native Americans living on reservations, it is just below the fabled and feared 25 percent of the Great Depression. For all families out of work, the economy is in a depression. Unable to find a suitable job, more than a third of those out of work are classified as long-term unemployed. The longer they remain out of the labor market, the more difficult it will be for them to reenter the workforce. It also makes them less likely to regain a job paying the same or higher wages than the job they have lost, and more likely to run out of unemployment insurance and potentially end up on the streets with few, if any, options. In fact, prior to the recent extension of unemployment benefits, roughly 7,000 people per day were losing their benefits.

Many economists dismiss the bad news on the employment front arguing that unemployment is merely a lagging indicator. But a recovery without jobs is meaningless for families worried about paying their mortgages, purchasing food, affording health care, sending their kids to college, and saving for a decent retirement. And, a recovery without jobs presents the prospect for further damage to the financial system as growing numbers of households are unable to pay their debts. Most concerning, continued significant job losses open the door for a possible “double-dip recession” given the key role played by consumer spending.

More after the jump.

--James Carr

Roosevelt Institute Braintruster James H. Carr is Chief Operating Officer of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

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Matthew Duss on Iran's legitimacy problem:

The "war on terror" was pretty great for Iran's hardliners. The Bush administration's 2002 inclusion of Iran in the "Axis of Evil" was a major blow to Iranian moderates, discrediting their calls for U.S.-Iran rapprochement and supporting the claims of Iran's hard-liners that engagement with America was pointless. The invasion of Iraq removed Iran's greatest enemy, Saddam Hussein, against whom Iran had fought a staggeringly destructive eight-year war. Iraq's postwar government included a significant number of Iran's former clients -- including eventual Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq -- in top leadership positions.

The perceived success of Iran's Lebanese ally Hezbollah against Israel in 2006 -- in a devastating month-long combination of bombing and ground combat hailed by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as "the birth pangs of a new Middle East" -- also proved a huge boost to Iranian hawks. A 2007 poll of Egyptians placed Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as the two most admired leaders in the region. The fact that two Shiite leaders topped an Egyptian poll, even as Iraq's sectarian civil war raged and Arab leaders like Jordan's King Abdullah warned of Shiite inroads into Sunni Arab lands, is a testament to Iran and Hezbollah's success in defying the West.

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A recent survey shows that more than 14 percent of borrowers are having trouble paying their mortgages, especially as unemployment starts to play a larger role than the subprime fiasco that helped kick off the recession. Meanwhile, 9.6 percent of borrowers are delinquent on payments, and 4.5 percent are involved in a foreclosure -- taken together, 7.4 million households, the highest level since 1972.

Especially given the problems with the administration's mortgage modification plan, this isn't welcome news. If anything, it should be another argument for using TARP funds to deal with unemployment rather than deficit reduction, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional Democrats, frustrated by the pace of real economic improvement, are urging Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

-- Tim Fernholz

Both the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First were at Guantanamo this week to observe the commencement of the new, revised military commissions. Both were present for the pre-trial hearing of Mohammed Kamin, and both organizations had similar takes on the proceedings.

ACLU:

Continuing the military commission proceedings against Kamin meant more of the same of what we've seen in other proceedings here: uncertainty about the rules, which the government is making up as we go along (even now, the Department of Defense is preparing new rules for the military commissions), and a judge frustrated by delays in the prosecution's failure to hand over fundamental evidence to the defense.

The usual chaos was compounded by uncertainty over where Kamin's case will ultimately be tried. Kamin is accused of a single crime, providing material support for terrorism—an offense that should have been prosecuted in established federal courts. While a military commission conviction for material support for terrorism could possibly be overturned on appeal because such a crime is not a traditional war crime, the offense is covered by the federal criminal law. And federal courts have a proven track record of obtaining convictions for material support for terrorism in numerous cases since 2001.

Human Rights First:

There is a making-it-up-as-we-go feel to these proceedings which is inevitable for a system of trials for which the Congress, courts and executive keep changing the rules. For example, there was discussion today of a new pre-trial hearing date in December in the Kamin case.

But officials said that the new rules for the military commission proceedings - which the Department of Defense needs to alter to conform with reforms passed by Congress on October 29 - have yet to be released by the Department of Defense. Officials with the Office of Military Commissions at Guantanamo acknowledged today that they have not even seen a draft set of the new rules.

I think most Americans aren't actually privy to how haphazard the military commissions are--they're essentially a new legal system invented from scratch to try detainees against whom we have dubious evidence or only intelligence information. The adjective "military" may give them a certain sense of authority for those who are unaware just how poorly the process has worked so far compared to federal courts, but this is misleading since the DoJ's civilian lawyers are actually more experienced in trying terrorism cases.

Not to belabor the point, but from a practical point of view, why would you want to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed through this kind of shaky process rather than a civilian trial in the Southern District of New York, which has already handled plenty of these types of cases? A civilian trial is still far less of a roll of the dice than the military commissions, even after the revisions.

-- A. Serwer

Joanne Kenen lays out some progressive solutions to the malpractice problem:

Year after year, Republicans try to pass legislation that would limit medical malpractice awards. Fix the tort system, they argue, and we fix rising health-care costs. And year after year, Democrats resist placing arbitrary caps on awards to people who may have suffered from an egregious medical error. The fight plays out like a predictable old Western -- good guys versus bad guys. Depending on your politics, the villain is either the greedy doctor or the greedy trial lawyer.

Health reform invites a fresh look at malpractice. The Republican tort-reform agenda hasn't magically fixed what ails American health care in states that have tried it. But progressives can test new models of medical malpractice reform because -- done right -- they may lead to a more consistent, more timely, and more equitable approach to compensating people who have been harmed.

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The other day, Jesse Jackson said Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama wasn't black because he voted against health-care reform:

At a CBC dinner on Wednesday night, the famed civil rights leader denounced Davis's vote, saying, "We even have blacks voting against the health care bill from Alabama. You can't vote against health care and call yourself a black man."

Jackson then walked it back:

Days after insisting it was impossible to be both black (which Davis is) and vote against health care reform (which Davis did), Jackson said he called the Alabama gubernatorial candidate to "assure him of my abiding admiration."

It's a good sign that even someone who has been associated with civil rights as long as Jesse Jackson can't get away with publicly questioning someone's ethnic loyalties based on their politics without embarrassing himself and having to apologize. If only we could somehow get this dynamic going within the American Jewish community.

-- A. Serwer

Following somewhat in the footsteps of the Constitution Project and former State Department official John Bellinger, former Bush Department of Justice officials Jack Goldsmith and Jim Comey have backed Eric Holder's decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators in civilian court. Goldsmith famously withdrew the administration's torture memos, and Comey backed then Attorney General John Ashcroft's decision not to certify the NSA wiretapping program.

