Resources for Trump Watchers

CLICK HERE to go directly down the page to the "Trump Tracking Sources"

Note: This blog post is one of a series; it is designed to provide links to media organizations' pages that were created post-inauguration to track the day-to-day news of President Trump's talk and actions. Those blog posts listed below, other than the first ("General Trump Resources"), are individual blog posts dealing with a range of Trump-related issues (in reverse chronological order).

General Trump Resources: "Tracking Trump" (with links to a series of 10 weekly pages of links to items regarding the period from November 9, 2016 through January 17, 2017 (the President-elect period of Donald Trump's transition to the inauguration, January 20, 2017, and the presidency)

General Trump Resources: "Resources for Trump Watchers," February 11, 2017

"What Trump Needs to Know About Libel," May 1, 2017

"Collusion, Treason, Trump and Putin," April 5, 2017

"Who Are We?" January 31, 2017

"Republicans Need To Get Their Party Back From Trump," October 20, 2016 [published as column by Iowa City Press-Citizen]

"Law, Social Norms and Trump," October 2, 2016

"Donald Trump's Barrel of Squirrels," September 25, 2016

"Trump Might Not Be Blundering in Race," September 9, 2016 [published as a column by Iowa City Press-Citizen]

"Maybe This Explains Trump," August 15, 2016

"When Words Can Kill," August 10, 2016

"Why Trump May Win," July 25, 2016

"What Putin Can Teach Rastetter," May 9, 2016 [published as a column by The Daily Iowan]

Introduction: Why Resources for Trump Tracking?
How are Donald Trump's presidential years like the Afghanistan War?

We've been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001. We're still there -- one of America's longest, continuous wars. The Afghanistan War was initially our response to the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City. Why Afghanistan? For the same reason the fellow in the story who had lost a quarter was looking for it a block from where he'd dropped it. As he explained, "The light is better here." The 9/11 attack was primarily planned, funded, and executed by Saudis. Afghanistan had better light.

News from Afghanistan continues to dribble out: an attack on an American base here, our responsibility for civilian casualties there. But 14 years of details are forgotten, if not the next day, certainly by the next month. The only way to even try to make sense out of it is to wait for a book to weave those details into a storyl; or, at a minimum, read through a month or two's worth of all known details.

So it is with our new president. There are more details regarding what he's done and failed to do than we can even recall, let alone make sense out of. Indeed, given the Administration's penchant for secrecy and lack of transparency, and the President's ability to come up with multiple tweets and headlines a day to control the evening news and next day's papers, the media have done an extraordinary job bringing the audience as many of the details as they have.

Of course, not everyone cares about following the daily activities of President Trump. Many Trump supporters seem to either admire, don't care, or don't know what he has been doing. Other Americans -- some who voted, some who didn't -- have been so put off by the campaign, and the flood of news since the election, that they simply want to shut it all out. Among those who do care, many are willing just to dip in and out of the news; if they hear an item, fine, but if they don't it's no big deal.

The sources linked from this blog post are for those who, for whatever reasons, want to see the whole picture. They see the times we are living through as historically unique and potentially dangerous.

(1) There are concerns about Trump's personality and style, such as his attitudes, speech, and behavior regarding women. They see his troubling narcissistic personality traits, ease of factual misrepresentations, tendency to strike out against anyone not sufficiently admiring (including our global allies).

(2) There are concerns about his substantive policies regarding such things as immigration, healthcare, and the environment.

(3) But of all these concerns, and more, those that are of greatest importance are those that go to the heart of the ability of a self-correcting democracy to function: his disregard of centuries of American constitutional principles, legislation, and norms regarding the behavior of the president -- the authoritarian's technique of diminishing the people's regard for the media and judiciary; his almost total lack of education and experience regarding the role of government at any level, from local to NATO (and apparent disinterest in learning); his unwillingness to reveal his tax returns or establish a legitimate blind trust; his appointment of cabinet officers with similar lack of understanding and experience.

For those who, for these reasons, do believe they have a responsibility to keep a continuous eye on what Trump is doing, someone needs to bring the daily facts together for us.

Following the election, from November 9, 2016 to January 20, 2017, I decided that one of those someones would be me -- at least for the days of President-elect Trump. It's called "Tracking Trump", a blog post covering weeks one and two, to which are linked four additional "pages" for weeks 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, and 9-10 -- organized under topics such as "international," "appointments," and "temperament."

This took a substantial amount of "opportunity time" away from other high-priority tasks which had to be postponed. So I decided to make President-elect Trump's weeks the finite period of time to be covered by my own efforts, and look for other sources of comparable efforts regarding President Trump's first 100 days -- or four years. With credit to Julie Johnson for her early efforts at ferreting out most of these sources, here are some you may find useful. I'd welcome your suggestions of more to add. And remember, it's never been more important to support the efforts of these media sources with our subscriptions!

Trump Tracking Sources
New York Times, Politics

New York Times, "First 100 Days Briefing." Use https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/us/politics/donald-trump-administration.html (substituting for 2017/02/09 the date desired) or search on "First 100 Days Briefing" on the Times' opening page search field.

Washington Post, Politics

Washington Post, Politics, White House

Lawfare Blog (excellent source for associated legal issues discussion)

The Guardian: "The First 100 Days of Trump; Tracking the 45th President of the United States, One Day at a Time"

ProPublica, "The Trump Administration" (November 18, 2016-present)

New York Magazine, Daily Intelligencer: Eric Levitz, "All the Terrifying Things That Donald Trump Did Lately,"

Euronews: "This is What Trump Has Done So Far"

Politico: "Forty Five: A Daily Diary of the Trump Presidency"

Politico: "Handicapping Trump’s first 100 days; Trump’s campaign promises have run into trouble with his own party — even his own Cabinet members — before he even takes the oath of office," January 20, 2017

YAHOO! Style: Natalie Gontchrova, "Everything That's Happened Since Trump Took Office,"

Campaign Promises, Executive Orders and Tweets
Ray Giles' "Trump Campaign Promises Monitor"

USA TODAY: "On Politics: President Trump's executive actions: The complete list so far"

Los Angeles Times: "Here's everything Donald Trump has tweeted since he became president"

"Russia: Trump & His Team's Ties to Russia," Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-Calif. 15th Dist.)

# # #

Reasons for Hope in 2016

Note: The following are substantial excerpts from a New York Times editorial (modified with some additional paragraph breaks), for which the Times holds the copyright. Information concerning subscriptions to the Times, both the hardcopy and digital editions, can be found -->here<--. If representatives of the Times would like for me to remove this blog entry -- along with my personal endorsement of the Times and this subscription information -- please merely contact Nicholas Johnson, at mailbox@nicholasjohnson.org, and all will be immediately removed. -- N.J.

Moments of Grace in a Grim World

Editorial, The New York Times, December 25, 2015, p. A26
[I]t might help to . . . tune out the rancor and find reasons to believe in the persistence of better values: humility, conciliation, kindness, dignity and reason.

The evidence was all around in 2015, nearly everywhere you looked.

The nations of the world came together in Paris to reach an agreement that may yet halt the march toward an overheated, unlivable planet. It offers the best chance for meaningful global action to avert catastrophic climate change, and 195 countries promised to seize it.

Pope Francis, like the saint he took his name from, a messenger of humility and peace, visited the Americas. He challenged the wealthy and powerful in the name of the poor and the weak. When he spoke to Congress, prayed at ground zero, and greeted, with a smile and a hug, a little girl who jumped a fence to approach his motorcade in Washington, he set a vivid example of welcome for children, immigrants, the forgotten.

As the Syrian crisis swelled and a human tide poured toward Western Europe, tens of thousands of refugees found open doors and hearts in Germany and other countries. The overall global response remains far from adequate, but the Germans sent a message that rebukes nationalist bigotry, defends human rights and reminds countries like the United States how to confront a humanitarian emergency.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of committed love between two people, affirming the marriage rights of same-sex couples who had been denied equal treatment under the law.

The use of the death penalty in the United States fell to the lowest levels in two decades.

A bipartisan movement for criminal justice reform advanced, despite our blighted politics.

In neighborhoods long scarred by discrimination and police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement spread a message of peaceable resistance. Its methods and successes evoked those of the older and continuing struggle for immigrants’ and workers’ rights, which had many victories, like the workers’ campaign for a $15 minimum wage.

Dozens of states and cities, resisting a xenophobic tide, passed laws expanding rights and inclusion for undocumented immigrants, through driver’s licenses, legal services and health care. Come January, California, long a leader in this area, will be the first state to forbid discrimination based on immigration status, language or citizenship.

