Our valiant allies in the drug wars

Jeremy McDermott, The Beeb:

Colombia’s secret police is under investigation over claims rogue agents may have intercepted phone calls and passed on information to criminals.

Magistrates, politicians, officials and journalists may have had phones tapped.

It is the latest scandal to hit the Department of Administrative Security – or DAS, as the secret police are known – under President Alvaro Uribe.

One ex-DAS director is accused of giving right-wing death squads the names of suspected rebel sympathisers.

Bad news for human rights

Stephen Foley, London Independent:

Less than a month after signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, President Barack Obama has quietly agreed to keep denying the right to trial to hundreds more terror suspects held at a makeshift camp in Afghanistan that human rights lawyers have dubbed “Obama’s Guantanamo”….

human rights groups say they are becoming increasingly concerned that the use of extra-judicial methods in Afghanistan could be extended rather than curtailed under the new US administration. The air base [Bagram] is about to undergo a $60m (£42m) expansion that will double its size, meaning it can house five times as many prisoners as remain at Guantanamo….

The Department of Justice would only say that the legal briefs in the Washington case “speak for themselves”. It says Bagram is a special case because, unlike Guantanamo, it is sited within a theatre of war.

Mr Obama has pushed out the wider questions about the US policy on detaining terror suspects and supporters of the Taliban in Afghanistan until the summer, ordering a review that will take six months to complete.

Financial crisis and Mexican civil war converge

Ed Vulliamy and Paul Harris, The Guardian:

The FBI is probing possible money laundering linked to Mexico’s infamous narco-trafficking Gulf Cartel in its investigation of Texan billionaire Sir Allen Stanford, US law enforcement sources have told the Observer.

An FBI source close to the investigation would not give exact details but confirmed the agency was looking at links to international drug gangs as part of the huge investigation into Stanford’s banking activities. Reports in the US have said Mexican authorities have detained one of Stanford’s private planes as part of an investigation into possible links to the Gulf Cartel. It has been alleged cheques found inside the plane were linked to the cartel, which is one of the most violent criminal organisations in the world.

David Brooks Makes Sense

David Brooks — yes, that David Brooks, the New York Times columnist with whom I’d don’t thing I’ve ever agreed before — writes temperately and sensibly about our economic situation.

He responds to the people who are outraged that the Obama Administration’s economic plans may help people who (according to the outraged souls) don’t deserve it:

…government isn’t fundamentally in the Last Judgment business, making sure everybody serves penance for their sins. In times like these, government is fundamentally in the business of stabilizing the economic system as a whole.

[...]

Individual responsibility doesn’t mean much in an economy like this one. We all know people who have been laid off through no fault of their own. The responsible have been punished along with the profligate.

It makes sense for the government to intervene to try to reduce the oscillation. It makes sense for government to try to restore some communal order.

Welcome to the liberal reality, Mr. Brooks. I’m glad you recognize that it’s better to save the innocent even if a few guilty people go unpunished than to cause the innocent to suffer in one’s zeal to punish the guilty. As you yourself say, we’re all in this together, and we’ll share the fate of the “guilty” unless we let mercy temper justice.

Little Red Hen Rashomon

There’s a revisionist version of “The Little Red Hen” going around that portrays the bread-baking hen as an industrious Republican and her fellow barnyard animal as lazy and greedy [by definition!] government employees, union workers, and other minions of the Democratic Party. (Here’s an example.) The message, of course, is that “Farmer” Obama is taking away the fruits of honest Republican toil to give it to his followers because they won’t shift for themselves.

I think the version by Michael Griffin of Saunderstown, Rhode Island is a lot closer to reality.

Quoted with permission:

“Not I,” said the cow.

“Not I,” said the duck.

“Not I,” said the pig.

“Not I,” said the goose.

“Then I will do it by myself,” said the little red hen, and so she did. She planted her crop, and the wheat grew very tall and ripened into golden grain.