Goldsmith and Comey don't go as far as the Constitution Project in pushing against preventive detention, and they're fine with the two-tiered system of justice for suspected terrorists. In fact, they're painfully honest about it:

It is more likely that Holder decided to use a commission system still learning to walk because the Cole case is relatively weak and will benefit from the marginal advantages the commission system offers the government. It is also likely that the Justice Department will decide that many other terrorists at Guantanamo Bay will not be tried in civilian or military court but, rather, will be held under a military detention rationale more suitable to the circumstances of their cases.

Meanwhile, Charles Krauthammer fufills his weekly duty by resurrecting the conservative strawmen of the past week and marching that zombie army across the Post op-ed page. The only valid criticism he raises of the decision to try KSM in a civilian trial is that "whatever the outcome of the trial, KSM will never walk free." It's hard to see this criticism as based on his concern for due process however, since he's angry that "receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom." The more honest version of this argument is that conservatives don't believe that people accused of terrorism should be given a presumption of innocence -- which undermines the whole "fair trial" thing. That's exactly the point, but you can't just come out and say "I don't believe in fair trials" so you dissemble as above, or in the Obama administration's case, you just tell everyone what a good job you're doing adhering to the rule of law even as you assure people that the accused will be executed.

Krauthammer also fears, like other conservatives, the unhinged rants of KSM. There's really nothing more self-implicating than the chattering teeth of Republicans in the face of a terrorists' rants -- in a military commissions trial, KSM's indictment of the United States might have some resonance, particularly in the Middle East. Placing him in a civilian courtroom is a propaganda coup for the U.S., not the other way around. When people get hysterical over what KSM might say, it makes me wonder how much of what they think he might say is actually true. Spencer Ackerman has another theory: Seeing Al Qaeda terrorists being brought low before a court of law demystifies them for a fearful public, diminishing the political currency of terrorism-based fearmongering.

I can see why the GOP would be afraid of that.

-- A. Serwer

First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada -- which, by the way, costs Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)

So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a "Medicare-like plan" that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.

So the compromise was to give the public option only to Americans who wouldn't be covered either by their employers or by Medicaid. And give them coverage pegged to Medicare rates. But private insurers and ... you know the rest.

So the compromise that ended up in the House bill is to have a mere public option, open only to the 6 million Americans not otherwise covered. The Congressional Budget Office warns this shrunken public option will have no real bargaining leverage and would attract mainly people who need lots of medical care to begin with. So it will actually cost more than it saves.

But even the House's shrunken and costly little public option is too much for private insurers, Big Pharma, Republicans, and "centrists" in the Senate. So Harry Reid has proposed an even tinier public option, which states can decide not to offer their citizens. According to the CBO, it would attract no more than 4 million Americans.

More after the jump.

--Robert Reich

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Something is fishy about this article on the U.S. relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Apparently, the White House is hitting the ol' reset button beginning at a recent meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton :

But instead of revisiting old disputes, Karzai brought in several cabinet ministers to talk about development and security. He explained details of a new effort to address graft. And halfway through a meal of lamb stew, chicken and rice, he looked across the table and said he had decided that the United States would be a "critical partner" in his second term, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the meeting.

I'm glad he's decided that the U.S. is a "critical partner," but that's not exactly his decision, is it, given the whole U.S.-military-keeps-him-in-power thing? While Rajiv Chandrasekaran's piece suggests that Karzai's efforts are a result of "top diplomats and generals ... abandoning for now their get-tough tactics with Karzai and attempting to forge a far warmer relationship," I just don't think the chronology adds up. It was only a week ago that Ambassador Karl Eikenberry was arguing that the U.S. shouldn't send more troops specifically to have more leverage over Karzai, leading the president to reject all of his staff's proposals. I doubt that things have since turned around dramatically since then.

Reading on, the change in dynamic seems to be this: The new approach "will entail more engagement with members of Karzai's cabinet and provincial governors, officials said, because they have concluded that the Afghan president lacks the political clout in his highly decentralized nation to purge corrupt local warlords and power brokers." Essentially, U.S. officials have realized Karzai is inept and are bypassing him, which is much better explanation of why he's suddenly decided the U.S. ought to be his critical partner.

That's not to say there is no merit in Chrasekaran's analysis, which does show that the U.S. has pushed Karzai pretty hard throughout the election cycle, and made some diplomatic missteps that led Karzai to seek unsavory allies. But the article concludes with a quote from a senior official saying that Karzai isn't obstructionist, just inept, and with mention that at Clinton's feel-good meeting, she also delivered the news that further U.S. aid would be contingent on the Afghan government hitting certain benchmarks, not exactly a message Karzai wants to hear. Maybe the U.S. is taking a warmer tone with Karzai, but that's because they've realized how ineffectual he is, which in turn has led him to emphasize his value to the American project. The combination of the U.S. dealing with the facts on the ground and Karzai being cooperative might be a very good outcome indeed.

-- Tim Fernholz

• Some conservatives are open about their reverence for the Bush administration's policies. But others, perhaps not wanting to associate themselves with the worst presidency of modern times try to pretend the last eight years didn't happen by comparing Barack Obama to History's Greatest Monster, Jimmy Carter, or pretending that foreign policy initiated by the Bush administration, left to fester for years, is now proof that Obama has "lost" the war in Afghanistan.
• I agree with Robert Farley that basing your foreign policy exclusively on worst-case scenarios is arguably the worst thing you can do, which I think is related to the another common refrain in foreign affairs: portraying your would-be adversary in the personalized terms of a madman who cannot be negotiated with, and who is unwavering in his commitment to destroy you. Fortunately, the Obama administration has opted to return to a fairly conventional carrots-and-sticks approach which gives the United States more leverage than mindless saber-rattling and demonization ever could.
• Needless to say, Republicans did not provide the leadership which led to passage of the Civil Rights Act, but what's most telling about these remarks is that most Republicans probably believe this. As we all know, the only racists left in this country are liberals, whose insistence on big government creates dependency for minorities who would otherwise pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and become successful small business owners under the proven deregulatory policies of Republicans.
• Remainders: Voters sour on the stimulus, don't understand recession economics; Michael Tomasky tries to unravel the Blue Dog enigma; the fundraising war continues apace; and the Senate deludes itself into thinking that it can legislate away teenagers' hormones.

--Mori Dinauer

With the unemployment rate the highest it's been in 25 years, The Roosevelt Institute asked historians, economists and other public thinkers to reflect on the lessons of the New Deal and explore new, big ideas for how to get America back to work. TAPPED will be cross-posting the 10-part series with the New Deal 2.0 blog. In this installment, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins argues for clean energy investments that will create 1.7 million jobs for the people who need them the most.