As with states, many individuals led by example, opposing hatred and fear with courage. Parisians opened their homes to strangers on the night of terrifying slaughter there.

After a gunman’s rampage at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., victims’ families forgave the killer. “A hateful person came to this community with some crazy idea he’d be able to divide,” said the mayor, Joseph Riley Jr., “but all he did was unite us and make us love each other even more.”

President Obama spoke at the church about healing racial divisions, then began to sing “Amazing Grace.” When the congregation stood and joined him, how sweet the sound. Days later, the Confederate battle flag came down at the South Carolina State Capitol.

Evil is everywhere, and anger and hatred are loud. The shouting drowns out the quiet; tragedy and disaster block the view of the good. Yet there are always signs of progress toward a better future. Look, or you may miss them.

# # #

Economic Recovery? It's Simple and Obvious

October 13, 2011, 1:45 p.m.

Recovery Requires Consumers, and Consumers Require Jobs
Yesterday [Oct. 12, 2011] the Senate refused to even debate, let alone pass, President Obama's jobs bill. As the New York Times editorialized:

[Photo credit: Pete Souza, White House.]

It was all predicted, but the unanimous decision by Senate Republicans on Tuesday to filibuster and thus kill President Obama’s jobs bill was still a breathtaking act of economic vandalism. There are 14 million people out of work, wages are falling, poverty is rising, and a second recession may be blowing in, but not a single Republican would even allow debate on a sound plan to cut middle-class taxes and increase public-works spending.

Editorial, "No Jobs Bill, and No Ideas," New York Times, October 13, 2011, p. A28.

For at least the past three years I have been repeatedly blogging here on a similar theme, for example:

You can't improve business (profits, returns to shareholders, executive compensation) without improving retail sales; you can't improve retail sales without putting money in the hands, and confidence in the heads, of potential consumers; and unemployed consumers don't have money unless they are provided either unemployment compensation or wages from a public sector job (in an economy with a shrinking private sector).

Given our rotting, unattended, infrastructure (roads, bridges, pipelines, schools) resulting from the last 30 years of "tax cuts" it seems to me, given the same amount of money, that using it to create "jobs" makes more sense than providing it for "unemployment compensation."

But either makes more sense than trying to turn an economy around with "trickle down" -- whether tax cuts for the rich, or bailouts for the rich.

"Jobs, Not Unemployment, Key to Recovery," November 8, 2008.

I may be naive, and I claim no credentials as an economist, but to me the solution to our economic doldrums has always seemed quite simple and obvious.

My son, Gregory, when providing computer consulting service, likes to respond to customers' frustration and confusion with, "There are three steps," which he then proceeds to set forth.

I'm not sure I can keep this to a three-step analytical progression, but it's not much more complex than that.

1. We have an economy that is driven -- for good or for ill, in boom times and bad -- overwhelmingly (say, 70% or more) by consumer spending.

2. We now have 25% or more of the workforce that is unemployed, significantly underemployed, or has given up trying to find work (for African-American, male, high school dropouts, between 18 and 25, it's well over 50%). Those who are in the workforce are, understandably, concerned that they might become unemployed. At best they are, again understandably, confused and worried about the future of our global economy, and America's role in it.

3. As a result, and as a variation on "the tragedy of the commons," while we would all be better off as members of an inter-dependent community if we would all spend more, the most rational thing for every individual to do, as an individual, is to save more and spend less.

4. Similarly, providing cash, tax breaks, and other incentives to business to increase hiring, and banks to increase lending, has not worked and will never work. Why? Because a corporate CEO would be nuts, and deserve being fired, if he or she were to borrow more money, to hire more workers, to increase production, at a time when their company is unable to sell what it already has in warehouses, on the shelves, or in showrooms. As evidence, we are told that business is now sitting on something like $2 trillion in cash. Clearly, it is a lack of demand, not a lack of capital, that is the problem. The private sector has repeatedly, and again recently, made clear that it is incapable of turning around a plummeting economy all by itself.

5. So what do I think is so "simple and obvious"?

We have a short term, immediate problem, and a longer range problem.

Longer range, to become globally competitive during the 21st Century we need to provide more education and training to more people, and provide incentives for entrepreneurial activity. (As someone has said, "There has never been a more difficult time to find a job; and never been an easier time to create a job.")

But short term, the way to bring ourselves out of the economic doldrums, to give a boost to our economy, to increase consumer spending, is to create more consumers, with greater confidence in their future prospects for employment. That means a full-employment economy; jobs for all; provided by the private sector when it's rational for business to do so, and provided by the federal government when it is not.

Don't start by talking about private sector jobs, or even "infrastructure." Start by talking about full employment -- or as near "full" as practicable.

In January of 2009, had we taken all the money we lavished on the banks, auto and insurance industries, and other large corporations, and used it for wages for all, our economy would have turned around by the fall of 2009 at the latest, and be humming along right now.

With the increase in consumer spending would have come the confidence of business. Once there is the prospect of continuing, dependable demand, smart business people are perfectly capable of providing the supply. And as the economy continued to spiral up, the federal payrolls would have contracted as better paying jobs would be created -- rationally created -- in the private sector marketplace.

Our unwillingness to take that path has hurt us all -- up to and including that "1%."

Can I put this in three steps?

1. If you have a downward spiraling economy, 70% of which represents consumer spending, you need to increase consumer spending.

2. If you have excessive unemployment and underemployment, you increase consumer spending by creating more consumers, with more money to spend.

3. If the private sector cannot create the jobs that create additional consumers, you must either (a) have the federal government become the "employer of last resort," or (b) resign yourself to the unnecessary prolonging of a grossly under-performing economy -- which has been our choice.

And that's what, to me, seems "simple and obvious."

# # #

Why 'Occupy'?

October 10, 2011, 7:30 a.m.

[And see also, "Those Kinds of Riots Here," September 18, 2011.]

What Do "Those People" Want?
[Photo credit: Elvira Bakalbasic.]

There was a lot of newspaper commentary about the "Occupy" movement once the local media finally recognized that the story could no longer be ignored. (The New York City version of "Occupy Wall Street" quickly morphed into "Occupy" places all across the country, including Iowa and Iowa City -- plus Des Moines, Mason City, and Fairfield, among other cities in Iowa.)

Many of those reader comments were critical of Occupy, from wild rants and charges of "Communist!" to critiques regarding the lack of specific demands and leadership. (This from critics who failed to recognize that the existence of movement "leaders" and "specific demands" in a movement's beginning often contribute to its downfall.)

Senator Grassley elaborated on Donald Trump's line, saying these protesters are "just a bunch of unemployed college students looking for dates" -- a disparagement he may come to regret.
[Arrests at Occupy Des Moines; thanks to BlogForIowa.com.]

A common question, seemingly reflecting genuine bewilderment on the part of the relatively well off, was a variant of "What do these people want?"

My response, in newspaper comments, was a variation on "if you have to ask you haven't been paying attention":

More and more Americans over the past 30 years have come to the realization that, as the "silent majority" bumper sticker had it, "The Majority is not Silent, the Government is Deaf." They come from all regions of the country, slices of the political spectrum, religions (and no religions), ages, and occupations.

There is a perception that when corporations and the ultra rich are not getting away with violating the law it is because they have written the law, that the ever-escalating gap in income between the 1% and the 99% is at least in part the result of money in politics (not just differences in enterprise, intellectual and entrepreneurial ability), and that ours has become a "government of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%" -- a government that has for the most part rebuffed and ignored our polite requests.

Historically, when those perceptions begin to register with the people, they take to the streets. That's how our nation began -- as the Declaration of Independence put it, "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations . . .." It's how women got the right to vote, and African-Americans got civil rights. It's what it took to get the right to unionize, and bring the Viet Nam war to an end.

"This is what democracy looks like." Get used to it. Support it. Nothing could be more "American."

See, "Those Kinds of Riots Here," September 18, 2011,
http://fromdc2iowa.blogspot.com/2011/09/those-kinds-of-riots-here.html

So I was especially pleased to see the New York Times' editorial yesterday striking a similar theme. [I am taking the unusual step of reproducing here the entire editorial. I encourage you to subscribe to the Times, as I do: http://www.nytimes.com; they offer a special deal on a combination Sunday edition in Iowa City plus unlimited online access. But if they would like me to remove the editorial from this blog entry, along with my personal endorsement, I am quite willing to do so.]

Editorial: Protesters Against Wall Street
New York Times
October 9, 2011, p. SR 10

As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions. The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.

At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost opportunity.

