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Mortgage Association Has Mortgage Problems

Nikki Gloudeman — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:27:20 +0000

The real estate situation is so bad, even the mortgage associations are having a hard time with their mortgages.

Last Friday, the Mortgage Bankers Association sold its $90 million headquarters—for $41 million.

As Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, mused to the Washington Post, "It's a little bit of irony that in the middle of the mortgage crisis brought on by the bad lending practices of many members of the Mortgage Bankers Association that they got caught up in the same problem."

I believe that's what they call a taste of your own medicine.

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The 700 Military Bases of Afghanistan

Tom Engelhardt — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:32:58 +0000

Once is an anomaly; twice is the beginning of a pattern. Right now, we’re seeing the same sequence of events for the second time in less than a decade, and it looks like the signature American way of war in our time is coming into focus.

In 2003, when the Bush administration invaded Iraq, the Pentagon already had on its drawing boards plans for building a series of permanent mega-bases in that country. (They were charmingly called "enduring camps.") Once Baghdad fell and it turned out that, Saddam Hussein or no, the U.S. was going to have to fight rather than settle in and let the good times roll, hundreds of micro-bases were added to the mega ones—106 of them by 2005, more than 300 in all. Then, in 2005, Washington decided to trade in its embassy in one of Saddam’s old palaces for something a little spiffier. In its place, on a 104-acre plot by the Tigris River in the middle of Baghdad, for at least three-quarters of a billion dollars after cost overruns, it built the largest, most expensive embassy on the planet. It was planned for a staff of 1,000 "diplomats" with all the accoutrements of the good life and plenty of hired help. (Even now, despite much discussion about "ending" the American role in Iraq, further plans are reportedly being made for the embassy’s staff to double.) This was clearly to be U.S. mission control for the Greater Middle East.

Building of this expansive kind is, of course, a staggering imperial undertaking. It implies a global power with resources beyond measure, for which waste means nothing. The mega-bases and the embassy were, in that sense, American wonders of the world, our own ziggurat-equivalents in Mesopotamia, right down to the multiple PXs, familiar fast food outlets, and miniature golf. No empire had ever launched a base-building program quite like it (if, that is, you leave out the precursor to this whole experience, the U.S. in Vietnam in the 1960s).

The Iraqi base-building project alone had already absorbed several billion taxpayer dollars in just the first half-year of construction in 2003. But it did look like a one-of-a-kind architectural adventure— until, that is, the "forgotten war," the one in Afghanistan, came back into view. Starting in 2008, base building ramped up there, went into overdrive in 2009, and hasn’t come out of it yet. The result: an even more staggering base-construction splurge, and with it, the announcement last year that another monster embassy would go up, this time in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, for another cool near-billion. (The already large U.S. embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, would also be further expanded to the tune of $175-200 million). And keep in mind that none of this even includes the huge ring of supporting bases for America’s Afghan and Iraq operations in the Persian Gulf, South and Central Asia, and even on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Does anyone see a pattern here? The American military must be the heaviest occupation force in history. According to reports, it now has 1.5 million pieces of equipment, micro to mega, to get out of Iraq as U.S. forces draw down. This is war and occupation of Guinness World Records proportions, a veritable Ripley’s Believe It Or Not of imperial military construction. The only thing that won’t make the record books, of course, is the results: in war-fighting terms, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the world’s mightiest military has been battled to at least a draw by rag-tag, lightly armed, minority insurgencies.

To read more about Afghanistan's base-building boom, click here.

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German Geezer Gang Kidnaps Investment Advisor Who Lost Their Money

James Ridgeway — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:03:44 +0000

The British Daily Mail today reports on what it calls a “gang of Old Rage Pensioners” in Bavaria who are accused of kidnapping and assaulting their financial adviser because, they said, he had “taken us for a ride.”

Keep in mind that this colorful account is from a British tabloid: Terms like “torture” are there for sensational effect, the events are still under contention, and none of the geezers has yet been convicted. According to NPR’s “The World,” the old people are charged with abduction and grievous bodily harm--the latter, apparently, for injuries caused when they hit the financial advisor with their walkers.

While the senior are on trial, the financial advisor is also under investigation for fraud.

The four German seniors said they were so incensed over the losses that American-born investment specialist James Amburn incurred that they hatched the plan to kidnap him in a bid to get their cash back....

Amburn was ambushed outside his home in Speyer, west Germany, where he was bound with masking tape and bundled into the boot of a car after being hit over the head with the walking frame of one of his kidnappers.

Prosecutors charged the two married couples, aged between 60 and 79, as well as the co-conspirator, with carrying out the kidnapping in order to recoup losses amounting to £2.3 million in investments that soured due to the international financial downturn.