It’s difficult for most Americans to accept data indicating an end to the recession for a simple reason – they don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Despite a quarter of growth, the unemployment rate has topped 10 percent, the highest it has been since 1983. Among people of color, the rates are even higher, with Latino unemployment exceeding 13 percent, and unemployment in the African-American community just shy of 16 percent. Economic growth does not mean that Americans experience economic relief; without stable jobs for everyday Americans, this cannot be considered a recovery. Recovery necessitates that jobs be created – jobs that provide stable employment for years, not months.

Green shoots of an employment recovery are showing through the investments made under President Obama's Recovery Act, which is already producing impressive innovation and the beginnings of job and wealth creation in green industries. Clean-energy sectors, which hold the promise of being major engines of job growth, are creating opportunities for those communities hit hardest by the recession: low-income communities and communities of color.

Portland, Oregon, for example, is using Recovery Act investments to launch a revolving loan fund that will help residents pay for energy-efficiency improvements to their homes. This program will save energy, save money and create 10,000 local jobs. A groundbreaking Community Workforce Agreement will further ensure that those jobs are available to workers from low-income and other disadvantaged communities.

In New York City, Recovery Act investments are helping the Community Environmental Center (CEC) hire more workers and weatherize more buildings. The largest Weatherization Assistance Program provider in the state, CEC is a union shop providing good wages and benefits. And thanks to a partnership between the union (the Laborers Local 10) and Non-Traditional Employment for Women, women and historically disadvantaged workers have the opportunity to win those jobs.

These local examples reinforce what larger, national investigations have shown. In our report Green Prosperity, Green For All, the Political Economy Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council showed that clean-energy investment creates roughly three to four times as many jobs as comparable investment in fossil fuel industries. The report estimates that investing $150 billion (public and private) in clean energy will create a net gain of 1.7 million jobs. Renewable energy and energy efficiency replace the damage done to our environment by fossil fuels with good, sustainable jobs for American workers. Building a green economy involves more than a shift to clean energy – it will provide a shift to a more skilled and labor-intensive economy.

More after the jump.

-- Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins is the CEO of Green For All, a national organization working to build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.

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In a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Senator Arlen Specter has said he does not support sending additional troops to Afghanistan because he does not see the fight as central to national security and because such an effort "…requires a reliable ally in the government, and we we do not have that in [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai." The Senator concludes, "I'm unconvinced that it is sensible to add troops. ... there ought to be an exit strategy, and it ought to be geared to our expecations as to what we're looking to accomplish."

All very interesting stuff from the newest Democratic senator. But, when asked what would happen if the president proposed a troop increase -- "I don't think Congress would leap forward with plaudits" -- Specter gave the game away: "When you have Congressman [Joe] Sestak calling for an increase, a major increase, I think his view would be in the minority." Sestak, a retired Admiral, is the Pennsylvania Representative challenging Specter for his senate seat. Asked how much of his forward leaning statements were political positioning, Specter replied,"None, None," pointing to a statement he delivered in September raising similar questions about the war -- which also came after Sestak's decision to run.

Funny to see Specter, the former Republican, is finding ground to the left of Sestak in the Pennsylvania primary on an issue of major importance to progressives. Sestak probably has the advantage on almost every other issue among the Democratic base, but his support of increasing troops in Afghanistan could present a window of opportunity to Specter. It all depends on what the Obama administration chooses, and whether real congressional opposition emerges following that decision.

-- Tim Fernholz

Sady Doyle on the unwarranted backlash against fans of the world's most popular vampire-romance series:

When New Moon, the second film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's four-part Twilight series, opens in theaters this month, those who see it will not be getting great art. The faults of Meyer's immensely popular teen vampire-romance novels have been endlessly, and publicly, rehashed: the retrograde gender roles, the plodding plotlines, the super-heated goofiness of Meyer's prose. I can confirm for you that these faults are real!



Yet I could not stop reading the series. The books -- all about sexy teen vampire Edward Cullen, his sexy teen werewolf rival Jacob Black, and their joint quest to stalk, control, and condescend their way into the ever-turgid affections of sexy teen (human) narrator Bella Swan -- are slow, repetitive, and often unintentionally hilarious. ("If I hadn't seen him undressed, I would have sworn there was nothing more beautiful than Edward in his khakis." Wait. Hold up. The vampire is wearing khakis?) 



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Peter Bergen, who testified today before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment, made an important point about homegrown radicalization.

An important caveat: Some of the men drawn to jihad in America in recent years looked much like their largely disadvantaged and poorly integrated European Muslim counterparts. The Afghan-American al Qaeda recruit, Najibullah Zazi, a high school dropout, earned his living as an airport shuttle bus driver; the Somali-American community in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis where some of the young men who volunteered to fight in Somalia had lived, is largely ghettoized. Family incomes there average less than $15,000 a year and the unemployment rate is 17%. Bryant Neal Vinas, the kid from Long Island who volunteered for a suicide mission with al Qaeda, skipped college, washed out of the US Army after three weeks and later became a truck driver, a job he quit for good in 2007. The five men in the Fort Dix cell were all illegal immigrants who supported themselves with construction or delivery jobs.

A few years ago Spencer Ackerman wrote what I think was a very accurate piece about how American pluralism and economic opportunity had stemmed the growth of homegrown Islamic radicalism. But that was years ago, and things change -- de facto segregation may be creating the conditions for the kinds of radicalization that we've seen in Europe.

Weeks ago I had a conversation with Bergen's colleague at the New America Foundation Andrew Lebovich, who warned that Americans may have gotten complacent about thinking of how to properly counter radical ideologies from spreading because of a certain strain of American exceptionalism -- the idea that American culture is itself a deradicalizing force. I happen to think that's true. Nevertheless, Lebovich points out that what we've seen recently -- most dramatically in Minnesota -- is the rise of isolated, economically depressed "country-or region-specific" communities where radicalization can take root anyway, often as a result of events in the country of their families' origin. It's a problem we're going to have to figure out how to face soon, without alienating or demonizing the communities in question.

As former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army John Keane said in the Senate Subcommittee on Homeland Security hearing on the Ft. Hood shootings said earlier today, “you cannot kill this movement, you need moderate Muslims to reject it."

-- A. Serwer

A new poll shows that 52 percent of Republicans think ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama.

I've written about voter fraud pretty extensively -- most Republicans don't know the difference between registration fraud, which is as easy as filling out a ballot application incorrectly, and voter fraud, which means actually casting a ballot. The conservative Ahabs at the Bush Justice Department spent years chasing that white whale and came up with bubkus. The latter is incredibly rare, and there isn't a single documented instance of ACORN anywhere, ever, stealing an election.

