2 Republicans Open Door to Increases in Revenue

By JOHN M. BRODER

Published: July 3, 2011

WASHINGTON — Two senior Republicans said Sunday that they might be open to raising new government revenue as part of a deal to resolve the dispute over the federal debt ceiling, but they warned that there was little time to enact a comprehensive deal.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images; J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

Senators John McCain, left, and John Cornyn said that they might be open to raising new government revenue.

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Times Topics: Federal Debt Limit (Debt Ceiling) | John McCain |John Cornyn


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One of the senators, John Cornyn of Texas, said he would consider eliminating some tax breaks and corporate subsidies in the context of changes in the tax code, provided there was not an overall increase in taxes.

“I think it’s clear that the Republicans are opposed to any tax hikes, particularly during a fragile economic recovery,” Mr. Cornyn said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Now, do we believe tax reform is necessary? I would say absolutely.”

But he insisted that any changes in taxes be “revenue neutral,” meaning that the government would not take in any more money from individuals or businesses than it does now.

The other senator, John McCain of Arizona, said he would be willing to consider some “revenue raisers” as part of a broad deal, but he refused to name specific measures.

Mr. Cornyn, a member of the Senate leadership, also said that Republicans would be open to a short-term deal on the debt ceiling to provide more time for a comprehensive agreement.

“The problem with a minideal is we have a maxi-problem,” he said. “And the big problems aren’t going to go away if you cut a minideal. All it does is delay the moment of truth. And so I’d say better now than then. But if we can’t, then we’ll take the savings we can get now, and we will relitigate this as we get closer to the election.”

The White House had no comment on the senators’ remarks.

Last week, President Obama harshly criticized Republicans lawmakers for refusing to eliminate tax breaks like those for private jet owners, hedge fund managers, multinational oil companies and ethanol producers. He argued that eliminating such loopholes could save billions of dollars and help fix the short-term federal deficit and long-term national debt.

The administration and Congressional negotiators are racing to find a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion by Aug. 2, when the Treasury Department says the United States will exhaust its ability to borrow money and could default on some obligations. A bargain must be struck at least a week before then to provide time for a Congressional Budget Office analysis and for both chambers to vote on it.

Mr. McCain said Sunday that closing the tax breaks that Mr. Obama mentioned would have a negligible impact on the nation’s fiscal condition and would defy the will of the voters.

“The principle of not raising taxes is something that we campaigned on last November, and the result of the election was that the American people didn’t want their taxes raised and they wanted us to cut spending,” he said on the CNN program “State of the Union.”

He added that his fellow Republican senator from Arizona, Jon Kyl, a member of the budget negotiating team, had said there were certain measures that Republicans would consider, and that he was open to them. He refused to name any.

Mr. Kyl said he would be willing to consider some increases to help bring down the deficit. “We’re perfectly willing to consider those kinds of issues in the context of tax reform, which we would very much like to do,” Mr. Kyl said last week on “Fox News Sunday.” “But we’re not going to have the time to do it or be able to do it in order just to raise revenue as part of the exercise, which should be about reducing spending.”

The motives of Bradley Manning

MONDAY, JUL 4, 2011 08:05 ET

BY GLENN GREENWALD

In New York Magazine, Steven Fishman has a lengthy profile of Bradley Manning that purports to shed new light on the accused WikiLeaks leaker.  The only aspect of Fishman's article that's meaningfully new is a series of chat logs and other online communications Manning purportedly conducted with Zachary Antolak, a 19-year-old gay web designer whom Manning befriended.  Though the article focuses on a variety of Manning's emotional struggles in a way that -- as is typical for whistleblowers or anyone who engages in acts of meaningful dissent -- is supposed to make you believe his alleged actions were the by-product of psychological afflictions, it actually achieves the opposite. 

The emotional problems of loneliness and alienation Manning confronted are hardly atypical for a perceptive 20-year-old, particularly one with a long-estranged father dealing with issues of sexual orientation and gender identity who, after being raised in a tiny evangelical community in Oklahoma, finds himself deployed to Baghdad as part of the U.S. Army's brutal war in Iraq (the one who ends up looking truly psychologically unstable in this article -- and, as usual, deeply dishonest -- is government informant Adrian Lamo; see below).  What Fishman's article actually does is bolster the previous view of Manning's alleged leaks as motivated by noble and understandable horror at what the U.S. was doing in Iraq specifically and that region generally, and a resulting desire to take action to shed light on what he was seeing and to do what he could to stop it.