According to the prosecutors, kidnappers Roland Koenig, 74, and Willy Dehmer, 60, attacked Amburn outside his home and bundled him into an oversize cardboard box which they wheeled to the boot of a silver Audi saloon car.

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Sri Lankan President Arrests Election Opponent, Dissolves Parliment

Sonja Sharp — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:59:04 +0000

It's been a busy February for newly reelected Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa: Just two weeks after defeating ex-General Sarath Fonseka in the polls on January 26th, he had his arch rival physically carted from his office and placed under arrest for sedition. Then, he dissolved Parliament. It seems no amount of pleading by the UN or India's Manmohan Singh can get Sri Lanka to just chill out.

Rajapaksa and Fonseka were always an odd couple: closely allied during last spring's final campaign against the separatist Tamil Tigers (LTTE), the two men fell out after the war, each accusing the other of taking sole credit for the Tigers' defeat. After trading accusations of war crimes through the summer and fall, the President "promoted" the General to a largely ceremonial position last winter. Fonseka quit, and shortly thereafter, declared his intent to unseat his rival.

That's when things got really weird. Both Fonseka and Rajapaksa are suspected by international agencies of having committed war crimes during the spring campaign; both are open Sinhalese nationalists. Yet, with little trouble, Fonseka managed to secure the backing of a coalition of minority parties, including the Tamil National Alliance, a crucial ally. In the elections, he carried the largely Tamil provinces of the North and East, but lost the national vote by 17 points.

Then day after the elections, rumors began to fly that the General had plotted with army officers to murder the President and his family. Fonseka's campaign headquarters were searched and several campaign workers arrested. For the last 24 hours, the General was kept in an undisclosed location, though India's Hindustan Times is reporting that Fonseka's wife, Anoma, was allowed to see her husband for the first time today, bringing him a change of clothes and his inhaler. Many critics fear arresting the losing presidential candidate and dissolving Parliament sends the wrong message to a country that just ended a 26-year-long civil war. That's putting it mildly.

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Black History Month: What's In It For Me?

Titania Kumeh — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:11:35 +0000

FYI: It's Black History Month, and to honor the occasion I got the scoop on proposed policies that could directly impact me—a 25-year old, African-American female with some debt and no health insurance. To find out what the government has in store, I enlisted the help of Marjorie A. Innocent and Alana Hackshaw who are directors at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

First up is health care. Both the House and Senate health care reform bills would extend the age limit for young adults to retain insurance coverage under their parents’ plans. The House bill allows parents to cover their children until age 27; the Senate version grants coverage until age 26. Nearly one-third of young adults in their twenties lack coverage, with the rate being even higher for African-American males. Either bill would increase access to preventive health care as young Americans transition from school to the workforce—which for many is a time of financial vulnerability.

I'm familiar with financial vulnerability: I was unemployed after graduating from college, and now I'm an intern. But I'm fortunate in comparison to many college-educated African-Americans who are more likely to be unemployed than whites who have only a high school diploma. Not to mention, African American males my age who represent the highest unemployment rate in the nation. At this time, none of the administration's initiatives specifically target unemployment's disproportionate impact upon African-Americans, but the policies below may help:

President Obama’s proposal of the Small Business Jobs and Wages Tax Credit will provide employers with a tax credit of $5K for every new employee added to their payroll.
The effects of the black community's 16.5 percent unemployment rate would be blunted by the continued extension of unemployment compensation under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which is slated to expire at the end of the month.

I'm lucky to have a job, but I'm still broke, partly because I'm drowning in student loans. In his State of the Union speech last month, President Obama said he wants to provide relief to college graduates. The Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan, which was enacted under the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007, went into effect in July. It's good news for federal student loan borrowers who are experiencing financial challenges, have a high debt-to-income ratio, or are seeking a career in public service. And the administration is proposing to strengthen it by limiting loan payments to ten percent of discretionary income instead of the current 15 percent, plus forgiving unpaid balances after 20 years instead of 25. Such changes would benefit many African-American graduates who relied on federal student loans to realize their higher education goals, but it should be noted that African Americans disproportionately default on private student loans. And the IBR program doesn't touch those.

All of these proposals would signify a bit of progress, if only Black History Month could inspire Congress to pass them.

UPDATE: This post previously stated that the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF) recently slammed Obama for not tailoring policies to fit the needs of African-Americans. It was the 42-member Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) that criticized Obama not the CBCF, which is a nonpartisan, nonprofit institute. The error has since been changed.

Follow Titania Kumeh on Twitter.