“Who will help me reap my wheat?” asked the little red hen.

“Not I,” said the duck.

“I’m too busy finding ways around health and safety rules,” said the pig.

“I’d dirty my million-dollar office,” said the cow.

“Isn’t that what illegal immigrants are for?” said the goose.

“Then I will do it by myself,” said the little red hen, and so she did.

Solar Energy Gets A Break

Your good news tidbit for today: The price of silicon is dropping thanks to a growing number of factories making it – which means that the people making conventional solar photovoltaic cells have been given a tremendous break just when they really need it.

Socks, RIP

I just learned that Socks has died of cancer.

Rest in peace, little guy. You had a long life and made a lot of people smile, and we’ll miss you.

CNBC mutates

They’re pushing NEWBO’s… America’s NEW Black Overclass. Gosh. Scary.

And then there’s their attitude toward mortgage relief. Here’s my letter to them about a segment on Power Lunch:

The discussion of the Administration’s mortgage assistance plan and the interview of Jared Bernstein amounted to an abuse of journalistic privilege. Rick Santelli presented a crowd of traders hostile to the plan as if they represented the American people. They don’t.

The journalistic panel, which had joked that they were the “teenagers,” proceeded to prove it. There is a great hypocrisy in asserting that mortgages are a sacred contract which must fail if someone gets sick or loses a job, while the government is pouring trillions of dollars into banks. There are a lot of shorts who are furious about that intervention into the sacred market.

Americans care about neighborhoods deteriorating as foreclosures create vacant houses attracting criminal activity. We are our brother’s keeper if only to keep our homes safe. Why did not Rick Santelli ask the traders if they wanted crack houses in their neighborhood? Why didn’t the panel ask Jared Bernstein the basic facts: how many people would be helped? How much would it cost per mortgage? What specifically would prevent speculators from benefiting?

CNBC seems to be becoming all about ideology and nothing about news. But ideology is worthless to those of us trying to navigate the market. We want news!

Update: MSNBC commenters were saying that they were inundated with mail complaining about Santelli’s partisan statement yesterday. Keep those letters coming, folks.

Added: via Josh, here’s the film. Watch it here.

A Really Stupid Idea

That’s my kneejerk reaction to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s idea to tax motorists based on how many miles they drive.

There’s the privacy concern, certainly, and the sheer magnitude of the task of installing a GPS chip in everybody’s car that tracks their every movement, just for the purpose of counting up the miles driven.

But my first thought was that between the job losses and housing crisis, many people must be taking jobs far away from their residences because there are no jobs closer, and they can’t move closer to work because of the difficulty of getting a mortgage and selling a house in a glutted market. There are also people in rural areas who are driving into urban areas for work, because that’s where the jobs are. And people who live a long distance from work because housing closer to where the jobs are is just too expensive for the average wage earner. And people who live in urban areas that don’t have public transportation worth considering.

So yeah sure, let’s punish people who are doing what they have to do to keep paying the bills. And while we’re at it, let’s discourage people from going to restaurants, theaters, shops, and other places where they’d spend money that keeps the businesses open and the employees employed and the economy going.

I recognize the need to raise revenue for road maintenance and repair, but a mileage tax would do far more harm than good.

I say that as someone who drives a mere 13 miles each way to work. I’d take the bus, but I’d burn almost as much gasoline getting to the nearest bus stop as I do driving all the way to work. Instead of thinking of ways of penalizing drivers who can’t choose not to drive long distances, maybe Mr. LaHood could spend some time working on providing adequate public transportation that would reduce oil consumption and the wear and tear on our roads.

(H/T Barbara Morrill in Daily Kos)

[Edit] White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says, “It is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration.”

Friday Cat Blogging

“It was like that when I got here.”

In fairness to the junior cat, it was indeed the senior cat who clawed the chair to shreds. (It’s officially her chair.) Alexander, inexplicably, sharpens his claws on the basement door hinges.