Nevertheless, like the idea that the Obama was born abroad, the myth of voter fraud persists -- only a minority of Republicans believe the president was born in the United States.

These issues are ultimately connected -- the segment of the Republican base that imagines itself as "real" Americans finds it incomprehensible that they, and their agenda, could be rejected by a majority of voters. We saw a little bit of this denial from conservative pundits insisting America is a "center-right" country immediately after the election. But for a certain group of Republicans the 2008 election caused a sense of rejection that has fermented into derangement, which is why the weepy, manic Glenn Beck has now become the right's primary ideological voice. It's why so much of that emotion is focused on a time -- right after 9/11--that people were so fearful of terrorism that the right had overwhelming political support.

The 2008 electorate was the most diverse ever--for some people, that is disenfranchisement by definition, since that means America is being increasingly populated by people who aren't "real Americans." Even if ACORN didn't steal the election, those people did, and so whether ACORN literally stole the election matters about as much as literal "death panels". It's "true enough." Hoffman workers in NY-23 mistook one of their own African-American volunteers for a member of ACORN, which wasn't even active in the district.

None of this new far right mythology actually has to make sense. As long as the frayed pieces of the puzzle can be assembled in a manner that allows this part of the right to preserve in their minds the idea that they are the authentic representation of what it means to be American, any explanation will do.

-- A. Serwer

Today, Obama leaves Asia having made no headway on the issue of North Korean denuclearization. In Japan, China, and South Korea, the president reaffirmed each country's commitment to bring North Korea back to the Six-Party Talks. But it's not clear how much good that would do: Pyongyang remains as unpredictable as ever. For the past decade, North Korea has participated in eight rounds of these negotiations -- a process aimed toward ending DPRK's nuclear program that also involves the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea -- and it's been rewarded with gradual loosening of economic sanctions. The outcome? A trail of broken pledges and two nuclear tests, the most recent one in May.

It may be time to shift toward using trade and academic exchanges to open up North Korea -- an approach that worked with Eastern Europe and China -- and leave more of the heavy lifting on denuclearization to its neighbors. As a recent Asia Society report suggests, integrating North Korea into the world economy could potentially empower its citizens and impose heretofore nonexistent domestic pressure on its leaders to abide by international norms. Having already removed North Korea from the U.S. Trading with Enemy Act last year (only Cuba remains!), we should follow the lead of many European countries to develop trade ties and encourage NGO aid networks to work within the country. The United States could also initiate technological and educational exchanges to expose North Koreans to new ideas and business practices that can be implemented back home.

These societal improvements will be critical to transitioning North Korea out of its currently unthinkable degree of isolation and poverty. In a recent New Yorker article, Barbara Demick describes a famine in North Korea that killed 2.5 million and profiles a woman who led a modern-day hunter-gatherer life in order to combat state-induced food shortage, all the while believing that she was living in the “greatest nation on earth”:

Enduring hunger became part of one's patriotic duty. Posters went up in the capital, Pyongyang, touting a new slogan, "Let's Eat Two Meals a Day"… Mrs. Song would hike north and west from the city center, carrying a kitchen knife and a basket to collect edible weeds and grass. If you got out to the mountains, you could find dandelions or other weeds that people ate even in good times. Occasionally, Mrs. Song also collected rotten cabbage leaves that had been discarded by a farmer.

This oppression is destabilizing for North Korea's economic system and the country as a whole -- clearly not a good thing when you're talking about a country with nukes.

Meanwhile, we can leave the task of putting pressure on DPRK to its neighbors -- they're within range of Pyongyang's missiles, and they're most vulnerable if it experiences internal instability. Japan, South Korea, and even China are pursuing a denuclearization policy with North Korea that is already roughly in line with U.S. interests. Two days ago, Pyongyang even declared eagerness for inter-Korean dialogue toward unification.

Going forward, the Six-Party Talks will remain an important platform for coordination among the nations invested in North Korea’s nuclear disarmament. However, for the United States, economic engagement with DPRK would be a more practical and sustainable policy focus. By drawing North Korea into the international community, as President Obama wishes, it would indirectly coerce Pyongyang to denuclearize and, more importantly, induce systemic change that bring benefits directly to the North Korean people.

-- Linda Li

The Catholic bishops have gotten a lot of attention for the role they played in pushing the Stupak amendment -- and the House health-care bill -- over the finish line. While there's no doubt the bishops applied the midnight pressure, their role is just one piece of how Democrats yearn for the godly imprimatur.

To be sure, the final outcome on the House side is the result of whip counts simply not adding up to the number needed to pass the bill. But Democrats ending up in the position of having to obtain a particular religious stamp of approval was also the result of seeking out the "faith vote" in the last several election cycles, and confining the definition of "people of faith" to people who oppose abortion.

The Democrats "got religion," but at what cost?

The Democrats failed to tap into pro-choice religious groups as a voice to argue for inclusion of abortion coverage in a health-care bill. Instead, these groups, along with leading pro-choice groups, acquiesced to the Capps amendment, which would have segregated private and public funds and used only private funds to pay for abortions, as a reasonable compromise. But not being met in the middle by the anti-choice side has infuriated the pro-choice side.

The day before the House vote on November 7, pro-choice groups, including religious pro-choice groups like Catholics for Choice, were essentially saying they would hold their noses and not object to an abortion amendment compromise being crafted by Rep. Brad Ellsworth. That proposed amendment would have required a private contractor to oversee disbursement of funds for abortion coverage to ensure that public funds wouldn't be used. The pro-choice side did this reluctantly, though, because they felt they had already compromised by acquiescing to the Capps amendment when they in fact favor full coverage of abortion services.

On November 6, I wrote in a story published at Religion Dispatches:

Indeed, the pro-choice camp has compromised in order to make the bill more palatable to the anti-choice camp, which is not meeting them in the middle. “This is a hard time for us in the pro-choice community,” said [Catholics for Choice president Jon] O'Brien. “We’ve been straightforward and reasonable.” The House bill “is not a win for women. But it’s not a loss for the poor, marginalized, and dispossessed. We see it as a compromise.”

When the Stupak amendment prevailed, these pro-choicers were furious. The midnight pressure applied by the Catholic bishops amounted to the enshrining of one particular religion -- and indeed one version of that particular religion -- into law. Polling data showed that most Catholics not only disagreed with the bishops' position on the Stupak amendment, but also believed they shouldn't be politicizing the health-care debate. While the bishops do have an infrastructure that gives them access to thousands of parishes across the country -- unrivaled in any other denomination -- many pro-choice advocates believe that Congress "drank the Kool-Aid" that the bishops have actual power to sway votes.