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The Economist's Bizarre Health Care Claim

Nick Baumann — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:20:34 +0000

In an editorial in Friday's issue bemoaning American politicians' inability to tackle the budget deficit, The Economist offers this bizarre, unsupported assertion:

Health care offered a chance to [reduce government spending on social insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid] (broader coverage could come with tougher cost controls). But a weak administration and a greedy Congress conspired to produce a baggy monster of a bill which, from a fiscal point of view, might have made things worse.

The health care bill could have been a lot better. But if The Economist's editorial writers are going to claim that the bill "might" make the fiscal situation worse, they should offer some evidence. The Congressional Budget Office, which has been cited by both Republicans and Democrats as an impartial referee, found that both the House and the Senate health care bills would reduce the deficit over their first decade. And the Senate bill, according to the CBO's calculations, would reduce the deficit by more than a trillion dollars in its second decade. The news article that's paired with The Economist's editorial says that "many" (unspecified) analysts "doubt whether [health care reform] savings would have materialised" if reform passed, and argues that if they did, it would be "miraculous."

Economist readers would have been better served by coverage that made it clear that the CBO believes that passing health care reform will reduce the deficit. They would have been even better served if The Economist explained that America's long-term deficit problem is driven almost entirely by the rising cost of health care—not by the retirement of baby boomers or Social Security costs. As Dean Baker (an economist!) likes to remind us, "if the United States health care system were as efficient as those in other countries, the U.S. would be expecting huge budget surpluses in future decades."

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Arpaio Rebukes DOJ, Will Train 881 Deputies For Immigration Arrests

Ben Buchwalter — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:01:00 +0000

When Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio tweeted yesterday that he would announce a change on his department's enforcement of immigration laws, I knew we were in for a ride.

Fresh off a federal court victory that vindicated Arpaio's decision to force a mentally ill inmate, Eric Vogel, to wear pink underwear under his striped jail uniform, Arpaio's office announced that the Sheriff, who became a hero of the right for cracking down on illegal immigration in Hispanic neighborhoods, will train all 881 Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies to make immigration arrests.

This is a sharp rebuke to the federal government, which stripped 100 of Arpaio's deputies of the right to make immigration arrests in the field last October. At the time, Arpaio vowed to continue his policies regardless of the Justice Department's instructions. Yesterday's announcement shows that Arpaio still means business.

Arpaio supporters claim that his tactics preserve states' rights as guaranteed by the Constitution. But critics say that this is merely an excuse for the Sheriff to implement an anti-immigration agenda that is fueled by racial profiling. "Sheriff Arpaio is a demagogue, and his use of immigration as a pretext to gain notoriety is old news, " said Chris Newman of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

"Good for Joe Arpaio!" says former Sheriff Richard Mack, who now runs the No Sheriff Left Behind campaign urging local Sheriffs to disobey unjust federal orders. "The Sheriffs of this country have an obligation to uphold the law and protect the citizens from illegal immigration. And when the feds don't do their job, it leaves it to us to clean up the situation."

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Mortgage Shark Attack

Nikki Gloudeman — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:20:00 +0000

The economic meltdown has been rife with villains, from corporate execs who turned their TARP payouts into multimillion dollar paydays, to corrupt politicians who favored Corporate America for their own financial gain.

Another group for the scoundrel list? Loan servicers, the mortgage middlemen who literally cheat Americans out of house and home because (you guessed it) it lines their pockets. While fact-checking a story about these sharks, I rifled through a thousand legal complaints against the nation's ten largest mortgage servicers, and spoke with homeowners who have been cheated out of thousands of dollars—all while fearing they may literally be kicked to the curb.

Last year, as the problem worsened, Obama established the Home Affordable Modification Program to try to get servicers to negotiate with homeowners to keep their homes. But after months, the program has not done nearly enough to prevent predatory servicing or skyrocketing foreclosure rates.

In her testimony (pdf) to Congress last year, attorney and mortgage expert Diane Thompson called the epidemic a "foreclosure tsunami." And with little to suggest a systemic change, it doesn't look like it will stop raging anytime soon.

Read the full story here.

See a list of subprime lenders who are reaping the benefits of HAMP here.

And click here for a list of resources to help homeowners deal with mortgage hell.

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The Drone Wars

Tom Engelhardt — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:48:05 +0000

Almost every day, reports come back from the CIA’s "secret" battlefield in the Pakistani tribal borderlands. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—that is, pilot-less drones—shoot missiles (18 of them in a single attack on a tiny village last week) or drop bombs and then the news comes in: a certain number of al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders or suspected Arab or Uzbek or Afghan "militants" have died. The numbers are often remarkably precise. Sometimes they are attributed to U.S. sources, sometimes to the Pakistanis; sometimes, it’s hard to tell where the information comes from. In the Pakistani press, on the other hand, the numbers that come back are usually of civilian dead. They, too, tend to be precise.