The highly edited chat logs purportedly between Manning and Lamo and previously published by long-time Lamo associate Kevin Poulsen ofWired already made clear why Manning -- if the chat logs are to be believed -- leaked these videos and documents.  In those chat logs, Manning described his growing realization of the evil of the the war in Iraq of which he was a part; he specifically recounted that his discovery that Iraqi "insurgents" rounded up and arrested by U.S. forces were actually guilty of nothing was explicitly ignored; and he explained that the documents he is alleged to have leaked revealed systematic deceit, illegality and exploitation on the part of the U.S. Government and its allied governments, and that only disclosure and transparency could trigger urgently needed reforms.  As Manning put it in those purported chats with Lamo when asked what he hoped to achieve:

hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms - if not, than [sic] we're doomed - as a species - i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens - the reaction to the [Collateral Murder] video gave me immense hope; CNN's iReport was overwhelmed; Twitter exploded - people who saw, knew there was something wrong . . . Washington Post sat on the video… David Finkel acquired a copy while embedded out here. . . . - i want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.

The objectives Manning described there have, in a very short time, already been vindicated: the Baghdad video was viewed by tens of millions of people around the world, and even the anti-WikiLeaks Executive Editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller, hascredited the release of the diplomatic cables allegedly leaked by Manning as playing a substantial role in triggering the revolts across the Middle East against mostly U.S.-supported despots.  Beyond that, so much of what we have learned about the world's most powerful factions over the last year has come from these leaks.  Those results, by themselves, mean Manning -- if he is the alleged leaker -- has done at least as much, if not more, to advance the causes of transparency, accountability, and freedom across the world than any single living individual.

The New York article adds more details to Manning's noble motives.  Like millions of people, Manning concluded that the war in Iraq, far from being a magnanimous endeavor to help the Iraqi people, was in fact an inhumane, monstrous act of aggression that indiscriminately killed huge numbers of innocent people; but unlike those millions of war critics, Manning decided to take action rather than remain passive:

For Manning, nothing was okay. In ­October 2009, he arrived at Forward ­Operating Base Hammer, a dusty back­water 40 miles from Baghdad. . . . Usually, there was a large central TV screen where an analyst could watch the war play in endless loop. You could zoom in on the raw footage from helicopters or even helmet cams. At times it felt like watching nonstop snuff films. . . .

An intel analyst sat at his work station and targeted the enemy, reducing a human being to a few salient points. Then he made a quick decision based on imperfect information: kill, capture, exploit, source. Any illusions Manning had about saving lives quickly vanished. At one point, he went to a superior with what he believed to be a mistake. The Iraqi ­Federal Police had rounded up innocent people, he said. Get back to work, he was told. . . .

He told the counselor about a targeting mission gone bad in Basra. "Two groups of locals were converging in this one area. Manning was trying to figure out why they were meeting," the counselor told me. On Manning's information, the Army moved swiftly, ­dispatching a unit to hunt them down. Manning had thought all went well, until a superior explained the outcome. "Ultimately, some guy loosely connected to the group got killed," the counselor said. To the counselor, it was clear: Manning felt that there was blood on his hands. "He was very, very distressed."

About that time, Manning later ­explained, "everything started slipping." Manning, it turned out, wasn’t built for this kind of war. "i was a *part* of something … i was actively involved in something that i was completely against." The job wore down lots of soldiers. Some survived by becoming desensitized -- the blood and death goes right past them. Manning took it personally. According to the government, it was in November 2009, the same month that he reached out to the gender counselor, that ­Manning began to work with WikiLeaks’ ­Julian ­Assange, "a candidate for the most dangerous man in the world," as Daniel ­Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon papers, later put it.