The anti-choice Democrats who allowed Bart Stupak to be their ringleader now risk being seen as more aligned with the religious right than with their own party. As I reported at RD, while the Catholic bishops were in Nancy Pelosi's office late that Friday night, the religious right -- and Democrats for Life of America -- were rallying the religious right's base to push members of Congress to settle for nothing less than the Stupak amendment. Their goal, as we know, is blocking access to legal abortion, and a new study from the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services maintains the Stupak amendment would, over time, end all insurance coverage for abortion services. But the Ellsworth compromise, the religious right maintained, was nothing more than a "money-laundering scheme." (Apparently the Catholic bishops believe Catholic organizations are capable of segregating public and private funds, but the government is not.)

But where were the president's vaunted faith allies? The ones who were supposed to bring home the big tent? The broader agenda voters who didn't care about abortion anymore? It seems like there are cracks in their common ground strategy on health care. Religious pro-choice groups are not going to be sidelined in order for "people of faith" to close ranks around a health-care bill, just to support a health-care bill. As I reported earlier this week, religious pro-choice groups might have been foiled on Stupak, but they vowing not going to be silent in their advocacy for abortion coverage in the final bill.

--Sarah Posner

Matt Yglesias observes the appealing incoherence of the Right, in contrast to the coherent but politically unpleasant and morally questionable policies that the administration has been forced to carry on to prevent economic collapse. Matt observes that the conservative message is predicated on time travel, but as his commenters point out, much of the bad bank policy began before Obama was even president.

A more relevant example is health-care reform, where the administration has made a ton of what are essentially sweetheart deals with insurance companies and Big Pharma and even bought off most of the physicians in order to get universal coverage and deal with the whole wildly out of control costs issue. But, as most people realize and Luke Mitchell points in this (subscriber-only, sorry) article in Harper's, health-care reform essentially creates "a regulatory system that virtually mandates [health insurance companies] existence." This little corporate deal is necessary, Democrats reason, because Republicans would freak out about single-payer and other cheaper, more efficient ways to do health care reform, what with the socialism and all. And Republicans probably would, given that they call this public-private partnership "socialism." (Side query: When unemployment eventually does lead to revolutionaries actually seizing the means of production, will the GOP be at a loss for words?)

But this corporatism -- made palatable to the Left only by heavy-duty pro-consumer regulations and the public option -- is naturally offensive to progressives and populists of all stripes. More than one conservative has complained to me about these deals as offensive to the free market (as if insurance companies have ever operated in a 'free market'). But instead of taking advantage of this situation and calling out the Democrats on creating a permanent insurance industry, conservative health care proposals are an even bigger gift to the health insurance industry -- their proposals to throw off almost all regulations, allow for many kinds of medical discrimination against customers, and basically let these firms run wild -- would be even worse for consumers. But they're free market, dammit, and it saves them the time of solving the ridiculously hard problem of actual health care reform. Even their moderates, some of whom have good ideas, can't propose them because the caucus can't even agree whether or not denying coverage based on preexisting conditions is OK.

As Matt says, "moving to a less-incoherent posture would have some real benefits, but also disrupt the current sweet deal." Unfortunately, the benefits, in the form of responsible governance, would be more for the country at large than to the Republicans themselves, so I imagine we can expect the current status quo to continue.

-- Tim Fernholz

Gershom Gorenberg on selective disobedience in Israel:

Driving through the West Bank recently, I picked up two hitchhikers. Both wore the long, thick sidelocks and extra-large skullcaps that have become the mark of young men on the religious right, especially among settlers. Since they were what Israelis call army age (what Americans would call college age), the conversation turned to military service.

Despite Israel's universal draft, the hitchhiker in the back seat said he didn't intend to serve. The Israel Defense Forces, he argued, hurts Jews -- a point he presumed was obvious from the "uprooting" of settlements in Gaza four years ago and the occasional dismantling of tiny, illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank more recently. Besides that, he said, the IDF "doesn't want to kill Arabs because it wants to look nice in the world." He didn't want to die because commanders were too concerned with Arabs' lives. As a student at a yeshivah -- a religious seminary -- he had a deferment, and he intended to keep it till he was past draft age.

KEEP READING ...

Tom Ricks summarizes a speech by counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen, wherein he says that the U.S. basically needs to go all or nothing -- either put in at least 40,000 troops to control corruption, or start pulling out. Related true story: A to-remain-nameless national security expert told me of a conversation he had the other day, when a congressional aide asked if the U.S. should be all in or all out in Afghanistan, and this security wonk replied, "That’s the stupidest fucking question I’ve ever heard on national security.” Kilcullen's polarity fixation aside, check the post for his comparison of Karzai to the Kuomintang in 1949 and his description of the corruption cycle. Like Ricks, I was most surprised by Kilcullen's take on Al Qaeda.

One surprise to me was that he isn't particularly worried about the possibility of al Qaeda moving back into Afghanistan. "I hope so," he said, explaining that it would be a strategic gain for us to see the terrorist group leave Pakistan and move into parts of Afghanistan that essentially are "the moon with gravity."

If Kilcullen thinks this al Qaeda problem is sorted, and that the situation would in fact be better if they did move back into Afghanistan, why is escalation even on the table? If the justification for being in Afghanistan isn't al Qaeda, then a lot of folks -- particularly President Barack Obama -- are going to be surprised.

-- Tim Fernholz

I think Daphne Eviatar is exactly right to point out that Eric Holder's comment that "failure is not an option" in the 9/11 trials sounds eerily similar to one made by Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes on the military commissions prosecutions years ago. Haynes' statement that “We can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals. We’ve got to have convictions," was used by civil liberties groups at the time to argue that the military commissions were reverse engineered to ensure convictions.

Of course, it's not just Holder making such statements. President Obama said yesterday in response to those criticizing him for not trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators in military commissions that such people won't find it "offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him." He's since backed off that statement.

By trying KSM in a civilian court, the Obama administration is circumventing the accusation that the venue is meant to ensure conviction. But what we have here, essentially, is a situation in which there is immense social and political pressure for any judge and jury to convict the accused -- pressure that is coming from the highest reaches of the administration. Now, I personally think KSM is guilty -- but that doesn't change the fact that when the president and attorney general speak so frankly in favor of a particular outcome of a criminal trial, it certainly calls into question whether or not the accused is getting a fair proceeding.

This trial isn't just for the U.S.: It's for the world. Al Qaeda's murderous ideology will be put on trial here, but anything less than real due process will indict the United States instead. Most Americans may be convinced of KSM's guilt, but the rest of the world -- particularly the hearts and minds the U.S. is trying to win, may not be. Which is why getting this right is so important.