Don’t let that precision fool you. Here’s the reality: There are no reporters on the ground and none of these figures can be taken as accurate. Let’s just consider the CIA side of things. Any information that comes from American sources (i.e. the CIA) has to be looked at with great wariness. As a start, the CIA’s history is one of deception. There’s no reason to take anything its sources say at face value. They will report just what they think it’s in their interest to report—and the ongoing "success" of their drone strikes is distinctly in their interest.

Then, there’s history. In the present drone wars, as in the CIA’s bloody Phoenix Program in the Vietnam era, the Agency’s operatives, working in distinctly alien terrain, must rely on local sources (or possibly official Pakistani ones) for targeting intelligence. In Vietnam in the 1960s, the Agency’s Phoenix Program—reportedly responsible for the assassination of 20,000 Vietnamese—became, according to historian Marilyn Young, "an extortionist’s paradise, with payoffs as available for denunciation as for protection." Once again, the CIA is reportedly passing out bags of money and anyone on the ground with a grudge, or the desire to eliminate an enemy, or simply the desire to make some of that money can undoubtedly feed information into the system, watch the drones do their damnedest, and then report back that more "terrorists" are dead. Just assume that at least some of those "militants" dying in Pakistan, and possibly many of them, aren’t who the CIA hopes they are.

Think of it as a foolproof situation, with an emphasis on the "fool." And then keep in mind that, in December, the CIA’s local brain trust, undoubtedly the same people who were leaking precise news of "successes" in Pakistan, mistook a jihadist double agent from Jordan for an agent of theirs, gathered at an Agency base in Khost, Afghanistan, and let him wipe them out with a suicide bomb. Seven CIA operatives died, including the base chief. This should give us a grim clue as to the accuracy of the CIA’s insights into what’s happening on the ground in Pakistan, or into the real effects of their 24/7 robotic assassination program.

But there’s a deeper, more dangerous level of deception in Washington’s widening war in the region: self-deception. The CIA drone program, which the Agency’s Director Leon Panetta has called "the only game in town" when it comes to dismantling al-Qaeda, is just symptomatic of such self-deception. While the CIA and the U.S. military have been expending enormous effort studying the Afghan and Pakistani situations and consulting experts, and while the White House has conducted an extensive series of seminars-cum-policy-debates on both countries, you can count on one thing: none of them have spent significant time studying or thinking about us.

As a result, the seeming cleanliness and effectiveness of the drone-war solution undoubtedly only reinforces a sense in Washington that the world’s last great military power can still control this war—that it can organize, order, prod, wheedle, and bribe both the Afghans and Pakistanis into doing what’s best, and if that doesn’t work, simply continue raining down the missiles and bombs. Beware Washington’s deep-seated belief that it controls events; that it is, however precariously, in the saddle; that, as Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal recently put it, there is a "corner" to "turn" out there, even if we haven’t quite turned it yet.

In fact, Washington is not in the saddle and that corner, if there, if turned, will have its own unpleasant surprises. Washington is, in this sense, as oblivious as those CIA operatives were as they waited for "their" Jordanian agent to give them supposedly vital information on the al-Qaeda leadership in the Pakistani tribal areas. Like their drones, the Americans in charge of this war are desperately far from the ground, and they don’t even seem to know it.

It’s time for Washington to examine not what we know about them, but what we don’t know about ourselves.

Read more about drone attacks in Pratap Chatterjee's "Destabilizing Pakistan."

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Dumbest Quote of the Day

David Corn — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:22:55 +0000

And the winner is Michael Steele, the GOP chaiman. From an AP report on a debate between Steele and Harold Ford Jr., a former Democratic House member, at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock:

"Trust me, after taxes, a million dollars is not a lot of money," Steele said.

Yes, he said after taxes. (Steele was attacking President Barack Obama's plan to let George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy expire.) So is the Democratic attack ad finished yet? Such a spot could be used in every congressional district of the nation. This quote was first reported last week, but Dems are pushing it out today. In oppo research, this is what they call a "keeper."