The notion that these reactions to wholly unjustified, massive blood-spilling is psychologically warped is itself warped.  The reactions described there are psychologically healthy; it's far more psychologically disturbed not to have the reactions Manning had. There are countless people who knew from the start, or who ultimately concluded, that the Iraq War was an act of supreme barbarism.  Many who so concluded -- especially among our political and media elite -- did nothing to stop it or bring accountability for those who caused it; Manning, by stark and commendable contrast, took action.  Which is the psychologically suspect behavior?  Manning was clearly motivated by the principle attributed by the New York article to Julian Assange, but espoused by countless heroic activists and philosophers throughout history: "Every time we witness an act that we feel to be unjust and do not act, we become a party to injustice."

The morality at play in the Manning persecution is mangled beyond belief.  It's perfectly conventional wisdom that the war in Iraq was an act of profoundly unjust destruction, yet normal, psychologically healthy people are expected to passively accept that there should be no consequences for those responsible (a well-intentioned policy mistake), while one of the very few people to risk his life and liberty to stop it and similar acts is demonized as a mentally ill criminal.  Similarly, thenumerous acts of corruption, deceit and criminality Manning allegedly exposed are ignored or even sanctioned, while the only punished criminal is -- as usual -- the one who courageously brought those acts to light.  Meanwhile, Americans love to cheer for the Arab Spring rebellions -- look at those inspiring people standing up to their evil dictators and demanding freedom -- yet the American government officials who propped up those dictators for decades and helped suppress those revolts, including the ones currently in power, are treated as dignified statesmen, while a person who actually exposed those tyrants and played at least some role in triggering those inspiring revolts (Manning) rots in a prison after enduring 10 months of deeply inhumane treatment.

There's no doubt that it's illegal for a member of the military to leak classified or secret documents -- just as there was no doubt about the illegality of Daniel Ellsberg's leaks, or a while slew of other acts of civil disobedience we consider noble.  The fact that an act is legal does not mean it is just, and conversely, that an act is illegal does not mean it is unjust.  Many people enjoy hearing themselves condemn the acts of tyrants and imperial forces in the world. If the allegations against him are true, Bradley Manning knowingly risked his liberty to take action against those acts, in the hope of exposing those responsible and triggering worldwide reforms.  It's hard to dispute that these leaks achieved exactly that, but even if they hadn't, his conduct is profoundly commendable, and the world needs far more, not fewer, Bradley Mannings.

* * * * *

Adrian Lamo has no relevance either for the Manning case or anything else, but just to underscore how thoroughly unreliable and deranged he is -- that, as I've documented repeatedly before, what comes out of his mouth at any given moment is designed exclusively to generate attention for himself and bears almost no relationship to reality -- just contrast what he's quoted as saying about Manning in this New Yorkarticle with what he told me in an interview last year:

New York:

When Lamo was arrested, he’d been offended by the government prosecution-- “criminalizing curiosity," he called it. Now he was offended by Manning. "He's a traitor at best," Lamo said. . . . He was disgusted by the way in which Manning conflated his own precious moral awakening with the future of U.S. diplomacy. The leaks could “compromise our ability to make the world a better place, which we do in a lot of ways,” Lamo later said.

Interview with me:

GREENWALD: Do you consider Bradley Manning to be a traitor? I had seen you use that word in a couple interviews that you did.

LAMO: Can you cite one so I can double-check and make sure it's a direct quote?

GREENWALD: Yeah. I think the quote was, "I’m not a traitor, and I wasn’t going to harbor a traitor." And it was unclear, I mean, the context was you were asked why. So I didn’t know if you meant that, that’s why I’m asking in an open-ended way, regardless of what you’ve said in the past: Do you think he’s a traitor?

LAMO: Well, in that case, I regret that statement. I don’t think he's a traitor. I think. He did something not too different from what I did: break the law to accomplish what he believed to be a good purpose, and I apologized to a judge in tears for that, and I would be a hypocrite if I didn't still believe that it was wrong now.

There are many people in this case whose actions are disturbed, twisted, and unjust.  Bradley Manning is most assuredly not one of them.

What is a "constitutional conservative" anyway?