The jobless rate for college graduates under age 25 has averaged 9.6 percent over the past year; for young high school graduates, the average is 21.6 percent. Those figures do not reflect graduates who are working but in low-paying jobs that do not even require diplomas. Such poor prospects in the early years of a career portend a lifetime of diminished prospects and lower earnings — the very definition of downward mobility.

The protests, though, are more than a youth uprising. The protesters’ own problems are only one illustration of the ways in which the economy is not working for most Americans. They are exactly right when they say that the financial sector, with regulators and elected officials in collusion, inflated and profited from a credit bubble that burst, costing millions of Americans their jobs, incomes, savings and home equity. As the bad times have endured, Americans have also lost their belief in redress and recovery.

The initial outrage has been compounded by bailouts and by elected officials’ hunger for campaign cash from Wall Street, a toxic combination that has reaffirmed the economic and political power of banks and bankers, while ordinary Americans suffer.

Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government backing as by productive investment.

When the protesters say they represent 99 percent of Americans, they are referring to the concentration of income in today’s deeply unequal society. Before the recession, the share of income held by those in the top 1 percent of households was 23.5 percent, the highest since 1928 and more than double the 10 percent level of the late 1970s.

That share declined slightly as financial markets tanked in 2008, and updated data is not yet available, but inequality has almost certainly resurged. In the last few years, for instance, corporate profits (which flow largely to the wealthy) have reached their highest level as a share of the economy since 1950, while worker pay as a share of the economy is at its lowest point since the mid-1950s.

Income gains at the top would not be as worrisome as they are if the middle class and the poor were also gaining. But working-age households saw their real income decline in the first decade of this century. The recession and its aftermath have only accelerated the decline.

Research shows that such extreme inequality correlates to a host of ills, including lower levels of educational attainment, poorer health and less public investment. It also skews political power, because policy almost invariably reflects the views of upper-income Americans versus those of lower-income Americans.

No wonder then that Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for discontent. There are plenty of policy goals to address the grievances of the protesters — including lasting foreclosure relief, a financial transactions tax, greater legal protection for workers’ rights, and more progressive taxation. The country needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing.

It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.

# # #

Dominique's Dominos: Strauss-Kahn and Sexual Assault

July 1, 2011, 7:00 p.m. (with additions July 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, 2011, including resolution of alleged UI football players' sexual assault, 2007)

[And as evidence that (a) the problems on college campuses continue, and (b) have been exacerbated by the predicted Strauss-Kahn outcome, here's an exchange on July 6, 2011, during Tom Ashbrook's "On Point" program:

Tom Ashbrook (TA): Andrew in [city]. Thanks for calling. You're on the air.
Andrew (A): Hi, Tom
TA: Hi.
A: Thanks for taking my call.
TA: Yes, sir.
A: The topic is relevant to my family at this time, and I have an inquiry for Professor Brenner, if she's able to assist.
TA: OK.
A: My daughter, a few weeks ago, was assaulted sexually by a prominent basketball player at one of the two state universities here, . . .
TA: I'm sorry.
A: . . . who had been removed from another state university and was able to transfer in. But my concern is, the university has closed its investigation based on a he-said-she-said type of scenario, which is very frustrating for our family. It obviously raises some concerns about the integrity of the university process. Being both involved with a state university and highly educated on matters of this type, I was wondering if the professor [guest, Professor Hannah Brenner, Michigan State University College of Law] has a suggestion on how we may proceed. My daughter is disinclined to go to law enforcement. Obviously, she does not want to become the maid in the New York City story.
TA: Right. . . .

Tom Ashbrook, "What Does the Dominique Strauss-Kahn Case Mean?" "On Point," WBUR-FM 90.9/NPR, July 6, 2011; Audio, 30:28-31:35.]

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's "mess on both sides"
The media that were so quick to, seemingly, accept the guilt-before-trial of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (then IMF Managing Director, alleged to have raped a New York Sofitel Hotel maid in his $3000-a-day room), now seem equally ferocious in their attack on the credibility of his accuser. And just as they said little about the accuser when judging him, they now make little to no reference to his own past record of sexual assaults, and therefore the credibility of his denials, while disparaging her accusations. [Photo credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News.]

[The Times' assault on her credibility continued in the July 2 edition, Jim Dwyer and Michael Wilson, "Strauss-Kahn Accuser’s Call Alarmed Prosecutors," New York Times, July 2, 2011, p. A1. By Sunday, the story was still headlining page one, above the fold, in the hard copy edition (although at the bottom of the heap online), but its focus had shifted once again. This time the criticism was not of Strauss-Kahn or his accuser, but of District Attorney Cy Vance, Jr.: "[T]he second-guessing of Mr. Vance’s leadership has intensified in the wake of a string of courtroom losses that culminated in the startling events last week, when prosecutors revealed their concerns about the honesty of the hotel housekeeper . . .. Even a member of the [DA's] finance committee . . . questioned how the case had been handled. . . .Some of the most pointed complaints about Mr. Vance are emanating from the district attorney’s office itself," Alan Feuer, John Eligon and William K. Rashbaum, "Strauss-Kahn Case Adds to Doubts on Prosecutor," New York Times (online), July 3, 2011 (nat'l ed.; headlined, "Crumbled Case Adds to Doubts On Prosecutor; Issues Were Seen Even Before Strauss-Kahn," p. A1).

For a contrasting view, see Joe Nocera, "The D.A. Did the Right Thing," New York Times, July 5, 2011, p. A21 ("For the life of me . . . I can’t see what Vance did wrong. . . . The woman alleged rape, . . . backed up by physical (and other) evidence. She had no criminal record. Her employer vouched for her. The quick decision to indict made a lot of sense, both for legal and practical reasons. Then, as the victim’s credibility crumbled, Vance . . . acknowledged the problems.").]

As a result, as the Times quoted an unnamed official, "It is a mess, a mess on both sides." Jim Dwyer, William K. Rashbaum and John Eligon, "Strauss-Kahn Prosecution Said to be Near Collapse," New York Times, July 1, 2011, p. A1 (New York edition).

[By July 4 there was yet one more rape allegation -- this one in France. Steven Erlanger, "Strauss-Kahn to Face New Sex Complaint in France," New York Times, July 4, 2011 ("Dominique Strauss-Kahn will face another complaint alleging attempted rape, this one in France, the lawyer for a French novelist announced Monday. The novelist, Tristane Banon, 32, claims that Mr. Strauss-Kahn tried to rape her [and she] offered a graphic account of her alleged encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in 2003, saying he grabbed her in a nearly empty apartment as she was interviewing him and dragged her to the floor, pulling off some of her clothes and forcing his hand into her underwear. She said she escaped by kicking him desperately." Her lawyer says her testimony is “solid and well prepared.”) Banon photo credit: Charles Platiau/Reuters.]

By July 5 the Times possessed, and reported, the contents of the hospital counselor's report of the accuser's statement. John Eligon, “In Hospital Report, Housekeeper’s Graphic Account of Attack,” July 5, 2011, p. A16 (“[T]his is the most direct account of the housekeeper’s version of events to be offered so far. It comes from a report prepared by a counselor at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, where the housekeeper was treated just hours after she said she was attacked, and where she related for one of the first times what happened in the hotel suite. . . . [The] account is suggestive of a serious sexual assault . . ..”)

It makes one at least want to learn more about, if not encourage the U.S. emulation of, the British courts' limitations on the media's coverage of criminal matters. See, e.g., the British 1981 Contempt of Court Act.

In addition to the adverse impact on a "fair and impartial" trial, premature media coverage has an extraordinarily intrusive impact on parties' right to privacy -- the accused as well as the accuser. Clearly the public has an interest in knowing significant changes in the locations and statistics regarding various crimes, or whether a serial killer or rapist is at large. And it has an interest in knowing the outcome, and ultimate jury verdict, in criminal cases -- after the trial is over. But I think the news media has a much tougher case to prove when it comes to their assertion of a public's need to know revelations of the intimate details of an alleged sexual assault before a jury verdict, when the sources of those details are nothing more than the allegations of very interested parties and their lawyers.

And the prosecutors in this case seem little better than the media -- as they are the cause and source of much of what the media is passing along to the public.

At Strauss-Kahn's arraignment, May 16, Assistant District Attorney Artie McConnell, said,

The victim provided very powerful details consistent with violent sexual assault committed by the defendant, which establishes all the necessary elements of the crime he is charged with. She made outcries to multiple witnesses immediately after the incident, both to hotel staff and law enforcement. She was then taken to the hospital and was given a full sexual assault forensic examination. The observations and findings during that exam corroborate her accounts.