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

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New Push for Crooked Oil Crackdown

Andy Kroll — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:24:44 +0000

In the wake of last's week Senate report on how dirty foreign money still flows into the US, an international group of energy activists pointed to the report's findings as fresh evidence for the need for more transparency in the oil, gas, and mineral industries. The exhaustive report, published by the Senate investigations subcommittee, details four corruption cases—three of them previously unreported—in which foreign individuals all from nations rich in oil or other natural resources funneled millions of dollars in "suspect funds" into the US for money laundering purposes. In several instances, that dirty money likely came from the countries' burgeoning energy sectors. The energy-transparency organization, the Publish What You Pay coalition, said the Senate's findings reveal the shadowy, corrupt figures in energy-rich nations like Angola, Nigeria, and Gabon—three countries cited in the report—and show the need for disclosure on how multinational energy companies do business in those countries. "More transparency is needed in these countries to empower citizens to prevent the theft of public funds," Isabel Munilla, Publish What You Pay's US director, said in a statement. "A comprehensive US policy response requires the passing of the Energy Security Through Transparency Act."

That legislation, introduced by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) in September 2009, would force SEC-registered energy companies, like ExxonMobil and British Petroleum, to disclose how much they pay to foreign countries like Nigeria and the Congo to extract natural resources. Right now, information on those kinds of payments remains in the dark; the final destination of that money—be it the extraction company or the pockets of powerful foreign leaders—remains unclear. Lugar and Cardin's bill would go a long way toward tracking that money and potentially preventing those funds from ending up in the wrong hands—an all-too-often occurrence in countries where resource wealth is a curse and not a blessing and transparency is the exception and not the rule.

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We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for February 8, 2010

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:46:46 +0000

A morning sun glares through a pack of clouds as AV-8B Harriers and MV-22 Ospreys from Marine Medium Tilt Rotor Squadron 162 (Reinforced), 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, quietly rest aboard USS Nassau sailing through the Caribbean Sea Feb. 7. Photo via the US Marines by Sgt. Alex Sauceda.

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Need to Read: February 8, 2010

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:36:15 +0000

The must-read news from around the web and in today's papers:

A glimpse inside the front lines of Obama's war in Afghanistan: [Mother Jones]
Obama plans to host a bipartisan summit on health-care reform's future: [New York Times]
Carly Fiorina is hardly original in casting a politician as a mere creature: [MoJo]
Iran will build 10 nuclear plants and beef up its military forces: [Los Angeles Times]
In a Democratic rebuke, Wall Street begins giving more to the GOP: [NYT]
Slowly, Taliban leaders are increasingly considering negotiations: [Reuters]
Anti-terrorism czar blasts politicians who use attacks as talking points: [Washington Post]
A senior Afghan police official is accused of helping insurgents build bombs: [LAT]
Sarah Palin won't rule out a 2012 presidential run: [WaPo]
Fed Reserve chair Ben Bernanke will lay out credit tightening plan this week: [Wall Street Journal]

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LA Joins Hebrew Charter Fray

Sonja Sharp — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:30:00 +0000

Ugg, really? For the second time in as many years, a major metro that just happens to be home to a statistically significant percentage of all World Jewry falls prey to the total non-controversy of a Hebrew-language charter school. I'm speaking, of course, about the current clash over a proposed Public Hebrew-language charter school in Los Angeles, the first Hebrew-language charter in the state. Non-controversy, you say? But how could anything with a possible tangential relation religion or Israel not be controversial? Glad you asked.

People's Exhibit A: Brooklyn's Hebrew Language Academy in Kings Highway (an neighborhood which is in many parts profoundly Jewish, though not particularly Orthodox). I visited founders of the HLA during the firestorm of controversy that surrounded its opening. Give 'em an inch and they'll be learning Gemara before you can say shalosh, cried the critics. Only Jewish parents want it, groused the Times. It'll be a yeshiva in public school's clothing, screamed the Post. (To be fair, HLA did end up in an old yeshiva building—but go ahead and ask me how many HeadStart preschool programs are also housed in old yeshivas in Marine Park, Kings Highway and Brighton Beach and nobody bats an eyelash—go ahead, ask me).

Didn't happen. Nothing of the kind. Today, less than 9 months into its inaugural year, the charter couldn't make headlines if it tried. Why? You mean besides that it's integrated and successfully meets educational benchmarks? Other than that?

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A Draft in Afghanistan?

Taylor Wiles — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:01:00 +0000

This past weekend Afghan president Hamid Karzai revisited the controversial prospect of instigating a draft while speaking at a security conference in Munich. His hope is to boost national security forces so that, within five years, the country would "no longer be a burden on the shoulders of the international community." But just last week, Karzai's defense minister said his army was growing sufficiently without the help of mandatory service.

In addition to contradicting the popular notion that the transition is going smoothly, Karzai's comments seemed to foil the counter-insurgency strategy that the top US and NATO commander General McChrystal began pushing last year. McChrystal's strategy is to secure rural civilian areas by rooting out Taliban fighters and building safe zones for local governance. But this weekend Karzai said that the war "is not in the Afghan villages and homes. We believe this war on terror is in the sanctuaries, training grounds and the motivational factors and financial resources beyond the Afghan borders."