-- A. Serwer

Yesterday, during Attorney General Eric Holder's appearance before the Senate, the right-wing blogosphere crowded around National Review "legal expert" Andy McCarthy as he exposed the "whoppers" in Holder's testimony. Let's take a look at these -- I'll excerpt as much as possible since McCarthy's post is long.

The "tragic shooting" at Ft. Hood. What happened at Ft. Hood was a jihadist massacre — a terrorist act, not a tragedy.

So, right off the bat, we've established that former U.S. Attorney Andy McCarthy has no idea what a "fact" is, since whether or not the shooting at Ft. Hood was a "tragedy" is actually a matter of opinion. This man is a lawyer.

The civilian justice system has been handling terrorism cases successfully for years. No mention of Mamdouh Salim, the al-Qaeda founder who was never brought to trial for 1998 U.S. embassy bombings because he maimed a Bureau of Prisons guard in an escape attempt during which he attempted to kidnap is taxpayer-funded defense lawyers.

The federal courts have convicted hundreds of terrorists; during the entire Bush administration the military commissions tried three cases. That one of these people tried to escape and hurt someone has zero to do with whether or not the legal system of the United States can handle trying terrorist suspects. What McCarthy is describing above is a security issue, not a legal issue, but since he can't distinguish between fact and opinion I suppose the above distinction is also too much to ask. Yesterday, former Bush adviser John Bellinger said that military lawyers were so unused to trying terrorism cases that they tried to get them help from the civilian attorneys in the Justice Department. That's not a qualitative judgment on military lawyers -- it's indicative of the fact that terrorism has traditionally been tried in civilian court and so federal prosecutors have more experience with those kinds of cases.

A civilian trial is no more a platform for KSM than a military commission would have been. That's ridiculous. KSM was ready to plead guilty and be executed eleven months ago. Whatever soapbox he was going to have, he'd largely already had, and while we'd have had to let him speak before sentence was imposed, that would have been the end of it. Now, he's going to get a full-blown trial — after combing through the discovery for a couple of years and after putting the Bush administration under the spotlight.

So this is an unforced self-owning. McCarthy wants a military commission for KSM because he's afraid of "putting the Bush administration under the spotlight." In other words, a civilian trial of KSM would expose the Bush administration's illegal behavior, behavior McCarthy supports but doesn't want exposed for what it is. There's nothing more telling about the shaky moral case for torture than torture apologists' fear of their methods being scrutinized before a court of law.

In a civilian trial, America will see KSM for the coward that he is — Holder: "I am not scared of KSM." Submitting a war criminal to a military commission is not an exercise in fear; it is an exercise in justice. We already know all about what kind of animal KSM is, thanks to the exrtraordinary information that has come out in the military proceedings and the CIA interrogations. You could fill a book a book with it, which the 9/11 Commission did. We don't need to bear the risks of a civilian trial either to learn more about KSM or so Mr. Holder can show how brave he is.

Of course, KSM isn't a "war criminal" if he's guilty, he's just a criminal -- a mass murdering criminal, but there's no need to elevate him to the status of warrior. He was captured by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, not on a battlefield. He has no right of belligerence. He's not a uniformed soldier or state actor. He is a terrorist. Terrorists are criminals.

For eight years justice has been delayed — no longer, "It is past time to finally act." Holder, of course, does not mention the role of his firm and others in delaying and derailing the military commissions during their representation of America's enemies. Senator Kyl just confronted him with my contentions on that score (from this column). The attorney-general responded that I am a polemecist who says inflammatory things for talk shows, whereas he is concerned with facts. (I guess he means pertinent facts, like how he is not "scared of KSM.") I'm delighted to let people judge that one for themselves.

McCarthy wrote a long screed attacking the "the tireless campaign conducted by leftist lawyers" who gave "free, top-flight legal assistance to our enemy detainees," for delaying the military commissions by challenging their constitutionality. The lawyers in question were doing nothing more than following Thomas Paine's counsel, that "he that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

Never mind that these "left-wing lawyers" -- many of whom were people in uniform serving their country -- have managed to win 30 out of 38 habeas cases for detainees at Guantanamo. McCarthy's argument is a textbook example of what Armando describes as "the Ed Meese School of Law" wherein being a suspect makes you guilty even if you've been convicted of nothing. Never mind that it was the 2006 Roberts-Alito Supreme Court -- that left-wing cabal that was to the right of the partisans who handed the presidency to George W. Bush -- that decided the Hamdan case ruling the Bush military commissions unconstitutional. Never mind that due process is the legal principle on which a democratic society rests -- McCarthy would throw it all away to have a bad guy waterboarded or thrown in a cell forever.

This man, who in a second would give al-Qaeda the kind of strategic victories it only dreams of without hesitation by needlessly shredding the traditional institutions of American democracy, imagines himself a patriot, and those who defend the Constitution as traitors.

-- A. Serwer

• Of course there are political advantages to calling a "stimulus bill" a "jobs bill." But rhetoric only takes you so far if your jobs bill fails to actually produce jobs. The ARRA, while imperfect, saved a not-insignificant number of jobs, and created some demand where there otherwise would not have been any, but it wasn't designed to create concentrated and targeted job growth. Since the administration reportedly knew the stimulus fell short of the amount of money its economists were recommending for political reasons, perhaps they held off on an actual jobs bill designed to make up for the ARRA's shortcomings.
• Kevin Drum catches a New York Times piece on Obama's trip to China making the assumption that China has become "more willing to say no to the United States," as if in the rosy past China was more deferential to the United States. As much as this narrative stems from a simpleminded understanding of our fiscal relationship to the Chinese, it also draws upon the "rising power" story that places China on an inevitable path to preeminence, regardless of the fact that China is still very, very poor.
• I don't doubt that many Republicans believe their own terrorist-as-supervillian fantasies, but the main reason they would welcome a return to the inspiring politics of 2002-2004 is that they, you know, won those elections. And they won them because they convinced enough people that only they could protect you from the terrorists marching on Main St., USA, and that Democrats were nothing less than traitors.
• It's possible that Chuck Grassley actually believes that in their heart of hearts, Democrats just want to destroy capitalism, but to suggest that they "don't care" if they're hurting the economy doesn't make any sense. Name me a political party that won elections by being indifferent to an ailing economy. If Democrats were really just self-interested power seekers, why would they deliberately ruin their chances for re-election?
• Remainders: The vision of the Senate Robert Byrd recalls doesn't actually exist; Marco Rubio tests whether anti-immigration sentiment or worship of St. Ronnie is more powerful; and this year's War on Christmas is the most clueless yet.
  