MONDAY, JUL 4, 2011 10:01 ET

From Goldwater to Bachmann, the meaning of one of the right's favorite terms has evolved considerably

BY BRIAN GLENN

Wikipedia/AP/Salon

Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann calls herself a "constitutional conservative." So does Rand Paul, and anyone endorsed by Sarah Palin gets the label as well. As the nation heads towards defaulting on its debt obligations and the state of Minnesota remains closed, it’s worth pondering what constitutional conservatism actually means, and what lessons we can take from it.

For conservative politicians, the name signals that they are identifying as Tea Party members, which means limiting government, balancing the federal budget, lowering taxes, ending redistribution from the wealthier to the poor, assigning a central position for God in the lives of Americans, even in courthouses and public schools, and asserting the right to bear arms. While God will always be given top billing, one gets the sense that lowering taxes and eliminating social programs are actually the most important pillars in the platform -- so much so that many elected officials claim to be unwilling to compromise no matter what the short-term consequences.

Yet the term "constitutional conservative" is older than the Tea Party movement, and has a subtle yet important difference to it, since it focuses on moderation. For contemporary conservative political theorists like Harvey Mansfield and Peter Berkowitz, among others, constitutional conservatism requires a proper balance between principle and prudence -- that is, between living up to one’s ideology, and living together in a democratic community in which all acknowledge the necessity of compromise. God remains central, for religion provides a source of virtue and a reason to sacrifice for the greater good, and protecting individual liberties still remain the fundamental goal, but being a constitutional conservative for political theorists above all requires an awareness of political realities, and an accommodation to them in order to a allow a range of people in a society to live together peacefully.

The great writers in the conservative pantheon such as J. S. Mill, Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and the authors of the Federalist Papers, all focused on how a society of people with very different values could live together. As we celebrate the nation’s independence this week, it is worth reminding ourselves that the American political system that rests on their theories has been such a success because of this tradition of moderation, compromise, and an accommodation of differences.

Even the two greatest standard bearers of political conservatism acknowledged this reality. Barry Goldwater may always be best-known for arguing that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, but his actions were usually far more moderate, and his Senate career was filled with working with those from across the aisle to achieve his goals.

Taking office in 1980 amid rising gas prices, a stagnant economy, and high unemployment, Ronald Reagan argued that government was not the solution to the nation’s problems, but rather it was the problem. Yet as Berkowitz has written, Reagan’s rhetoric deploring "unnecessary and excessive growth of government" implicitly conceded that there could be necessary and appropriate growth, and he in fact allowed taxes to rise and government spending to grow above inflation without sacrificing his principles.

It isn’t simply that Tea Party members are against having their tax money spent on (undeserving) others; Tea Partiers are actually for something. They want a world where each household is responsible for its own place on the socioeconomic ladder, even if it means some will fail. They are for local communities determining what values their schools will inculcate, and they want the virtue taught by Christianity and Judaism to play a central role. Tea Party rhetoric is also infused with generosity towards the needy, but through voluntary -- not coercive -- giving, allowing for individual caring and the building of bonds that bridge across social differences. This appears to be supported by action, largely through churches.

The real line in the sand for political constitutional conservatives is taxes. They are not to rise, for anyone, under any circumstances. Period. If one truly believes that much of what the federal and state governments currently do is unconstitutional, this stance may not be all that unreasonable -- in theory. Certainly over time, if America’s citizens believed the government had overstepped its bounds, they could shrink it gradually in a manner that neither disrupted society nor the economy, and that allowed tax rates to decline.

Today’s officeholders who call themselves constitutional conservatives have taken a very different approach. They may do well to revisit their theoretical brethren who acknowledged the necessity of living according to principle while not being ideologues, of being driven by values and not opportunism, of compromising on policy while remaining true to principle, and understanding that as much as one would like to move society in a certain direction, it may not happen overnight.

As the federal government stands on the brink of defaulting on its debt obligations, the question for the moment is whether political constitutional conservatives, too, can find proper balance between principle and prudence, between staying true to their ideology, and living together in a democratic community in which all acknowledge the necessity of compromising with others.

Brian J. Glenn is a political historian who teaches in the Department of Government at Wesleyan University. His book, "Conservatism and American Political Development" (co-edited with Steven M. Teles), was published by Oxford University Press in 2009.