Karzai's statement came on the same day as the arrest of the deputy police chief of Afghanistan's central province. NATO and Afghan forces acted on allegations that Col. Attaullah Wahab had been in cahoots with the Taliban, distributing roadside bombs targeting coalition troops in the north.

In the current issue of Mother Jones, correspondent Nir Rosen reports from Afghanistan during last year's most aggressive military offensive. Click here to read Rosen's firsthand account of how counter-insurgency is playing out on the ground. Also, check out this photo essay about Afghanistan's Weapons Removal and Abatement teams—the brave guys charged with the thankless task of digging up unexploded ordnance all over the country.

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House Committee Passes Bill to Ban Physical Restraint in Schools

Jessica Calefati — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:06:11 +0000

A bi-partisan group of legislators from the House Education and Labor Committee has approved a bill that will protect students, especially those with special needs, from teachers who use restraint and seclusion as punishment.

According to a Government Accountability Office report published last spring, special education teachers have disciplined students by sitting on them or strapping them into devices that look like electric chairs. Many children have survived such torture, albeit with physical and emotional scars, but for others like Cedric Price, whose mother spoke before lawmakers at a committee hearing last May, the treatment was fatal.

Though the GAO report speculates that this type of abuse is widespread, and even though there are laws protecting children from such abuses in hospitals and other facilities that receive federal health funding, there are currently no federal laws addressing restraint and seclusion in schools. The bill now awaits a full vote in the House before it moves onto the Senate. “This bill makes clear that there is no place in our schools for abuse and torture,” said committee chair Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). “The egregious abuse of a child should not be considered less criminal because it happens in a classroom—it should be the opposite."

The bill will apply to public and private schools, but it's uncertain what effect it would have on residential treatment centers like the Judge Rotenberg Center in Massachusetts, which uses electric shocks to discipline its special needs students. At very least, the bill would establish national reporting standards, documenting for the first time the frequency and number of students being restrained or secluded.

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Udall Talks Senate Reform

Tim Murphy — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:47:33 +0000

Sen. Tom Udall, a freshman Democrat from New Mexico, has raised some eyebrows with a resolution (pdf) to adopt a new set of rules (and possibly scrap the filibuster) at the start of the 112th Congress. I spoke with the Senator yesterday about the prospects for reform and what specifically he hoped to accomplish. Among the main points:

History repeating? Udall, whose "constitutional option" bears the same name as the failed Republican reform in 2005, doesn't believe the Democratic efforts have much in common with GOP's failed attempt to abolish the filibuster.
Will it catch on? Despite low recognition among the general public, Udall believes the reforms will be a winner with his constituents.
Don't expect much bombthrowing: Udall expects procedural reform to be a bi-partisan issue, but did not want to get "stuck in the weeds" discussing specific changes.

You can read the full piece here.

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Virginia GOP Exploits Blizzard

Kate Sheppard — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:51:37 +0000

Check out Blue Marble for the latest on environmental politics:

Virginia GOP Uses Blizzard to Spread Climate Lies

It's snowing! The Virginia GOP uses the blizzard as an opportunity to spread global warming misinformation. The only problem? Their new Republican governor admits climate change is a concern.

Politics and the Pika

The Department of Interior denies a request to add the pika to the endangered species list. Here's why the debate is about more than just a cute little critter.

The Underwear Bomber and Climate Legislation

VoteVets, the progressive veterans group, kicked off a $2 million ad campaign in key states linking our dependence on oil from hostile nations to the Christmas Day underwear bomber.

Doing the Math on Green Jobs

"Clean energy jobs" get a lot of lip service from politicians. But legislation in Congress to create them falls far short of its potential.

At the Intersection of Climate Science and Voluptuous Breasts ...

The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change penned a racy new novel. It's no Dynamics of Electrical Energy Supply and Demand: An Economic Analysis, but it has its allure.

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Charter Schools Segregated (Just Like Public Schools)

Sonja Sharp — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:50:25 +0000

Charter schools suffer more from de facto segregation than their chronically segregated public school counterparts, claims a study (pdf) from the UCLA Civil Rights Project. The San Francisco Chronicle took the story and ran with it, even trekking across the bridge to the Achieve Academy in Oakland, a charter school with a student population that is 90 percent Latino.