--Mori Dinauer

In a story that's provoked justified outrage, the Army has threatened single military mom Spc. Alexis Hutchinson with a military court marshal for refusing leave her 10-month-old and ship off to Afghanistan when none of her family members could care for the child. In a compassionate display of flexibility, her superiors offered her the alternative of putting the child in foster care. The whole episode seems to be a the result of military keeping an inadequate and inconsistent family policy.

The Army requires single parents to have a "family plan" in case they are deployed, but if yours falls through, you're out of luck. Why isn't there a backup plan? Hutchinson -- a chef -- could serve on the base for a certain period until she finds an adequate solution. Worse comes to worse, she could receive an "administrative discharge." Whatever the details of the arrangement are, the default choice should not be to put your child in foster care or face criminal charges.

Hutchison also wouldn't have been in this predicament had she been serving, in say, the Navy. Military women generally get six weeks of maternity leave. But the time period before they can be deployed varies by branch. The Navy and Marine Corps don't require women to deploy for up to a year. The Army, however, is ready to ship you off after four months. Four months of leave isn't enough of a grace period for deployments -- many women are still breastfeeding then. Returning to work after four months might not seem so bad, but it's a huge burden when work is thousands of miles away.

The military's family policies belong in the 1950s, both in their understanding of gender balance and in terms of labor law. The government's requirement for private employers – under the Family and Medical Leave Act – makes companies with 50 employees or more give new mothers 14 weeks, a meager baseline that it fails to follow itself. And after years of prodding, the military finally acknowledged that men take care of kids, too: They get all of 10 days.

--Gabriel Arana

With the unemployment rate the highest it's been in 25 years, The Roosevelt Institute asked historians, economists and other public thinkers to reflect on the lessons of the New Deal and explore new, big ideas for how to get America back to work. TAPPED will be cross-posting the 10-part series with the New Deal 2.0 blog. In this installment, David Woolner urges President Obama and Congress to adopt the fearlessness of FDR in directly creating jobs.

The recent news that the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2009 while at the same time the national unemployment rate hit a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October, has many economists talking about a “jobless recovery.” What this means, say the experts, is continued economic growth -- and hence a technical end to the recession -- but no improvement in the employment figures for the immediate future. In fact, most economists predict that under current conditions, the unemployment rate will rise even further -- perhaps reaching as high as 11 percent by the summer of 2010.

It appears that the Obama administration is prepared to accept this scenario and will not push for bolder solutions so as to ensure that the so-called recovery includes not just an expansion of the GDP but also a reduction in the alarmingly high unemployment rate. As a consequence, millions of American workers will continue to languish among the ranks of the unemployed, burdened by an anxious present and an uncertain future.

More after the jump.

--David Woolner

Braintruster David Woolner is senior vice president of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.

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Bank of America has been one of the least cooperative banks participating in Treasury's slow-going program to modify mortgages and prevent foreclosure, but last week I received a lending report from BofA with a fishy paragraph:

Over the past 21 months, we’ve helped modify mortgage loans for 445,000 homeowners or, on average, more than 21,000 each month. In addition to these results through our own programs, we helped move almost 100,000 customers into trial modifications through the Administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) in the third quarter.

Wait a minute. BofA has been performing Treasury modifications through the Home Affordable Mortgage Program more slowly than almost every other peer institution, and had been complaining about how they didn't have the resources or infrastructure to move any faster. But now we find out that even as they complained about the lack of resources, they've been doing hundreds of thousands of non-Treasury modifications, which, as I reported in the spring, are usually worse than getting no modification at all. How are they doing this? Andrew Jakabovics and Pat Garafalo at the Center for American Progress have found out: BofA is directing potential HAMP participants into its proprietary modification program, something the HAMP program is supposed to discourage:

In case there remains any ambiguity as to whether a servicer can pull borrowers out of the pool to offer them a non-HAMP-compliant modification before determining their status under HAMP, Treasury official Herbert Allison recently testified, “under HAMP’s loan modification guidelines, mortgage servicers are prevented from ‘cherry-picking’ which loans to modify in a manner that might deny assistance to borrowers at greatest risk of foreclosure.”

So BofA can’t simply suggest an alternative program to this homeowner without determining eligibility for HAMP, and by doing so, it is potentially lowering the number of successful HAMP modifications it completes. Given the size of BofA’s portfolio, its compliance with program rules — particularly as it pertains to getting eligible borrowers into the program — directly impacts the public’s perception of the success of HAMP. If BofA were performing as well as CitiMortgage, Treasury would have reported an additional quarter million mortgages in its HAMP totals.

This is, of course, ridiculous. The whole point of HAMP was to make modifications that helped troubled borrowers and the broader economy, not use the facade of a government program to trick homeowners into changes that could end with them owing even more money and still potentially losing their homes.

-- Tim Fernholz

At the U.N.'s big World Food Summit in Rome this week, Pope Benedict gave voice to a way of thinking about food that is both seemingly obvious and undervalued in development circles. You hear about the mismatch between the world's sustenance needs and the amount of readily available food attacked from the market angle -- treating food as products that would flow where they need to be if not for subsidies and other protectionist schemes. And you hear food security talked about from the structural-inefficiencies angle -- countries where there is food insecurity suffer from either underdeveloped agricultural industries or malevolent governments. Applying new biotech innovations or focusing on eliminating political bottlenecks thus becomes the goal.

Benedict sees food security differently. Without ignoring the damage done by protectionism and corruption, or the promise of a new green revolution, Benedict is trying to reframe the debate from the bottom up. And at the base is the premise that we should assume that people have secure food, and then muster up outrage when it becomes glaringly clear that they don't. Food insecurity where it exists is not an inefficiency. It's a disgrace. Thus, says Benedict:

[T]he need to oppose those forms of aid that do grave damage to the agricultural sector, those approaches to food production that are geared solely towards consumption and lack a wider perspective, and especially greed, which causes speculation to rear its head even in the marketing of cereals, as if food were to be treated just like any other commodity.

Again, it isn't exactly non-obvious that a billion or so humans being food insecure should be considered a moral question. But Benedict's appeal failed to resonate with the attendees at the U.N. summit, as the countries in attendance -- which included only Italy's Silvio Berlusconi among the G-8 leaders -- issued a squishy statement that failed to set concrete targets for addressing food security, either in terms of economic commitment or goals for a timeline for drawing the global food insecurity crisis to a close.

--Nancy Scola

Tim Fernholz on the need to consider strategy and resources in Afghanistan:

Last week, President Barack Obama rejected four different plans for what to do in Afghanistan, each one including an increase in the number of U.S. troops in the region. Resources -- how much money and how many troops -- are at the forefront of the media's coverage of Obama's decision, and the most tangible measure of the conflict to most Americans.