His statement at the May 19 bail hearing was consistent:

The complainant in this case has offered a compelling and unwavering story about what occurred in the defendant’s room. She made immediate outcries to multiple witnesses, both to hotel staff and to police. The victim was given a complete and expert forensic examination and the findings from that examination are consistent with her account. The Crime Scene Unit processed the hotel room and the scene, and while those scientific tests have not been completed, the preliminary indications are that forensic evidence that supports the victim’s version of events may be found.

Yesterday [June 30], McConnell and another assistant district attorney provided Strauss-Kahn's defense lawyers a letter setting forth a number of past instances in which the accuser had not been truthful, such as tax returns and her application for asylum. Other law officers revealed she once had a phone conversation with someone in prison for dealing marijuana.

However, with one easily explained exception, none of the incidents contained in the letter has any relevance whatsoever to her version of what occurred during her encounter with Strauss-Kahn on May 14! (The exception has to do with what she did immediately after the attack -- wait for him to descend in the elevator, or go clean another room. Neither is inconsistent with what, if the attack occurred, could have been her state of shock at that time.)

The Times reported that at today's [July 1] hearing,

Prosecutors said they still believed Mr. Strauss-Kahn had forced the woman into sex, but that inconsistencies in her past and account of the moments following the incident could make it hard for jurors to believe her. . . .

Mr. Kenneth Thompson, the woman’s lawyer, . . . insisted that she was still the victim of an attack, saying that her version of events has never wavered. He said some evidence, like bruising she had sustained, was consistent with a nonconsensual encounter. And he said her decision to clean a room was consistent with someone who was confused and upset in the wake of an attack.

John Eligon, "Strauss-Kahn Is Released as Case Teeters," New York Times (online), July 1, 2011, 3:35 p.m. EDT.

My reading of the accounts is that everyone, including Strauss-Kahn and his attorneys, acknowledge that a sexual attack or encounter of some kind occurred. Their version of events is that the accuser's bruises and vaginal tears were "consensual."

I'm willing to accept the assistant district attorneys' assertion that New York's Criminal Procedure Law, 240.20, required at least some of the disclosures in their letter be made to defense counsel. But I also accept Assistant District Attorney McConnell's judgment on May 16th that, "The victim provided very powerful details consistent with violent sexual assault committed by the defendant, which establishes all the necessary elements of the crime he is charged with."

Apparently there are years' old instances in which she did not tell the truth about events in no way related to those on May 14th. But it seems to me the issue of whether that will, in the words of the assistant district attorney, "make it hard for jurors to believe her," is a matter which our legal system has delegated to those very jurors, not assistant district attorneys.

The only issue, the only fact questions, in this case are what happened between the housekeeper and Strauss-Kahn on May 14.

It is irrelevant that numerous women have come forward, or are alleged, to acknowledge affairs, unwanted sexual advances, and sexual violence with Strauss-Kahn -- including a hotel maid in Mexico. Fay Schlesinger, "He was like a gorilla. . . actress's sex claim against former IMF chief as new affair is revealed with Italian widow," London Daily Mail, May 19, 2011. It is equally irrelevant that his accuser may have mentioned in a phone conversation with her boyfriend (in prison) a couple days later something about Strauss-Kahn's wealth. (What may perhaps be relevant are that (a) in the course of that conversation, one she likely presumed was private, her account of the alleged assault squares perfectly with what she had earlier told New York police, and (b) questions as to how that conversation happened to have been recorded, by whom, where a translator of the accuser's language (a “unique dialect of Fulani”) was found, and whether this operation was a violation of law.)

(Another process and privacy issue is raised by "Paul" in a comment on the Times' story regarding the hospital counselor's report of the maid's statement, linked above, "Who leaked this report? I hope my medical records remain more confidential than this." Paul, Plattsburgh, July 5, 2011, 8:22 a.m., http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/nyregion/housekeeper-detailed-strauss-kahn-attack-in-hospital-notes.html?permid=11#comment11.)

Strauss-Kahn could be a serial rapist and his accuser a serial killer. The question still remains: what happened between them on May 14? If her past misrepresentations make her trial testimony about those events less trustworthy, then the prosecution will have to provide additional evidence -- the forensic evidence from the hotel room, the medical experts and their records , her contemporaneous statements to hotel personnel and police, and especially her wiretapped "confidential" description to the prison inmate.

Undoubtedly, other facts will unfold with time. But for now, I tend to share many of the reactions of another lawyer who commented on the New York Times's site, a "Scott F." of Atlantic Beach, Florida:

I do not know if he [Strauss-Kahn] raped the housekeeper. I do not know what went on in DSK's hotel suite at the Sofitel on that morning/afternoon. But I am more than a little suspicious at how quickly the prosecution's case is supposedly unraveling. The anonymous law enforcement officials quoted in the NYT seem to be cheerleaders for DSK.

I am not familiar with any other criminal case where the prosecution did such a gigantic flip-flop about the accused's guilt or innocence under anything close to similar circumstances.

What in the world is going on with this case? . . .

It makes me more than a little uncomfortable . . . that the prosecution is selling its witness/victim down the river so blatantly. I have not yet read about any "lies" that strongly suggest that she was lying about the attack itself.

If the prosecutor is going to wait for a blemish-free victim before it prosecutes another case, he may be sitting idle for quite some time. Seems to me that some strings are being pulled by some very powerful fingers.

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/nyregion/new-yorkers-and-french-await-latest-dominique-strauss-kahn-legal-turn.html?permid=29#comment29

Meanwhile, I am left with the memory of what a local football player declared on his Facebook page to be his "favorite quote":
"She can't say no if her mouth is taped shut."
(Quoted in "Abu Ghraib, Rumsfeld, and Athletes' Facebook Photos; What Do Abu Ghraib and Athletes' Facebooks Have in Common?" August 23, 2007, from Brian Morelli, "Alcohol Abundant on Players' Sites; Review Shows Questionable Material," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 23, 2007, no longer available online.)

Of course, she is equally inhibited from saying no if she has passed out.

An Iowa football player "was accused of sexually assaulting a female UI swimmer while she was passed out in a dorm room on Oct. 14, 2007. [His] teammate . . . was charged with second- and third-degree sex abuse in the case, based on allegations the men worked together to assault the woman." Erin Jordan, "Former UI Football Player to Serve 7 Days for Assault," The Gazette, June 25, 2011, p. A3. What transpired during the year following October 2007 is collected in "University of Iowa Sexual Assault Controversy -- 2007-08," September 25, 2008.

Now, after numerous postponements, the cases have finally been concluded nearly four years later.

One player, charged with the felony of third-degree sex abuse (up to 10 years in prison and sex offender registry listing) ended up with seven days in the local jail for simple assault. The other took a plea deal, pleaded guilty to assault with intent to commit serious injury, and received no prison time; just a suspended sentence, probation, a fine and victim restitution.

This was Iowa's version of a high-profile sexual assault case. As Jordan reports, "The UI’s handling of the sex abuse case was criticized in an independent investigation ordered by the Iowa Board of Regents. The case resulted in the firing of two senior-level administrators and redrafting of UI policies for dealing with sexual assault allegations."

Of course, IMF directors and football players aren't the only ones who often end up "getting away with it." But the high profile cases are a teachable moment, or should be, for all of us.

Somehow, some way, someday, we are going to have to figure out a way for the legal system to make it possible for a victim of sexual assault to bring a legitimate accusation against her accused without being subjected to the second assault of the legal system itself -- as multiplied by the media's coverage -- and with a reasonable probability of something more than a suspended sentence or seven days in the county jail. Of course, the law must also protect those accused from any false accusations motivated by vindictiveness or an effort at blackmail. And hopefully, it will protect the privacy of all parties -- at least until the trial and appeals have concluded.

At a time when rape is being used as a military strategy by some countries' armies, and often seems to be treated less seriously by some of our prosecutors and judges than other forms of deliberate physical assault, we obviously still have a very, very long way to go before this problem is solved.

# # #

Wiki Not Only Source of Leaks

December 16, 2010, 9:00 a.m.

We Have Found the Enemy
(bought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
While embarrassed U.S. Government officials in the State Department and Department of Justice are busily trying to come up with some legal theory to persecute Julian Assange beyond what the Swedes have devised, it turns out that other officials have been busily leaking material more significant than any Wikileaks ever dreamed of revealing.