What the SF critics have failed to point out is that, though segregation is "alive and well" in other districts, the Bay Area actually has the most segregated schools in the state. The other thing they neglected to mention? Achieve Academy is in Fruitvale, one of the most thoroughly Latino neighborhoods in Oakland. I would challenge anyone to find me a public school in Fruitvale that didn't have the exact same student profile. More to the point, that's what draws many charters to neighborhoods like Fruitvale in the first place--minority students under-served by failing public schools. That doesn't make de facto segregation right, but it does make the Chronicle piece sloppy--unless they attend Berkeley High, Bay Area students are virtually guaranteed to go to a school where 80 percent of the student body is of the same ethnicity. Even San Francisco's magnet high school, Lowell, is more than 52 percent Chinese, and 70 percent Asian. The difference between 70 and 85 and 90 percent as homogeneous as canned milk is not impressive to me.

By contrast, charters in the Bay Area are merely just as segregated as their California counterparts. Which would probably make them less segregated than Bay Area public schools. So what's the big deal? It seems, belatedly, that the media's attitude towards charter schools has started to shift. To wit: the recent New Yorker profile of Secretary of Ed Arne Duncan, which spent valuable real estate debating the merits of the movement. Is the blush off the rose? Are unlucky states like California growing bitter watching the Race to the Top money slip them by? Are charters just the next in an eye-grabbing list of controversial topics newspapers have gripped in a desperate attempt to stay afloat, or should we really be worried about a weakened and battered Brown v. Board actually getting weaker? Too bad, SF Chron. I thought we were finally going to see some enterprise reporting. Nice you went over to Oakland though--good for you.

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Which Members of Congress Are On Twitter?

Nick Baumann — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:34:13 +0000

Which members of Congress are on Twitter? A lot of them, it turns out. A new report (PDF) by the Congressional Research Service examines the use of Twitter by representatives and senators during August and September of 2009:

The data show that 205 Representatives and Senators are registered with Twitter (as of September 30, 2009) and issued a total of 7,078 "tweets" during the data collection period of August and September 2009. With approximately 38% of House Members and 39% of Senators registered with Twitter, Members sent an average of 116 tweets per day collectively.

Unsurprisingly, member use of Twitter mirrors that of regular people: many registered members don't tweet at all, while a few members are responsible for a big chunk of the tweets. Half of the members of Congress on Twitter sent 20 or fewer tweets during August and September. But "16 Members sent more than 100 tweets," according to the report. Members of the House tweet far more often than Senators, and House Republicans are far more active tweeters than House Democrats. (Senate Republicans tweet slightly more frequently than Senate Democrats.)

The most interesting part of the CRS report focuses on the content of members' tweets. The authors of the study classified all the tweets they looked at into eight categories: position taking, policy statements, media or public relations, district or state, official or congressional action, personal, campaign, and other. Bottom line?

At this time, Twitter largely facilitates a one-way transmission of information from Members to the public. Members use Twitter to convey information about their official actions, press appearances, or policy positions. Given the limited data available thus far, a two-way exchange of information or policy dialogue appears less frequent.

That's also unsurprising, but it's too bad. It would be good for everyone if more Americans thought their representatives were hearing their concerns. Anyway, one more item. While the median representative had 1,297 followers, and the median senator had 3,536, one senator is the undisputed king of congressional twitterers: Sen. John McCain. He has over 1.7 million.

(h/t: Steven Aftergood)

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Obama: Question Time with GOPers was "Fun"

David Corn — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:02:28 +0000

At a Democratic fundraiser on Thursday night, Obama referred to last week's Q&A with House GOPers:

We've got to change the tone of government and politics here in Washington and all across America. I'm not going to give up on that either. You know, the American people are right to be frustrated about a Washington where every day is Election Day -- and the basic theory is, "If you lose I win." Where we're not measuring success by what we're doing for the American people, but how we look in the latest Gallup. No wonder people are frustrated. That’s why I went to the House Republican caucus the other day. We had a good discussion -- (laughter) -- about the challenges that are facing the American people, our ideas to solve them. That was good for the country. It's good for our democracy. I had fun.

Just not enough fun to commit to doing it again.

By the way, an informed source tells me that House GOP leader John Boehner is unlikely to say yes to the cross-partisan campaign for more Question Time without the White House agreeing first. And you can read my response to QT skeptics here.