But as the debate over Afghanistan has progressed, voices within the administration, military commanders like Gen. Stanley McChrystal, former officials like Gen. Colin Powell, and pundits like Fred Kaplan have argued that the focus shouldn't be on how many troops are sent to Afghanistan but what they will do when they get there. This is a misleading formulation that eliminates vital strategic options. In reality, the resources the U.S. commits in Afghanistan, in both troops and treasure, should be at the crux of this debate.

KEEP READING ...

I just got off a conference call held by the Council on Foreign Relations, featuring former adviser to Condoleeza Rice, John B. Bellinger, and National Security expert Steve Simon. Simon has an op-ed in the New York Times today supporting the decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in civilian court.

Bellinger said that he thought the administration's "hybrid model" of military commissions and civilian trials makes sense given that some of the people the U.S. is holding were captured on the battlefield. Nevertheless, he also pointed out that federal courts have far more experience dealing with terrorism cases than military commissions.

Bellinger condemned the "demonization" of the military commissions by human rights groups, and argued that the commissions were "in fact a well functioning system with good judges and good lawyers who I think would have been fair," but that "none of the military lawyers were used to dealing with massive terrorism cases like this.” Bellinger said that the Bush administration had in fact planned on "moving to shore up the military prosecutors with people from the Justice Department."

“Federal prosecutors are really more used to doing this kind of thing anyway," Bellinger said.

Another point that Bellinger made was that military commissions cases can be appealed into the federal court system -- meaning that any lawyer who decides to appeal would have his client's case looked at by a civilian judge anyway. He said that even if KSM had been tried by military commission, his case would have ended up in federal court.

As for Simon, he pointed out that trying KSM and the alleged 9/11 conspirators by military commission would read poorly in the Middle East.

“In the Arab Middle East, these sorts of trials are carried out by the military, they are seen as the worst form of pseudo-judicial regime justice, and not the real thing," Simon said. "So when they would look at a trial conducted by the U.S. military, even though it would adhere to more than just a semblance of due process, they’re looking at men in uniform trying other men, and they’re going to draw certain conclusions based on mirror imaging.”

"They’re just going to say that’s what happens here.”

-- A. Serwer

How can the stock market hit new highs at the same time unemployment is hitting new highs? Simple. The market is up because corporate earnings are up. Corporate earnings are up because companies are cutting costs. And the biggest single cost they’re cutting is their payrolls. So they let people go and, presto, their balance sheets look better and their stock prices rise.

In the old-fashioned kind of recession decades ago, big companies laid off people with the expectation of rehiring them when the economy turned up. Then a few recessions back, companies started laying off people for good, never rehiring them even when the economy recovered.

In the Great Recession of 2008-2009, companies are going a step further. They’re using this sharp downturn to cut payrolls even below where they were when times were good. Outsourcing abroad, setting up shop in China and elsewhere, contracting out, replacing people with software and automated machines – they're doing whatever it takes to get payrolls down so earnings bounce up.

Caterpillar earned $404 million in the third quarter, or 64 cents a share. Analysts had expected only 5 cents. Caterpillar’s stock is up 165 percent since March. How did Caterpillar do it? Not by selling more bulldozers. It did it by cutting over 37,000 jobs.

The result, overall, is an asset-based recovery, not a Main Street recovery. Yes, the economy is growing again, but the surge in productivity is a mirage. Worker output per hour is skyrocketing because companies are generating almost as much output with fewer workers and fewer hours.

More after the jump.

--Robert Reich

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Julie Strawn explains how we can fix our community colleges:

Community colleges, far more than four-year colleges, serve groups that will dominate our undergraduate student populations and our work force for decades to come: students on their own financially, older students, people of color, parents, first-generation college students, and immigrants. Although widely viewed as gateways to the American dream, community colleges face relatively low completion rates. This quandary challenges our national commitment to economic mobility.

Washington state, more than any other, has sought to address this challenge systematically. Researchers mined state data on work-force needs, demographic changes, and student outcomes in community and technical colleges. They found that students needed to reach a "tipping point" in their educational journeys for postsecondary education to translate into significant economic benefits. This tipping point is about a year's worth of post-secondary education, paired with an occupational credential.

KEEP READING ...

Attorney General Eric Holder is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, and his prepared remarks focus heavily on justifying the decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators in federal court. Holder points out that civilian courts have been used very successfully over the years to prosecute terrorists, that the Classified Intelligence Procedures Act will prevent sensitive information from leaking out of a trial, and that KSM's hollow indictments of the United States will be no less present in a military commission than they would be in a civilian court.

The most politically salient part of Holder's speech however, is the part meant to head off conservative criticism that the administration is underestimating the threat posed by terrorism. Holder states unequivocally that "I know we are at war," adding that "We need not cower in the face of this enemy. Our institutions are strong, our infrastructure is sturdy, our resolve is firm, and our people are ready."

Here's the relevant excerpt:

I know that we are at war.

I know that we are at war with a vicious enemy who targets our soldiers on the battlefield in Afghanistan and our civilians on the streets here at home. I have personally witnessed that somber fact in the faces of the families who have lost loved ones abroad, and I have seen it in the daily intelligence stream I review each day. Those who suggest otherwise are simply wrong.

Prosecuting the 9/11 defendants in federal court does not represent some larger judgment about whether or not we are at war. We are at war, and we will use every instrument of national power – civilian, military, law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic, and others – to win. We need not cower in the face of this enemy. Our institutions are strong, our infrastructure is sturdy, our resolve is firm, and our people are ready.

We will also use every instrument of our national power to bring to justice those responsible for terrorist attacks against our people. For eight years, justice has been delayed for the victims of the 9/11 attacks. It has been delayed even further for the victims of the attack on the USS Cole. No longer. No more delays. It is time, it is past time, to act. By bringing prosecutions in both our courts and military commissions, by seeking the death penalty, by holding these terrorists responsible for their actions, we are finally taking ultimate steps toward justice. That is why I made this decision.

In making this and every other decision I have made as Attorney General, my paramount concern is the safety of the American people and the preservation of American values. I am confident this decision meets those goals, and that it will withstand the judgment of history.

I'm skeptical that this two-tiered justice system, where military commissions are used to try not soldiers breaking the laws of war but criminals against whom we have shaky cases, will stand the test of time. Military commissions have historically been used for dispensing battlefield justice, not for trying people months or years after the fact.

That said, Holder's right that "we need not cower in the face of the enemy". Al Qaeda cannot destroy the United States. It can only make us so fearful that we destroy ourselves.

-- A. Serwer