(See, Nicholas Johnson, "Wikileaks Random Thoughts & Comments," December 7, 2010; Nicholas Johnson, "Wikileaks In Its Own Words," December 3, 2010;
Charlie Savage, "U.S. Tries to Build Case for Conspiracy by WikiLeaks," New York Times, December 16, 2010, p. A1; Elisabeth Bumiller, "Intelligence Reports Offer Dim View of Afghan War," New York Times, December 15, 2010, p. A1.)

As the Times' Charlie Savage reports this morning, above,

Since WikiLeaks began making public large caches of classified United States government documents this year, Justice Department officials have been struggling to come up with a way to charge Mr. Assange with a crime . . . including the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.

But while prosecutors have used such laws to go after leakers and hackers, they have never successfully prosecuted recipients of leaked information for passing it on to others — an activity that can fall under the First Amendment’s strong protections of speech and press freedoms.

How ironic that on the same front page of the same newspaper the day before, Elisabeth Bumiller was passing along to Times' readers the leaks from highly classified government documents provided to her by U.S. government officials, above -- clearly not all (if, indeed, any) of whom had the legal authority to declassify them.

Bear in mind, these are not like a Wikileaks' State Department cable that might report a single diplomat's impressions of a given individual, event or situation. These are the joint product of our nation's 16 top intelligence agencies in what's called the National Intelligence Estimates. And they happen to deal with a debate currently ongoing within the Administration regarding the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan; a debate that pits the Department of Defense against the intelligence community. Bumiller reports these "two new classified intelligence reports [one on Afghanistan, the other on Pakistan] offer a . . . negative assessment and say there is a limited chance of success . . .."

And who are her unnamed sources? "[A] number of American officials," referred to simply as "officials" throughout the very revealing story.

Savage reports the Justice Department may have already convened a grand jury to consider possible charges against Assange -- who is probably a constitutionally protected distributor of often-inconsequential cables, not the original hacker or leaker.

Will there also be a DOJ grand jury to consider prosecution of the officials who clearly were the leakers of classified intelligence reports to The New York Times?

Will there be a prosecution of The New York Times and the other leading global newspapers that have also performed a much more consequential (in terms of size of audience) distribution of the cables than anything Wikileaks ever did?

To paraphrase Jesus' comment regarding the medical profession, "Politician, heal thyself." Luke 4:23.

Or, as cartoonist Walt Kelly once had his popular character, Pogo, observe, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
_______________

* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
# # #

NY Times Online to Charge Readers

January 22, 2009, 8:00 a.m.

What Readers Will, and Won't Pay For
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
The New York Times, clearly at least one of the world's most highly regarded and influential newspapers, is betting it can make more money by charging those who read it online than by continuing to let them read it for free. Frank Ahrens, "The New York Times announces a plan to charge readers for online content starting in 2011," Washington Post, January 21, 2010.

That may not be as safe a bet as first appears.

For your sake and mine, this is not about to become my definitive work on the future of the newspaper industry. But I will make some comments.

1. "Everything You Know About Intellectual Property is Wrong." Sixteen years ago John Perry Barlow provided the world an insight, and for those in the intellectual property business, a warning. Barlow has been a cattle rancher from my old stomping ground around Pinedale, Wyoming, lyricist for the Grateful Dead, and co-founder with Lotus developer Mitch Kaporof of the "eff" (the Electronic Frontier Foundation), still going strong at www.eff.org, and about to celebrate its 20th birthday February 10, 2010.

It was early in the age of the Internet, and World Wide Web, but he saw what was coming. Among other things, he observed, "copyright," which came to us from a time when it was necessary to protect the bottle more than the wine -- the book, or reel of film, you could hold in your hand -- expressly provides that "ideas" cannot be protected. Indeed, Section 102 of the current Copyright Act still provides that the Act only protects "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." John Perry Barlow, "The Economy of Ideas; A framework for patents and copyrights in the Digital Age; (Everything you know about intellectual property is wrong)," Wired 2.03, March 1994.

Indeed, he leads his seminal article with a quote from Thomas Jefferson, including this passage:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea . . .. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

[Although Barlow does not cite a source, it can now be found online: Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813. ME 13:333.]

2.Free razors. Charging what the market will bear for everything you have to sell is not necessarily the road to riches. John Perry explains how, while other bands were hiring security guards to keep concert-goers from bringing tape recorders into the venue, the Grateful Dead encouraged fans to make tapes of concerts and share them as widely with friends as they wished. Grateful Dead's grateful Dead Heads soon not only made the group richer from more ticket sales, but CD sales as well. As a result, not only did the group create goodwill, and get wider distribution among potential new fans with this approach, it turned out that as often as not those who got the music "for free" were sufficiently impressed to want to buy the higher quality CD version with the liner notes.

Someone else's more recent Wired article puts the story in context:

"He [Gillette] sold razors in bulk to banks so they could give them away with new deposits ("shave and save" campaigns). Razors were bundled with everything from Wrigley's gum to packets of coffee . . .. By giving away the razors, which were useless by themselves, he was creating demand for disposable blades. A few billion blades later, this business model is now the foundation of entire industries: Give away the cell phone, sell the monthly plan; make the videogame console cheap and sell expensive games; install fancy coffeemakers in offices at no charge so you can sell managers expensive coffee sachets."

-- Chris Anderson, "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business," Wired 16.03, February 25, 2008.

3. Newspapers understood the part about giving away the content for free. All of which brings me to one of my favorite Seinfeld bits. Jerry and Elaine are at the rental car counter. He has a reservation. The rental car company is out of cars. Here's how it goes, followed by the YouTube video.

Agent: I'm sorry, we have no mid-size available at the moment.

Jerry: I don't understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?

Agent: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.

Jerry: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.

Agent: I know why we have reservations.

Jerry: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to hold the reservation and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.

Larry David and Bill Masters, "The Alternate Side," Season 3, Episode 11, broadcast December 4, 1991.



In other words, newspapers understood the part about giving away their content for free, they just didn't understand the part about having to substitute some other revenue stream to make up for the lost advertising and subscription revenue stream.

As Frank Ahrens explains in the Washington Post story with which I began, quoting the Financial Times' FT.online managing director Rob Grimshaw:

"[I]t was a 'huge mistake' for publishers to give away their product. So why did they? Grimshaw said newspaper publishers realized they did not understand the Internet, so they hired Internet experts and 'let them do whatever they wanted and whatever they said was the right thing.'"

Imagine someone in the home building business, building unique homes from the buyers' architectural plans, being told about manufactured homes.

"I tell you, Bubba, this is going to be big. Now's the time to get in on the ground floor, so to speak."

"So what do you suggest I do?"

"Construct a facility where you can build them and get started."

"Yeah, and then?"

"And then announce you're going to start giving them away. You'll have customers breaking your door down."

"Wow. You really think so? I think I'll do it. If it worked for Gillette with razors it ought to work for me with manufactured homes."

No, I don't think that's exactly how it happened in the newspaper business, but it's not far off.

4. What I predict will, and won't, work. When I was teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, law school, I subscribed to the New York Times by mail, which was the only way to get it. It came about three days late, but it was still able to inform me of stories before they appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. I urged the company to start a West Coast edition, which eventually it did.

In Iowa City, once the Times became available online I actually preferred the online to the hard copy edition. It wasn't the cost; the Times is one of a number of papers that give away hard copy editions for free to college students in an effort to win back the younger readers they have been losing (and will need to someday replace the rest of us) -- a classic example of the triumph of hope over experience.

When I heard the paper had mortgaged its building, I even tried to make a charitable contribution to the Times. After all, we're willing to contribute to Iowa Public Radio and Iowa Public Television. It turned out there was no way to make a contribution to the Times. I would have subscribed to the hard copy as a way of getting the paper some money, but our newspaper recycling bin is already a heavy load to carry to the curb as it is.

So I sent an email to the guy managing the two electronic editions asking for information. I knew enough about both of them to know that I wouldn't use either; I'm accustomed to, and find fully adequate, the format of what's available for free. But I would at least feel less guilty, I explained to him, if I was sending the Times money for something, even if I would never use it.

He never replied, and I decided that ended my charitable obligation to the organization.

Now, it turns out, I'll have another chance next year. But I'm not sure just how many others like me there are out there looking for a way to contribute their hard earned money to a large, for-profit corporation.

Like every other newspaper, the New York Times circulation is down, but the daily and Sunday circulations still hover around one million daily and 1.4 million Sunday. So the paper's starting off with something between 1/3 and 1/2 of one percent of the American population. Richard Perez-Pena, "U.S. Newspaper Circulation Falls 10%," New York Times, October 27, 2009, p. B3. Can it expect to continue to hold even that many when it starts charging readers for online access; readers who (a) have grown accustomed to the idea that "information wants to be free," both in general and with respect to the content of the New York Times in particular, and (b) have access to other nationally respected, influential newspapers that will not charge -- as Frank Ahrens reports his Washington Post is not, now, contemplating?