Political Heroes

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 4, 2011 at 10:29 am

A July 4 question from Jonathan Bernstein: “Who are your great American (political) heroes? I’ll take anything — those who you think are obvious but deserving, those who are obscure but shouldn’t be, past or present, whatever.”

To start with the obvious-but-deserving, the longer world history rolls on the more remarkable George Washington’s peaceful assumption of power and departure from office looks. I believe the current understanding is that he did this in part out of a motivation to be remembered as a Great and Honorable Man by history, so it’s worth paying tribute to him if for no other reason than to try to inspire other powerful people around the world to consider the option that doing the right thing may be your best strategy.

Philip Randolph strikes me as an underrated player in the history of the civil rights movement. The tendency is to celebrate the people who played the biggest roles in getting the ball into the end zone, but in some ways the achievement of the activist leaders of the 30s and 40s who actually changed the trajectory of policy after several decades of continued advances for white supremacy are even more impressive. Also as union leader and a socialist and important reminder that on a correct understanding of human justice the idea of a sharp disjoint between “social” and “economic” concerns is badly misguided. In a related way, the “Radical Republicans” of the 1860s and 1870s were, at a minimum, hideously underrated by my high school history textbook. I’ll single out Thaddeus Stevens for, among other things, offering a useful manifesto for radicalism in general—”Prejudices may be shocked, weak minds startled, weak nerves may tremble, but they must hear and adopt it: Universal emancipation must be proclaimed to all.” Frances Perkins is incredibly impressive as someone who wasn’t just a pioneer for women in public life but also as a pioneering woman in public life stands out as one of the major architects of the American welfare state.

Last, let me offer up Gouverneur Morris a man of considerable merits who I want to recognize specifically for his role in the Erie Canal. People don’t generally recognize that New York City wasn’t simply fated to become the nation’s largest. Its status as the East Coast’s largest seaport, and therefore largest city, is pretty purely a consequence of the fact that this gigantic infrastructure project was undertaken which suddenly made its port much more valuable than those at Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Boston. There’s a tendency in modern America—a tendency that I find vaguely un-American, to use an ugly term—to simply refuse to dream big and believe that large change for the better is possible. Morris and the canal from the Hudson to the Great Lakes are the antidote to that. The canal opened in 1825 and now almost 200 years later the consequences of that achievement have still not been undone.

The UN Is Aiding a Corporate Takeover of Drinking Water

By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Posted on July 3, 2011, Printed on July 4, 2011