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

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Need to Read: February 5, 2010

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:01:00 +0000

The must-read stories from around the web and in today's papers:

Does Obama want to impose martial law to shut down the Tea Party movement? [Mother Jones]
US officials are cracking down more on commanders in Afghan war: [Washington Post]
Calif. gubernational hopeful Carly Fiorina's success strategy: Demon sheep! [MoJo]
Breaking down the bitter fight Senate Dems face in keeping their majority: [Reuters]
US officials are encouraged by India's desire for security talks with Pakistan, others: [The Hindu]
Former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis is sued over Merrill Lynch-shareholder flap: [Wall Street Journal]
10 Americans charged with child abduction involving Haitian children: [New York Times]
Illinois Democrats face a bleak upcoming election season: [Wall Street Journal]
A University of East Anglia scientist is being questioned over "Climategate" leaks: [The Guardian UK]
Congress passes record hike in US debt level: [Politico]

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We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for February 5, 2010

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Marines and Afghan national army soldiers with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, step out on patrol through the Shorshurak region of Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on January 29. Photo via the US Marines by Lance Cpl. James W. Clark.

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Banks Snooze, Arms Dealers Win

Andy Kroll — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:57:44 +0000

You've heard plenty about the big banks' role in the Great Recession, but their headaches are about to get worse.

At a packed hearing today, the Senate investigations subcommittee led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) shed new light on banks' negligence and wrongdoing—and this time it's not credit-default swaps or derivatives but money laundering and arms dealers. The hearing, held in conjunction with a 325-page report by the subcommittee, focused on four detailed cases of foreign money pouring in the United States and the ways in which American banks, lobbyists, lawyers, and other businessmen aided that money laundering. "For the United States, which has so much riding on global stability, corruption is a direct threat to our national interests," Levin said in his opening statement. "The stories we uncovered are striking in their misuse of our financial system."

In essence, the hearing and the report highlighted how institutions like Bank of America, HSBC, and Citibank snoozed when it comes to due diligence and investigating their clients, while notorious arms dealers, sons of despotic politicians, and even shady central banks channeled millions upon millions into the US to buy planes, sports cars, and luxury houses. Singling out HSBC, whose anti-money laundering compliance director testified at the hearing, Levin slammed the bank for actually encouraging the Central Bank of Angola—whose clients include many questionable red-flagged individuals, or "Politically Exposed Persons"—to move millions to an offshore bank in the Bahamas beyond the reach of British financial laws. "You claim that you're a leader in anti-money laundering rules and enforcement," Levin told HSBC's Wiecher Mandemaker. Yet "you facilitate people evading the law of your own country."

Levin, seated next to subcommittee ranking member Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), had also invited three active participants in the corruption cases detailed in the report—Beverly Hills attorneys Michael Berger and George Nagler, who'd aided Teodoro Obiang, son of the president of Equatorial Guinea, and Jeffrey Birrell, an American lobbyist who tried to purchase armored cars and military transport planes for Omar Bongo, the president of Gabon. All three directly implicated witnesses, however, chose not to speak at the hearing, citing the Fifth Amendment.

Levin and Coburn did offer a modicum of praise to a Bank of America senior executive who spoke at this morning's hearing. Bank of America appears several times in the subcommittee's report for allowing Pierre Falcone, an infamous arms dealer imprisoned several times, and his relatives to circulate at least $60 million through 29 accounts with the bank. In fact, Levin pointed to documents obtained by the subcommittee showing that Bank of America knew of Falcone's background and the millions flowing into his accounts from the secretive countries and shady "clients" yet concluded that "activity for the accounts of the Falcone's [sic] is not unusual." And while William Fox, the Bank of America executive, acknowledged that the bank had made "a bad judgment call" with Falcone, he emphasized the tougher disclosure and anti-money laundering safeguards that bank had installed in the past few years, measures that Levin praised.

In all, the hearing, together with the report, offered an unparalleled glimpse at the ways in which corrupt foreign figures still funnel their money into major American financial institutions. At the hearing, Levin said he hopes to close legal loopholes and revoke a 2002 exemption allowed by the Patriot Act, among others, to cut off the gaping holes that still allow dirty money to come into the US. "There is a lot more that can be done to combat foreign corruption," Levin said. "It doesn't have to be that way."

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What's the Matter With Massachusetts?

Tim Murphy — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:48:06 +0000

Since President Obama first broached the subject of immigration reform last summer—and devoted a whopping 39 words to the subject during last Wednesday's State of the Union—there's been a bit of discussion as to whether any comprehensive reforms will get the green light this year. There have been some signs of action: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops began organizing in January to push for reforms, and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill) has introduced reform legislation in the House. But given the myriad problems Democrats face right now, it's difficult to imagine anything getting passed in the near future. Immigration is always next year's problem, anyway.

To get a sense of how bearish elected officials have become on the topic, just look to Massachusetts. Yesterday Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick all but conceded defeat on his state’s version of the DREAM Act, which would allow undocumented immigrants to attend public colleges and universities at in-state tuition rates. Anti-immigrant backlash and calls to focus on jobs have swamped the proposal—not too surprising when you consider that stuff like this passes for intelligent debate.

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