He also reminds us that,

"The Times Co. tried a pay wall around content from its opinion columnists in 2005 -- a feature called TimesSelect -- charging $49.95 per year for online access to such writers as Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman. The Times got 227,000 subscribers to sign up, but abandoned the plan in 2007; behind the pay wall, some of the paper's star writers had been effectively removed from the national conversation.

Online ad revenue has not, so far, come close to replacing the lost hard copy advertising income. As the Financial Times' Rob Grimshaw calculates, it takes 4 billion page views a month to produce $50 million a year -- which, as I calculate it, means a return of roughly 1/10th cent per page view (if that's something that interests you).

The Times supplies no details. It says it will fill us in on those later this year, or early 2011. But it refers to a "metered" service. If it means that literally -- that the reader will owe an incremental amount more for every story hit on, or every word displayed on the screen (for stories that carry over multiple screens) -- I predict it will fare no better than TimesSelect. There are many ways of "reading" the Times' relatively thorough (long) stories: glancing at a headline, reading the lead or the first few grafs, scanning the entire story, or reading it carefully word for word. Although the quality and value of each of those approaches varies widely I don't know how they can be variously monitored, metered and priced.

What readers have shown a willingness to pay for so far are online services that are essential to their lives or professions, or actually produce money for them. The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal are two examples of newspapers that many people in the business community, banking, investing, and some academics (e.g., corporation and securities law professors; business college faculty) simply must read every day if they are to hold their jobs, let alone prosper. Moreover, since those in business are relatively wealthy to begin with (and some academics get discount subscription rates) the added daily cost of the paper (hard copy, online, or both) is of no more significance to them than a second cup of Starbucks coffee.

As for the rest of us, Consumer Reports is an example of a magazine that pays for itself many times over -- hard copy, online or both -- for millions of American consumers smart enough to know it's not true that "you get what you pay for," and want to go into the marketplace (brick-and-mortar or online) fully armed with the facts.

When a friend asked me why I listened to the BBC during the night, I responded without thinking, "Because I like to be informed." (He laughed. It is an odd habit, I admit; but the BBC seems to be the only source of journalism that regularly reminds the listener that there really are more than five or six countries in the world, and that those nations' most important stories are not always wars and natural disasters.)

How many people are there who are equally compulsive about their desire "to be informed" -- about matters beyond their work or potential future income? More significant, how many of them are willing to pay -- in the quantity and way that the Financial Times' and Wall Street Journal's readers are -- for the mere, non-remunerative satisfaction of being generally informed? And even among them, how many are willing to pay one source when other, somewhat similar sources, remain available for free?

I don't know the answers. I don't even know all the questions. But the Times, and the rest of us, will at least have some of them 18 months to two years from now.
_______________
* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson

Obama's Punking and Punting on First Down

July 10, 2009, 5:00 p.m.

Change We Can No Longer Believe In
From the blogosphere to the pages of the New York Times, others' disappointments and disillusionment with President Obama are coming more and more to resemble what I have been saying in blog entries here since the election last November. (And I consider myself an Obama supporter.)

Below are excerpts from a couple of examples. And see, Robert Reich, "How the White House's Deal With Big Pharma Undermines Democracy," Robert Reich's Blog, August 9, 2009.

First, some excerpts from Frank Rich, "Is Obama Punking Us?" New York Times, August 9, 2009, p. WK8:

Is Obama Punking Us?

By FRANK RICH

[T]here is real reason for longer-term worry in the form of a persistent, anecdotal drift toward disillusionment among some of the president’s supporters . . . articulated by an Obama voter . . . “Nothing’s changed for the common guy,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been punked.” She cited in particular the billions of dollars in bailouts given to banks . . ..

It’s the sinking sensation that the American game is rigged — that . . . [as the President said earlier] the system is in hock to “the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few” who have “run Washington far too long.” . . . [T]he fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand, from commercial transactions as trivial as the sales of prime concert tickets to cultural forces as pervasive as the news media. . . .

[T]he Democratic members of Congress those hecklers assailed can hardly claim the moral high ground. . . . [I]ndustry groups contributed almost $1.8 million in the first six months of 2009 alone to the 18 House members of both parties supervising health care reform . . ..

[T]he Democratic Senate Campaign Committee . . . raked in nearly $500,000 from a single doctor-owned hospital in McAllen, Tex. — the very one that Obama has cited as a symbol of runaway medical costs . . ..

[Former Congressman Billy] Tauzin, an active player in White House health care negotiations, . . . secured a behind-closed-doors flip-flop, enlisting the administration to push for continued protection of drug prices. . . .

[Obama's] first questionable post-victory step was to assemble an old boys’ club of Robert Rubin protégés and Goldman-Citi alumni as the White House economic team . . .. The questions about Geithner’s role in adjudicating the subsequent bailouts aren’t going away . . ..

And here, in its entirety, is the Daily Kos blog's take on Obama supporters' dispair:

Oh, my President. What are you doing?

by flitedocnm

Sun Aug 09, 2009 at 07:53:27 PM PDT

You warned us from the beginning not to expect too much. You told us that you were a centrist.

OK, we said. You are intelligent, you understand constitutional law, you are inspiring, you speak of real change, you are saying all the right things about special interests. You are a natural leader. We want you to be the leader of all of us.

You were everything that George Bush was not.

You gave us hope.

We understood.

But today, Mr. President, we are devastated.

We were forgiving when you compromised on FISA.

We understood, you had to get elected, you didn't want to spook those who were still scared, and you didn't want to make this an issue.

We were puzzled when you appointed the guys from Goldman Sachs to run the economy.

OK, we knew these guys are smart and they have experience. They do understand how the system works. We gave you the benefit of the doubt on this.

We were patient when you asked us to be patient on Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Well, we still don't really understand why you can't end this now, but at least we know you're committed to fixing this. Most of us said we'd be patient.

We cheered when you vowed to shut down Guantánamo within twelve months.

Maybe a little longer than we'd hoped, but at least you've given a firm commitment.

We were concerned about what we were getting into with the increased mobilization in Afghanistan.

But you ran on this during your campaign, and nobody really knows the best answer for this. We again gave you the benefit of the doubt.

And we were thrilled at the real prospect of health system reform.

Maybe not what many had hoped for, but we were going to get real reform, real structural changes in the system, a real Public Option, a new paradigm.

But then, Mr. President, but then, things started going not so well.

First there were the second thoughts about indefinite detentions without charge or trial. And whether Guántanmo would really shut down within twelve months.

OK, the fools and cowards in Congress threw you a lead anchor on this. We know you'll do the best you can.

We heard you loudly and clearly about wanting to move forward, and not look backward.

But we remain increasingly alarmed, as more and more comes out about torture, rendition, the shredding of our Constitution, and now the alleged abuses of Blackwater, that we will never restore the precedent that the rule of law must come first, and can never be abrogated with impunity by an Executive branch that has claimed unaccountable power, beyond the rule of law.

And transparency, Mr. President. You promised transparency.

And you are more and more defending the idea that we can't afford transparency. That it's a luxury, not something we should expect of our government.

Then there was the DOJ brief not merely defending DOMA, but using language that would have made Sean Hannity proud.

What was that all about?? Was this a Bush mole run amok at DOJ?

We expected the pushback from the right on health system reform, albeit nobody quite expected the ferocity of the hatred and venom.

But at least we can understand where it's coming from. So, we'll be out there at all the town halls, we will mobilize, we will defend, we'll use calm logic where the other side uses slander and lies, we'll be there defending you and defending health system reform.

But despite all this, the talk of "bipartisanship" has continued, relentlessly, when it is clear as the New Mexico sky on a cold December morning that this would buy you nothing -- that maybe with one or two exceptions, the Republicans will oppose you every step of the way on this, and will extract concessions that would gut the bill.

And with this, Mr. President, we started to see the writing on the wall.

And at the same time, Mr. President, even the Senators like Bingaman and Durban who have supported real reform, who have spoken of the importance of a robust public option, have started to back down, using terms like "on the ropes", that maybe "co-ops are sorta the same thing".

We really, truly don't like this, Mr. President. This is not going well. The writing on the wall looks like it's written in blood now.