Early last month, pharmaceutical titan Merck became the latest multinational to pledge allegiance to the CEO Water Mandate, the United Nations' public-private initiative "designed to assist companies in the development, implementation and disclosure of water sustainability policies and practices."
But there's darker data beneath that sunny marketing: The CEO Water Mandate has been heavily hammered by the Sierra Club, the Polaris Institute and more for exerting undemocratic corporate control over water resources (PDF) under the banner of the United Nations. It even won a Public Eye Award for flagrant greenwashing from the Swiss non-governmental organization Berne Declaration. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
"There is no admission of problems with the Water Mandate, or the United Nations Global Compact itself" -- the strategic policy initiative committed to human rights, labor and the environment -- Blue Gold and Blue Covenant author and activist Maude Barlow, who also chairs the National Council of Canadians and Food & Water Watch, explained to AlterNet. "These initiatives continue to flourish, not least because the most powerful member states of the United Nations are fully behind them. This also means that the United Nations is not funded fully. Programs and agencies often rely on private sponsorship to function, and are often barely getting their core administrative budgets funded."
Another major problem is that routinely compromised and controversial institutions like World Bank, International Monetary Fund and regional development banks in general are in control of the United Nations' biggest projects. In April, the World Bank assumed control of the United Nations Climate Conference's new $100 billion Green Fund, which is the opposite of a comforting proposition, considering the World Bank's repeatedly noxious financing of oil and coal projects.
"That gives control of billions of dollars to those who have been the most ardent promoters of water privatization," added Barlow, whose foreword for the Council of Canadians' recently damning report on private sector influence over the United Nations (PDF) argued that the planet is on the verge of a water crisis of terrifying proportions. "We're also seeing the IMF forcing indebted nations to sell off public assets, including water systems, as a condition of receiving financial support. The whole system is rigged for these corporations, and they still are losing contracts, not meeting their obligations and watching as remunicipalization moves forward in France and other core markets."
That kind of illogical corporate performance would logically lead to less control, not more. But the United Nations continues to hand over the reins to multinationals like its new cosigner Merck, which has repeatedly settled in court over everything from carcinogenic pollution to deceptive marketing. Despite the fact that the United Nations' own Joint Inspection Unit stated in a 2010 report (PDF) that the Global Compact's corporate partnerships were an unregulated mess.
"The lack of a clear and articulated mandate has resulted in blurred focus and impact," the report stated. "The absence of adequate entry criteria and an effective monitoring system to measure actual implementation of the principles by participants has drawn some criticism and reputational risk for the Organization, and the Office’s special set up has countered existing rules and procedures. Ten years after its creation, despite the intense activity carried out by the Office and the increasing resources received, results are mixed and risks unmitigated."
The report suggested that not only was a clearer mandate from Member States required to "rethink and refocus" the Compact's corporate partnerships, but that the United Nations' General Assembly must better direct the Secretary-General to delineate the Compact's overall functions "in order to prevent a situation whereby any external group or actor(s) may divert attention from the strategic goals agreed to promote interests which may damage the reputation of the United Nations." The short version? It's not working, and won't work in its current form for the foreseeable future.
But the United Nations' own advice to itself has evidently fallen mostly on deaf ears.
"Unfortunately, the United Nations appears to be embracing more and more partnerships with the corporate sector across the board," Corporate Accountability International campaign director Gigi Kellett told AlterNet. "Civil society has been raising concerns about this flawed approach for over 10 years. There are strong voices within the United Nations, including some Member states, who are questioning the partnership paradigm adopted by the UN and calling for more transparency and accountability."
But they are voices in the wilderness without the concerted support of a motivated public, as well as the usual civil society champions who make stopping this strain of corporate abuse their life's work. Power truly respects only one thing, and that is equally exercised power. And the public is fully empowered to make all the change it wants, provided it can unplug itself from distracting sex scandals and mainstream media marketing primarily designed to nurture its collective complacency.
"Corporations rely on people's tacit support and willingness to look the other way when they engage in conduct that harms people or the environment and undermines democratic governance and decision-making," Kellett said. "When people come together in coordinated fashion and withhold their support from a corporation, that relationship is turned on its head. Boycotts are one powerful way that individuals can withhold their support, but there are range of other strategies. When activists come together and raise questions about a corporation's actions and tie them to its brand and image, the resulting media exposure can greatly impact how the corporation is perceived by consumers, investors or even government regulators."
But how do you boycott a multinational that controls your water supply? Can you shame a mammoth corporation into abdicating control over a lucrative commodity that should instead be regarded as a universal human right? Talk about your Sisyphean tasks.
"Boycotts are much more difficult with water than a product like Coke," said Barlow. "There are no substitutes for water, and when these corporations are given monopoly power over water systems, boycotts are very unrealistic. Suez, Veolia and others are very concerned about their corporate image, but there is no effective means to hurt them financially except to end or block the contracts before they are signed. Boycotts have been very effective as public awareness campaigns, but citizens need to apply pressure on their governments as the first step in stopping the proliferation of voluntary initiatives."
Demanding regulation of the private sector's products -- from water and natural resource commodification to inscrutable financial instruments and beyond -- as well as the public's political electives appears to be the paramount first principle. Because the problem is getting worse and going nowhere, especially now that our dystopian climate crisis has permanently disrupted business, and existence, as usual. From escalating warming and extreme weather to destabilized nations and environments, Earth is already precariously balanced on the tipping point. And giving profit-minded corporations voluntary control over their power and procedures is a 20th century anachronism best left behind.
"We have not proven to have what it takes to deal with the climate crisis," argued Barlow, "and this is because it is all seen as a giant political and financial game, rather than the best and only chance to head off a catastrophe like we have never before imagined. Climate change is upon us, but we will never admit it fully, nor invest in stopping it, if our governments continue to represent corporate interests above others. It is up to us to challenge our states, and make sure they know we are engaged and aware."