Amidst all of this, Mr. President, your Chief of Staff, Mr. Emanuel, decided that he'd had enough of interference from the people who were questioning how all this was going. He decided that it was the moment to exercise his superb powers of diplomacy to look in our direction -- in the direction of progressives, of the people who have given you our all, who sent in millions of donations during the campaign, who have worked for you tirelessly, endlessly, with faith that ultimately, finally, we would have a president who would lead us back from the abyss that we faced after eight long years wandering in the wilderness of ignorance, lies, greed and destruction, with faith that even when you felt you had to compromise, your heart was in the right place and you would do the best you possibly could -- your Chief of Staff looked in our direction, looked right into our eyes and smiled and extended his middle finger.

To this, Mr. President, I cannot begin to even offer a response.

And now, Mr. President, now we are dumbstruck. Over this weekend, we have learned of the deal with Big PhRMA. A deal that George Bush would be proud of -- the deal to buy their support, their advertising dollars, in return for their pledge to cut their profits by a defined margin, but not more than that, and that it would be promised that WE WOULD NEVER SEEK TO NEGOTIATE FOR THE BEST DRUG PRICES. I don't have to outline the details of why this leaves us speechless. Robert Reich spelled that out with great clarity today.

The Barack Obama we voted for in November of 2008, the guy who spoke eloquently of not allowing special interests to run the government, would understand. He wouldn't require Robert Reich or any of us to explain it to him.

This is not reform, Mr. President. It does not even remotely resemble "change". This is business as usual. It sends the message that true change is impossible, that there is no hope at all, that all we can do is capitulate.

Will all due respect, Mr. President, those who love you are all sitting here tonight with tears in our eyes, saying: "WTF, Mr. President. WTF are you doing?"

# # #

Punishment to Fit Financial Crimes

March 23, 2009, 8:20 a.m.

Punishing Thieves in Suits:
Piano Wire or Stocks?
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
As I've repeatedly conceded, I don't claim expertise as an economist. On the other hand, I've also urged that our instincts and intuition are entitled to more weight than we're modestly inclined to accord them. Nicholas Johnson, "Trust Your Instincts, Auto Bailout's Terrible Idea," November 14, 2008.

Clearly, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers do know something about economics.

Equally clearly the New York Times staff of editorial writers and columnists are not necessarily among the nation's top economists -- although one did win the Nobel Prize in economics, which is not something those three can claim .

Nonetheless, it was reassuring in terms of my "trust your instincts" theory that so much of what appeared in the Times over the weekend echoed analyses and concerns I've expressed over the last six months in the blog entries linked below.

For example, while I'd prefer to let the market sort this out, rather than simply throw taxpayers' dollars at bankers, if we are going to bail out those who have brought us this disaster I'd rather it be used to purchase the banks ("nationalization") rather than their so-called "toxic assets."

On Saturday the Times editorialized:

This crisis is unlikely to turn around until President Obama and his aides come up with a plan for failing banks that does not arbitrarily reject the idea of nationalization.

Thursday morning [March 19] I wrote:

And if it makes no sense to try to revive the auto economy by giving billions to auto executives [when consumers would rather save their money than buy cars], it makes even less sense to try to revive an entire economy by transferring trillions of taxpayer dollars to bankers. Here again, the problem is not that businesses and consumers don't have the opportunity to run up even more debt. The problem is that they have the wisdom not to want to do so, especially at this time. ["What a Mess," March 19, 2009.]

Saturday's editorial continues:

On Wednesday [March 18], it [the Fed] announced that it would buy hundreds of billions of dollars more [of mortgage-backed securities] and as much as $300 billion of Treasury bonds. . . . Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that this will work. With unemployment rising, debt loads high and household wealth falling, consumers may be reluctant to resume spending anytime soon, no matter how low rates and prices go. And even if consumers and businesses want to borrow, banks — stung by their own losses — may not be willing to lend.

I have repeatedly noted that the multi-trillion-dollar transfer of taxpayers' money to the banking and financial community has emphasized only the benefits of a rational benefit-cost analysis. There are potential downsides of this approach as well -- most notably, inflation -- and that the Administration and Congress have, at a minimum, an obligation to evaluate, and then share with the American people, those costs and risks.

The Times editorial went on:

To buy up securities, the Fed creates money. To provide fiscal stimulus, Congress borrows money. The more money that is created and borrowed, the greater the risk of future inflation and higher interest rates. . . . [A] forthright acknowledgment of the risks is necessary to keep policy makers from venturing too far into dangerous territory.rates.

Editorial, "The Fed Does Battle, Again," New York Times, March 21, 2009.

By this morning [Monday, March 23] at least four, count 'em four, Times columnists, card-carrying members of the "liberal media," were expressing something far shy of enthusiasm for President Obama.

Paul Krugman (that Nobel Prize winner) writes of his "Financial Policy Despair":

If the reports [of the Administration's bank rescue plan] are correct, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, has persuaded President Obama to recycle Bush administration policy — specifically, the “cash for trash” plan proposed, then abandoned, six months ago by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

I have expressed concern about the Administration and Fed secrecy regarding what the banks and AIG have done with the money we gave them. Krugman notes that,

the administration has failed to quell the public’s doubts about what banks are doing with taxpayer money.

From the outset I've expressed concern about the President's close ties to the financial community, that community's financial contributions to him and members of Congress, the role of Goldman Sachs and Geithner's selection of the firm's lobbyist, no less, as his chief of staff, and the seeming obliviousness of the lot of them to the public feelings about corporate excesses.

Krugman comments:

And now Mr. Obama has apparently settled on a financial plan that, in essence, assumes that banks are fundamentally sound and that bankers know what they’re doing. It’s as if the president were determined to confirm the growing perception that he and his economic team are out of touch, that their economic vision is clouded by excessively close ties to Wall Street.

In "What A Mess" I wrote:

[E]ven the world's best and most honorable bankers couldn't solve this problem with that much money. Trickle down doesn't work. In addition to common sense, intuition, and long history, we now have the lack of results from the most recent six months of trying.

Paul Krugman shares this conclusion:

But the real problem with this plan is that it won’t work. . . . And no amount of financial hocus-pocus — for that is what the Geithner plan amounts to — will change that fact.

Paul Krugman, "Financial Policy Despair," New York Times, March 23, 2009.

On Sunday [March 22] Tom Friedman bemoaned the consequences of what he called "politics worse than usual":

There don’t seem to be any adults at the top — nobody acting larger than the moment, nobody being impelled by anything deeper than the last news cycle. . . . Right now we have an absence of inspirational leadership. From business we hear about institutions too big to fail — no matter how reckless. From bankers we hear about contracts too sacred to break — no matter how inappropriate. And from our immature elected officials we hear about how it was all “the other guy’s fault.” . . . [Meanwhile,] our country, alas, is not too big to fail.

Thomas L. Friedman, "Are We Home Alone?" New York Times, March 22, 2009.

Maureen Dowd shares my concern about the consequences of the close ties between the Administration, AIG and Wall Street. She thinks "we need less smooth jazz and more martial brass" and, inspired by Michelle Obama's declaration that the President (and their daughters) are going to be pulling weeds in her new White House garden "whether they like it or not," believes "the wrong Obama is in the Oval."

[T]he fury directed at the robber barons by the robbed blind in America has been getting hotter, not cooler. And that’s because the president and his Treasury secretary have been coddling the Wall Street elite, fretting that if they curtail executives’ pay and perks too much, if they make the negotiations with those who siphoned our 401(k)’s too tough, the spoiled Sherman McCoys will run away, the rescue plan will fail and the markets will wither. . . .

The shafters of the universe have been treated with such kid gloves that they remain obnoxiously oblivious. Vikram “Pandit the Bandit” at Citigroup, which received $50 billion in bailout money, is . . . spending $10 million to renovate his Park Avenue offices . . .

Fannie Mae . . . brazenly intends to give $1 million apiece in retention bonuses to four top executives, even though the word retention in a depression is pure Ionesco. Freddie Mac . . . has yet to disclose its planned bonuses. . . .

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who grew up as a Republican . . . sees things from the point of view of that wellspring of masters of the universe, Goldman Sachs. (His Treasury chief of staff was a Goldman lobbyist, who fought then-Senator Obama’s attempt to curb executive compensation — just as Geithner has done within the administration.) . . .

Virtually unnoticed amid the bonus imbroglio was A.I.G.’s grudging disclosure that it had funneled $93 billion — more than half its federal money to date — to its high-flying insurees, including Goldman Sachs . . .. Yet as Goldman sneers at the federal money at the front door, it’s taking delivery of billions in no-strings federal money through the back door. . . .

The issue is how much we must pay to preserve financial stability over all, not how much one company promised to pay. At this point, A.I.G. seems to be the only party paying face value on toxic derivatives.

Maureen Dowd, "Toxic R Us," New York Times, March 22, 2009.

Frank Rich used some very tough language to hit on a number of the issues that I have written about, many of which are identified above. He also mentions an issue (the legality of much of what was done) that I've often described in these words: "the problem is not just that corporations violate the law, the much more serious problem is that they are writing the law."

A charming visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger . . . his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. . . .

The White House seemed utterly blindsided by the public’s revulsion at the moneyed insiders’ culture illuminated by [former Senator Tom] Daschle’s post-Senate career. Yet last week’s events suggest that the administration learned nothing from that brush with disaster.

Otherwise it never would have used Lawrence Summers, the chief economic adviser, as a messenger just as the A.I.G. rage was reaching a full boil last weekend. Summers is so tone-deaf that he makes Geithner seem like Bobby Kennedy. . . .

[AIG] has, in essence, been laundering its $170 billion in taxpayers’ money by paying off its reckless partners in gambling and greed, from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup on Wall Street to Société Générale and Deutsche Bank abroad.

Summers was even more highhanded in addressing the “retention bonuses” . . ..

[M]ost Americans don’t know how A.I.G. brought the world’s financial system to near-ruin or what credit-default swaps are. They may not even know what A.I.G. stands for. But Americans do make the connection between their fears about their own jobs and their broad understanding of the A.I.G. debacle.

They know that the corporate bosses who may yet lay them off have sometimes been as obscenely overcompensated for failure as Wall Street’s bonus babies. . . .

Since Americans get the big picture of this inequitable system, that grotesque reality dwarfs any fine print. That’s why it doesn’t matter that the disputed bonuses at A.I.G. amount to less than one-tenth of one percent of its bailout. . . .

What made Jon Stewart’s takedown of Jim Cramer resonate was less his specific brief against CNBC’s cheerleading for bad stocks than his larger indictment of the gaping economic inequality that defined the bubble . . . [the] “two markets”. . ..

No one is more commanding on this subject than our president. . . . But rhetoric won’t tamp down the anger out there, and neither will calculated displays of presidential “outrage.” . . .

Obama must do what he has repeatedly promised but not always done: make everything about his economic policies transparent and hold every player accountable . . . actually answering the questions that officials like Geithner and Summers routinely duck.

Inquiring Americans have the right to know why it took six months for us to learn (some of) what A.I.G. did with our money. . . . [W]hy Goldman, which declared that its potential losses with A.I.G. were “immaterial,” nonetheless got the largest-known A.I.G. handout of taxpayers’ cash ($12.9 billion) while also receiving a TARP bailout. We need to be told why retention bonuses went to some 50 bankers who not only were in the toxic A.I.G. unit but who left despite the “retention” jackpots. . . . And where are the M.R.I.’s from those “stress tests” the Treasury Department is giving those banks?

[I]t's hard to imagine taxpayers shelling out billions for a second bank bailout unless there’s a full accounting of every dime of the first, and true transparency for the new plan whose rollout is becoming the most attenuated striptease since the heyday of Gypsy Rose Lee. . . .

[W]hy . . . has there been . . . so much evasiveness so far? The answer, I fear, is that too many of the administration’s officials are too marinated in the insiders’ culture to police it, reform it or own up to their own past complicity with it. . . .

The “dirty little secret,” Obama told Leno on Thursday, is that “most of the stuff that got us into trouble was perfectly legal.” An even dirtier secret is that a prime mover in keeping that stuff legal was Summers [of whom his mentor, Robert Rubin] wrote in his 2003 memoir . . . underestimated how the risk of derivatives might multiply “under extraordinary circumstances.”

Given that Summers worked for a secretive hedge fund, D. E. Shaw, . . . you have to wonder how he can now sell the administration’s plan for buying up toxic assets with the help of hedge funds. It will look like another giveaway to his own insiders’ club. As for Geithner, people might take him more seriously if he gave a credible account of why, while at the New York Fed, he and the Goldman alumnus Hank Paulson let Lehman Brothers fail but saved the Goldman-trading ally A.I.G.

Frank Rich, "Has a 'Katrina Moment' Arrived?" New York Times, March 22, 2009.

To remove any possible question I want to repeat that with which I began. I suffer no illusion that anyone -- members of Congress, the Obama Administration, or New York Times' columnists -- are even reading this blog, let alone influenced by it. Nor do I believe that I've come up with insights over the past six months or so that had not occurred to others. Indeed, that's exactly my point.

If I, and thousands of other bloggers, can come up with these insights and analysis drawing on nothing much beyond intuition, why oh why cannot our elected and appointed officials do as well?

So what should we do with these folks who've brought the world to this economic disaster?

At dinner last evening talk turned to appropriate punishments for those who are coming to taxpayers for multi-trillion-dollar bailouts necessitated by a 40% (give or take) decline in home values and stock prices brought on by their own incompetence and greed.

Nicholas Night, who hails from Bisbee, Arizona ("the town too high to care" -- a response to Tombstone's claim to be "the town too tough to die"), made reference to AIG Ed Liddy's concern regarding threats he's received from those who believe piano wire should be put around the necks of the most guilty of AIG executives. Bisbee is something of a music town, and Nick observed that there are now so many electronic keyboards in use that there may well be a shortage of piano wire -- at least in Bisbee.

So what he next proposed is that they be put in stocks. No, not the kind they're already in, the stocks of profiteers; the stocks the Puritans put folks in, with criminals' heads, arms and legs sticking through and locked down. Guards would be provided to protect them, so that nothing more damaging than tomatoes and rotten eggs would be thrown.

After being freed from the stocks they, and indeed all white collar criminals in Nick's proposal, would then be required to pay back in full whatever losses they'd caused or thefts they'd pulled off. They would have to earn that money selling ice cream bars by driving a truck through neighborhoods primarily occupied by persons of a different color from themselves. And these customers could pick a 38-second excerpt from a song that the perps would have to listen to over-and-over, constantly, until the debt was paid.

It's possible you had to be there, but I think Night is on to something. If Obama is going to continue to refuse to prosecute and imprison them the least we can do is identify who they are and do some form or another of public shaming.
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Related Blog Entries on Global Economy and Bailouts
Nicholas Johnson, "Who's The Reason?" September 5, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "How Much Do You Owe the Chinese?" September 6, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Taxpayer Rescue," September 15, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Global Finance: The Great Fountain Pen Robbery," September 21, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Alternatives to 'The Plan,'" September 28, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Better Alternatives to Congress' Bailout Plan," October 2, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Can We Trust Our Bankers?" October 29, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "It's the Economy," November 7, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Jobs, Not Unemployment, Key to Recovery," November 8, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Trust Your Instincts, Auto Bailout's Terrible Idea," November 14, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Auto Bailout: An Open Letter to Congress," November 19, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "A Trillion Here, a Trillion There," November 20, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "FromDC2Iowa's Weekend Edition," November 21, 2008 ("The Answer to Global Economic Collapse" and "Auto Bailout: 'Show Me the . . . Plan'")

Nicholas Johnson, "Citigroup Deal Stinks," November 25, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Only Select Few Are Thankful for Trillions," November 27, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Auto Loan Makes Too Few Dollars Even Less Sense," December 4, 2008

Nicholas Johnson,"Quick Fix for the Economy," December 12, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "You Know It's Serious When We Start Laughing," December 15, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "A Car in Every Garage," December 16, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Forget Madoff, Focus on Bernanke," December 17, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Of Theaters and Automobiles," December 20, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "There's Bad News and . . . and . . .," December 21, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Et Tu, Toyota?" December 22, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "Revolting Developments," December 23, 2008

Nicholas Johnson, "First Things First," January 8, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "Why We Should 'Point Fingers' and 'Look Backwards,'" January 13, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "Fool Me Twice," January 14, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "Economic Sorrows and Solutions," January 27, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "No More for Wall Street!" February 1, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "Hang Onto Your Wallet," February 5, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "Quick Fix: Support Jobless, Not Bankers," February 7, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "Geithner's Same Old, Same Old," February 10, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "Terrorist Bankers," February 13, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "Financial Crises for Dummies," February 17, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "They're Back!!" February 20, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "The Burden We Ought to Bear," February 23, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "Candid Conservatism," February 27, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "Bankers as Arsonists," March 3, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "Don't Buy Stuff," March 6, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "The Story of Stuff," March 16, 2009

Nicholas Johnson, "What a Mess," March 19, 20, 2009
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson

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